is superior to that of any nation in Europe, except perhaps Great Britain. Her ports are few, her commerce limited, while we, on our part, would offer as a prey to her cruisers a rich and extensive

commerce.

"Thus, sir, after effecting nothing in such a war, after abandoning our ancient policy of amity and non-intervention in the affairs of other nations, and thus justifying them in abandoning the terms of forbearance and non-interference which they have hitherto preserved toward us; after the downfall, perhaps, of the friends of liberal institutions in Europe, her despots, imitating, and provoked by our fatal example, may turn upon us in the hour of our weakness and exhaustion, and, with an almost equally irresistible force of reason and of arms, they may say to us You have set us the example. You have quit your own, to stand on foreign ground; you have abandoned the policy you professed in the day of your weakness, to interfere in the affairs of the people upon this continent, in behalf of those principles, the supremacy of which you say, is necessary to your prosperity,-to your existence. We, in our turn, believing that your anarchical doctrines are destructive of, and that monarchical principles are essential to, the peace, security and happiness of our subjects, will obliterate the bed which has nourished such noxious weeds; we will crush you as the propagandist of doctrines so destructive of the peace and good order of the world.'

"The indomitable spirit of our people might and would be equal to the emergency, and we might remain unsubdued even by so tremendous a combination; but the consequences to us would be terrible enough. You must allow me, sir, to speak thus freely, as I feel deeply, though my opinion may be of but little import, as the expression of a dying man. Sir, the recent melancholy subversion of the republican government of France, and that enlightened nation voluntarily placing its neck under the yoke of despotism, teach us to despair of any present success for liberal institutions in Europe. They give us an impressive warning not to rely upon others for the vindication of our principles, but to look to ourselves, and to cherish with more care

than ever the security of our institutions and the preservation of our policy and principles.

"By the policy to which we have adhered since the days of Washington, we have prospered beyond precedent,—we have done more for the cause of liberty in the world than arms could effect. We have showed to other nations the way to greatness and happiness; and, if we but continue united as one people, and persevere in the policy which our experience has so clearly and triumphantly vindicated, we may in another quarter of a century furnish an example which the reason of the world can not resist. But if we should involve ourselves in the tangled web of European politics, in a war in which we could effect nothing, and if in that struggle Hungary should go down, and we should go down with her, where, then, would be the last hope of the friends of freedom throughout the world? Far better is it for ourselves, for Hungary, and for the cause of liberty, that, adhering to our wise, pacific system, and avoiding the distant wars of Europe, we should keep our lamp burning brightly on this western shore as a light to all nations, than to hazard its utter extinction amid the ruins of fallen or falling republics in Europe."

OBITUARY ADDRESSES

TO THE MEMORY OF

HENRY CLAY.

SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES..

MR. UNDERWOOD, on Wednesday, June 30, 1852, addressed the Senate as follows:

Mr. PRESIDENT-I rise to announce the death of my colleague, Mr. CLAY. He died at his lodgings, in the National Hotel of this city, at seventeen minutes past eleven o'clock yesterday morning, in the seventy-sixth year of his age. He expired with perfect composure, and without a groan or struggle.

By his death our country has lost one of its most eminent citizens and statesmen; and, I think, its greatest genius. I shall not detain the Senate by narrating the transactions of his long and useful life. His distinguished services as a statesman are inseparably connected with the history of his country. As Representative and Speaker in the other House of Congress, as Senator in this body, as Secretary of State, and as envoy abroad, he has, in all these positions, exhibited a wisdom and patriotism which have made a deep and lasting impression upon the grateful hearts of his countrymen. His thoughts and his actions have already been published to the world in written biography; in Congressional debates and reports; in the journals of the two Houses; and in the pages of American History. They have been commemorated by monuments erected on the wayside,

They have been engraven on medals of gold. Their memory will survive the monuments of marble and the medals of gold; for these are effaced and decay by the friction of ages. But the thoughts and actions of my late colleague have become identified with the immortality of the human mind, and will pass down, from generation to generation, as a portion of our national inheritance, incapable of annihilation so long as Genius has an admirer, or Liberty a friend.

Mr. PRESIDENT, the character of HENRY CLAY was formed and developed by the influence of our free institutions. His physical, mental, and moral faculties, were the gift of God. That they were greatly superior to the faculties allotted to most men can not be questioned. They were not cultivated, improved, and directed by a liberal or collegiate education. His respectable parents were not wealthy, and had not the means of maintaining their children at college. Moreover, his father died when he was a boy. At an early period Mr. CLAY was thrown upon his own resources, without patrimony. He grew up in a clerk's office, in Richmond, Virginia. He there studied law. He emigrated from his native State and settled in Lexington, Kentucky, where he commenced the practice of his profession before he was of full age.

The road to wealth, to honor, and fame was open before him. Under our Constitution and laws he might freely employ his great faculties, unobstructed by legal impediments, and unaided by exclusive privileges. Very soon Mr. CLAY made a deep and favorable impression upon the people among whom he began his career. The excellence of his natural faculties was soon displayed. Necessity stimulated him in their cultivation. His assiduity, skill, and fidelity in professional engagements, secured public confidence. He was elected member of the Legislature of Kentucky, in which body he served several sessions prior to 1806. In that year he was elevated to a seat in the Senate of the United States.

At the bar, and in the General Assembly of Kentucky, Mr. CLAY first manifested those high qualities as a public speaker, which have secured to him so much popular applause and admi

ration. His physical and mental organization eminently qualified him to become a great and impressive orator. His person was tall, slender, and commanding. His temperament ardent, fearless, and full of hope. His countenance clear, expressive, and variable-indicating the emotion which predominated at the moment with exact similitude. His voice, cultivated, and modulated in harmony with the sentiment he desired to express, fell upon the ear like the melody of enrapturing music. His eye beaming with intelligence, and flashing with coruscations of genius. His gestures and attitudes graceful and natural. These personal advantages won the prepossessions of an audience, even before his intellectual powers began to move his hearers; and when his strong common sense, his profound reasoning, his clear conceptions of his subject in all its bearings, and his striking and beautiful illustrations, united with such personal qualities, were brought to the discussion of any question, his audience was enraptured, convinced, and led by the orator as if enchanted by the lyre of Orpheus.

No man was ever blessed by his Creator with faculties of a higher order of excellence than those given to Mr. CLAY. In the quickness of his perceptions, and the rapidity with which his conclusions were formed, he had few equals and no superior. He was eminently endowed with a nice discriminating taste for order, symmetry, and beauty. He detected in a moment every thing out of place or deficient in his room, upon his farm, in his own or the dress of others. He was a skillful judge of the form and qualities of his domestic animals, which he delighted to raise on his farm. I could give you instances of the quickness and minuteness of his keen faculty of observation, which never overlooked any thing. A want of neatness and order was offensive to him. He was particular and neat in his handwriting, and his apparel. A slovenly blot or negligence of any sort, met his condemnation; while he was so organized that he attended to, and arranged little things to please and gratify his natural love for neatness, order, and beauty, his great intellectual faculties grasped all the subjects of jurisprudence and politics with a facility amounting almost to intuition. As a lawyer he stood at