Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 2).djvu/159

Rh ples, nullification, political alliances, all these were to him subservient to his one aim. He modified his theories, as well as his associations, as that one interest seemed to demand. In Jackson he had opposed assumptions of executive power hostile to the state-rights principle, which he considered the essential bulwark of slavery. The ascendency of the Whig party he feared, because it would strengthen the general government in a manner dangerous to slavery. He saw in the breaking up of the alliance with the Whigs “the chance of effecting the union of the whole South.”

But there was something crafty and disingenuous in the manner in which Calhoun tried to prove the complete consistency of his political conduct during the first period with that during the second. He worked hard to show that, while he supported the tariff, internal improvements, the United States Bank, and a liberal construction of the Constitution, he never meant what he appeared to mean, — in fact, that he had really never been the man he had induced his associates to believe him to be. His own presentation of himself was calculated to characterize him as a man of mental reservations and secret purposes, with whom it was dangerous to coöperate in full confidence.

Clay, on the other hand, while defending his general consistency with his usual impulsiveness, did not hesitate frankly to admit that once, indeed, on an important subject, he had changed his opinion; and the dashing freedom with which