Mr.Webster opposed the confirmation in an eloquent speech full of just pride in his country and of vigorous indignation against the slight which Mr.Van Buren had put upon her by his instructions to Mr.McLane.He pronounced a splendid "rebuke upon the first instance in which an American minister had been sent abroad as the representative of his party and not as the representative of his country." The opposition was successful, and Mr.Van Buren's nomination was rejected.

It is no doubt true that the rejection was a political mistake, and that, as was commonly said at the time, it created sympathy for Mr.Van Buren and insured his succession to the presidency.

Yet no one would now think as well of Mr.Webster if, to avoid awakening popular sympathy and party enthusiasm in behalf of Mr.Van Buren, he had silently voted for that gentleman's confirmation.

To do so was to approve the despicable tone adopted in the instructions to McLane.

As a patriotic American, above all as a man of intense national feelings, Mr.Webster could not have done otherwise than resist with all the force of his eloquence the confirmation of a man who had made such an undignified and unworthy exhibition of partisanship.