It was wittily said of a well-known anti-slavery leader, that had he lived in the Middle Ages he would have gone to the stake for a principle, under a misapprehension as to the facts.
Mr.Webster not only could never have misapprehended facts, but, if he had flourished in the Middle Ages he would have been a stanch and honest supporter of the strongest government and of the dominant church.

Perhaps this defines his religious character as well as anything, and explains why the argument in the Girard will case, fine as it was, did not reach the elevation and force which he so often displayed on other themes.
The Rhode Island case grew out of the troubles known at that period as Dorr's rebellion.

It involved a discussion not only of the constitutional provisions for suppressing insurrections and securing to every State a republican form of government, but also of the general history and theory of the American governments, both state and national.

There was thus offered to Mr.Webster that full scope and large field in which he delighted, and which were always peculiarly favorable to his talents.

His argument was purely constitutional, and although not so closely reasoned, perhaps, as some of his earlier efforts, is, on the whole, as fine a specimen as we have of his intellectual power as a constitutional lawyer at the bar of the highest national tribunal.