Chapter XIII: Part 13

"To this last article [the right of the British to navigate the Mississippi River] Mr. Clay makes strong objections. He is willing to leave the matter of the fisheries as a nest-egg for another war.... He considers it a privilege much too important to be conceded for the mere liberty of drying fish upon a desert, but the Mississippi was destined to form a most important part of the interests of the American Union.... Mr. Clay, of all the members, had alone been urgent to present an article stipulating the abolition of impressment. Mr. Clay lost his temper, as he generally does whenever the right of the British to navigate the Mississippi is discussed....

"December 11th. He [Clay] was for war three years longer. He had no doubt but three years more of war would make us a warlike people, and that then we should come out of the war with honor.... December 22d. At last he turned to me, and asked me whether I would not join him now and break off negotiations."

After five months of weary negotiations under most adverse conditions so far as the American commissioners were concerned, the treaty was signed on December 24th, 1814. During all these months Clay had resisted any and all concessions, and none were made. The Marquis of Wellesley declared in the House of Lords that the American commissioners had shown a most astonishing superiority over the British during the whole of the correspondence.

During Mr. Clay's absence at Ghent, his admiring constituents returned him to Congress by an almost unanimous vote. A year later in Congress, Clay referred to his part in the bringing on the war as follows:--

"I gave a vote for a declaration of war. I exerted all the little influence and talent I could command to make the war. The war was made. It is terminated. And I declare with perfect sincerity, if it had been permitted to me to lift the veil of futurity and to foresee the precise series of events which had occurred, my vote would have been unchanged. We had been insulted and outraged and spoliated upon by almost all Europe,--by Great Britain, by France, Spain, Denmark, Naples, and to cap the climax, by the little contemptible power of Algiers. We had submitted too long and too much. We had become the scorn of foreign powers and the derision of our own citizens. What have we gained by the war? Let any man look at the degraded condition of this country before the war, the scorn of the universe, the contempt of ourselves; and tell me if we have gained nothing by the war? What is our situation now? Respectability and character abroad, security and confidence at home."

Clay more than any other man forced the war. It was the successful military hero of this war--the victor of New Orleans--who defeated him in after years for the Presidency.

MISSOURI COMPROMISE

The heated struggle in Congress over the admission of Missouri into the Union first brought prominently forward the agitation of the slavery question. This struggle, which lasted from 1818 to 1821, threatened the very existence of the Union. Jefferson wrote from Monticello:--

"The Missouri question is the most portentous one that has ever threatened the Union. In the gloomiest moments of the Revolutionary War I never had any apprehension equal to that I feel from this source."

Mr. Schurz, writing of the feeling at the time, says:--

"While thus the thought of dissolving the Union occurred readily to the Southern mind, the thought of maintaining the government and preserving the Union by means of force hardly occurred to anybody. It seemed to be taken for granted on all sides that if the Southern States insisted on cutting loose from the Union, nothing could be done but to let them go."

The two sections were at this time so evenly balanced that the maintenance of the Union by force could not have been successfully attempted. The compromise which admitted Missouri to the Union as a slave State, and recognized the right of settlers to carry slaves into the territory south of 36 deg. 30', was carried through by the splendid leadership of Clay, who thus earned the title of "the great pacificator." Future historians will accord to him the title of the savior of the Union.

Upon the adoption of the compromise measures Mr. Clay resigned his seat in Congress to give his attention to his private affairs, being financially embarrassed by indorsing for a friend. During his stay at home there was a fierce controversy over the issue of paper money and relief measures to favor debtors who had become involved through the recklessness following such inflation. Against what seemed to be an overwhelming popular feeling, Clay arrayed himself on the side of sound money and sound finance. In 1823 he was again returned to the House of Representatives without opposition, and was chosen Speaker by a vote of 139 to 42.

INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS

Soon after his entrance into Congress Clay took advanced ground in favor of building roads, improving water-ways, and constructing canals by the general government, in order to connect the seaboard States with the "boundless empire" of the growing West. He became the leader, the foremost champion, of a system which was bitterly opposed by some of the ablest statesmen of the time as unauthorized by the Constitution. Clay triumphed, and during his long public service was the recognized leader of a system which though opposed at first, has been accepted as a national policy by both of the great political parties. That he was actuated by a grand conception of the future destiny of the country, and the needs of such improvements to insure a more perfect union, his able speeches on these questions will show. In one he said:--

"Every man who looks at the Constitution in the spirit to entitle him to the character of statesman, must elevate his views to the height to which this nation is destined to reach in the rank of nations. We are not legislating for this moment only, or for the present generation, or for the present populated limits of the United States; but our acts must embrace a wider scope,--reaching northward to the Pacific and southwardly to the river Del Norte. Imagine this extent of territory with sixty or seventy or a hundred millions of people. The powers which exist now will exist then; and those which will exist then exist now.... What was the object of the Convention in framing the Constitution? The leading object was UNION,--Union, then peace. Peace external and internal, and commerce, but more particularly union and peace, the great objects of the framers of the Constitution, should be kept steadily in view in the interpretation of any clause of it; and when it is susceptible of various interpretation, that construction should be preferred which tends to promote the objects of the framers of the Constitution, to the consolidation of the Union.... No man deprecates more than I do the idea of consolidation; yet between separation and consolidation, painful as would be the alternative, I should greatly prefer the latter."

