Page:The American review - a Whig journal of politics, literature, art, and science (1845).djvu/85

1845.]

life and character of Henry Clay are fully before the public. Were it otherwise, no brief space, which alone this journal could afford—a few pages quickly and easily run over—would suffice for such a purpose. No scattered words of tribute could bring a man before us, who, for half a century, has filled so large a space in the eye of the nation—who, for all coming time, will occupy and adorn so large a portion of the nation's history. But it is in all respects unnecessary. His humble childhood and early struggles, his subsequent long and brilliant career, his great public services and eminently noble qualities, have been many times set forth and with the greatest disthictness. The various distinguished positions which he has occupied from the first are, perhaps, more familiar to the people than those of any man, but Washington, who has arisen in the commonwealth. From his birth in a farmhouse of Virginia amid the conflict of the Revolution, and his entrance, an unfriended youth, into the hardships of a professional life in the West, to his last exit from the chief council of the nation—whether lifting the hand of eloquence at the bar or in the senate-chamber, whether raising a determined voice for the birth of other republics in the New World, and against the oppression of long-struggling, famished, and down-trodden Greece, or presenting an equally determined front towards the encroachments of executive power at home—whether representing the dignity and worth of the American name in a foreign country, or, in our own midst, forming, defending, establishing, the great American System of Finance, or, by the efforts of an almost despairing eloquence, saving the republic from dishonor, disunion, and ruin—no one of these, or the many other high stations occupied by him in the public eye, during the course of a long life, did Mr. Clay ever leave with one stain upon his public character, or without an addition to his honorable fame. But, of all those elevated positions, though some may have been by externals more brilliant, no one has appeared to us more truly exalted by purity of patriotism and the dignity of wide-seeing statesmanship, than that in which he now, at last, stands before us, on the exciting question of the admission of Texas into our Union. And we esteem ourselves fortunate that we can fortify our opinion by such a communication as follows, from one not blinded by the dust of any political arena, but whose vision is the clearer, that he looks forth upon men and thmgs from the calmness of academic shades and the quiet repose of Letters.

—I am no politician in the ordinary sense of that term; that is, I never have held, and I never expect to hold office. My daily professional employments remove me far from the strifes of elections and mass-meetings. The pursuits in which I am constantly engaged are such as, in any ordinary condition of our country, would entirely shut me out from all active participation in the political contentions of the day; and yet I must confess a deep and, at times, a most exciting interest in the result of the present election. The reasons of this interest I wish to state, because they are somewhat different from those which are most usually urged upon the country. I profess no very deep understanding of the real merits of those questions of tariff, currency, and distribution, which most regard as the main matters at issue. As far as I understand these points, I am in favor of the Whig measures, at the same time admitting that their opponents may possibly be right, that they present some fair arguments, and that their policy, if wrong, could only produce a temporary evil, soon to be rectified when the mischief should be so palpable that a desire for its removal would become stronger than any party ties. But, sir. I go much further than this. If I were opposed to the Whig policy on all the points which have been mentioned, and decidedly in favor of all the Loco-Foco views on the same subjects, I should still give my vote, and a thousand if I had them, for Henry Clay. For such an apparent inconsistency many reasons might be given,