power to exhibit a Carolina name so bright as to produce envy in my bosom? No, sir, increased gratification and delight, rather. I thank God, that, if I am gifted with little of the spirit which is able to raise mortals to the skies, I have yet none, as I trust, of that other spirit, which would drag angels down.

When I shall be found, sir, in my place here in the Senate, or elsewhere, to sneer at public merit because it happens to spring up beyond the little limits of my own State or neighborhood; when I refuse, for any such cause, or for any cause, the homage due to American talent, to elevated patriotism, to sincere devotion to liberty and the country; or, if I see an uncommon endowment of heaven, if I see extraordinary capacity and virtue, in any son of the South, and if, moved by local prejudice or gangrened by State jealousy, I get up here to abate the tithe of a hair from his just character and just fame, may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!

Sir, let me recur to pleasing recollections; let me indulge in refreshing remembrance of the past; let me remind you that, in early times, no States cherished greater harmony, both of principle and feeling, than Massachusetts and South Carolina. Would to God that harmony might again return! Shoulder to shoulder they went through the Revolution, hand in hand they stood round the administration of Washington, and felt his own great arm lean on them for support. Unkind feeling, if it exist, alienation and distrust, are the growth, unnatural to such soils, of false principles since sown. They are weeds, the seeds of which that same great arm never scattered.

Mr. President, I shall enter on no encomium upon Massachusetts; she needs none. There she is. Behold her, and judge for yourselves. There is her history; the world knows it by heart. The past, at least, is secure. There is Boston, and Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker Hill; and there they will remain for ever. The bones of her sons, falling in the great struggle for Independence, now lie mingled with the soil of every State from New England to Georgia; and there they will lie for ever. And, sir, where American Liberty raised its first voice, and where its youth was nurtured and sustained, there it still lives, in the strength of its manhood and full of its original spirit. If discord and disunion shall wound it, if party strife and blind ambition shall hawk at and tear it, if folly and madness, if uneasiness under salutary and necessary restraint, shall succeed in separating it

from that Union by which alone its existence is made sure, it will stand, in the end, by the side of that cradle in which its infancy was rocked; it will stretch forth its arm with whatever of vigor it may still retain over the friends who gather round it; and it will fall at last, if fall it must, amidst the proudest monuments of its glory, and on the very spot of its origin.

And secondly,

THE PERORATION.

I PROFESS, sir, in my career hitherto, to have kept steadily in view the prosperity and honor of the whole country, and the preservation of our Federal Union. It is to that Union we owe our safety at home, and our consideration and dignity abroad. It is to that Union that we are chiefly indebted for whatever makes us most proud of our country. That Union we reached only by discipline of our virtues in the severe school of adversity. It had its origin in the necessities of disordered finance, prostrate commerce, and ruined credit. Under its benign influences these great interests immediately awoke, as from the dead, and sprang forth with newness of life. Every year of its duration has teemed with fresh proofs of its utility and its blessings; and although our territory has stretched out wider and wider, and our population spread farther and farther, they have not outrun its protection or its benefits. It has been to us all a copious fountain of national, social, and personal happiness.

I have not allowed myself, sir, to look beyond the Union, to see what might be hidden in the dark recess behind. I have not coolly weighed the chances of preserving liberty when the bonds that unite us together shall be broken asunder. I have not accustomed myself to hang over the precipice of disunion, to see whether, with my short sight, I can fathom the depth of the abyss below; nor could I regard him as a safe counsellor in the affairs of this government whose thoughts should be mainly bent on considering, not how the Union may be best preserved, but how tolerable might be the condition of the people when it should be broken up and destroyed.

While the Union lasts we have high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread out before us, for us and our children. Beyond that I seek not to penetrate the veil. God grant that in my day, at least, that curtain may not rise! God grant that on my vision never may be opened what lies behind! When my eyes shall

be turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured, bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as "What is all this worth?" nor those other words of delusion and folly," Liberty first and Union afterwards;" but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart-Liberty and Union, now and for ever, one and inseparable!

CLAY.

HENRY CLAY was born in Hanover county, Virginia, April 12, 1777. From being the "Mill-boy of the Slashes" and a country store-keeper, he was transferred, through the influence of his kind-hearted stepfather, Captain H. Watkins, to a situation as copyist in the office of the clerk of the Virginia Court of Chancery.

This was an event of no small moment in Clay's life; for, in all probability, it was the peculiar surroundings of this situation-its associations of documents and doctors of the law-which confirmed, if they did not awaken, his design of following the legal profession. At any rate, we find him shortly afterwards (in 1797) qualified for practicing law. He then removed to Lexington, Kentucky, opened an office there, and speedily gained an extensive practice.

Clay's first political honors were bestowed in 1803, in his election to the State Legislature. Subsequently, after filling two partial terms as United States Senator, he was elected (in 1811) to the House of Representatives, and, on taking his seat, was complimented in an extraordinary manner by being chosen Speaker. This was the beginning of a long and eminent national service, which numbered among its distinctions Member and Speaker of the House of Representatives, Senator, Commissioner for negotiating the Treaty of Ghent, and Secretary of State; in all of which he shone with no light borrowed of the dignity of the office, but with a native lustre of integrity, devotion, and ability which might well have glorified any responsibility.

Henry Clay died in the city of Washington, June 29, 1852.

"His speeches are sincere and impassioned, qualities which distinguished the man, and which were among the chief causes of the great personal popularity he enjoyed.

Full, flowing, sensuous, his style of oratory was modulated by a voice of sustained power and sweetness, and a heart of chivalrous courtesy. Of the great triumvirate of the Senate, Calhoun, Webster, and Clay, respectively representing the South, the East, and the West, the last was the great master of feeling.

"His frank bearing, his self-developed vigor, his spontaneous eloquence and command of language, were Western characteristics, and reached the heart of the whole country.

. . There was at once something feminine and manly in his composition. He united the gentlest affections of woman with the pride of the haughtiest manhood. When his last moments came, he died, as he had lived, with simplicity and dignity."

SPEECH ON THE COMPROMISE RESOLUTIONS.

DELIVERED IN THE SENATE, Feb. 5 AND 6, 1850.

MR. PRESIDENT, I am directly opposed to any purpose of seces sion or separation. I am for staying within the Union, and defying any portion of this confederacy to expel me or drive me out of the Union. I am for staying within the Union and fighting for my rights, if necessary, with the sword, within the bounds and under the safeguard of the Union. I am for vindicating those rights, not by being driven out of the Union harshly and unceremoniously by any portion of this confederacy. Here I am within it, and here I mean to stand and die, as far as my individual wishes or purposes can go-within it to protect my property and defend myself, defying all the power on earth to expel me or drive me from the situation in which I am placed.

Sir, I have said that I thought there was no right on the part of one or more States to secede from the Union. I think so. The Constitution of the United States was made not merely for the generation that then existed, but for posterity—unlimited, undefined, endless, perpetual posterity. And every State that then came into the Union, and every State that has since come into the Union, came into it binding itself, by indissoluble bands, to remain within the Union itself, and to remain within it by its *Duyckinck's Cyclopædia of American Literature.

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