Congress now appropriates yearly for internal improvements a sum far greater than the entire revenue of the government at the time Clay made this speech.

SPANISH-AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE

It was but natural that Clay's ardent nature and his love of liberty would incline him to aid the people of Central and South America in their efforts to free themselves from Spanish oppression and misrule. Effective here as in all things undertaken by him, his name must always be linked with the cause of Southern American independence. Richard Rush, writing from London to Clay in 1825, says: "The South-Americans owe to you, more than to any other man of either hemisphere, their independence." His speeches, translated into Spanish, were read to the revolutionary armies, and "his name was a household name among the patriots." Bolivar, writing to him from Bogota in 1827, says:--"All America, Colombia, and myself, owe your Excellency our purest gratitude for the incomparable services which you have rendered to us, by sustaining our cause with sublime enthusiasm."

In one of his speeches on this subject Clay foreshadows a great American Zollverein. The failure of the Spanish-American republics to attain the high ideals hoped for by Clay caused him deep regret in after years.

THE AMERICAN SYSTEM

The tariff law of 1824 was another triumph of Clay's successful leadership, since which time he has been called the father of what has been termed the "American System." It must be remembered that Clay was first led to propose protective duties in order to prepare this country for a war which he felt could not be avoided without loss of national honor. When in 1824 he advocated increased tariff duties in order to foster home industries, protection was universal; even our agricultural products were excluded from British markets by the Corn Laws. The man who would now advocate in Congress duties as low as those levied by the tariff law of 1824, would be called by protectionists of the present day a free-trader. When in 1833 nullification of the tariff laws was threatened, Clay, while demanding that the laws should be enforced and that if necessary nullification should be put down by the strong arm of the government, feared that the growing discontent of the South and the obstinacy of a military President threatened the Union, introduced and carried to a conclusion a compromise tariff measure that brought peace to the country.

SECRETARY OF STATE

It was unfortunate that Clay temporarily relinquished his leadership in Congress to accept the premiership in the Cabinet of President Adams. Although the exacting official duties were not congenial, and proved injurious to his health, his administration of this high office was brilliant and able, as is well attested by the number of important treaties concluded, and by his brilliant state papers. His instructions to the United States delegates to the Panama Congress of American Republics will grow in importance in the years to come, because of the broad principles there enunciated,--that private property should be exempt from seizure on the high seas in times of war.

His chivalrous loyalty to President Adams was fully appreciated, and his friendship reciprocated. After the close of his administration Mr. Adams in a speech said:--

"As to my motives for tendering him the Department of State when I did, let the man who questions them come forward. Let him look around among the statesmen and legislators of the nation and of that day. Let him select and name the man whom, by his pre-eminent talents, by his splendid services, by his ardent patriotism, by his all-embracing public spirit, by his fervid eloquence in behalf of the rights and liberties of mankind, by his long experience in the affairs of the Union, foreign and domestic, a President of the United States intent only upon the honor and welfare of his country ought to have preferred to Henry Clay."

Just before the close of his administration President Adams offered him a position on the bench of the Supreme Court, which he declined.

HIS POSITION ON AFRICAN SLAVERY

Clay was a slaveholder, a kind master--but through his entire public life an open advocate of emancipation. He probably received his early predilections against slavery from his association with Chancellor Wythe, before removing from Virginia, as indeed the best part of his education probably came from personal contact with that able man. The intellectual forces of the border slave States were arrayed in favor of emancipation, until, as Clay writes with some feeling in 1849, they were driven to an opposite course "by the violent and indiscreet course of ultra abolitionists in the North"; but Clay remained to his death hopeful that by peaceable means his country might be rid of this great evil. In the letter above quoted, writing of his failure to establish a system of gradual emancipation in Kentucky, he says:--

"It is a consoling reflection that although a system of gradual emancipation cannot be established, slavery is destined inevitably to extinction by the operation of peaceful and natural causes. And it is also gratifying to believe that there will not be probably much difference in the period of its existence, whether it terminates legally or naturally. The chief difference in the two modes is that according to the first, we should take hold of the institution intelligently and dispose of it cautiously and safely; while according to the other it will some day or other take hold of us, and constrain us in some manner or other to get rid of it."

As early as 1798, he made his first political speeches in Kentucky advocating an amendment to the State Constitution, providing for the gradual emancipation of the slaves. Referring to the failure to adopt this amendment, he said in a speech delivered in the capital of Kentucky in 1829:--

"I shall never cease to regret a decision, the effects of which have been to place us in the rear of our neighbors who are exempt from slavery, in the state of agriculture, the progress of manufactures, the advance of improvements, and the general progress of society."

In these days, when public men who should be leaders bend to what they believe to be the popular wishes, the example of Clay, in his bold disregard of the prejudices and property interests of his constituents, is inspiring.

