unooncerted, it is nevertheless a most wonderful coincidence. The general never communicated to me his professed intention, but left me in entire ignorance of his generous purpose; like the overture itself, it was profoundly concealed from me. There was an authorized denial from me, which went to the circle of the public prints, immediately after the arrival at Washington of the Fayetteville letter. In that denial my words are given. They were contained in a letter dated at Washington city on the 18th day of April last, and are correctly stated to have been "that the statement that his (my) friends had made such a proposition as the latter describes to the friends of General Jackson was, as far as he knew or believed, utterly destitute of foundation; that he was unwilling to believe that General Jackson had made any such statement; but that no matter with whom it had originated, he was fully persuaded it was a gross fabrication of the same calumnious character with the Kremer story, put forth for the double purpose of injuring his public character, and propping the cause of General Jackson; and then for himself and his friends he defied the substantiation of the charge before any fair tribunal whatever." Such were my own words, transmitted in the form of a letter from a friend to a known person. Whereas the charge which they repelled was contained in a letter written by a person then unknown to some person also unknown. Did I not deny the charge under my own signature, in my card of the 31st of January, 1825, published in the National Intelligencer? Was not there a substantial denial of it in my letter to Judge Brooke, dated the 28th of the same month? In my circular to my constituents? In my Lewisburg speech? And may I not add, in the whole tenor of my public life and conduct? If General Jackson had offered to furnish me the 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 the 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 pro

elaim 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 As sembly, 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 subscribed 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 surmise 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 demanded the witness, and await the event with fearless confidence.

The issue is fairly joined. The imputed offense 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 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 offense. 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 believe, 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.

DANGER OF THE MILITARY SPIRIT IN A

REPUBLIC.

BALTIMORE, MAY 13, 1828.

[THE last of four years was now in transitu, since Mr. Clay had committed the mortal offense of using his vote and influence for the election to the presidency of John Quincy Adams, and since he had entered on the duties of Secretary of State. The whole of this time had been occupied by General Jackson and his party in endeavoring to convince the American people that the hero of New Orleans had been deprived of his just rights in the election of Mr. Adams, by a bargain between Mr. Clay and Mr. Adams. They would not consent to lose the benefit of this charge by accepting a challenge to prove it, as they knew they must fail in it. All they would say, was: Mr. Adams was made president, and Mr. Clay was made Secretary of State; and the charge was, that they had bargained with each other for these places respectively. This charge was so managed that a majority of the people believed it, and waited only for the next presidential election to avenge the wrongs of their military chieftain. In such a contest, the military spirit took possession of the heart of the nation. It was in the midst of this campaign that the following speech was delivered, at a dinner with his friends at Baltimore, in reply to the following toasts:

1. The President of the United States.

2. A great statesman has said, "What is a public man worth, who will not suffer for his country?" We have seen a public man sacrifice much for his country, and rise resplendently triumphant over the calumnies of his enemies.]

MR. CLAY then rose, and said, Although I have been required, by the advice of my physicians, to abstain from all social entertainments, with their consequent excitements, I can not leave Baltimore, without saying a few words, by way of public acknowledgment, for the cordial congratulations with which I have been received during my present visit. I am not so vain, indeed, & to imagine that any personal considerations have

prompted the enthusiastic demonstrations by which my approach to this city, and my short sojourn, have been so highly distinguished. Their honored object, has, it is true, some claims upon the justice, if not the sympathy, of a generous, intelligent, and high-minded people. Singled out for proscription and destruction, he has sustained all the fury of the most ferocious attacks. Calumnious charges, directed against the honor of his public character, dearer than life itself, sanctioned and republished by one who should have scorned to lend himself to such a vile purpose, have been echoed by a thousand profligate or deluded tongues and presses. Supported by the consciousness of having faithfully discharged his duty, and defended by the virtue and intelligence of an enlightened people, he has stood firm and erect amid all the bellowings of the political storm. What is a public man, what is any man worth, who is not prepared to sacrifice himself, if necessary, for the good of his country?

But, continued Mr. Clay, the demonstrations which I have here witnessed, have a higher and a nobler source, than homage to an individual : they originate from that cause with which I am an humble associate-the cause of the country-the cause of the Constitution-the cause of free institutions. They would otherwise be unworthy of freemen, and less gratifying to me. I am not, I hope, so uncharitable as to accuse all the opponents of that cause with designs unfriendly to human liberty. I know that they make, many of them sincerely, other professions. They talk, indeed, of republicanism, and some of them impudently claim to be the exclusive republican party! Yes! we find men who, but yesterday, were the foremost in other ranks, upon whose revolting ears the grating sound of republicanism ever fell, and upon whose lips the exotic word still awkwardly hangs, now exclaiming, or acquiescing in the cry, that they are the republican party! I had thought if any one, more than all other principles, characterized the term republican party, it was their ardent devotion to liberty, to its safety, to all its guaranties. I had supposed, that the doctrines of that school taught us to guard against the danger of standing armies, to profit by the lessons which all history inculcates, and never to forget that liberty and the predominance of the military principle, were utterly incompatible. The republican party! In this modern, new-fangled, and heterogeneous party, Cromwell and Cæsar have recently found apologists. The judgment of centuries is reversed; long-established maxims are overturned; the Ethiopian is washed white; and the only genuine lovers of liberty were the Philips, the Caesars, the Cromwells, the Mariuses, and the Syllas, of former ages.

It is time for slumbering patriotism to awake, when such doctrines as these are put forth from the capitol, and from popular assemblies. It is time that the real republican party (I speak not of former divisions, springing from causes no longer existing, and which are sought to be kept up by some men in particular places, only for sinister purposes)-that party, under whatever flag its members may have heretofore acted, that party