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, and 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 surrounded 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 ex-pect 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

have just delivered, and in the sentiment with which you concluded it, that your warm partiality, and the fervent friendship which has so long existed between us, and the kindness of my neighbors and friends around me, have prompted an exaggerated description, in too glowing colors, of my public services and my poor abilities.

I seize the opportunity to present my heartfelt thanks to the whole people of Kentucky, for all the high honors and distinguished favors which I have received, during a long residence with them, at their hands; for the liberal patronage which I received from them in my professional pursuit; for the eminent places in which they have put me, or enabled me to reach; for the generous and unbounded confidence which they have bestowed upon me, at all times; for the gallant and unswerving fidelity and attachment with which they stood by me, throughout all the trials and vicissitudes of an eventful and arduous life; and, above all, for the scornful indignation with which they repelled an infamous calumny directed against my name and fame at a momentous period of my public career. In recalling to our memory the circumstances of that period, one cannot but be filled with astonishment at the indefatigability with which the calumny was propagated and the zealous partisan use to which it was applied, not only without evidence, but in the face of a full and complete refutation. Under whatever deception, delusion or ignorance, it was received elsewhere, with you, my friends and neighbors, and with. the good people of Kentucky, it received no countenance; but in proportion to the venom and the malevolence of its circulation was the vigor and the magnanimity with which I was generously supported. Upheld by a consciousness of the injustice of the charge, I should have borne myself with becoming fortitude, if I had been abandoned by you as I was by so large a portion of my countrymen ; but to have been sustained and vindicated as I was by the people of my own State, by you who knew me best, and whom I had so many reasons to love and esteem, greatly cheered and encouraged me in my onward progress. Eternal gratitude and thanks are due from me.

I thank you my friends and fellow citizens, for your distinguished and enthusiastic reception of me this day; and for the excellence and abundance of the Barbecue that has been provided for our entertainment. And I thank from the bottom of my heart, my fair countrywomen for honoring and gracing and adding brilliancy to this occa

sion by their numerous attendance. If the delicacy and refinement of their sex will not allow them to mix in the rougher scenes of human life, we may be sure that whenever, by their presence, their smiles and approbation are bestowed, it is no ordinary occurrence. That presence is always an absolute guaranty of order, decorum and respect. I take the greatest pleasure in bearing testimony to their value and their virtue. I have ever found in them true and steadfast friends, generously sympathizing in distress, and, by their courageous fortitude in bearing it themselves, encouraging us to imitate their example. And we all know and remember how, as in 1840, they can powerfully aid a great and good cause, without any departure from the propriety or dignity of their sex.

In looking back upon my origin and progress through life, I have great reason to be thankful. My father died in 1781, leaving me an infant of too tender years to retain any recollection of his smiles or endearments. My surviving parent removed to this State in 1792, leaving me, a boy of fifteen years of age, in the office of the High Court of Chancery, in the City of Richmond, without guardian, without pecuniary means of support, to steer my course as I might or could. A neglected education was improved by my own irregular exertions, without the benefit of systematic instruction. I studied law principally in the office of a lamented friend, the late Governor BROOKE, then Attorney General of Virginia, and also under the auspices of the venerable and lamented Chancellor WYTHE, for whom I had acted as an amanuensis. I obtained a license to practice the profession from the Judges of the Court of Appeals of Virginia, and established myself in Lexington in 1797, without patrons, without the favor or countenance of the great or opulent, without the means of paying my weekly board, and in the midst of a Bar uncommonly distinguished by eminent members. I remember how comfortable I I thought I should be, if I could make £100 Virginia money per year, and with what delight I received the first fifteen shilling fee. My hopes were more than realized. I immediately rushed into a successful and lucrative practice.

In 1803 or 4, when I was absent from the County of Fayette, at the Olympian Springs, without my knowledge or previous consent, I was brought forward as a candidate and elected to the General Assembly of this State. I served in that body several years, and was