accompanied it. The hat might have 'protected' a better and wiser head than mine, but no head was ever covered by a better or more elegant hat.

"Your friend and obedient servant,

"ORLANDO FISH, New York."

"H. CLAY.

"In the name of wonder, what have we here?" exclaimed Mr. Clay one day, during the extra session of 1841, as he was walking with a friend near the White-House, and observed a troop of opposition members of Congress marching to call on Mr. Tyler, and, as afterward appeared, to congratulate that notorious worthy for his veto on the bank. Mr. Clay looked volumes of mischief at the spectacle.

On the 2d of September, Mr. Buchanan said in the senate: "The president had shown himself a man of mettle." Mr. Clay replied:

"The senator, who belongs to a party, boastingly democratic, is found defending prerogatives-regal prerogatives. He would sustain the executive even in a whole shower of vetoes, when he and his friends, if consistent, should be in opposition to this monstrous principle of power. He [Mr. Buchanan] would go over to the president, and invite the president to come over to him and his party. Sir, the president is insulted. He is too honorable a man to indulge in such perfidy. Such treachery would be inconceivable. The soil of Virginia never had given, and never would give birth to treason. I believe in the purity of blood; and the father of John Tyler was one of the noblest and most patriotic men of the ancient commonwealth of Virginia. It is impossible that the son should be guilty of such treason. The human mind could not conceive of greater turpitude.

"Rumor had said, that a party of the opposition had visited the president's house, the night after the veto. He [Mr. Clay] did not know as to the fact. But he would suppose a case. There, he would imagine, among those gathered for the great congratulation, was the senator from South Carolina [Mr. Calhoun], looking as if he were deducting the nicest abstraction that had ever issued from his metaphysical brain. There, he presumed, was the senator from Alabama [Mr. King], ready to settle, in the most positive manner, any question of order that might arise. He supposed many others were present. There, too, was the senator from Pennsylvania [Mr. Buchanan], as their distinguished leader, addressing the president in something like the following manner :"May it please your excellency: my political friends and myself have come this afternoon, to deposite at your excellency's feet, the evidences of our loyalty and devotion. We have come

more particularly to express to your excellency the congratulations to which we think you are entitled, for having relieved the country from the danger of a violation of its constitution, by the establishment of a bank of the United States; and we owe to your excellency our special acknowledgments for the veto with which you have favored the country to-day; and for special reasons, we struggled against your excellency's friends in both houses of Congress, for days and weeks together; we exhausted all our powers of logic and argument to defeat the alarming measure; but, in spite of that, the friends of your excellency, in both houses, proved too strong for us, and carried it against our united exertions; and we come now to thank your excellency, that you have done that against your friends, which we could not accomplish with all our

Mr. Benton came in for his share, and while Mr. Clay was describing his hypothetical part with graphic power, he rose, and denied with great vehemence that he was there. "It is only a supposition," said Mr. Clay. Mr. Calhoun, too, denied. Mr. King colored, and Mr. Buchanan betrayed much feeling, when he rose to rejoin. Mr. Clay desired him to consider, that it was only an hypothesis. Mr. Buchanan would not consent to be interrupted. "Go on, go on, then," said Mr. Clay. It was reported that Mr. Buchanan afterward complained, that he could not convince his constituents, that he did not make that speech to his "excellency."

Mr. Clay came up the Ohio, August, 1845, in the steamer Senate. "I had hoped," said Mr. Clay, as he went on board, “that I had done with public life. But I see I must go into the SENATE again."

It will have been seen, that some graver thoughts have been necessarily mixed up with these more sprightly demonstrations of Mr. Clay's intellectual and moral powers. The selections might have been greatly extended; but these examples of brilliant, and sometimes dazzling emanations of thought and feeling, not confined to lighter matters, but often entering into the most solemn debate, may suffice to show the versatility and prolific character of these lofty and shining qualities, as developed in Mr. Clay's social intercourse and public life. If the use of these weapons has occasionally offended, and sometimes made enemies, it has nevertheless been greatly effective for the chastisement of vice, and for the rebuke of political degeneracy. Happy the nation, which has a pure and overawing spirit, whom the people can and must observe, standing up in the midst of them, to see and urge the right, to point out and denounce the wrong.

CHAPTER VII.

THE POLITICIAN-STATESMAN-DIPLOMATIST-AND PARLIAMENTARIAN.