George W. Prentice was sent from New England to Kentucky to write a life of Clay, and writing in 1830 he says:--

"Whenever a slave brought an action at law for his liberty, Mr. Clay volunteered as his advocate, and it is said that in the whole course of his practice he never failed to obtain a verdict in the slave's favor.... He has been the slaves' friend through life. In all stations he has pleaded the cause of African freedom without fear from high or low. To him more than to any other individual is to be ascribed the great revolution which has taken place upon this subject--a revolution whose wheels must continue to move onward till they reach the goal of universal freedom."

Three years before this was written, Clay in a speech before the Colonization Society said:--

"If I could be instrumental in eradicating this deepest stain upon the character of my country, and removing all cause of reproach on account of it by foreign nations; if I could only be instrumental in ridding of this foul blot that revered State which gave me birth, or that not less beloved State which kindly adopted me as her son, I would not exchange the proud satisfaction which I should enjoy for the honor of all the triumphs ever decreed to the most successful conqueror."

He longed to add the imperial domain of Texas to this country, but feared that it would so strengthen the slave power as to endanger the Union; and when finally he yielded to the inevitable, the Free-Soilers threw their votes to Birney and thus defeated Clay for the Presidency. He deprecated the war with Mexico, yet gave his favorite son as a soldier, who fell at Buena Vista. He stood for the reception of anti-slavery petitions by Congress, against the violent opposition of the leading men of his own section. He continued steadfast to the end, writing in 1849 that if slavery were, as claimed, a blessing, "the principle on which it is maintained would require that one portion of the white race should be reduced to bondage to serve another portion of the same race, when black subjects of slavery could not be obtained." He proposed reasonable schemes for gradual emancipation and deportation, which would, if adopted, have averted the war and settled peaceably the serious problem. He warned the Southerners in 1849 that their demands were unreasonable, and would "lead to the formation of a sectional Northern party, which will sooner or later take permanent and exclusive possession of the Government."

Seeming inconsistencies in Mr. Clay's record on this subject will disappear with a full understanding of the difficulties of his position. Living in a State midway between the North and South, where slavery existed in its mildest and least objectionable form, yet fully alive to its evils, recognizing that the grave problem requiring solution was not alone slavery, but the presence among a free people of a numerous, fecund, servile, alien race; realizing that one section of the country, then relatively too powerful to be ignored, was ready to withdraw from the Union rather than to submit to laws that would endanger slavery; loving the Union with an ardor not excelled by that of any public man in our history; wishing and striving for the emancipation of the slaves, yet too loyal to the Union to follow the more zealous advocates of freedom in their "higher law than the Constitution" crusade,--Mr. Clay in his whole course on this question was consistent and patriotic in the highest degree.

THE COMPROMISE OF 1850

The crowning triumph of a long life of great achievements was his great compromise measures of 1850. These, with their predecessors of 1821 and 1833, have caused some writers to speak of Clay as a man of compromising nature. The reverse is true. Bold, aggressive, uncompromising, and often dictatorial by nature, he favored compromise when convinced that only by such means could civil war or a disruption of the Union be averted. And he was right. He averted a conflict or separation from the Union when the relative strength of the South was such as to have rendered impossible the preservation of the Union by force. The Constitution was a compromise, without which there would have been no union of States. That the compromise did not long survive him was no fault of Clay's, but chargeable to the agitators of both sections, who cared less for the Union than for their pet theories or selfish interests.

Two years after his death the compromise measures were repealed, and the most destructive civil war of modern times and a long list of resultant evils are the result. Those who knew Henry Clay and had felt his wonderful power as a leader, are firm in the belief that had he been alive and in the possession of his faculties in 1861, the Civil War would have been averted. His name and the memory of his love for the Union restrained his adopted State from joining the South.

The struggle over the passage of the compromise measures, lasting for seven months, was one of the most memorable parliamentary struggles on record. The old hero, Henry Clay, broken in health, with the stamp of death upon him, for six weary months led the fight with much of his old-time fire and ability. Sustained by indomitable will and supreme love of country, "I am here," he said, "expecting soon to go hence, and owing no responsibility but to my own conscience and to God."

In his opening speech, which lasted for two days, he said:--

"I owe it to myself to say that no earthly power could induce me to vote for a specific measure for the introduction of slavery where it had not before existed, either south or north of that line. Sir, while you reproach, and justly too, our British ancestors for the introduction of this institution upon the continent of America, I am for one unwilling that the posterity of the present inhabitants of California and New Mexico shall reproach us for doing just what we reproach Great Britain for doing to us."

He upbraided on the one hand the ultra abolitionists as reckless agitators, and hurled defiance at disunionists of the South, while at the same time appealing to the loftier nature and patriotic impulses of his hearers:--

"I believe from the bottom of my soul that this measure is the reunion of the Union. And now let us discard all resentments, all passions, all petty jealousies, all personal desires, all love of peace, all hungering after gilded crumbs which fall from the table of power. Let us forget popular fears, from whatever quarter they may spring. Let us go to the fountain of unadulterated patriotism, and performing a solemn lustration, return divested of all selfish, sinister, and sordid impurities, and think alone of our God, our country, our conscience, and our glorious Union."

