The most celebrated of his efforts of that session, however, was the speech on the Bank Charter. He opposed the measure as unconstitutional; maintaining that no specific provision could be found in the Constitution of the United States, authorizing or permitting the charter of a bank, nor could it be so construed as to imply the power to that effect. Although opposed by many of the ablest men of both parties, his powerful reasoning was sustained and the charter was lost. In all the important subjects which came before the Senate, Mr. Clay evinced his usual zeal and activity. His eloquent powers and brilliant talents were now acknowledged, and his reputation as a debater firmly established throughout the country. At the close of his second senatorial term he was elected to the lower House of Congress, and on the meeting of that body in November, 1811, he was, on the first ballot, elected to the honorable position of Speaker. His eminent services here are too well known to require particular notice in this sketch. He was a firm supporter of Mr. Madison, and his war measures of 1812, and during the continuance of the hostilities with Great Britain, he displayed the most intense interest for the welfare and honor of the country. It is a remarkable fact, that while the speakership is regarded as a bar to the privilege of participation in the debates of the House, Mr. Clay was accustomed to mingle in its deliberations, while in Committee of the Whole, and to perform the double duty of speaker and member. On the twentieth of January, 1812, he delivered a speech in favor of an increase of the Navy, and succeeded in procuring an appropriation for that object. During the session of 1812-1813, he was the leader of the administration party in the House of Representatives. "Here" says his biographer, "amidst all discouragements, he moved in majesty, for he moved in strength. No difficulties could weary or withstand his energies. Like the Carthaginian chief in the passage of the Alps, he kept his place in front of his comrades, putting aside, with a giant effort, every obstacle that opposed his progress, applauding the foremost of his followers, and rousing those who lingered, by words of encouragement or reproach, till he succeeded in placing them upon a moral eminence, from which they could look down upon the region where their prowess was to meet with its long-expected reward." In 1814 Mr. Clay was appointed with Mr. Bayard, Mr. Gallatin, and others, to negotiate a treaty of peace with Great Britain. On the termination of that mission, he visited Paris, where he met with a distinguished reception, and by the frankness, grace and ease of his deportment, won the esteem of all who came in contact with him. An anecdote of this visit, illustrative of Mr. Clay's power at repartee and charm of conversation has been preserved. Shortly after his arrival he attended a ball, given by Mr. Hottinguer, the American banker, in honor of the conclusion of the treaty. He was there introduced to the famous Madame de Stael, who cordially addressed him with-"Ah, Mr. Clay! I have been in England, and have been battling your cause for you there." "I know it, madame; we heard of your powerful interposition, and are grateful and thankful for it." "They were much enraged against you," said she; so much so, that they at one time thought seriously of sending the Duke of Wellington to command their armies against you!" "I am very sorry, madame,” replied Mr. Clay, "that they did not send his Grace." "Why?" asked she, surprised. "Because, madame, if he had beaten us, we should have been in the condition of Europe, without disgrace. But, if we had been so fortunate as to defeat him, we should have greatly added to the renown of our arms." He afterwards met her at her own residence, where he was introduced to the Duke of Wellington, and other celebrities. She related the foregoing conversation to the Duke, who promptly and gracefully responded, that had he been so fortunate in the execution of such a commission as to triumph over a foe evincing so much bravery as the Americans had, he should regard it as a greater honor than the most brilliant victory he had ever achieved.* Mr. Clay remained at Paris until after the ratification of the treaty, when he went to England. The like civilities and attention with which he had been honored while in the French capital, were extended to him here. While he was in London, the news of the battle of Waterloo arrived, and he was a witness of the joy and exultation with which the British people received it. A few days after, he was dining in company with many of the nobility, at the house of Lord * Homes of American Statesmen, article Clay: also, Mallory's Life of Clay, vol. 1, page 85. Castlereagh, when the conversation turned on the recent victory and the flight of Napoleon. Some one suggested that he had gone to America. "If he reaches your shores, Mr. Clay,' inquired Lord Liverpool, one of the ministers, "will he not give you much trouble?" "None whatever," responded Mr. Clay; "we shall be glad