Excerpt from Speeches and Forensic Arguments, Vol. 2 The position which Mr. Webster fills in the eyes of the country, by this general consent, is the more honorable to him, when it is recollected that it is the victory gained by talent, wholly unaided by those advantages of opportunity, which, to other men, have given official standing, influence, and political power. Mr. Webster came forward at a period'when that ascendency, which New England possessed from the early settlement of the colonies, and which was strengthened by her agency in the great triumphs of the revolution, had passed away. Other portions of the country had grown up the West was settled; the Virginian dynasty was in undisputed possession of the public favor; and new centres of political influ ence had been established, in which New England was allowed to have no share. Had he been a foreigner, barely naturalized, he would have come forward with less prejudice than as a New Eng lander of talent and promise; At the early age of thirty, and without preliminary training in the state assemblies, he rose at once, in the Congress of 1812, to an undisputed eminence; and it was said of him, even then, by one of the very few who could have dis puted his rank, (mr. Lowndes, ) that the North had not his equal, nor the South his superior. What might not have been his career, had he sprung from the other side of the Potomac! He would have succeeded Mr. Monroe, as inevitably as sunrise succeeds the dawn, and would have been thought to sustain, with increased lustre, the line of the great men of Virginia. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.