As described by Bancroft, Clay was "in stature over six feet, spare and long-limbed; he stood erect as if full of vigor and vitality, and ever ready to command. His countenance expressed perpetual wakefulness and activity. His voice was music itself, and yet penetrating and far-reaching, enchanting the listeners; his words flowed rapidly without sing-song or mannerism, in a clear and steady stream. Neither in public nor in private did he know how to be dull."

Bold, fearless, commanding, the lordliest leader of his day, he was yet gentle, and as an old friend wrote, "was the most emotional man I ever knew. I have seen his eyes fill instantly on shaking the hand of an old friend, however obscure, who had stood by him in his early struggles." The manliest of men, yet his voice would tremble with emotion on reading aloud from a letter the love messages from a little grandchild.

The following, told me by a gentleman who knew Mr. Clay, illustrates the true gentleman he was:--

"When I was a small boy my father took me with him to visit Mr. Clay at his home Ashland. We found some gentlemen there who had been invited to dinner. Just before they went in to dinner my father told me privately to run out and play on the lawn while they were dining. As the gentlemen came out, Mr. Clay saw me, and calling me to him said, 'My young friend, I owe you an apology.' Turning to the gentlemen he said, 'Go into the library, gentlemen, and light your cigars--I will join you presently.' Taking me by the hand he returned with me to the table, ordered the servants to attend to my wants, and conversed most delightfully with me until I had finished my dinner."

He had the faculty of making friends and holding them through life by ties which no circumstances or conditions could sever.

When Clay passed away there was no one whose Unionism embraced all sections, who could stand between the over-zealous advocates of abolition of slavery on the one side and the fiery defenders of the "divine institution" on the other. Sectionalism ran riot, and civil war was the result. During the many years when the North and South were divided on the question of slavery, and sectional feeling ran high, Henry Clay was the only man in public life whose broad nationalism and intense love for the Union embraced all sections, with no trace of sectional bias. He can well be called "The Great American."

[Signature: John R. Procter]

PUBLIC SPIRIT IN POLITICS

From a Speech at Buffalo, July 17th, 1839

Are we not then called upon by the highest duties to our country, to its free institutions, to posterity, and to the world, to rise above all local prejudices and personal partialities, to discard all collateral questions, to disregard every subordinate point, and in a genuine spirit of compromise and concession, uniting heart and hand to preserve for ourselves the blessings of a free government, wisely, honestly, and faithfully administered, and as we received them from our fathers, to transmit them to our children? Should we not justly subject ourselves to eternal reproach, if we permitted our differences about mere men to bring defeat and disaster upon our cause? Our principles are imperishable, but men have but a fleeting existence, and are themselves liable to change and corruption during its brief continuance.

ON THE GREEK STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCE

From a Speech in 1824

Are we so mean, so base, so despicable, that we may not attempt to express our horror, utter our indignation, at the most brutal and atrocious war that ever stained earth or shocked high Heaven? at the ferocious deeds of a savage and infuriated soldiery, stimulated and urged on by the clergy of a fanatical and inimical religion, and rioting in all the excesses of blood and butchery, at the mere details of which the heart sickens and recoils?

If the great body of Christendom can look on calmly and coolly while all this is perpetrated on a Christian people, in its own immediate vicinity, in its very presence, let us at least evince that one of its remote extremities is susceptible of sensibility to Christian wrongs, and capable of sympathy for Christian sufferings; that in this remote quarter of the world there are hearts not yet closed against compassion for human woes, that can pour out their indignant feelings at the oppression of a people endeared to us by every ancient recollection and every modern tie. Sir, attempts have been made to alarm the committee by the dangers to our commerce in the Mediterranean; and a wretched invoice of figs and opium has been spread before us to repress our sensibilities and to eradicate our humanity. Ah, sir! "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" or what shall it avail a nation to save the whole of a miserable trade and lose its liberties?

SOUTH-AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE AS RELATED TO THE UNITED STATES

From a Speech before the House of Representatives in 1818

It is the doctrine of thrones that man is too ignorant to govern himself. Their partisans assert his incapacity, in reference to all nations; if they cannot command universal assent to the proposition, it is then demanded as to particular nations; and our pride and our presumption too often make converts of us. I contend that it is to arraign the dispositions of Providence himself, to suppose that he has created beings incapable of governing themselves, and to be trampled on by kings. Self-government is the natural government of man, and for proof I refer to the aborigines of our own land. Were I to speculate in hypotheses unfavorable to human liberty, my speculations should be founded rather upon the vices, refinements, or density of population. Crowded together in compact masses, even if they were philosophers, the contagion of the passions is communicated and caught, and the effect too often, I admit, is the overthrow of liberty. Dispersed over such an immense space as that on which the people of Spanish America are spread, their physical and I believe also their moral condition both favor their liberty.

