lleries when Mr. Clay
retorted by saying, that, if Mr. Rhett had really made that
proposition, and should follow it up by corresponding acts, he would
be a TRAITOR; "and," added Mr. Clay, "I hope he will meet a traitor's
fate." When the chairman had succeeded in restoring silence, Mr. Clay
made that celebrated declaration which was so frequently quoted in
1861:

"If Kentucky to-morrow should unfurl the banner of
resistance unjustly, I will never fight under that banner. I
owe a paramount allegiance to the whole Union,--a
subordinate one to my own State."

He said also:

"If any one State, or a portion of the people of any State,
choose to place themselves in military array against the
government of the Union, I am for trying the strength of the
government. I am for ascertaining whether we have a
government or not."

Again:

"The Senator speaks of Virginia being my country. This
UNION, sir, is my country; the thirty States are my country;
Kentucky is my country, and Virginia no more than any State
in the Union."

And yet again:

"There are those who think that the Union must be preserved
by an exclusive reliance upon love and reason. That is not
my opinion. I have some confidence in this instrumentality;
but, depend upon it that no human government can exist
without the power of applying force, and the actual
application of it in extreme cases."

Who can estimate the influence of these clear and emphatic utterances
ten years after? The crowded galleries, the numberless newspaper
reports, the quickly succeeding death of the great orator,--all aided
to give them currency and effect. We shall never know how many
wavering minds they aided to decide in 1861. Not that Mr. Clay really
believed the conflict would occur: he was mercifully permitted to die
in the conviction that the Compromise of 1850 had removed all
immediate danger, and greatly lessened that of the future. Far indeed
was he from foreseeing that the ambition of a man born in New England,
calling himself a disciple of Andrew Jackson, would, within five
years, destroy all compromises, and render all future compromise
impossible, by procuring the repeal of the first,--the Missouri
Compromise of 1821.

Henry Clay was formed by nature to please, to move, and to impress his
countrymen. Never was there a more captivating presence. We remember
hearing Horace Gre