Mr. Speaker, when I remember the party strifes in which he wasso much mingled, and through which we all more or less have passed, and then survey this scene, and think how far, as the lightning has borne the news that he is gone, half-masted flags are drooping and church-bells are tolling, and men are sorrowing, I can but feel that it is good for man to die. For when death enters, O! how the unkindnesses, and jealousies, and rivalries of life do vanish, and how like incense from an altar do peace, and friendship, and all the sweet charities of our nature, rise around the corpse which was once a man! And of a truth, Mr. Speaker, never was more of veritable noble manhood cased in mortal mould than was found in him to whose memory this brief and humble, but true and heartfelt tribute is paid. But his eloquent voice is hushed, his high heart is stilled. ‘Like a shock of corn fully ripe, he has been gathered to his fathers.’ With more than three score years and ten upon him, and honors clustered thick about him, in the full possession of unclouded intellect, and all the consolations of Christianity, he has met the fate which is evitable by none. Lamented by all his countrymen, his name is bright on fame’s immortal roll. He has finished his course, and he has his crown. What more fruit can life bear? What can it give that Henry Clay has not gained?
Then, Mr. Speaker, around his tomb should be heard not only the dirge that wails his loss, but the jubilant anthem which sounds that on the world’s battle-field another victory has been won—another incontestable greatness achieved.
Mr. CHANDLER, of Pennsylvania, said: Mr. Speaker, It would seem as if the solemn invocation of the honorable gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. EWING) was receiving an early answer, and that the heavens are hung in black, and the wailing elements are singing the funeral dirge of Henry Clay. Amid this elemental gloom, and the distress which pervades the nation at the death of Henry Clay, private grief should not obtrude itself upon notice, nor personal anguish seek for utterance. Silence is the best exponent of individual sorrow, and the heart that knoweth its own bitterness shrinks from an exposition of its affliction.
Could I have consulted my own feelings on the event which occupies the attention of the house at the present moment, I should even have forborne attendance here, and in the solitude and silence of my chamber have mused upon the terrible lesson which has been administered to the people and the nation. But I represent a constituency who justly pride themselves upon the unwavering attachment they have ever felt and manifested to Henry Clay—a constant, pervading, hereditary love. The son has taken up the father’s affection, and amid all the professions of political attachments to others, whom the accidents of party have made prominent, and the success of party has made powerful, true to his own instincts, and true to the sanctified legacy of his father, he has placed the name of Henry Clay forward and preëminent as the exponent of what isgreatest in statesmanship and purest in patriotism. And even, sir, when party fealty caused other attachments to be avowed for party uses, the preference was limited to the occupancy of office, and superiority admitted for Clay in all that is reckoned above party estimation.
Nor ought I to forbear to add that, as the senior member of the delegation which represents my commonwealth, I am requested to utter the sentiments of the people of Pennsylvania at large, who yield to no portion of this great Union in their appreciation of the talents, their reverence for the lofty patriotism, their admiration of the statesmanship, and hereafter their love of the memory of Henry Clay.
I cannot, therefore, be silent on this occasion without injustice to the affections of my constituency, even though I painfully feel how inadequate to the reverence and love my people have toward that statesman must be all that I have to utter on this mournful occasion.
I know not, Mr. Chairman, where now the nation is to find the men she needs in peril; either other calls than those of politics are holding in abeyance the talents which the nation may need, or else a generation is to pass undistinguished by the greatness of our statesmen. Of the noble minds that have swayed the senate, one yet survives in the maturity of powerful intellect, carefully disciplined and nobly exercised. May He who has thus far blessed our nation, spare to her and the world that of which the world must always envy our country the possession! But my business is with the dead.
The biography of Henry Clay, from his childhood upward, is too familiar to every American for me to trespass on the time of this house by a reference directly thereto; and the honorable gentlemen who have preceded me have, with affectionate hand and appropriate delicacy, swept away the dust which nearly fourscore years have scattered over a part of the record, and have made our pride greater in his life, and our grief more poignant at his death, by showing some of those passages which attract respect to our republican institutions, of which Mr. Clay’s whole life was the able support and the most successful illustration.
It would, then, be a work of supererogation for me to renew that effort, though inquiry into the life and conduct of Henry Clay would present new themes for private eulogy, new grounds for public gratitude.