With regard to their superstition, they worship the same God with us. Their prayers are offered up in their temples to the same Redeemer whose intercession we expect to save us. Nor is there anything in the Catholic religion unfavorable to freedom. All religions united with government are more or less inimical to liberty. All separated from government are compatible with liberty. If the people of Spanish America have not already gone as far in religious toleration as we have, the difference in their condition from ours should not be forgotten. Everything is progressive; and in time I hope to see them imitating in this respect our example. But grant that the people of Spanish America are ignorant, and incompetent for free government; to whom is that ignorance to be ascribed? Is it not to the execrable system of Spain, which she seeks again to establish and to perpetuate? So far from chilling our hearts, it ought to increase our solicitude for our unfortunate brethren. It ought to animate us to desire the redemption of the minds and bodies of unborn millions from the brutifying effects of a system whose tendency is to stifle the faculties of the soul, and to degrade them to the level of beasts. I would invoke the spirits of our departed fathers. Was it for yourselves only that you nobly fought? No, no! It was the chains that were forging for your posterity that made you fly to arms; and scattering the elements of these chains to the winds, you transmitted to us the rich inheritance of liberty.

FROM THE VALEDICTORY TO THE SENATE, DELIVERED IN 1842

From 1806, the period of my entrance upon this noble theatre, with short intervals, to the present time, I have been engaged in the public councils at home or abroad. Of the services rendered during that long and arduous period of my life it does not become me to speak; history, if she deign to notice me, and posterity, if the recollection of my humble actions shall be transmitted to posterity, are the best, the truest, and the most impartial judges. When death has closed the scene, their sentence will be pronounced, and to that I commit myself. My public conduct is a fair subject for the criticism and judgment of my fellow men; but the motives by which I have been prompted are known only to the great Searcher of the human heart and to myself; and I trust I may be pardoned for repeating a declaration made some thirteen years ago, that whatever errors--and doubtless there have been many--may be discovered in a review of my public service, I can with unshaken confidence appeal to that divine Arbiter for the truth of the declaration that I have been influenced by no impure purpose, no personal motive; have sought no personal aggrandizement; but that in all my public acts I have had a single eye directed and a warm and devoted heart dedicated to what, in my best judgment, I believed the true interests, the honor, the union, and the happiness of my country required.

During that long period, however, I have not escaped the fate of other public men, nor failed to incur censure and detraction of the bitterest, most unrelenting, and most malignant character; and though not always insensible to the pain it was meant to inflict, I have borne it in general with composure and without disturbance, waiting as I have done, in perfect and undoubting confidence, for the ultimate triumph of justice and of truth, and in the entire persuasion that time would settle all things as they should be; and that whatever wrong or injustice I might experience at the hands of man, He to whom all hearts are open and fully known, would by the inscrutable dispensations of His providence rectify all error, redress all wrong, and cause ample justice to be done.

But I have not meanwhile been unsustained. Everywhere throughout the extent of this great continent I have had cordial, warm-hearted, faithful, and devoted friends, who have known me, loved me, and appreciated my motives. To them, if language were capable of fully expressing my acknowledgments, I would now offer all the return I have the power to make for their genuine, disinterested, and persevering fidelity and devoted attachment, the feelings and sentiments of a heart overflowing with never-ceasing gratitude. If, however, I fail in suitable language to express my gratitude to them for all the kindness they have shown me, what shall I say, what can I say, at all commensurate with those feelings of gratitude with which I have been inspired by the State whose humble representative and servant I have been in this chamber?

I emigrated from Virginia to the State of Kentucky now nearly forty-five years ago; I went as an orphan boy who had not yet attained the age of majority; who had never recognized a father's smile, nor felt his warm caresses; poor, penniless, without the favor of the great, with an imperfect and neglected education, hardly sufficient for the ordinary business and common pursuits of life; but scarce had I set my foot upon her generous soil when I was embraced with parental fondness, caressed as though I had been a favorite child, and patronized with liberal and unbounded munificence. From that period the highest honors of the State have been freely bestowed upon me; and when in the darkest hour of calumny and detraction I seemed to be assailed by all the rest of the world, she interposed her broad and impenetrable shield, repelled the poisoned shafts that were aimed for my destruction, and vindicated my good name from every malignant and unfounded aspersion. I return with indescribable pleasure to linger a while longer, and mingle with the warm-hearted and whole-souled people of that State; and when the last scene shall forever close upon me, I hope that my earthly remains will be laid under her green sod with those of her gallant and patriotic sons....

That my nature is warm, my temper ardent, my disposition--especially in relation to the public service--enthusiastic, I am ready to own; and those who suppose that I have been assuming the dictatorship, have only mistaken for arrogance or assumption that ardor and devotion which are natural to my constitution, and which I may have displayed with too little regard to cold, calculating, and cautious prudence, in sustaining and zealously supporting important national measures of policy which I have presented and espoused....

I go from this place under the hope that we shall mutually consign to perpetual oblivion whatever personal collisions may at any time unfortunately have occurred between us; and that our recollections shall dwell in future only on those conflicts of mind with mind, those intellectual struggles, those noble exhibitions of the powers of logic, argument, and eloquence, honorable to the Senate and to the nation, in which each has sought and contended for what he deemed the best mode of accomplishing one common object, the interest and the most happiness of our beloved country. To these thrilling and delightful scenes it will be my pleasure and my pride to look back in my retirement with unmeasured satisfaction....