THERE is a manifest distinction between a politician and statesman, though one character may often be blended with the other. The term, politics, has a very wide and comprehensive scope. At one time, it means party politics, or the arts, devices, and means of promoting the interests of one party, in opposition to another, or all others--one branch of which is a public or national policy, advocated by one party against another. In this sense, he is a pol-. itician, who applies himself to support and advance his own party. In another application, the term indicates a national policy in relation to the policies of other nations. This department blends itself with the appropriate functions of a statesman. So also may

a domestic policy. But the more common understanding of the character of a politician, is that of a man who devotes himself to party politics. In this view, a man may at the same time be a very good politician, and a very bad statesman, and vice versa. He may be an honest or a dishonest politician. He may be a politician just so far as the duties of a pure and patriotic statesman go; or only as an unprincipled demagogue, all whose aims are selfish and base. In short, politics are not, in themselves, inconsistent with the character of the best and purest men; and inasmuch as the most important, the most sacred, and the dearest interests of society, are in the hands of politics, the only pity is, that the best men are not the only politicians. Politics might be, and ought to be, a high and sacred vocation. No country can be well governed, where it is not so regarded, and where public opinion does not make it so. No man's virtue, patriotism, or religion, can be better, or more worthily employed, than in politics. There is no necessity that politics should vitiate him; but it is his duty to purify politics.

If honest politicians are rare, it will be found that Mr. Clay has a strong claim to rank in that class, if, indeed, he has any claim at

all to the character of a politician. Of this last, without derogation, there is good reason for saying, that he never was a politician for himself. The history, exemplifications, and evidences of his patriotism, presented in another chapter of this work, will evince, that Mr. Clay has ever been as simple as a child, as to any anxiety or devices for his own advancement; that, for the promotion and security of his great patriotic objects, he has many times prejudiced, not unfrequently sacrificed, his chances of political promotion and of personal aggrandizement; and that his zeal for the public good, has been the greatest injury to himself. Who can doubt, that if ambition for precedence of all others, in political preferment, had been his passion, he could at almost any time for the twenty years previous to 1844, and even in that year, have arrived at the goal?

It was for like reasons inconsistent with Mr. Clay's general character, that he should be a consummate politician for his party, in the practical tactics of its machinery-more especially in consideration of the character of his political opponents. He could never-God be thanked he could never depart from his rules of uprightness and honor-and his opponents knew it. During his whole political career, he has trusted to the intelligence and virtue of the people, and from that rule he has never deviated. Under the overwhelming persecutions he suffered from the great conspiracy formed against him in 1824-'5, during the pendency of the presidential election, by the house of representatives, which continued for years, and have never altogether ceased, he still trusted in the intelligence and virtue of the people; and in the hottest of that conflict, in 1827, while on his way home from Washington to Kentucky, with a copy of General Jackson's letter of the 6th of June of that year, to Carter Beverley, in his pocket, just obtained at Wheeling, he said in a note to a committee of his fellow-citizens of Maysville, who had invited him to a public dinner, respectfully declining it, "Although my enemies are resolved to spare no exertion to destroy my public character, I will triumph over all their machinations, because truth is triumphant, and public justice is certain.”

A few days after this, July 4th, in a letter of reply to a committee from Madison county, Kentucky, who had also invited him to a public dinner, and in their communication spoken in high commendation of his views of public policy, as comprehended in the American system, Mr. Clay said:

"All who are opposed to the American system-all who are

i

opposed to internal improvements, are now united with others in their endeavors to defeat the re-election of the present chief magistrate [Mr. Adams], and to elevate another individual [Gen. Jackson]. Should they succeed, there can not be a doubt, that the most powerful element of this association would afterward prevail in the conduct of public affairs. Against such inauspicious results, the best security is the intelligence, candor, and virtue of the people. A reliance upon this security has been the great maxim of my public life. I have never heretofore been deceived by it. And I am extremely glad to be authorized to assure you, that daily developments of public sentiment justify the confident anticipation, that the truth of the maxim will be again confirmed."

The result in that instance, and for the great controversy then pending, as is well known, was a disappointment. But still Mr. Clay has never abandoned his "MAXIM." The test of it may be long protracted; Mr. Clay may even sink down into his grave, before its truth, in regard to himself, will be fully realized; nevertheless, it is a good and a sound one. He who has reposed so much confidence in the people, will not in the end-certainly not in history and with posterity-lose his reward.

No good man, no American citizen, could desire, that Mr. Clay should have been less honest, less generous, less confiding, less magnanimous, if that were necessary to have made him a better politician. That he has been able to see and tell the truth, and that, on fit occasions, he has always been frank enough to do so, will be unfading honor to his name, and though he may have suffered, his country will reap the benefit. But Mr. Clay has not been a bad politician; and the reason why will be found in the fact, that the public, the world, friends and foes, have believed he was an honest one. That honesty is the BEST policy, has been most strikingly illustrated in his public life. He may have made mistakes, as a politician. Who has not? But a general conviction of his up

rightness. has done more for him, than he has lost by errors. Even his alleged mistakes have this question as facts of this description. lends a sanction even to his defects.

relief, that, they are open to He who is so generally right,

But it is as a STATESMAN, that Mr. Clay has been preeminent. In another chapter his shining pathway as the parent, advocate, and guardian of the American system, has been so far delineated, as to supersede an extended notice of it here. That prolific genius which begat such a progeny, that skill which fashioned its