The fame of his youthful eloquence, so far beyond anything ever known in the college, was noised abroad, and in the year 1800 the citizens of Hanover, the college town, asked him to deliver the Fourth of July oration.

In this production, which was thought of sufficient merit to deserve printing, Mr.
Webster sketched rapidly and exultingly the course of the Revolution, threw in a little Federal politics, and eulogized the happy system of the new Constitution.

Of this and his other early orations he always spoke with a good deal of contempt, as examples of bad taste, which he wished to have buried and forgotten.

Accordingly his wholesale admirers and supporters who have done most of the writing about him, and who always sneezed when Mr.
Webster took snuff, have echoed his opinions about these youthful productions, and beyond allowing to them the value which everything Websterian has for the ardent worshipper, have been disposed to hurry them over as of no moment.

Compared to the reply to Hayne or the Plymouth oration, the Hanover speech is, of course, a poor and trivial thing.
Considered, as it ought to be, by itself and in itself, it is not only of great interest as Mr.Webster's first utterance on public questions, but it is something of which he had no cause to feel ashamed.