to receive such a distinguished, though unfortunate exile, and we shall soon make a good democrat of him." On his return to America in the fall of 1815, Mr. Clay was re-elected to the House of Representatives, and at the commencement of the session was again called to the Speaker's chair. This position he retained until his appointment as Secretary of State, in 1825, with the exception of a short temporary retirement, rendered necessary by heavy pecuniary losses. To enumerate his long and able services in this important station, would be to write a history of the government during ten years of its existence; and the details of his public life are so permanent in the minds of every one, that such a course would be a work of supererogation. On the inauguration of President Jackson in 1829, Mr. Clay retired to his home in Kentucky. During the winter of that year and the year following, he visited the Southern States, besides passing through the various parts of his own State. The reception he met at the different stages of his route was most cordial and flattering. Men of all parties, distinguished for their abilities and position, went out to welcome him. "The dark elements of faction sank down into quietude" wherever he went, and a “hundred hands were extended to clasp his own." About this time he delivered an address before the Colonization Society of Kentucky, at Frankfort, in which he supported, with his characteristic eloquence and power, the objects and principles of that institution. During his remarks he alluded to the subject of slavery, and expressed a great desire to co-operate in any work which should have for its end the mitigation of that evil. He dwelt with peculiar pleasure upon the success of the Colonizing efforts throughout the Union, and declared his convictions that it gave the most abundant encouragement for perseverance and renewed exertions in the cause. "We may boldly challenge the annals of human nature," he said, "for the record of any human plan for the melioration of the condition or the advancement of our race, which promises more unmixed good in comprehensive benevolence, than that of the Colonization Society, if carried into full operation. Its benevolent purposes are not confined to the limits of one continent-not to the prosperity of a solitary race. They embrace the largest two portions of the earth, with the peace and happiness of both descriptions of their present inhabitants, and the countless millions of their posterity. The colonists, reared in the bosom of this republic, with a knowledge of the blessings which liberty imparts, although now unable to share them, will carry a recollection of them to benighted Africa, and light up in time her immense territory. And may we not indulge the hope, that in a period of time not surpassing in duration that of our own colonial and national existence, we shall behold a confederation of republican States on the western shores of Africa, with their congress and their annual legislatures, thundering forth in behalf of the rights of man, and causing tyrants to tremble on their thrones." Another portion of this address evinces how deeply he deplored the existence of slavery. "If I could be instrumental," said he, "in eradicating this deepest stain upon the character of our 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 that gave me birth, or that not less beloved State which has 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." In the fall of 1831, Mr. Clay was again elected to the United States Senate, and about the same time nominated for the presidency, in opposition to General Jackson. He remained in the Senate until 1842, when he made his farewell speech, which is considered one of his finest oratorical efforts, and retired, as he supposed, for ever, from that body. His services during this term of office are familiar to all. In 1844 he was again nominated for the presidency, but was defeated by the election of James K. Polk. In 1849, he was again returned to the Senate, by an unanimous vote of the legislature of his adopted State, and continued a senator until the time of his death. The limits of this sketch will not allow a particular recital of the many and important measures which he originated or perfected in this last term of his senatorial career. It is sufficient to say that in all his actions he manifested the deepest solicitude and anxiety for the welfare and happiness of his country and his fellow-men. He died on the twenty-ninth of June, 1852. Tributes of respect from all distinctions of men were offered to his memory, and the nation mourned their irreparable loss. The following remarks, which will close this general sketch, were delivered by his colleague, Mr. Underwood, in the Senate of the United States:-"The character of Henry Clay was formed and developed by the influence of our free institutions. His physical and mental organization eminently qualified him to become a great and impressive orator. His person was tall, slender, and commanding. His temperament ardent, fearless, and full