May the most precious blessings of Heaven rest upon the whole Senate and each member of it, and may the labors of every one redound to the benefit of the nation and to the advancement of his own fame and renown. And when you shall retire to the bosom of your constituents, may you receive the most cheering and gratifying of all human rewards,--their cordial greeting of "Well done, good and faithful servant."

FROM THE LEXINGTON 'SPEECH ON RETIREMENT TO PRIVATE LIFE'

It would neither be fitting, nor is it my purpose, to pass judgment on all the acts of my public life; but I hope I shall be excused for one or two observations which the occasion appears to me to authorize.

I never but once changed my opinion on any great measure of national policy, or on any great principle of construction of the national Constitution. In early life, on deliberate consideration, I adopted the principles of interpreting the federal Constitution which have been so ably developed and enforced by Mr. Madison in his memorable report to the Virginia Legislature; and to them, as I understood them, I have constantly adhered. Upon the question coming up in the Senate of the United States to re-charter the first Bank of the United States, thirty years ago, I opposed the re-charter upon convictions which I honestly entertained. The experience of the war which shortly followed, the condition into which the currency of the country was thrown without a bank, and I may now add, later and more disastrous experience, convinced me I was wrong. I publicly stated to my constituents, in a speech in Lexington (that which I made in the House of Representatives of the United States not having been reported), my reasons for that change, and they are preserved in the archives of the country. I appeal to that record, and I am willing to be judged now and hereafter by their validity.

I do not advert to the fact of this solitary instance of change of opinion as implying any personal merit, but because it is a fact. I will however say that I think it very perilous to the utility of any public man to make frequent changes of opinion, or any change, but upon grounds so sufficient and palpable that the public can clearly see and approve them. If we could look through a window into the human breast and there discover the causes which led to changes of opinion, they might be made without hazard. But as it is impossible to penetrate the human heart and distinguish between the sinister and honest motives which prompt it, any public man that changes his opinion, once deliberately formed and promulgated, under other circumstances than those which I have stated, draws around him distrust, impairs the public confidence, and lessens his capacity to serve his country.

I will take this occasion now to say, that I am and have been long satisfied that it would have been wiser and more politic in me to have declined accepting the office of Secretary of State in 1825. Not that my motives were not as pure and as patriotic as ever carried any man into public office. Not that the calumny which was applied to the fact was not as gross and as unfounded as any that was ever propagated. Not that valued friends and highly esteemed opponents did not unite in urging my acceptance of the office. Not that the administration of Mr. Adams will not, I sincerely believe, advantageously compare with any of his predecessors, in economy, purity, prudence, and wisdom. Not that Mr. Adams was himself wanting in any of those high qualifications and upright and patriotic intentions which were suited to the office....

But my error in accepting the office arose out of my under rating the power of detraction and the force of ignorance, and abiding with too sure a confidence in the conscious integrity and uprightness of my own motives. Of that ignorance I had a remarkable and laughable example on an occasion which I will relate. I was traveling in 1828 through--I believe it was Spottsylvania County in Virginia, on my return to Washington, in company with some young friends. We halted at night at a tavern, kept by an aged gentleman who, I quickly perceived from the disorder and confusion which reigned, had not the happiness to have a wife. After a hurried and bad supper the old gentleman sat down by me, and without hearing my name, but understanding that I was from Kentucky, remarked that he had four sons in that State, and that he was very sorry they were divided in politics, two being for Adams and two for Jackson; he wished they were all for Jackson. "Why?" I asked him.--"Because," he said, "that fellow Clay, and Adams, had cheated Jackson out of the Presidency."--"Have you ever seen any evidence, my old friend," said I, "of that?"--"No," he replied, "none," and he wanted to see none. "But," I observed, looking him directly and steadily in the face, "suppose Mr. Clay were to come here and assure you upon his honor that it was all a vile calumny, and not a word of truth in it, would you believe him?"--"No," replied the old gentleman, promptly and emphatically. I said to him in conclusion, "Will you be good enough to show me to bed?" and bade him good-night. The next morning, having in the interval learned my name, he came to me full of apologies; but I at once put him at his ease by assuring him that I did not feel in the slightest degree hurt or offended with him....

If to have served my country during a long series of years with fervent zeal and unshaken fidelity, in seasons of peace and war, at home and abroad, in the legislative halls and in an executive department; if to have labored most sedulously to avert the embarrassment and distress which now overspread this Union, and when they came, to have exerted myself anxiously at the extra session, and at this, to devise healing remedies; if to have desired to introduce economy and reform in the general administration, curtail enormous executive power, and amply provide at the same time for the wants of the government and the wants of the people, by a tariff which would give it revenue and then protection; if to have earnestly sought to establish the bright but too rare example of a party in power faithful to its promises and pledges made when out of power: if these services, exertions, and endeavors justify the accusation of ambition, I must plead guilty to the charge.

