ON RETIRING FROM THE SENATE.

IN THE SENATE of the United STATES, MARCH 31, 1842.

[Mr. CLAY had intended to retire from the Senate at the close of the Extra Session, but was prevented by the entreaties of his friends, and the unsettled state of our Public Affairs. He early, however, gave notice to the Legislature of Kentucky, that he should resign by the end of March, in order that his successor might be chosen and in readiness to take his place. Mr. CRITTENDEN having been unanimously elected, and having arrived at Washington, Mr. CLAY was at length at liberty to withdraw, and on the 31st of March he addressed the Senate as follows:]

BEFORE proceeding to make the motion for which I have risen, I beg leave to submit, on the only occasion afforded me, an observation or two on a different subject. It will be remembered that I offered on a former day, some resolutions going to propose certain amendments to the Constitution of the United States. They have undergone some discussion, and I have been desirous of obtaining an expression of the sense of the Senate upon their adoption; but owing to the infirm state of my health, to the pressure of business in the Senate, and especially to the absence at this moment of several of my friends, I have concluded this to be unnecessary; nor should I deem myself called upon to reply to the arguments of such gentlemen as have considered it their duty to oppose the resolutions. I shall commit the subject, therefore, to the hands of the Senate, to be disposed of as their judgment shall dictate; concluding what I have to say in relation to them with the remark, that the convictions I have before entertained in regard to the several amendments, I still deliberately hold, after all that I have heard upon the subjects of them.

And now, allow me to announce, formally and officially, my retirement from the Senate of the United States, and to present the last motion I shall ever make in this body. But, before I make that motion, I trust I shall be pardoned if I avail myself of the occasion to make a few observations which are suggested to my mind by the present occasion.

I entered the Senate of the United States in December, 1806. I regarded that body then, and still contemplate it, as a body, which may compare, without disadvantage, with any legislative assembly, either of ancient or modern times, whether I look to its dignity, the extent and importanee of its powers, or the ability by which its individual members have been distinguished, or its constitution. If compared in any of these respects with the Senates either of France or of England, that of the United States will sustain no derogation. With respect to the mode of its constitution, of those bodies I may observe that in the House of Peers in England, with the exception but of Ireland and of Scotland-and in that of France with no exception whatever the members hold their places under no delegated authority, but derive them from the grant of the Crown, transmitted by descent, or expressed in new patents of nobility; while here we have the proud title of Representatives of sovereign States, of distinct and independent Commonwealths.

If we look again at the powers exercised by the Senates of France and England, and by the Senate of the United States, we shall find that the aggregate of power is much greater here. In all the members possess the legislative power. In the foreign Senates, as in this, the judicial power is invested, although there it exists in a larger degree than here. But, on the other hand, that vast, undefined, and undefinable power involved in the right to co-operate with the Executive in the formation and ratification of treaties, is enjoyed in all its magnitude and weight by this body, while it is possessed by neither of theirs; besides which, there is another of very great practical importance that of sharing with the executive branch in distributing the vast patronage of the Government. In both these latter respects, we stand on grounds different from the House of Peers either of England or France. And then as to the dignity and decorum of its proceedings, and ordinarily as to the ability of its members, I can with great truth declare, that during the whole long period of my knowledge of this Senate it can, without arrogance or presumption, sustain no disadvantageous comparison with any public body in ancient or modern times.

Full of attraction, however, as a seat in this Senate is, sufficient as to fill the aspirations of the most ambitious heart, I have long deter mined to fnrego it, and to seek that repose which can be enjoyed only

in the shades of private life, and amid the calm pleasures which belong to that beloved word, "home."

It was my purpose to terminate my connection with this body in November 1840, after the memorable and glorious political struggle which distinguished that year; but I learned soon after, what indeed I had for some time anticipated from the result of my own reflections, that an extra session of Congress would be called; and I felt desirous to co-operate with my personal and political friends in restoring, if it could be effected, the prosperity of the country by the best measures which their united counsels might be able to devise, and I therefore attended the extra session. It was called, as all know, by the lamented HARRISON; but his death and the consequent accession of his successor produced an entirely new aspect of public affairs. Had he lived, I have not, one particle of doubt that every important measure for which the country had hoped with so confident an expectation, would have been consummated by the co-operation of the Government. And here allow me to say, only, in regard to that so much reproached extra session of Congress, that I believe if any of those who, through the influence of party spirit or the bias of political prejudice, have loudly censured the measures then adopted, will look at them in a spirit of candor and of justice, their conclusion, and that of the country generally, will be that if there exists any just ground of complaint, it is to be found, not in what was done, but in what was left unfinished.

