Staunton Spectator

At no period of his life heretofore has Mr. Webster displayed more of the great qualities of a great orator than now. His speeches on his recent tour to the North, though referring to one general subject, have the charm of infinite variety ; and while they abound in matter to suggest and to exercise the profoundest reflection, they appear at the same time to be the unstudied effusions of the moment and the occasion. The following from a speech of his at Syracuse, is in his happiest manner, and it has the further interest of communicating some particulars of his earliest history :—Balt. American.

"It so happened that all the public services which I have rendered in the world, in my day and generation, have been connected with the General Government. I think I ought to make an exception. I was ten days a member of the Massachusetts Legislature, [laughter,] and I turned my thought to the search of some good object in which I could be useful in that position——and after much reflection, I introduced a bill which, with the general consent of both houses of the Massachusetts Legislature, passed into a law—and is now a law of the State— which enacts no man in the State shall catch trout in any other manner than with the hook and line. [Great laughter.] With that exception, I never was connected for an hour with any State Government. Perhaps that was my misfortune.

"At the age of thirty. I was in New Hampshire practising law—and had some clients.

"The Governor of that State, John Taylor Gilman, thought that a youth and young man, as I was, I might be fit to make an attorney General of the State of New Hampshire, and he nominated me to the Council, and the Council taking it into their deep consideration, and not happening to be of the same politics of the Governor and myself, voted, three out of five, that I was not competent. [Laughter.]

"So you see, gentlemen, I never gained promotion in any State Government.

"Gentlemen, to be serious, my life has been a life of severe labor in my profession, and all the portion I could spare of that labor, from the support of my family and myself, has been devoted to the consideration of subjects connected with the general history of the country—the Constitution of the country—the confederation out of which the Constitution arose,—all the history of the Congresses which have assembled before and since the formation of that Constitution—and in short, if I have learned anything,—and I agree it is very little— what I do know, and what I do understand, so far as I understand anything, is the Constitution of the United States, the history of its formation, and the history of its administration under General Washington, and from that time down to this."