Above all, it stamped him as a statesman of a broad and national cast of mind.
He now settled down to hard and continuous labor at the routine business of the House, and it was not until the end of March that he had occasion to make another elaborate and important speech.

At that time Mr.Clay took up the bill for laying certain protective duties and advocated it strenuously as part of a general and steady policy which he then christened with the name of "the American system." Against this bill, known as the tariff of 1824, Mr.Webster made, as Mr.Adams wrote in his diary at the time, "an able and powerful speech," which can be more properly considered when we come to his change of position on this question a few years later.
As chairman of the Judiciary Committee, the affairs of the national courts were his particular care.

Western expansion demanded an increased number of judges for the circuits, but, unfortunately, decisions in certain recent cases had offended the sensibilities of Virginia and Kentucky, and there was a renewal of the old Jeffersonian efforts to limit the authority of the Supreme Court.

Instead of being able to improve, he was obliged to defend the court, and this he did successfully, defeating all attempts to curtail its power by alterations of the act of 1789.

These duties and that of investigating the charges brought by Ninian Edwards against Mr.Crawford, the Secretary of the Treasury, made the session an unusually laborious one, and detained Mr.Webster in Washington until midsummer.
The short session of the next winter was of course marked by the excitement attendant upon the settlement of the presidential election which resulted in the choice of Mr.John Quincy Adams by the House of Representatives.