without patrons, without influential friends, and without the means of paying his weekly board, and immediately rushed into a lucrative practice. His frankness and gravity, his ardent feelings, his lofty principles, his brilliant talents, but as much as all else, his manly courage in advocating the interests and rights of his clients, however humble, and protecting them against the aggressions of the wealthy and the influential, conspired to command his success at the bar, and finally to induct him, through the suffrages of his fellow citizens, into those public offices which he so well filled and so much adorned. Although throughout his life, Mr. Clay, as a lawyer, stood in the very front rank of his profession, yet it is not in this character that the world is in the habit of regarding him. However exalted his talents; however extensive and deep his learning; no mere lawyer can ever have much more than a local reputation, except among his own professional brethren. It is as a popular Leader and Statesman, as the "GREAT COMMONER," that Mr. Clay is known, wherever the light of civilization shines, or a pulsation of liberty is felt in the human breast. 4

Mr. Clay's political life commenced shortly after his removal to Kentucky, in the advocacy of a gradual emancipation of the slaves of that State; to effect which, he labored strenuously, but without success, to have a clause inserted in the New Constitution then about to be formed. Gradual emancipation was at all times a favorite doctrine with him; asserted and earnestly maintained by him on all appropriate occasions, without regard to popular displeasure, and always with a heavy majority in his own State opposed to his views on this question. In his speech on the Mexican war, delivered to a popular assembly at Lexington, on the 13th of November, 1847, he reiterated, as the matured opinions of his old age, the sentiments on this subject, to which he first gave utterance nearly fifty years before.

In the year 1803, without solicitation on his part, and indeed without his knowledge, while he was absent from home, Mr. Clay was brought forward as a candidate for the Legislature of his adopted State, and elected. He continued a member of the Gen-. eral Assembly of Kentucky until the year 1806, when on the 29th of December, in that year, at the age of twenty-nine, he was called by the body of which he had been a member, to represent the State of Kentucky in the Senate of the United States, filling the vacancy

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ccasioned by the resignation of Hon. John Adair.

Although thus early thrown among men of wisdom, and matured intellect, he was not there to sit as a listener and admirer of other men; he at once realized the responsibilities of his high office, and true to his nature, fearlessly, and at once, entered upon the active discharge of all his duties. His first efforts in the Senate, were directed to the subject of internal improvements. He continued in the Senate only until the 4th of March, 1807. In the succeeding summer, his services were again required by his fellow citizens of Fayette county, as their representative in the General Assembly of Kentucky; and on the meeting of that body, he was chosen Speaker of the Assembly. During his speakership, he discharged all his official duties with great satisfaction to the body over which he presided. He felt it his duty, however, occasionally to leave the chair for the purpose of mingling in debate. His peculiar devotion to everything American, was evinced at this period, by the offering of a series of resolutions, in approval of the course pursued by Mr. Jefferson in resist ing the British orders in Council, and pledging to his administration the support of Kentucky, in any measures calculated to oppose the exactions of Great Britain. It was about this time also, that Mr. Clay offered a resolution, recommending, for the sake of example, that each member of the Assembly should clothe himself in apparel of American manufacture, which was the occasion of a hostile meeting between him and Humphrey Marshall, who opposed the measure in a very sarcastic and imbittered style of argument, indulging in the grossest personalities toward the mover of it.

His subsequent duel with the distinguished, but eccentric, if not insane, John Randolph of Roanoke, taken in connection with his encounter with Mr. Marshall, would seem to indicate, on the part of Mr. Clay, a bloodthirsty and quarrelsome disposition. To those who knew the warmth and tenderness of his feelings, he needs no vindication from such a charge. It is proper to say however, that his participation in duels was in obedience to the insane requirements of the society in which he mingled, and always the subject of the deepest regret to himself. In a public address to his constituents, in 1825, he avowed his own views of dueling in these words. "I owe it to the community, to say, that whatever heretofore I may have done, or by inevitable circumstances might be forced to do, no man holds in deeper abhorrence than I do that pernicious

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practice, condemned, as it must be, by the judgment and philosophy, to say nothing of the religion, of every thinking man; it is an affair of feeling, about which we cannot, although we should, reason. Its true correction will be found, when all shall unite, as all ought to unite, in its unqualified proscription." Mr. Clay could take to himself at least, the consolation that in neither of these duels did he have to repent too late, the death of a fellow being, although a personal enemy. In fact, according to the statement of Hon. Thos. H. Benton, who was an eyewitness of the meeting with Randolph, that conflict furnished an opportunity for the exhibition of some of the best qualities of Mr. Clay's heart; his chivalry and high-toned honor, never on any other occasion shone out with more brilliancy.

