Quitting the still shore for the troubled wave,
Struggling with storm-clouds, over shipwrecks flying,
And casting anchor in the silent grave.’
But though time would not spare him, there is still this of consolation: he died peacefully and happy, ripe in renown, full of years and of honours, and rich in the affections of his country. He had, too, the unspeakable satisfaction of closing his eyes whilst the country he had loved so much and served so well was still in the enjoyment of peace, happiness, union, and prosperity—still advancing in all the elements of wealth, greatness, and power.
I know, Mr. President, how unequal I have been to the apparently self-imposed task of presenting, in an appropriate manner, the merits of the illustrious deceased. But if I had remained silent on an occasion like this, when the hearts of my constituents are swelling with grief, I would have been disowned by them. It is for this reason—that of giving utterance to their feelings as well as of my own—that I have trespassed on the time of the senate. I would that I could have spoken fitter words; but such as they are, they were uttered by the tongue in response to the promptings of the heart.
Mr. SEWARD.—Mr. President: Fifty years ago, Henry Clay, of Virginia, already adopted by Kentucky, then as youthful as himself, entered the service of his country, a representative in the unpretendinglegislature of that rising state; and having thenceforward, with ardor and constancy, pursued the gradual paths of an aspiring change through halls of congress, foreign courts and executive councils, he has now, with the cheerfulness of a patriot, and the serenity of a Christian, fitly closed his long and arduous career, here in the senate, in the full presence of the republic, looking down upon the scene with anxiety and alarm, not merely a senator, like one of us who yet remain in the senate-house, but filling that character which, though it had no authority of law, and was assigned without suffrage, Augustus Cæsar nevertheless declared was above the title of Emperor, Primus inter Illustres—the Prince of the Senate.
Generals are tried, Mr. President, by examining the campaigns they have lost or won, and statesmen by reviewing the transactions in which they have been engaged. Hamilton would have been unknown to us, had there been no constitution to be created; as Brutus would have died in obscurity, had there been no Cæsar to be slain.
Colonization, Revolution, and Organization—three great acts in the drama of our National Progress—had already passed when the Western Patriot appeared on the public stage. He entered in that next division of the majestic scenes which was marked by an inevitable rëaction of political forces, a wild strife of factions and ruinous embarrassments in our foreign relations. This transition stage is always more perilous than any other in the career of nations, and especially in the career of Republics. It proved fatal to the Commonwealth in England. Scarcely any of the Spanish-American states have yet emerged from it; and more than once it has been sadly signalized by the ruin of the republican cause in France.
The continuous administration of Washington and John Adams had closed under a cloud which had thrown a broad, dark shadow over the future; the nation was deeply indebted at home and abroad, and its credit was prostrate. The revolutionary factions had given place to two inveterate parties, divided by a gulf which had been worn by the conflict in which the Constitution was adopted, and made broader and deeper by a war of prejudices concerning the merits of the belligerents in the great European struggle that then convulsed the civilized world. Our extraordinary political system was little more than an ingenious theory, not yet practically established. The union of the states was as yet only one of compact; for the political, social, and commercial necessities to which it was so marvelously adapted, and which, clustering thickly upon it, now render it indissoluble, had not then been broadly disclosed, nor had the habits of acquiescence and the sentiments of loyalty, always slow of growth, fully ripened. The bark that had gone to sea, thus unfurnished and untried, seemed quite certain to founder by reason of its own inherent frailty, even if it should escape unharmed in the great conflict of nations which acknowledged no claims of justice and tolerated no pretensions of neutrality. Moreover, the territorypossessed by the nation was inadequate to commercial exigencies and indispensable social expansion; and yet no provision had been made for enlargement, nor for extending the political system over distant regions, inhabited or otherwise, which must inevitably be acquired. Nor could any such acquisition be made, without disturbing the carefully-adjusted balance of powers among the members of the confederacy.