I have wished the good opinion of the world; but I defy the most malignant of my enemies to show that I have attempted to gain it by any low or groveling arts, by any mean or unworthy sacrifices, by the violation of any of the obligations of honor, or by a breach of any of the duties which I owed to my country....

How is this right of the people to abolish an existing government, and to set up a new one, to be practically exercised? Our revolutionary ancestors did not tell us by words, but they proclaimed it by gallant and noble deeds. Who are the people that are to tear up the whole fabric of human society, whenever and as often as caprice or passion may prompt them? When all the arrangements and ordinances of existing organized society are prostrated and subverted, as must be supposed in such a lawless and irregular movement as that in Rhode Island, the established privileges and distinctions between the sexes, between the colors, between the ages, between natives and foreigners, between the sane and the insane, and between the innocent and the guilty convict, all the offspring of positive institutions, are cast down and abolished, and society is thrown into one heterogeneous and unregulated mass. And is it contended that the major part of this Babel congregation is invested with the right to build up at its pleasure a new government? that as often, and whenever, society can be drummed up and thrown into such a shapeless mass, the major part of it may establish another and another new government in endless succession? Why, this would overturn all social organization, make revolutions--the extreme and last resort of an oppressed people--the commonest occurrences of human life, and the standing order of the day. How such a principle would operate in a certain section of this Union, with a peculiar population, you will readily conceive. No community could endure such an intolerable state of things anywhere, and all would sooner or later take refuge from such ceaseless agitation in the calm repose of absolute despotism....

Fellow-citizens of all parties! The present situation of our country is one of unexampled distress and difficulty; but there is no occasion for any despondency. A kind and bountiful Providence has never deserted us; punished us he perhaps has, for our neglect of his blessings and our misdeeds. We have a varied and fertile soil, a genial climate, and free institutions. Our whole land is covered in profusion with the means of subsistence and the comforts of life. Our gallant ship, it is unfortunately true, lies helpless, tossed on a tempestuous sea amid the conflicting billows of contending parties, without a rudder and without a faithful pilot. But that ship is our country, embodying all our past glory, all our future hopes. Its crew is our whole people, by whatever political denomination they are known. If she goes down, we all go down together. Let us remember the dying words of the gallant and lamented Lawrence, "Don't give up the ship." The glorious banner of our country, with its unstained stars and stripes, still proudly floats at its mast-head. With stout hearts and strong arms we can surmount all our difficulties. Let us all, all, rally round that banner, and finally resolve to perpetuate our liberties and regain our lost prosperity.

Whigs! Arouse from the ignoble supineness which encompasses you; awake from the lethargy in which you lie bound; cast from you that unworthy apathy which seems to make you indifferent to the fate of your country. Arouse! awake! shake off the dewdrops that glitter on your garments, and once more march to battle and to victory. You have been disappointed, deceived, betrayed; shamefully deceived and betrayed. But will you therefore also prove false and faithless to your country, or obey the impulses of a just and patriotic indignation? As for Captain Tyler, he is a mere snap, a flash in the pan; pick your Whig flints and try your rifles again.

From 'The Speeches of Henry Clay; Edited by Calvin Colton.'
Copyright, 1857, by A. S. Barnes and Company.

CLEANTHES

(331-232 B.C.)

Cleanthes, the immediate successor of Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, was born at Assos, in the Troad, in B.C. 331. Of his early life we know nothing, except that he was for a time a prize-fighter. About the age of thirty he came to Athens with less than a dollar in his pocket, and entered the school of Zeno, where he remained for some nineteen years. At one time the Court of Areopagus, not seeing how he could make an honest livelihood, summoned him to appear before it and give an account of himself. He did so, bringing with him his employers, who proved that he spent much of the night in carrying water for gardens, or in kneading dough. The court, filled with admiration, offered him a pension, which he refused by the advice of his master, who thought the practice of self-dependence and strong endurance an essential part of education. Cleanthes's mind was slow of comprehension but extremely retentive; like a hard tablet, Zeno said, which retains clearest and longest what is written on it. He was not an original thinker, but the strength and loftiness of his character and his strong religious sense gave him an authority which no other member of the school could claim. For many years head of the Stoa, he reached the ripe age of ninety-nine, when, falling sick, he refused to take food, and died of voluntary starvation in B.C. 232. Long afterwards, the Roman Senate caused a statue to be erected to his memory in his native town. Almost the only writing of his that has come down to us is his noble Hymn to the Supreme Being.

