Deen distinguished by no cruel executions, stained by no blood, nor -soiled by any act of dishonor; and in the second place I think they must own (though I do not exactly know what date my commission of Dictator bears; I imagine, however, it must have commenced with the extra session) that if I did usurp the power of a Dictator, I at least voluntarily surrendered it within a shorter period than was allotted for the duration of the dictatorship of the Roman Commonwealth.

If to have sought, at the extra session and at the present, by the co-operation of my friends, to carry out the great measures intended by the popular majority of 1840, and to have desired that they should all have been adopted and executed; if to have anxiously desired to see a disordered currency regulated and restored, and irregular exchanges equalized and adjusted; if to have labored to replenish the empty coffers of the Treasury by suitable duties; if to have endeavored to extend relief to the unfortunate bankrupts of the country, who had been ruined in a great measure by the erroneous policy, as we believed, of this Government; if to seek to limit, circumscribe, and restrain executive authority; if to retrench unnecessary expenditure and abolish useless offices and institutions; if, while the public money is preserved untarnished by supplying a revenue adequate to meet the national engagements, incidental protection can be afforded to the national industry; if to entertain an ardent solicitude to redeem every pledge and execute every promise fairly made by my political friends with a view to the acquisition of power from the hands of an honest and confiding People; if these objects constitute a man a DICTATOR, why then, I suppose I must be content to bear, though I still only share with my friends, the odium of the honor or the epithet, as it may be considered on the one hand or the other.

That my nature is warm, my temper ardent, my disposition, especially in relation to the public service, enthusiastic, I am fully ready to own; and those who supposed that I have been assuming the dictatorship, have only mistaken for arrogance or assumption, that fervent ardor and devotion which is 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 proposed.

During a long and arduous career of service in the public councils of my country, especially during the last eleven years I have held a seat in the Senate, from the same ardor and enthusiasm of character, I have no doubt, in the heat of debate, and in an honest endeavor to maintain my opinions against adverse opinions equally honestly entertained, as to the best course to be adopted for the public welfare, I may have often inadvertently or unintentionally, in moments of excited debate, made use of language that has been offensive and susceptible of injurious interpretation towards my brother Senators. If there be any here who retain wounded feelings of injury or dissatisfaction produced on such occasions, I beg to assure them that I now offer the amplest apology for any departure on my part from the established rules of parliamentary decorum and courtesy. On the other hand, I assure the Senate, one and all, without exception and without reserve, and that I retire from this Senate Chamber without carrying with me a single feeling of resentment or dissatisfaction to the Senate or to any one of its members.

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 country, in which each has sought and contended for what he deemed the best mode of accomplishing one common object, the greatest 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.

And now, Mr. President, allow me to make the motion which it was my object to submit when I rose to address you. I present the credentials of my friend and successor. If any void has been created by my own withdrawal from the Senate, it will be filled to overflowing by him; whose urbanity, whose gallant and gentlemanly bearing, whose steady adherence to principle, and whose rare and accomplished powers in debate, are known already in advance to the whole Senate and country. I move that his credentials be received, and that the oath of office be now administered to him.

In retiring, as I am about to do, for ever from the Senate, suffer me to express my heartfelt wishes that all the great and patriotic objects for which it was constituted by the wise framers of the Constitution may be fulfilled; that the high destiny designed for it may be fully answered; and that its deliberations, now and hereafter, may eventuate in restoring the prosperity of our beloved country, in maintaining its rights and honors abroad, and in securing and upholding its interests at home. I retire, I know it, at a period of infinite distress and embarrassment. I wish I could take my leave of you under more favorable auspices; but, without meaning at this time to say whether on any or on whom reproaches for the sad condition of the country should fall. I appeal to the Senate and to the world to bear testimony to my earnest and anxious exertions to avert it, and that no blame can justly rest at my door.

May the blessing 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 the advancement of his own fame and renown. And when you shall retire to the bosom of your constituents, may you meet the most cheering and gratifying of all human rewards; their cordial greeting of "Well done, good and faithful servants."

ON RETURNING TO KENTUCKY.

NEAR LEXINGTON, JUNE 9, 1842.

[Mr. CLAY having resigned his seat in the Senate and returned to his home at Ashland, near Lexington, Ky. was enthusiastically received by his fellow-citizens, who pressed him to partake of a public entertainment or Barbecue, given in his honor. He consented; and, the repast being over, aud his health having been proposed in an eloquent Speech by Hon. GEORGE ROBERTSON, Chief Justice of the State, Mr. CLAY-the enthusiastic and prolonged applause having subsided-addressed the immense concourse as follows:]

MR. PRESIDENT, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN :-It was given to our countryman, Franklin, to bring down the lightning from Heaven. To enable me to be heard by this immense multitude, I should have to invoke to my aid, and to throw into my voice, its loudest thunders. As I cannot do that, I hope I shall be excused for such an use of my lungs as is practicable and not inconsistent with the preservation of my health. And I feel that it is our first duty, to express our obligations to a kind and bountiful Providence, for the copious and genial showers with which he has just blessed our land

a refreshment of which it stood much in need. For one, I offer to Him my humble and dutiful thanks. The inconvenience to us, on this festive occasion, is very slight, while the sum of good which these timely rains will produce is very great and encouraging.

comes.

Fellow citizens, I find myself now in a situation somewhat like one in which I was placed a few years ago when traveling through the State of Indiana, from which my friend (Mr. RARIDEN) near me I stopped at a village containing some four or five hundred inhabitants, and I had scarcely alighted before I found myself sur rounded in the Bar-room by every adult male resident of the place. After a while, I observed a group consulting together in one corner of the room, and shortly after, I was diffidently approached by one of them, a tall, lank, lean, but sedate and sober looking person, with

a long face and high cheek bones, who, addressing me said he was commissioned by his neighbors, to request that I would say a few words to them. Why my good friend, said I, I should be very happy to do any thing gratifying to yourself and your neighbors, but I am very much fatigued and hungry and thirsty, and I do not think the occasion is exactly suitable for a speech, and I wish you would excuse me to your friends. Well, says he, Mr. Clay, I confess I thought so myself, especially as we have no wine to offer you to drink!

Now, if the worthy citizen of Indiana was right in supposing, that a glass of wine was a necessary preliminary, and a precedent condition, to the delivery of a speech, you have no just right to expect one from me at this time; for during the sumptuous repast from which we have just risen, you offered me nothing to drink but cold water-excellent water it is true, from the classic fountnin of our lamented friend Mr. MAXWELL, which has so often regaled us on celebrations of our great anniversary.

I protest against any inference of my being inimical to the Temperance cause. On the contrary, I think it an admirable cause that has done great good, and will continue to do good as long as legal coercion is not employed, and it rests exclusively upon persuasion, and its own intrinsic merits.

I have a great and growing repugnance to speaking in the open air to a large assemblage. But while the faculty of speech remains to me, I can never feel that repugnance, never feel other than grateful sensations, in making my acknowledgments under such circumstances as those which have brought us together. Not that I am so presumptuous as to believe that I have been the occasion solely of collecting this vast multitude. Among the inducements, I cannot help thinking that the fat white virgin Durham Heifer of my friend Mr. BERRYMAN, that cost $600, which has been just served up, and the other good things which have been so liberally spread before us, exerted some influence in swelling this unprecedently large meeting. [Great laughter.]

I cannot but feel, Mr. President, in offering my respectful acknowledgments for the honor done me, in the eloquent address which you