Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 1).djvu/50



took his seat in the Senate of the United States on December 29, 1806. When a man at so early an age is chosen for so high a place, a place, in fact, reserved for the seniors in politics, be it even to “serve out an unexpired term,” it shows that he is considered by those who send him there a person forming an exception to ordinary rules. But it is a more remarkable circumstance that Clay, when he entered the Senate, was not yet constitutionally eligible to that body, and that this fact was not noticed at the time. According to the biographers whose dates were verified by him, he was born on April 12, 1777. On December 29, 1806, when he entered the Senate, he therefore lacked three months and seventeen days of the age of thirty years, which the Constitution prescribes as a condition of eligibility to the Senate of the United States. The records of the Senate show no trace of a question having been raised upon this ground when Clay was sworn. It does not seem to have occurred to any member of that body that the man who stood before them might not be old enough to be a Senator. In all prob-