Had President HARRISON lived, and the measures devised at that session been fully carried out, it was my intention to have resigned my seat. But the hope (I feared it might prove a vain hope,) that at the regular session the measures which we had left undone might even then be perfected, or the same object attained in equivalent form, induced me to postpone the determination; and events which arose after the extra session, resulting from the failure of those measures which had been proposed at that session, and which appeared to throw on our political friends a temporary show of defeat, confirmed me in the resolution to attend the present session also, and, whether in prosperity or adversity, to share the fortune of my friends. But I resolved at the same time to retire as soon as I could do so with propriety and decency.

From 1806, the period of my entry on this noble theatre, with short intervals, to the present time, I have been engaged in the public councils, at home and abroad. Of the nature or the value of the services rendered during that long and arduous period of my life, it does not become me to speak; history, if she deigns to notice me, or posterity, if the recollections of my humble actions shall be transmitted to posterity, are the best, the truest, the most impartial judges. When death has closed the scene, their sentence will be pronounced, and to that I appeal and refer myself. My acts and public conduct are a fair subject for the criticism and judgment of my fellow-men; but the private motives by which they have been prompted, they are known only to the great Searcher of the human heart and to myself; and I trust I may be pardoned for repeating a declaration made some thirteen years ago, that, whatever errors-and doubtless there have been many-may be discovered in a review of my public service to the country, I can with unshaken confidence appeal to that Divine Arbiter for the truth of the declaration, that I have been influenced by no impure purposes, no personal motive-have sought no personal aggrandizement; but that in all my public acts I have had a sole and single eye, and a warm and devoted heart, directed and dedicated to what in my judgment I believed to be the true interest of my country.

During that period, however, I have not escaped the fate of other public men, nor failed to incur censure and detraction of the bitterest most unrelenting, and most malignant character; and though not always insensible to the pain it was meant to inflict, I have borne it in general with composure, and without disturbance here, [pointing to his breast,] waiting as I have done, in perfect and undoubting confidence, for the ultimate triumph of justice and truth, and in the entire persuasion that time would, in the end, settle all things as they should be, and that whatever wrong or injustice I might experience at the hands of man, He to whom all hearts are open and fully known, would in the end, by the inscrutable dispensations of his providence, rectify all error, redress all wrong, and cause ample justice to be done.

But I have not meanwhile been unsustained. Every where throughout the extent of this great continent, I have had cordial warm-hearted, and devoted friends, who have known me and justly appreciated my motives. To them, if language were susceptible of fully expressing my acknowledgments, I would now offer them, as all

the returns I have now to make for their genuine, disinterested and persevering fidelity, and devoted attachment. But if I fail in suitable language to express my gratitude to them for all the kindness they have shown me what shall I say what can I say at all commensurate with those feelings of gratitude which I owe to the State whose humble representative and servant I have been in this Chamber?

I emigrated from Virginia to the State of Kentucky now nearly fortyfive years ago: I went as an orphan who had not yet attained the age of majority-who had never recognized a father's smile nor felt his caresses-poor, pennyless-without the favor of the great; with an imperfect and inadequate education, limited to the ordinary business and common pursuits of life; but scarce had I set my foot upon her generous soil when I was seized and embraced with parental fondness, caressed as though I had been a favorite child, and patronized with liberal and unbounded munificence. From that period the highest honors of the State have been freely bestowed upon me; and afterwards, in the darkest hour of calumny and detraction, when I seemed to be forsaken by all the rest of the world, she threw her broad and impenetrable shield around me, and bearing me up aloft in her courageous arms, repelled the poisoned shafts that were aimed at my destruction, and vindicated my good name against every false and unfounded assault.

But the ingenuity of my assailants is never exhausted, and it seems I have subjected myself to a new epithet, which I do not know whether it should be taken in honor or derogation: I am held up to the country as a 'Dictator.' A Dictator! The idea of a dictatorship is drawn from Roman institutions; and at the time the office was created, the person who wielded the tremendous authority it conferred, concentrated in his own person, an absolute power over the lives and property of all his fellow-citizens; he could raise armies; he could man and build navies; he could levy taxes at will, and raise any amount of money he might choose to demand; and life and death rested on his fiat. If I had been a Dictator, as I am said to have been, where is the power with which I have been clothed? Had I any army? any navy? any revenue? any patronage? in a word, any power whatever? If I had been a Dictator, I think that even those who have the most freely applied to me the appellation, must be compelled to make two admissions: first, that my dictatorship has