HYMN TO ZEUS

Most glorious of all the Undying, many-named, girt round with awe!
Jove, author of Nature, applying to all things the rudder of law--
Hail! Hail! for it justly rejoices the races whose life is a span
To lift unto thee their voices--the Author and Framer of man.
For we are thy sons; thou didst give us the symbols of speech at our
birth,
Alone of the things that live, and mortal move upon earth.
Wherefore thou shalt find me extolling and ever singing thy praise;
Since thee the great Universe, rolling on its path round the world,
obeys:--
Obeys thee, wherever thou guidest, and gladly is bound in thy bands,
So great is the power thou confidest, with strong, invincible hands,
To thy mighty ministering servant, the bolt of the thunder, that
flies,
Two-edged, like a sword, and fervent, that is living and never dies.
All nature, in fear and dismay, doth quake in the path of its stroke,
What time thou preparest the way for the one Word thy lips have spoke,
Which blends with lights smaller and greater, which pervadeth and
thrilleth all things,
So great is thy power and thy nature--in the Universe Highest of
Kings!
On earth, of all deeds that are done, O God! there is none without
thee;
In the holy ether not one, nor one on the face of the sea,
Save the deeds that evil men, driven by their own blind folly, have
planned;
But things that have grown uneven are made even again by thy hand;
And things unseemly grow seemly, the unfriendly are friendly to thee;
For so good and evil supremely thou hast blended in one by decree.
For all thy decree is one ever--a Word that endureth for aye,
Which mortals, rebellious, endeavor to flee from and shun to obey--
Ill-fated, that, worn with proneness for the lordship of goodly
things,
Neither hear nor behold, in its oneness, the law that divinity brings;
Which men with reason obeying, might attain unto glorious life,
No longer aimlessly straying in the paths of ignoble strife.
There are men with a zeal unblest, that are wearied with following of
fame,
And men with a baser quest, that are turned to lucre and shame.
There are men too that pamper and pleasure the flesh with delicate
stings:
All these desire beyond measure to be other than all these things.
Great Jove, all-giver, dark-clouded, great Lord of the thunderbolt's
breath!
Deliver the men that are shrouded in ignorance dismal as death.
O Father! dispel from their souls the darkness, and grant them the
light
Of reason, thy stay, when the whole wide world thou rulest with might,
That we, being honored, may honor thy name with the music of hymns,
Extolling the deeds of the Donor, unceasing, as rightly beseems
Mankind; for no worthier trust is awarded to God or to man
Than forever to glory with justice in the law that endures and is One.

SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS (MARK TWAIN)

(1835-)

Samuel L. Clemens has made the name he assumed in his earliest "sketches" for newspapers so completely to usurp his own in public and private, that until recently the world knew him by no other; his world of admirers rarely use any other in referring to the great author, and even to his intimate friends the borrowed name seems the more real. The pseudonym so lightly picked up has nearly universal recognition, and it is safe to say that the name "Mark Twain" is known to more people of all conditions, the world over, than any other in this century, except that of some reigning sovereign or great war captain. The term is one used by the Mississippi River pilots to indicate the depth of water (two fathoms) when throwing the lead. It was first employed by a river correspondent in reporting the state of the river to a New Orleans newspaper. This reporter died just about the time Mr. Clemens began to write, and he "jumped" the name.

Mr. Clemens was born in Hannibal, Missouri, a small town on the west bank of the Mississippi, in 1835. He got the rudiments of an education at a village school, learned boy-life and human nature in a frontier community, entered a printing office and became an expert compositor, traveled and worked as a journeyman printer, and at length reached the summit of a river boy's ambition in a Mississippi steamboat in learning the business of a pilot. It is to this experience that the world is indebted for some of the most amusing, the most real and valuable, and the most imaginative writing of this century, which gives the character and interest and individuality to this great Western river that history has given to the Nile. If he had no other title to fame, he could rest securely on his reputation as the prose poet of the Mississippi. Upon the breaking out of the war the river business was suspended. Mr. Clemens tried the occupation of war for a few weeks, on the Confederate side, in a volunteer squad which does not seem to have come into collision with anything but scant rations and imaginary alarms; and then he went to Nevada with his brother, who had been appointed secretary of that Territory. Here he became connected with the Territorial Enterprise, a Virginia City newspaper, as a reporter and sketch-writer, and immediately opened a battery of good-natured and exaggerated and complimentary description that was vastly amusing to those who were not its targets. Afterwards he drifted to the Coast, tried mining, and then joined that group of young writers who illustrated the early history of California. A short voyage in the Sandwich Islands gave him new material for his pen, and he made a successful debut in San Francisco as a humorous lecturer.

The first writing to attract general attention was 'The Jumping Frog of Calaveras,' which was republished with several other sketches in book form in New York. Shortly after this he joined the excursion of the Quaker City steamship to the Orient, wrote letters about it to American newspapers, and advertised it quite beyond the expectations of its projectors. These letters, collected and revised, became 'The Innocents Abroad,' which instantly gave him a world-wide reputation. This was followed by 'Roughing It,' most amusing episodes of frontier life. His pen became immediately in great demand, and innumerable sketches flowed from it, many of them recklessly exaggerated for the effect he wished to produce; always laughter-provoking, and nearly always having a wholesome element of satire of some sham or pretense or folly. For some time he had charge of a humorous department in the Galaxy Magazine. These sketches and others that followed were from time to time collected into volumes which had a great sale. About this time he married, and permanently settled in Hartford, where he began the collection of a library, set himself to biographical and historical study, made incursions into German and French, and prepared himself for the more serious work that was before him.