Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 9.djvu/97

 CLAY II HIS ATTACK ON JACKSON^ (1834) Never, Mr. President, have I known or read of an administration which expires with so much agony, and so little composure and resignation, as that which now unfortunately has the control of public affairs in this country. It exhibits a state of mind, feverish, fretful, and fidgety, bounding recklessly from one desperate expedient to another, without any sober or settled purpose. Ever since the dog-days of last summer, it has been making a succession of the most extrava- gant plunges, of which the extraordinary cabi- net paper, a sort of appeal from a descending cabinet to the people, was the first ; and the pro- test, a direct appeal from the Senate to the peo- ple, is the last and the worst. A new philosophy has sprung up within a few years past, called phrenology. There is, I be- lieve, something in it, but not quite as much as its ardent followers proclaim. According to its doctrines, the leading passion, propensity, and characteristics of every man are developed in his physical conformation, chiefly in the structure of his head. G-all and Spurzheim, its founders, or most eminent propagators, being dead, I re- 1 From a speech in the United St&ces Senate, on April 80, 18S4. 87