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.

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Seventh, the support given to executive usurpations, and the expunging the records of the senate of the United States.

Eighth, the recent refusal of state legislatures to pass laws to carry into effect the act of distribution, an act of congress passed according to all the forms of the constitution, after ample discussion and deliberate consideration, and after the lapse of ten years from the period it was first proposed. It is the duty of all to submit to the laws regularly passed. They may attempt to get them repealed; they have a right to test their validity before the judiciary; but whilst the laws remain in force unrepealed, and without any decision against their constitutional validity, submission to them is not merely a constitutional and legal, but a moral duty. In this case it is true that those who refuse to abide by them only bite their own noses. But it is the principle of the refusal to which I call your attention. If a minority may refuse compliance with one law, what is to prevent minorities from disregarding all law? Is this any thing but a modification of nullification? What right have the servants of the people, (the legislative bodies,) to withhold from their masters their assigned quotas of a great public fund?

Ninth. The last, though not least, instance of the manifestation of a spirit of disorganization which I shall notice, is the recent convulsion in Rhode Island. That little, but gallant and patriotic state had a charter derived from a British king, in operation between one and two hundred years. There had been engrafted upon it laws and usages, from time to time, and altogether a practical constitution sprung up, which carried the state as one of the glorious thirteen, through the revolution, and brought her safelyinto the union. Under it, her Greens and Perrys and other distinguished men were born and rose to eminence. The legislature had called a convention to remedy whatever defects it had, and to adapt it to the progressive improvement of the age. In that work of reform the Dorr party might have coöperated; but not choosing so to coöperate, and in wanton defiance of all established authority, they undertook subsequently to call another convention. The result was two constitutions, not essentially differing on the principal point of controversy, the right of suffrage.

Upon submitting to the people that which was formed by the regular convention, a small majority voted against it, produced by a union in casting votes, between the Dorr party and some of the friends of the old charter, who were opposed to any change. The other constitution being also submitted to the people, an apparent majority voted for it, made up of every description of votes, legal and illegal, by proxy and otherwise, taken in the most irregular and unauthorized manner.

The Dorr party proceeded to put their constitution in operation by electing him as the governor of the state, members to the mock legislature, and other officers. But they did not stop here; they proceeded to collect, to drill, and to marshal a military force, and pointed their cannon against the arsenal of the state.

The president was called upon to interpose the power of the union to preserve the peace of the state, in conformity with an express provision of the federal constitution. And I have as much pleasure in expressing my opinion that he faithfully performed his duty, in responding to that call, as it gave me pain to be obliged to animadvert on other parts of his conduct.

The leading presses of the democratic party at Washington, Albany, New York, Richmond, and elsewhere, came out in support of the Dorr party, encouraging them in their work of rebellion and treason. And when matters had got to a crisis, and the two parties were preparing for a civil war, and every hour it was expected to blaze out, a great Tammany meeting was held in the city of New York, headed by the leading men of the party, the Cambrelengs, the Vanderpools, the Allens, &c., with a perfect knowledge that the military power of the union was to be employed, if necessary, to suppress the insurrection, and, notwithstanding, they passed resolutions tending to awe the president, and to countenance and cheer the treason.

Fortunately, numbers of the Dorr party abandoned their chief; he fled, and Rhode Island, unaided by any actual force of the federal authority, proved herself able alone to maintain law, order, and government, within her borders.

I do not attribute to my fellow citizens here assembled, from whom I differ in opinion, any disposition to countenance the revolutionary proceedings in Rhode Island. I do not believe that theyapprove it, I do not believe that their party generally could approve it, nor some of the other examples of a spirit of disorganization which I have enumerated; but the misfortune is, in time of high party excitement, that the leaders commit themselves, and finally commit the body of their party, who perceive that unless they stand by and sustain their leaders, a division, and perhaps destruction of the party, would be the consequence. Of all the springs of human action, party ties are perhaps the most powerful. Interest has been supposed to be more so; but party ties are more influential, unless they are regarded as a modification of imaginary interest. Under their sway, we have seen, not only individuals, but whole communities abandon their long cherished interests and principles, and turn round and oppose them with violence.

Did not the rebellion in Rhode Island find for its support a precedent established by the majority in congress, in the irregular admission of territories, as states, into the union, to which I have heretofore alluded? Is there not reason to fear that the example which congress had previously presented, encouraged the Rhode Island rebellion?