Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 1).djvu/215



retirement was not of long duration. The people of Kentucky were then passing through the last stages of a confused excitement caused by a popular delusion that riches can be created and happiness acquired by a plentiful issue of paper money and an artificial inflation of prices. The consequence was what it always is. The more plenty the paper money became, the more people ran into debt. They then sought “relief” by legislative contrivances in favor of debtors, which caused a political division into the “relief” and the “anti-relief” parties. The “relief measures” came before the highest state court, which declared them unconstitutional; whereupon the court was abolished and a new one created, and this brought forth the “old court” and the “new court” parties in Kentucky. The whole story is told with admirable clearness in Professor Sumner's biography of Andrew Jackson. In these fierce controversies, Clay took position as an advocate of good sense, honesty, and sound principles of finance, sometimes against a current of popular feeling which seemed to be overwhelming. He made enemies