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His democratic principles, therefore, ardent and spontaneous as they are, are tempered by a deep reverence for the permanent reason of the State, and a profound regard for the well-being of his fellows. All his aspirations are to build up, not to tear down-to create, not to destroy. All the safeguards, then, which the sound wisdom of the people, triumphing and establishing a law over that of transient impulse, has thrown about individual rights, he reverences, and, so long as they seem to be needed, seeks to preserve. Like SCHILLER'S Wallenstein, while he knows that the flight of destruction is straight and swift, he feels that,

"the road the human being travels,

That on which BLESSING Comes and goes, both follow
The river's course, the valley's playful windings,
Curves round the cornfield and the hill of vines,
Honoring the holy bounds of property."

Mr. CLAY has always been the proud champion of that political party which maintains the true purpose of civil government to be, not merely the prevention of Wrong, but the establishment of Right,-not merely to define and punish offences, but to confer blessings and secure the highest good to those who live beneath its benignant sway. His public life has been consecrated to the development of this great principle; and if his efforts seem not yet to have been attended with full success, they have been oftentimes of saving service to the country; and the eye of Hope sees in them the germ of a power which shall yet work itself free from all crushing calamity, and accomplish the great end for which it was first put forth. He is one of those great men whose influence, even

*COLERIDGE's Translation.

when unseen and despised, is potent and controlling. The spirit of his life has wrought even more than his active efforts; and, far more than any other statesman among us, he has thus given strength to those principles of public policy which alone conduct nations to the height of prosperity. The value of his public services can only be worthily set forth when candor shall have made a faithful record of his life and his acts and just in proportion as that record is incomplete, will this great friend of mankind be defrauded of honor. It were rash and unwise to ask that his own age should rightly esteem and fully reward them. But, as in the old religion the lightning made sacred the object upon which it fell, so even now does Death hallow the victim whom he strikes. Future generations will not lose sight of his worth: those words of wisdom which, uttered by his living voice, fall too unheeded upon our hearts, shall come from his tomb with power as from a holy place for "such is the power of dispensing blessings, which Providence has attached to the truly great and good, that they cannot even die without advantage to their fellow creatures; for death consecrates their example; and the wisdom, which might have been slighted at the council-table, becomes oracular from the shrine."

END OF THE MEMOIR OF HENRY CLAY.

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IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, DECEMBER 25, 1810.

[THE region known as FLORIDA, though discovered by Sebastian Cabot, an Eng lish navigator, was first formally taken possession of by Ponce de Leon, a Spaniard, in behalf of the Spanish crown, and was thence deemed a possession of that crown A colony of French Protestants, who settled it in 1562, were overpowered and murdered by a Spanish force in 1565, in which year a Spanish colony was planted at St. Augustine. By the Treaty of Ryswick, in 1763, Florida was ceded to England, but restored to Spain by the Treaty of Paris, in 1783. It remained a Spanish possession down to its cession to the United States, for $5,000,000, in 1819. LOUISIANA, on the other hand-that is, the River Mississippi-was first discovered by the French, in 1688, and a settlement made by them in 1699. It was ceded to Spain in 1763, restored to France in 1800, and purchased of Bonaparte, by the United States, in 1803, for the sum of $15,000,000. And now a serious question soon arose as to the Boundary between the two Territories-Spain claiming that Florida extended to the Mississippi, embracing all the then wilderness which now forms the States of Alabama and Mississippi; while our Government claimed that Louisiana extended east to the Perdido, a small river running South into the Gulf of Mexico, about 50 miles east of Mobile, 150 east of New-Orleans and 20 west of Pensacola. President MADISON solved the dispute in 1810 by taking possession of Baton Rouge and Mobile, and extending the jurisdiction of the United States to the Perdido. This act was assailed in Congress by the Federal Members, especially by OUTERBRIDGE HORSEY, an eminent Senator from Delaware, who regarded it as an unjustifiable and offensive demonstration against Spain, then putting forth all her energies in resistance to the treacherous usurpation and overwhelming force of Bona parte. Mr. CLAY replied in defence of Mr. Madison's course in the following Speech, demonstrating that the Perdido was the true boundary between the twe Territories, and accordingly it has since remained the western limit of Florida.]

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