name of a member of Congress, who was capable of advising his acceptance of a base and corrupt proposition, ought I to have resorted to his infamous and discredited witness?

It has been a thousand times asserted and repeated, that I violated instructions which I ought to have obeyed. I deny the charge; and I am happy to have this opportunity of denying it in the presence of my assembled constituents. The general assembly requested the Kentucky delegation to vote in a particular way. A majority of that delegation, including myself, voted in opposition to that request. The legislature did not intend to give an imperative instruction. The distinction between a request and an instruction was familiar to the legislature, and their rolls attest that the former is always addressed to the members of the House of Representatives, and the latter only to the Senators of the United States.

But I do not rely exclusively on this recognized distinction. I dispute at once the right of the legislature to issue a mandatory instruction to the representatives of the people. Such a right has no foundation in the constitution, in the reason or nature of things, nor in usage of the Kentucky legislature. Its exercise would be a manifest usurpation. The general assembly has the incontrovertible right to express its opinions and to proclaim its wishes on any political subject whatever; and to such an expression great deference and respect are due; but it is not obligatory. The people, when, in August, 1824, they elected members to the general assembly, did not invest them with any power to regulate or control the exercise of the discretion of the Kentucky delegation in the Congress of the United States. I put it to the candor of every elector present, if he intended to part with his own right, or anticipated the exertion of any such power, by the legislature, when he gave his vote in August 1824 ?

The only instruction which I received from a legitimate source, emanated from a respectable portion of my immediate constituents; and that directed me to exercise my own discretion, regardless of the will of the legislature. You subsequently ratified my vote by unequivocal demonstrations, repeatedly given, of your affectionate attachment and your unshaken confidence. You ratified it two years ago by the election of my personal and political friend (Judge Clarke) to succeed me in the House of Representatives, who had himself sub

scribed the only legitimate instruction which I received. You ratify it by the presence and the approbation, of this vast and respectable assemblage.

I rejoice again and again, that the contest has at last assumed its present practical form. Heretofore, malignant whispers and dark surmises have been clandestinely circulated, or openly or unblushingly uttered by irresponsible agents. They were borne upon the winds, and like them were invisible and intangible. No responsible man stood forward to sustain them, with his acknowledged authority. They have at last a local habitation and a name. General Jackson has now thrown off the mask and comes confessedly forth from behind his concealed batteries, publicly to accuse and convict me. We stand confronted before the American people. Pronouncing the charges, as I again do, destitute of all foundation, and gross aspersions, whether clandestinely or openly issued from the halls of the capitol, the saloons of the Hermitage, or by press, by pen, or by tongue, and safely resting on my conscious integrity, I demand the witness, and await the event with fearless confidence.

The issue is fairly joined. The imputed offence does not comprehend a single friend, but the collective body of my friends in Congress; and it accuses them of offering, and me with sanctioning corrupt propositions, derogating from honor, and in violation of the most sacred of duties. The charge has been made after two years deliberation. General Jackson has voluntarily taken his position, and without provocation. In voting against him as President of the United States, I gave him no just cause of offence. I exercised no more than my indisputable privilege, as, on a subsequent occasion, of which I have never complained, he exercised his in voting against me as Secretary of State. Had I voted for him, I must have gone counter to every fixed principle of my public life. I believed him incompetent, and his election fraught with danger. At this early period of the Republic, keeping steadily in view the dangers which had overturned every other Free State, I believed it to be essential to the lasting preservation of our liberties, that a man, devoid of civil talents, and offering no recommendation but one founded on military service, should not be selected to administer the government. I believe so yet; and I shall consider the days of the Commonwealth numbered when an opposite principle is established. I believed, and still be

lieve, that now, when our institutions are in comparative infancy, is the time to establish the great principle, that military qualification alone is not a sufficient title to the Presidency. If we start right, we may run a long race of liberty, happiness, and glory. If we stumble in setting out, we shall fall as others have fallen before us, and fall without even a claim to the regrets or sympathies of mankind.

