"I am, gentlemen, a little hard to
coax," he said, "but as to being driven, that is out of the question. If I
choose to remain in the President's councils, do these gentlemen mean to
say that I cease to be a Massachusetts Whig? I am quite ready to put that
question to the people of Massachusetts." He was well aware that he was
losing party strength by his action; he knew that behind all these
resolutions was the intention to raise his great rival to the presidency;
but he did not shrink from avowing his independence and his intention of
doing what he believed to be right, and what posterity admits to have been
so. Mr. Webster never appeared to better advantage, and he never made a
more manly speech than on this occasion, when, without any bravado, he
quietly set the influence and the threats of his party at defiance.
He was not mistaken in thinking that the treaty was not yet in smooth
water. It was again attacked in the Senate, and it had a still more severe
ordeal to go through in Parliament. The opposition, headed by Lord
Palmerston, assailed the treaty and Lord Ashburton himself, with the
greatest virulence, denouncing the one as a capitulation, and the other as
a grossly unfit appointment.
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