of hope. His countenance clear, expressive, and variable-indicating the emotion which predominated at the moment with exact similitude. His voice, cultivated and modulated in harmony with the sentiment he desired to express, fell upon the ear like the melody of enrapturing music. His eye beaming with intelligence, and flashing with coruscations of genius. His gestures and attitudes graceful and natural. These personal advantages won the prepossessions of an audience, even before his intellectual powers began to move his hearers; and when his strong common sense, his profound reasoning, his clear conceptions of his subject in all its bearings, and his striking and beautiful illustrations, united with such personal qualities, were brought to the discussion of any question, his audience was enraptured, convinced, and led by the orator as if enchanted by the lyre of Orpheus. "No man was ever blessed by his Creator with faculties of a higher order of excellence than those given to Mr. Clay. In the quickness of his perceptions, and the rapidity with which his conclusions were formed, he had few equals, and no superior. He was eminently endowed with a nice discriminating taste for order, symmetry, and beauty. He detected in a moment every thing out of place or deficient in his room, upon his farm, in his own or the dress of others. He was a skilful judge of the form and qualities of his domestic animals, which he delighted to raise on his farm. I could give you instances of the quickness and minuteness of his keen faculty of observation, which never overlooked any thing. A want of neatness and order was offensive to him. He was particular and neat in his handwriting, and his apparel. A slovenly blot, or negligence of any sort, met his condemnation; while he was so organized that he attended to, and arranged little things to please and gratify his natural love for neatness, order, and beauty, his great intellectual faculties grasped all the subjects of jurisprudence and politics with a facility amounting almost to intuition. As a lawyer, he stood at the head of his profession. As a statesman, his stand at the head of the Republican Whig party for nearly half a century, establishes his title to pre-eminence among his illustrious associates. "Mr. Clay, throughout his public career, was influenced by the loftiest patriotism. Confident in the truth of his convictions, and the purity of his purposes, he was ardent, sometimes impetuons in the pursuit of objects which he believed essential to the general welfare. * * His sympathies embraced all. The African slave, the Creole of Spanish America, the children of renovated classic Greece-all families of men, without respect to color or clime, found in his expanded bosom and comprehensive intellect, a friend of their elevation and amelioration. "Bold and determined as Mr. Clay was in all his actions, he was, nevertheless, conciliating. He did not obstinately adhere to things impracticable. If he could not accomplish the best, he contented himself with the nighest approach to it. He has been the great compromiser of those political agitations and opposing opinions which have, in the belief of thousands, at different times, endangered the perpetuity of our Federal Government and Union. He was no less remarkable for his admirable social qualities than for his intellectual abilities. As a companion, he was the delight of his friends, and no man ever had better or truer. They have loved him from the beginning, and loved him to the last. His hospitable mansion at Ashland was always open to their reception. No guest ever thence departed without feeling happier for his visit." SPEECH ON THE NEW ARMY BILL. Mr. Clay delivered this speech in the House of Representatives of the United States, on the eighth of January, 1813, on a bill, proposing that twenty thousand men should be added to the existing military establishment. * MR. CHAIRMAN: I was gratified yesterday by the recommitment of this bill to a committee of the whole House, from two considerations; one, since it afforded me a slight relaxation from a most fatiguing situation; and the other, because it furnished me with an opportunity of presenting to the committee my sentiments upon the important topics which have been mingled in the debate. I regret, however, that the necessity under which the chairman has been placed of putting the question,† precludes the opportunity, I had wished to enjoy, of rendering more acceptable to the committee any thing I might have to offer on the interesting points, on which it is my duty to touch. Unprepared, however, as I am to speak on this day, of which I am the more sensible from the ill state of my health, I will solicit the attention of the committee for a few moments. I was a little astonished, I confess, when I found this bill permitted to pass silently through the committee of the whole, and not selected, until the moment when the question was about to be put for its third reading, as the subject on which gentlemen in the opposition chose to lay before the House their