At last, the morning hour having expired, the next business on the calendar was the reading of the report of the committee of investigation on the affairs of the K. F. R. land grants and the corporations connected therewith. The Vice-President, looking pale and worried, recognized the chairman of the committee, who looked paler and more worried. The stillness resolved itself into a deathlike silence, broken only by the resonant tones of the reading clerk. It was not a long report—the reading of it lasted scarcely three-quarters of an hour; but it was a terrible one. As the charges were named, and declared proved, a kind of horror appeared to settle down upon the Senate chamber. The senators who had been lukewarm in the matter were shamed for themselves; those who had been charged with the execution of justice were shamed for the cause of popular government. If such things were possible in a government by the people and for the people and of the people, it was an indictment against the whole people.
During it all Clavering sat with unshaken calmness. Not by a glance out of his handsome, stern eyes nor the least variation of color in his clear and ruddy complexion did he indicate the smallest agitation. Not even the last clause, which recommended his expulsion from the Senate of the United States, and which every member of the committee signed, without a dissenting voice, had the power to move him from his cool composure.
When the reading was concluded, the chairman of the committee rose and made a few explanations of the report. He spoke in an agitated and broken voice. Before introducing the resolution of expulsion, he hesitated and looked toward Clavering. Clavering rose, and on being recognized by the chair, asked to be heard in a brief defence.
Although he had always been a hard worker in his committee-room, Clavering had not often got upon his feet to speak in the Senate chamber. As he had told Elizabeth months before, he always knew his limitations as a debater. Having been used to lording over men for many years, the courteous assumption that every senator is a wise man had never sat well on him. When he spoke he had always been listened to, because he always had something to say; but he had shown his usual good sense and judgment by not measuring himself with the giants of debate. To-day, however, he had nothing more to hope or fear from those grave men, whose scorn of him was swallowed up in the execution of justice upon him.
As he rose to speak, to many minds came back that old Homeric line, “As the passing leaves, so is the passing of men;” and this man was passing from life into civil death before their eyes. Clavering, in his beautifully clear and well-modulated voice, began his defence, if defence it could be called. He told briefly but impressively of his youthful struggles, of his lack of education, of the wild life of the West into which he was inducted early, of the disregard of written laws in the administration of the justice with which he was familiar, how the strong men ruled by virtue of their strength, how great enterprises were carried through by forces not understood or even known in old and settled communities. His story was like a book out of the “Odyssey.” He described the effect of his operations in large sections of country, which made him hosts of friends and hosts of enemies. He subtly called attention by indirection to that unwritten law, noted by a British general in India, that there were in all partly civilized countries certain necessary and salutary rascalities, to be carried through by the strong and wise against the weak and foolish. Coming down to his own case, he made no appeal for mercy, and offered no plea in abatement. On the contrary, he became distinctly aggressive, and heaped ridicule upon the committee of elderly gentlemen sitting in their luxurious committee-room, passing judgment on the storm and stress of men and things as unknown to them as the inhabitants of another planet. His conclusion was a ringing defiance of his enemies, a promise of vengeance upon them, and a solemn declaration that he would return, rehabilitated, to the Senate of the United States, and every man who believed him guilty might count himself the everlasting enemy of James Clavering from that day forth.
When he sat down there was from the public galleries an involuntary burst of applause, which was instantly suppressed. Two or three women wept aloud; an aged senator attempted to rise from his seat, fell back, and was carried out half-fainting. There were a few minutes of nervous quiet and whispering, and then the final proceedings began. They were short and exquisitely painful. The resolution of expulsion was put, and received a three-fourths vote in its favor. Half a dozen senators in a group voted against the resolution, and a few others were absent or refrained from voting. Of the half-dozen senators who voted in Clavering’s favor, some voted in a spirit of sheer perversity, and the rest by absolute stupidity. When the result was declared amid a deathlike silence, Clavering rose and, making a low bow toward the senators who had voted for him, left his seat and went toward the aisle. As he reached it he turned to the chair and made another bow, full of dignity and respect; and then, without the least flurry or discomposure, retired from the Senate chamber which it had been the summit of his lifelong ambition to enter and of which he was never again to cross the threshold. He was to see no more service of the great Demos. But not Alcibiades, when he called the Athenians a pack of dogs, looked more sincerely contemptuous than did James Clavering of the United States Senate when, a disgraced and branded man, he walked out of the Senate chamber.