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364 never presented a more repugnant and alarming spectacle. But the Speaker, at least, had done his duty and kept his hands clean. Texas scrip rushed up to par. The other bills sent down by the Senate passed easily.

When Clay returned to Washington in the last week of August, he found that the Senate had carried out the whole programme laid down in his compromise resolutions seven months before, except the interdiction of the slave traffic in the District of Columbia. After a long debate, in which Clay with great emphasis expressed his expectation that slavery would pass away in the District, adding that he was glad of it, that bill, too, passed and became a law. The compromise of 1850 was then substantially complete.

On September 6, Clay wrote to one of his sons: “I am again getting very much exhausted. I wish I had remained longer at Newport, where I was much benefited. I shall as soon as possible return home, where I desire to be more than I ever did in my life.” The deep longing of the old man for home, and to be with his wife, had been pervading his letters to his family ever since the beginning of the session. And now, after the tremendous fatigue he had gone through, and from which his health never recovered, that yearning was stronger than ever. At last, on September 30, Congress adjourned, after one of the longest and most arduous sessions on record, and Clay took home with him the consciousness of having done