"Ighe Oppectator," 3une 14th, 1851
THE American President has returned to Washington. He appears to have been coolly received throughout his progress. Mr. Webster, who was prevented by his son's indisposition from attending the chief magistrate, has since gone over the same ground, and with much more eclat ; having addressed numerous assemblies along the whole line of the Erie railroad, and been received with enthusiasm. His greatest anxiety appears to have been to vindicate the course pursued by himself and his party in relation to the Fugitive Slave Bill, and to convince his auditors that upon the ground of that bill alone can the Union be perpetuated.
The vehemence with which Mr. Webster professed sincerity while indulging in something very closely resembling special- pleading, and the frequency of his appeals to the Supreme Being as witness to his good faith, imply a lively sense that the interests of his party are in danger, Indeed, the abstract of the returns of the census of 1850, published in the Washington papers, shows that he is not apprehensive without cause. The source of danger is not the altered balance of the Slavery and Abolition parties ; on both sides the question of slavery is palpably with the greater number a mere pretext—" political capital," in the Translantic phrase. But it is obvious that political power is rapidly passing from the Atlantic to the Western States: and the Conservative party, to which Mr. Webster belongs, has its strongholds in the Atlantic States ; the pioneers and backwoodsmen of the West belonging to a more reckless class of politicians.
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