A Biography of Henry Clay, the Senator from Kentucky / Containing Also, a Complete Report of All His Speeches; Selections From His Private Correspondence; Eulogies in the Senate and House; and a Poem, by George D. Prentice, Esq.

by Unknown

But I have not meanwhile been unsustained. Everywhere throughout the extent of this great continent I have had cordial, warm-hearted, faithful, and devoted friends, who have known me, loved me, and appreciated my motives. To them, if language were capable of fully expressing my acknowledgments, I would now offer all the return I have the power to make for their genuine, disinterested, and persevering fidelity and devoted attachment, the feelings and sentiments of a heart overflowing with never ceasing gratitude. If, however, I fail in suitable language to express my gratitude to them for all the kindness they have shown me, what shall I say, what can I say at all commensurate with those feelings of gratitude with which I have been inspired by the state whose humble representative and servant I have been in this chamber? [Here Mr. C’s feelings overpowered him, and he proceeded with deep sensibility and difficult utterance.]

I emigrated from Virginia to the state of Kentucky now nearly forty-five years ago; I went as an orphan boy who had not yet attained the age of majority; who had never recognised a father’s smile, nor felt his warm caresses; poor, pennyless, without the favor of the great, with an imperfect and neglected education, hardly sufficient for the ordinary business and common pursuits of life; but scarce had I set my foot upon her generous soil when I was embraced with parental fondness, caressed as though I had been a favorite child, and patronised with liberal and unbounded munificence. From that period the highest honors of the state have been freely bestowed upon me; and when, in the darkest hour of calumny and detraction, I seemed to be assailed by all the rest of the world,she interposed her broad and impenetrable shield, repelled the poisoned shafts that were aimed for my destruction, and vindicated my good name from every malignant and unfounded aspersion. I return with indescribable pleasure to linger a while longer, and mingle with the warm-hearted and whole-souled people of that state; and, when the last scene shall for ever close upon me, I hope that my earthly remains will be laid under her green sod with those of her gallant and patriotic sons.

But the ingenuity of my assailants is never exhausted. It seems I have subjected myself to a new epithet; which I do not know whether to take in honor or derogation: I am held up to the country as a ‘dictator.’ A dictator! The idea of a dictatorship is drawn from Roman institutions; and at the time the office was created, the person who wielded the tremendous weight of authority it conferred, concentrated in his own person an absolute power over the lives and property of all his fellow-citizens; he could levy armies; he could build and man navies; he could raise any amount of revenue he might choose to demand; and life and death rested on his fiat. If I were a dictator, as I am said to be, where is the power with which I am clothed? Have I any army? any navy? any revenue? any patronage? in a word, any power whatever? If I had been a dictator, I think that even those who have the most freely applied to me the appellation must be compelled to make two admissions; first, that my dictatorship has been distinguished by no cruel executions, stained by no blood, sullied by no act of dishonor; and I think they must also own, (though I do not exactly know what date my commission of dictator bears; I suppose, 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 coöperation of my friends, to carry out the great measures intended by the popular majority of 1840, and to have earnestly wished that they should all have been adopted and executed; if to have ardently 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; to limit, circumscribe, and reduce executive authority; to retrench unnecessary expenditure and abolish useless offices and institutions; and the public honor to preserve untarnished by supplying a revenue adequate to meet the national engagements and incidental protection to the national industry; if to have entertained an anxious solicitude to redeem every pledge, and execute every promise fairly made bymy political friends, with a view to the acquisition of power from the hands of an honest and confiding people; if these constitute a man a DICTATOR, why, then, I must be content to bear, although I still ought only to share with my friends, the odium or the honor of 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 ready to own; and those who suppose that I have been assuming the dictatorship, have only mistaken for arrogance or assumption that ardor and devotion which are 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 espoused.

In the course of a long and arduous public service, especially during the last eleven years in which 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 alike honestly entertained, as to the best course to be adopted for the public welfare, I may have often inadvertently and 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 most ample apology for any departure on my part from the established rules of parliamentary decorum and courtesy. On the other hand, I assure senators, one and all, without exception and without reserve, that I retire from this chamber without carrying with me a single feeling of resentment or dissatisfaction to the senate or 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 nation, in which each has sought and contended for what he deemed the best mode of accomplishing one common object, the 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 with unmeasured satisfaction.

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 withdrawal from the senate, it will be amply filled by him, whose urbanity, whose gallant and gentlemanly bearing, whose steady adherence to principle, and whose rare and accomplishedpowers in debate, are known to the senate and to the 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 of the wise framers of our 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 securing the prosperity of our beloved country, in maintaining its rights and honor abroad, and upholding its interests at home. I retire, I know, 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 continued exertions to avert it, and to the truth that no blame can justly attach to me.

May the most precious blessings 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 receive that most cheering and gratifying of all human rewards—their cordial greeting of ‘well done, good and faithful servant.’