Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 2).djvu/150

140 through troubled times, and often addressed public assemblies, in this capitol and elsewhere; but never before have I risen in a deliberative body under more oppressed feelings, or with a deeper sense of awful responsibility. Never before have I risen to express my opinions upon any public measure fraught with such tremendous consequences to the welfare and prosperity of the country, and so perilous to the liberties of the people, as I believe the bill under consideration will be. If you knew, sir, what sleepless hours reflecting upon it has cost me, if you knew with what fervor and sincerity I have implored Divine assistance to strengthen and sustain me in my opposition to it, I should have credit with you, at least, for the sincerity of my convictions. And I have thanked my God that he has prolonged my life until the present time to enable me to exert myself in the service of my country against a project far transcending in pernicious tendency any that I have ever had occasion to consider.”

Such displays of emotion are so apt to appear ridiculous to the hearer, that a skilled parliamentary speaker will hardly venture upon them as an artifice, especially with so cool an audience as the Senate. Clay was then sixty years old, — too old for experiments in farce. His utterances must therefore be taken as evidence that he profoundly believed in all the horrors he predicted. The old cry about the “union of the purse and the sword” probably had so excited his imagination as to make him overlook the fact that what our “British ancestors” dreaded was that union of sword and purse which consisted in the levying of taxes with-