In the winter of 1809-10, Mr. Clay was again returned to the United States Senate, to fill up the unexpired term of the Hon. Buckner Thurston, one of the Senators from Kentucky, who had resigned. In 1811, preferring a seat in the House of Representatives, to the more elevated position of Senator, he became a candidate for the suffrages of his fellow citizens of the Fayette district, and being elected, took his seat in that body on the 4th of November, 1811, at a called Session assembled in view of the impending war with Great Britain. On the first ballot for Speaker, he was chosen by the handsome vote of 79 to 48. Now for the first time, Mr. Clay was brought prominently before the country, as a patriot and statesman, and more especially as the exponents of republican liberty, and the defender of popular rights against the aggressions of monarchy. He thought he saw, in the aggressions upon our commerce, and the impressment of our mariners by Great Britain, a desire to destroy the seeds of a naval force, which in thirty years would rival her on her own element; and he bent all his energies, both as a member and as Speaker, to the preparation of his country for a conflict, which should vindicate her injured rights, and secure a just regard for them in the future. He became at once the warm advocate of vigorous hostile measures, although he was in this compelled to encounter in fierce debate, some of the most powerful speakers of the day, among others, Josiah Quincy of Massachusetts, and John Randolph of Virginia. His spirit was one, however, not to be daunted. A member of Congress who was present at the debate, says: "On this occasion Mr. Clays was a flame of fire. He had now brought Congress to the verge, of what he

conceived to be, a war for liberty and honor; and his voice rang through the Capitol like a trumpet tone sounding for the onset. On the subject of the policy of the embargo, his eloquence, like a Roman phalanx, bore down all opposition; and he put to shame those of his opponents who flouted the Government as being unprepared for war." Both in preparing the country for the war, and in vigorously prosecuting it to a successful termination, no man in the nation exerted a greater power and influence than Henry Clay. Mr. Madison, then President, impressed with the high qualities exhibited by Mr. Clay, and especially with his power of controlling and leading other men, and his remarkable promptness in finding expedients to meet all possible exigencies, had determined on sending in his name to the Senate for the office of Major-General. This purpose on the part of the President, was abandoned only for the reason, that Mr. Clay's services were considered indispensable to the nation in a civil capacity. After the close of the war, he was offered by Mr. Madison, the mission to Russia and a cabinet appointment; and by Mr. Monroe, after he became President, a Secretaryship at home, and a carte blanche of all the foreign missions; but entertaining a preference for his position in the House of Representatives, he thought proper to decline all executive appoint

If we regard Mr. Clay's age, and comparative inexperience in public affairs at the beginning of the war of 1812, his civic achievements during that memorable period must be considered one of the greatest triumphs recorded in the annals of statesmanship. His efforts and influence in bringing that war to a conclusion, creditable to himself and his country, naturally suggested his name as one of the commissioners to arrange and conclude a treaty of peace, his colleagues in this mission being John Quincy Adams, Albert Gallatin, James A. Bayard and Jonathan Russell. Accordingly, on the 19th of January, 1814, he resigned the office of Speaker of the House of Representatives, which he had filled with such distinguished success for three years, receiving an almost unanimous vote of thanks for the impartiality and ability with which he had presided.

When the commissioners met at Ghent, Messrs. Adams and Gallatin, with the assent of Mr. Bayard, proposed to their co-commissioners to insert an article in the project of a treaty to be pre

sented to the British commissioners, securing to American citizens the right of drying and curing fish on British soil, which they had enjoyed under Mr. Jay's treaty of 1794, and giving as an equivalent to Great Britain, the free navigation of the Mississippi River from its source to the ocean; a privilege which British subjects had formerly enjoyed under a clause of the Jay treaty. Mr. Clay, though anxious to obtain for his country all the privileges and rights which had been enjoyed prior to the war, was unwilling to purchase them "at the expense of putting a foreign and degrading mark upon the noblest of all our rivers," the "Father of Waters," and at once declared that he would affix his name to no treaty containing such a concession to Great Britain. His prompt and firm determination, at once brought over Mr. Bayard, leaving only Mr. Adams and Mr. Gallatin in favor of the proposition, and it was discarded.

Mr. Clay waited in Paris to hear of the ratification of the treaty of Ghent, and left for England in March, 1815. Here he was received by all parties with the most friendly and distinguished consideration. Being present at a dinner-party at Lord Castlereagh's, a few days after the battle of Waterloo, it is related of him, that he was asked by Lord Liverpool, whether, if Bonaparte should take refuge in America, he would not give us a great deal of trouble? "Not the least my Lord," replied Mr. Clay with his habitual promptitude, "We shall be very glad to receive him; we would treat him with all hospitality and very soon make of him a good democrat." The reply produced a very hearty peal of laughter from the whole company.

Mr. Clay returned home from Ghent in September, 1815. In anticipation of his return he was re-elected a member of Congress from the district in which he lived, but some doubts arising as to the legality of the election, the forms of another election were gone through with the same result. He took his seat in the House of Representatives in December, 1815, and was again elected Speaker almost without opposition. It was during this session, that Mr. Clay announced his change of opinion in regard to the United States Bank. Having opposed the re-chartering of that institution, on constitutional grounds, in 1811, he now gave his support to a bill for re-chartering it, reported by John C. Calhoun. His change of opinion was doubtless entirely honest, founded on reasons which he satisfactorily stated at the time, and was therefore candidly