views of the interesting attitude in which the nation stands. It did appear to me, that the loan bill, which will soon come before us, would have afforded a much more proper occasion, it being more essential, as providing the ways and means for the prosecution of the war. But the gentlemen had the right of selection, and having exercised it, no matter how improperly, I am gratified, whatever I may think of the character of some part of the debate, at the latitude in which, for once, they have been indulged. I claim only, in return, of gentlemen on the other side of the House, and of the committee, a like indulgence in expressing my sentiments with the same unrestrained freedom. Perhaps, in the course of the remarks which I may feel myself called upon to make, gentlemen may apprehend that they assume too harsh an aspect: but I have only now to say, that I shall speak of parties, measures and things, as they strike my moral sense, protesting against the imputation of any intention, on my part, to wound the feelings of any gentlemen. *Mr. Clay was, at this time, Speaker of the House of Representatives. + The Chairman had risen to put the question, which would have cut Mr. Clay off from the opportunity of speaking, by carrying the bill to the House. Considering the situation in which this country is now placed,—a state of actual war with it may not be useless to take a view of the one of the most powerful nations on the earth, past, and of the various parties which have at different times appeared in this country, and to attend to the manner, by which we have been driven from a peaceful posture to our present warlike attitude. Such an inquiry may assist in guiding us to that result, an honorable peace, which must be the sincere desire of every friend to America. The course of that opposition, by which the administration of the government has been unremittingly impeded for the last twelve years, is singular, and, I believe, unexampled in the history of any country. It has been alike the duty and the interest of the administration to preserve peace. It was their duty, because it is necessary to the growth of an infant people, to their genius and to their habits. It was their interest, because a change of the condition of the nation, brings along with it a danger of the loss of the affections of the people. The administration has not been forgetful of these solemn obligations. No art has been left unessayed; no experiment, promising a favorable result, left untried, to maintain the peaceful relations of the country. When, some six or seven years ago, the affairs of the nation assumed a threatening aspect, a partial non-importation was adopted. As they grew more alarming, an embargo was imposed. It would have accomplished its purpose, but it was sacrificed upon the altar of conciliation. Vain and fruitless attempt to propitiate! Then came a law of non-intercourse; and a general non-importation followed in the train. In the mean time, any indications of a return to the public law and the path of justice, on the part of either belligerent, are seized upon with avidity by the administra tion. The arrangement with Mr. Erskine is concluded. It is first applauded, and then censured by the opposition. No matter with what unfeigned sincerity, with what real effort administration cultivates peace, the opposition insist that it alone is culpable for every breach that is made between the two countries. Because the President thought proper, in accepting the proffered reparation for the attack on a national vessel, to intimate that it would have better comported with the justice of the king, (and who does not think so?) to punish the offending officer, the opposition, entering into the royal feelings, sees in that imaginary insult, abundant cause for rejecting Mr. Erskine's arrangement. On another occasion, you cannot have forgotten the hypercritical ingenuity which they displayed, to divest Mr. Jackson's correspondence of a premeditated insult to this country. If gentlemen would only reserve for their own government half the sensibility, which is indulged for that of Great Britain, they would find much less | and ridiculous as the insinuation is, it is propagated with so much industry, that there are persons found foolish and credulous enough to believe it. You will, no doubt, think it incredible, (but I have nevertheless been told it as a fact,) that an honorable member of this House, now in my eye, recently lost his election by the circulation of a silly story in his district, that he was the first cousin of the Emperor Napoleon. The proof of the charge rested on a statement of facts, which was undoubtedly true. The gentleman in question, it was alleged, had married a connexion of the lady of the President of the United States, who, was the intimate friend of Thomas Jefferson, late President of the United States, who some years ago, was in the habit of wearing red French breeches. Now, taking these premises as established, you, Mr. Chairman, are too good a logician not to see that the conclusion necessarily