Clay, if he had held out so long, would
have been helpless without Mr. Webster. But such a course required a very
strong will and great tenacity of purpose, and it was on this side that Mr.
Webster was weak, as Mr. Benton points out. Instead of waiting for Mr. Clay
to come to him, Mr. Webster went over to Clay and Calhoun, and formed for a
time the third in that ill-assorted partnership. There was no reason for
his doing so. In fact every good reason was against it. Mr. Clay had come
to Mr. Webster with his compromise, and had been met with the reply "that
it would be yielding great principles to faction; and that the time had
come to test the strength of the Constitution and the government." This was
a brave, manly answer, but Mr. Clay, nationalist as he was, had straightway
deserted his friend and ally, and gone over to the separatists for support.
Then a sharp contest had occurred between Mr. Webster and Mr. Clay in the
debate on the tariff; and when it was all over, the latter wrote with frank
vanity and a slight tinge of contempt: "Mr. Webster and I came in
conflict, and I have the satisfaction to tell you that he gained nothing.
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