Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 1).djvu/52

40 cut at the rapids of the Ohio, on the Kentucky shore.” This was in the line of the policy of “internal improvements.” Those claim too much for Henry Clay who call him the inventor, the “father,” of that policy. It was thought of by others before him, and all he did was to make himself, in this as in other cases, so prominent a champion, so influential and commanding a leader in the advocacy of it, that presently the policy itself began to pass as his own. In fact it was only his child by adoption, not by birth. But at the time of Clay's first appearance in the Senate there were two things giving that policy an especial impulse. One was as a revenue beyond the current needs of the government, and the other was the material growth of the country.

It would be difficult to find in the history of the United States a period of more general contentment and cheerfulness of feeling than the first and the early part of the second term of Jefferson's presidency. Never before, since the establishment of the government, had the country been so free from any harassing foreign complications. The difference with Great Britain about the matter of impressments had not yet taken its threatening form, and the Indians, under the influence of humane treatment, were for a time leaving the frontier settlements in peace. The American people, also, for the first time became fully conscious of the fact that the government really belonged to them, and not to a limited circle of im-