AND THE SENTIMENT OF UNION 397 



were as ready to strain the Constitution in one direc- 

 tion as the Democrats were inclined to bend it in 

 another. An instance of the latter kind was Mr. Ben- 

 ton's expunging resolution, against which Mr. Webster 

 emphatically protested. 



About this time Mr. Webster was entertaining 

 thoughts of retiring, for a while at least, from public 

 life. As he said in a letter to a friend, he had not for 

 fourteen years had leisure to attend to his private 

 affairs or to become acquainted by travel with his 

 own country. This period had not, however, been 

 entirely free from professional work. It was seldom 

 that Mr. Webster took part in criminal trials, but in 

 this department of legal practice he showed himself 

 qualified to take rank with the greatest advocates that 

 have ever addressed a jury. His speech for the prose- 

 cution, on the trial of the murderers of Captain Joseph 

 White, at Salem, in August, 1830, has been pro- 

 nounced equal to the finest speeches of Lord Erskine. 

 In the autumn of 1824, while driving in a chaise with 

 his wife from Sandwich to Boston, he stopped at the 

 beautiful farm of Captain John Thomas, by the sea- 

 shore at Marshfield. For the next seven years his 

 family passed their summers at this place as guests 

 of Captain Thomas ; and as the latter was growing old 

 and willing to be eased of the care of the farm, Mr. 

 Webster bought it of him in the autumn of 1831. 

 Captain Thomas continued to live there, until his 

 death in 1837, as Mr. Webster's guest. For the latter 

 it became the favourite home whither he retired in the 

 intervals of public life. It was a place, he said, where 

 he " could go out every day in the year and see some- 

 thing new." Mr. Webster was very fond of the sea. 