I have never done General Jackson, knowingly, any injustice. I have taken pleasure, on every proper occasion, to bestow on him merited praise for the glorious issue of the battle of New Orleans. No American citizen enjoyed higher satisfaction than I did with the event. I heard it for the first time on the boulevards of Paris; and I eagerly perused the details of the actions, with the anxious hope that I should find that the gallant militia of my own State had avenged, on the banks of the Mississippi, the blood which they had so freely spilt on the disastrous field of Raisin. That hope was not then gratified; and although I had the mortification to read in the official statement, that they ingloriously fled, I was nevertheless thankful for the success of the arms of my country, and felt grateful to him who had most contributed to the ever memorable victory. This concession is not now made for the purpose of conciliating the favor or mitigating the wrath of General Jackson. He has erected an impassable barrier between us, and I would scorn to accept any favor at his hands. I thank my GoD that He has endowed me with a soul incapable of apprehensions from the anger of any being but himself.

I have as your Representative, freely examined, and in my deliberate judgment, justly condemned the conduct of General Jackson in some of our Indian wars. I believed, and yet believe him, to have trampled upon the constitution of his country, and to have violated the principles of humanity. Entertaining these opinions, I did not and could not vote for him.

I owe you, my friends and fellow-citizens, many apologies for this long interruption of the festivities of the day. I hope that my desire to vindicate their honored object, and to satisfy you that he is not altogether unworthy of them, will be deemed sufficient.

ON RETIRING FROM OFFICE.

AT WASHINGTON, MARCH 7, 1829.

[AFTER the triumphant election of General JACKSON as President in 1828, and his imposing Inauguration to that office, March 4th, 1829, a number of the friends of Mr. CLAY, (who had resigned the post of Secretary of State the day before that Inauguration, and was preparing to return to his Western home) insisted that he should meet them around the festive board prior to his departure. To this request he acceded. The fifth toast was:

"Health, prosperity, and happiness to our highly valued and esteemed guest and fellow-citizen, HENRY CLAY. Whatever the future destination of his life, he has done enough for honor, and need desire no higher reward than the deep seated affec tion and respect of his friends and his country."

This having been received with profound enthusiastic feeling, Mr. CLAY arose and addressed the company as follows:]

In rising, Mr. President, to offer my respectful acknowledgements for the honors of which I am here the object, I must ask the indulgence of yourself and the other gentlemen now assembled, for an unaffected embarrassment, which is more sensibly felt than it can be distinctly expressed. This city has been the theatre of the greater portion of my public life. You, and others whom I now see, have been spectators of my public course and conduct. You and they are, if I may borrow a technical expression from an honorable profession, of which you and I are both members, jurors of the vicinage. To a judgment rendered by those who have thus long known me, and by others though not of the panel, who have possessed equal opportunities of forming correct opinions, I most cheerfully submit. If the weight of human testimony should be estimated by the intelligence and respectability of the witness, and the extent of his knowledge of the matter on which he testifies, the highest consideration is due to that which has been this day spontaneously given. I shall ever

cherish it with the most grateful recollection, and look back upon it with proud satisfaction.

I should be glad to feel that I could with any propriety abstain from any allusion at this time and at this place, to public affairs. But considering the occasion which has brought us together, the events which have preceded it, and the influence which they may exert upon the destinies of our country, my silence might be misinterpreted, and I think it therefore proper that I should embrace this first public opportunity which I have had of saying a few words, since the termination of the late memorable and embittered contest. It is far from my wish to continue or to revive the agitation with which that contest was attended. It is ended, for good or for evil. The nation wants repose. A majority of the people has decided, and from their decision there can and ought to be no appeal. Bowing, as I do, with profound respect to them, and to this exercise of their sovereign authority, I may nevertheless be allowed to retain and to express my own unchanged sentiments, even if they should not be in perfect coincidence with theirs. It is a source of high gratification to me to believe that I share these sentiments in common with more than half a million of freemen, possessing a degree of virtue, of intelligence, of religion, and of genuine patriotism, which, without disparagement to others, is unsurpassed, in the same number of men in this or any other country, in this or any other age.

I deprecated the election of the present President of the United States, because I believed he had neither the temper, the experience, nor the attainments requisite to discharge the complicated and arduous duties of chief magistrate. I deprecated it still more, because his elevation, I believed, would be the result exclusively of admiration and gratitude for military service, without regard to indispensable civil qualifications. I can neither retract, nor alter, nor modify any opinion which, on these subjects, I have at any time heretofore expressed. I thought I beheld in his election an awful foreboding of the fate which, at some future (I pray to God that, if it ever arrive, it may be some far distant) day was to befall this infant republic. All past history has impressed on my mind this solemn apprehension. Nor is it effaced or weakened by contemporaneous events passing upon our own favored continent. It is remarkable that, at this epoch, at the head of eight of the nine independent governments