I did not know him, Mr. President, as you did, in the freshness of his prime, or in the full maturity of his manhood. I did not hear him, sir, as you have heard him, when his voice roused the spirit ofhis countrymen for war—when he cheered the drooping, when he rallied the doubting through all the vicissitudes of a long and doubtful contest. I have never seen him, sir, when, from the height of the chair, he ruled the House of Representatives by the energy of his will, or when upon the level of the floor he exercised a control almost as absolute, by the mastery of his intellect. When I first knew him, his sun had a little passed its zenith. The effacing hand of time had just begun to touch the lineaments of his manhood. But yet, sir, I saw enough of him to be able to realize what he might have been in the prime of his strength, and in the full vigor of his maturity. I saw him, sir, as you did, when he led the ‘opposition’ during the administration of Mr. Van Buren. I had daily opportunities of witnessing the exhibition of his powers during the extra session under Mr. Tyler’s administration. And I saw, as we all saw, in a recent contest, the exhibition of power on his part, which was most marvellous in one of his years.
Mr. President, he may not have had as much of analytic skill as some others, in dissecting a subject. It may be, perhaps, that he did not seek to look quite so far ahead as some who have been most distinguished for political forecast. But it may be truly said of Mr. Clay, that he was no exaggerator. He looked at events through neither end of the telescope, but surveyed them with the natural and the naked eye. He had the capacity of seeing things as the people saw them, and of feeling things as the people felt them. He had, sir, beyond any other man whom I have ever seen, the true mesmeric touch of the orator—the rare art of transferring his impulses to others. Thoughts, feelings, emotions, came from the ready mould of his genius, radiant and glowing, and communicated their own warmth to every heart which received them. His, too, was the power of wielding the higher and intenser forms of passion with a majesty and an ease, which none but the great masters of the human heart can ever employ. It was his rare good fortune to have been one of those who form, as it were, a sensible link, a living tradition which connects one age with another, and through which one generation speaks its thoughts and feelings, and appeals to another. And, unfortunate is it for a country, when it ceases to possess such men, for it is to them that we chiefly owe the capacity to maintain the unity of the great Epos of human history, and preserve the consistency of political action.
Sir, it may be said that the grave is still new-made which covers the mortal remains of one of those great men who have been taken from our midst, and the earth is soon to open to receive another. I know not whether it can be said to be a matter of lamentation, so far as the dead are concerned, that the thread of this life has been clipped when once it had been fully spun. They escape the infirmities of age, and they leave an imperishable name behind them. The loss, sir, is not theirs, but ours; and a loss the more to be lamented that we see none to fill the places thus made vacant onthe stage of public affairs. But it may be well for us, who have much more cause to mourn and to lament such deaths, to pause amidst the business of life for the purpose of contemplating the spectacle before us, and of drawing the moral from the passing event. It is when death seizes for its victims those who are, by ‘a head and shoulders, taller than all the rest,’ that we feel most deeply the uncertainty of human affairs, and that ‘the glories of our mortal state are shadows, not substantial things.’ It is, sir, in such instances as the present that we can best study by the light of example the true objects of life, and the wisest ends of human pursuit.
Mr. HALE.—Mr. President: I hope I shall not be considered obtrusive, if on this occasion, for a brief moment, I mingle my humble voice with those that, with an ability that I shall neither attempt nor hope to equal, have sought to do justice to the worth and memory of the deceased, and at the same time appropriately to minister to the sympathies and sorrows of a stricken people. Sir, it is the teaching of inspiration that ‘no man liveth and no man dieth unto himself.’
There is a lesson taught no less in the death than in the life of every man—eminently so in the case of one who has filled a large space and occupied a distinguished position in the thoughts and regard of his fellow-men. Particularly instructive at this time is the event which we now deplore, although the circumstances attending his decease are such as are calculated to assuage rather than aggravate the grief which it must necessarily cause. His time had fully come. The three score and ten marking the ordinary period of human life had for some years been passed, and, full of years and of honors, he has gone to his rest. And now, when the nation is marshalling itself for the contest which is to decide ‘who shall be greatest,’ as if to chasten our ambition, to restrain and subdue the violence of passion, to moderate our desires and elevate our hopes, we have the spectacle of one who, by the force of his intellect and the energy of his own purpose, had achieved a reputation which the highest official honors of the Republic might have illustrated, but could not have enhanced, laid low in death—as if, at the very outset of this political contest, on which the nation is now entering, to teach the ambitious and aspiring the vanity of human pursuit and end of earthly honor. But, sir, I do not intend to dwell on that moral which is taught by the silent lips and closed eye of the illustrious dead, with a force such as no man ever spoke with; but I shall leave the event, with its silent and mute eloquence, to impress its own appropriate teachings on the heart.
In the long and eventful life of Mr. Clay, in the various positions which he occupied, in the many posts of public duty which he filled, in the many exhibitions which his history affords of untiring energy, of unsurpassed eloquence, and of devoted patriotism, it would bestrange indeed if different minds, as they dwell upon the subject, were all to select the same incidents of his life, as preëminently calculated to challenge admiration and respect.
Sir, my admiration—ay, my affection for Mr. Clay—was won and secured many years since, even in my school-boy days—when his voice of counsel, encouragement, and sympathy, was heard in the other hall of this capitol, in behalf of the struggling colonies of the southern portion of this continent, who, in pursuit of their inalienable rights, in imitation of our own forefathers, had unfurled the banner of liberty, and, regardless of consequences, had gallantly rushed into that contest where ‘life is lost, or freedom won.’ And again, sir, when Greece, rich in the memories of the past, awoke from the slumber of ages of oppression and centuries of shame, and resolved
‘To call her virtues back, and conquer time and fate’—
there, over the plains of that classic land, above the din of battle and the clash of arms, mingling with the shouts of the victors and the groans of the vanquished, were heard the thrilling and stirring notes of that same eloquence, excited by a sympathy which knew no bounds, wide as the world, pleading the cause of Grecian liberty before the American congress, as if to pay back to Greece the debt which every patriot and orator felt was her due. Sir, in the long and honorable career of the deceased, there are many events and circumstances upon which his friends and posterity will dwell with satisfaction and pride, but none which will preserve his memory with more unfading lustre to future ages than the course he pursued in the Spanish, American, and Greek revolutions.