follows! to condemn. Restriction after restriction has been tried; negotiation has been resorted to, until further negotiation would have been disgraceful. Whilst these peaceful experiments are undergoing a trial, what is the conduct of the opposition? They are the champions of war; the proud, the spirited, the sole repository of the nation's honor; the men of exclusive vigor and energy. The administration, on the contrary, is weak, feeble and pusillanimous,-"incapable of being kicked into a war." The maxim, "not a cent for tribute, millions for defence," is loudly proclaimed. Is the administration for negotiation? The opposition is tired, sick, disgusted with negotiation. They want to draw the sword and avenge the nation's wrongs. When, however, foreign nations, perhaps emboldened by the very opposition here made, refuse to listen to the amicable appeals, which have been repeated and reiterated by the administration, to their justice and to their interests; Throughout the period I have been speaking when, in fact, war with one of them has become of, the opposition has been distinguished, amidst identified with our independence and our sov- all its veerings and changes, by another inflexereignty, and to abstain from it was no longer ible feature, the application to Bonaparte of possible, behold the opposition veering_round every vile and opprobrious epithet, our language, and becoming the friends of peace and com- copious as it is in terms of vituperation, affords. merce. They tell you of the calamities of war, He has been compared to every hideous monits tragical events, the squandering away of ster and beast, from that mentioned in the Reyour resources, the waste of the public treasure, velations, down to the most insignificant quadand the spilling of innocent blood. Gorgons, ruped. He has been called the scourge of hydras and chimeras dire." They tell you that mankind, the destroyer of Europe, and the honor is an illusion! Now we see them exhib- great robber, the infidel, the modern Attila, iting the terrific forms of the roaring king of and heaven knows by what other names. the forest: now the meekness and humility of Really, gentlemen remind me of an obscure the lamb! They are for war and no restrictions, lady, in a city not very far off, who also took when the administration is for peace. They are it into her head, in conversation with an acfor peace and restrictions, when the administra-complished French gentleman, to talk of the tion is for war. You find them, sir, tacking with every gale, displaying the colors of every party and of all nations, steady only in one unalterable purpose, to steer, if possible, into the haven of power. 66 During all this time, the parasites of opposition do not fail, by cunning sarcasm or sly innuendo, to throw out the idea of French influence, which is known to be false, which ought to be met in one manner only, and that is by the lie direct. The administration of this country devoted to foreign influence! The administration of this country subservient to France! Great God! what a charge! how is it so influenced? By what ligament, on what basis, on what possible foundation does it rest? Is it similarity of language? No! we speak different tongues, we speak the English language. On the resemblance of our laws? No! the sources of our jurisprudence spring from another and a different country. On commercial intercourse? No! we have comparatively none with France. Is it from the correspondence in the genius of the two governments? No! here alone is the liberty of man secure from the inexorable despotism, which every where else tramples it under foot. Where then is the ground of such an influence? But, sir, I am insulting you by arguing on such a subject. Yet, preposterous affairs of Europe. She too spoke of the destruction of the balance of power, stormed and raged about the insatiable ambition of the emperor; called him the curse of mankind, the destroyer of Europe. The Frenchman listened to her with perfect patience, and when she had ceased, said to her, with ineffable politeness; "Madam, it would give my master, the emperor, infinite pain, if he knew how hardly you thought of him." Sir, gentlemen appear to me to forget that they stand on American soil; that they are not in the British House of Commous, but in the chamber of the House of Representatives of the United States; that we have nothing to do with the affairs of Europe, the partition of territory and sovereignty there, except so far as these things affect the interests of our own country. Gentlemen transform themselves into the Burkes, Chathams and Pitts of another country, and forgetting from honest zeal the interests of America, engage with European sensibility in the discussion of European interests. If gentlemen ask me, whether I do not view with regret and horror the concentration of such vast power in the hands of Bonaparte-I reply that I do. I regret to see the emperor of China holding such immense sway over the fortunes of millions of our species. I regret to see Great Britain possessing |