mitted a resolution providing by law for defraying the expense incident to the appointment of an agent or commissioner to Greece, whenever the president should deem it expedient to make such appointment. He supported this proposition in a most able speech, on the 19th of the ensuing January. Mr. Clay stood side by side with him in defence of the measure. Notwithstanding the advocacy of these gigantic champions, however, it failed in the

1ouse.

Mr. Clay's speech on the subject, though brief, was full of fire and point.

"Are we," he exclaimed, so humbled, so low, so debased, that we dare 1ot express our sympathy for suffering Greece, that we dare not articulate >ur detestation of the brutal excesses of which she has been the bleeding victim, lest we might offend some one or more of their imperial and royal majesties?"

Although Mr. Clay failed at the moment in procuring the recognition of Greece, he afterward, when secretary of state, accomplished his object. The United States was the first independent power by whom she was recognised.

Mr. Clay's labors, during the session of 1824, would alone have been sufficient to make his name memorable, to the latest posterity, in the annals of the country. The session is signalized by the passage of the tariff bill, and of his measure in behalf of South American independence. In reference to the former, it should not be forgotten that it was through his vigilant and persevering efforts, that the SUGAR DUTY was saved. A member from Louisiana, by his constant and bitter opposition to the protective policy, had greatly incensed its friends. They were provoked by his pertinacity, and, in committee of the whole, struck out the item of sugar from the list of protected articles. Mr. Clay remonstrated with them. He urged that the state ought not to be injured, and that it would be cruel to punish it for the supposed misconduct of one of its representatives. He entreated them, therefore, to restore the protective duty on sugar, and finally prevailed on them, by personal appeals to individual members, to restore it accordingly in the house.

On the 15th of August, 1824, General Lafayette, the nation's guest, arrived at New York, in the Cadmus, accompanied by his son George Washington Lafayette. The following 10th of

FRIENDSHIP OF LAFAYETTE.

101

December, he was introduced to the house of representatives by a select committee, appointed for the purpose. Mr. Clay, as speaker, received him with a pertinent and elegant address. Lafayette was deeply affected by this address, uttered, as it was, in the speaker's clear, musical, and genial tones; and the hero of two hemispheres replied to it in a manner that betokened much emotion.

This distinguished friend of America and of liberty, maintained, to the end of his days, an unwavering attachment for Mr. Clay; and when the miserable cry of "bargain and corruption" was raised against the latter, at the time of his acceptance of the office of secretary of state, Lafayette gave his conclusive testimony in favor of the integrity, ingenuousness, and public virtue of his friend, and in vindication of him from the charges which partisan hacks had originated.

"THAT IS THE MAN WHOM I HOPE TO SEE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES," said Lafayette, in 1832, pointing to a portrait of Mr. Clay, in presence of an officer of the United States navy, who was entertained by the great and good Frenchman at his country-seat. The anecdote here given, may be found in the "Commonwealth" newspaper published at Frankfort, Kentucky.

We have seen that Mr. Clay was at variance with President Monroe upon the subject of internal improvements, as well as in regard to the mode of recognising the independence of the South American patriots. Notwithstanding these differences of opinion, the personal relations of the speaker and the chief magistrate were friendly. Mr. Clay was offered a seat in the cabinet, and a carte blanche of all the foreign missions. Had place been his ambition and his object, he might have attained it without any sacrifice of independence—without any loss of position as the acknowledged head of the great republican party. He saw,

however, that he could be more useful to his country in Congress. Measures of vital importance were to be carried. The tariff was to be adjusted—the Missouri business to be settled— the constitutionality of internal improvements was to be admitted-South American independence was to be acknowledged -how could he conscientiously quit a post where he wielded an influence more potent than the presidents, while such mo

mentous questions remained open? These being disposed of, he would be at liberty to pursue any course which his inclinations might indicate, or which the public interests might sanction.

RHOD

HOUS

OXFOR

VIII.

PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1824.

As Mr. Monroe's second presidential term drew to a close, the question of the next presidency began to be busily agitated. Four prominent candidates were presented by their friends for the suffrages of the people: being John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts, Andrew Jackson of Tennessee, Henry Clay of Kentucky, and William H. Crawford of Georgia.

In November, 1822, Mr. Clay had been nominated as a suitable successor to James Monroe, at a meeting of the members of the legislature of Kentucky. The nomination soon after met with a response from similar meetings in Louisiana, Missouri, and Ohio; and, as the period of the election approached, he was hailed by large bodies of his fellow-citizens in all parts of the country as their favorite candidate.

The campaign of 1824 was one of the most warmly-contested in our annals. Some of the more unscrupulous of the friends of the various candidates resorted to manœuvres unworthy of their cause to advance their ends. Just as the election was commencing, a report was industriously circulated in different quarters of the country that Mr. Clay had withdrawn from the presidential contest. In consequence of this report, General William H. Harrison, and other of Mr. Clay's friends in Ohio, published a declaration, in which it was asserted that he (Mr. Clay) "would not be withdrawn from the contest but by the fiat of his Maker." Our late lamented chief magistrate was at that time, and ever after, his devoted political, as well as personal friend; and he has often been heard to declare his preference for him over all other candidates.

THE KREMER CALUMNY.

103

Early in the campaign it was discovered that there would be no election of president by the people. By the constitution, the house of representatives would, therefore, be called upon to choose from the three highest cadidates. In December, 1824, soon after the meeting of Congress, it was known that the three highest candidates were Jackson, Adams, and Crawford, and that Mr. Clay and his friends would have it in their power, when the question came before the house, of turning the balance in favor of any one of the three.

Mr. Clay's position was now an extremely important one. Several weeks were to intervene before the election; and, in the meantime, the partisans of the three candidates looked with intense anxiety to the speaker's course. His preferences were distinctly known to his personal friends, for he had expressed them in his letters and his conversations; but it would have been indelicate and superfluous for him to have electioneered in behalf of any one of the rival candidates—to have given occasion for intrigues and coalitions by deciding the question in advance.

While all parties were in this state of suspense, a gross and unprincipled attempt was made to browbeat Mr. Clay, and drive him from what was rightly supposed to be his position of preference for Mr. Adams. A letter, the authorship of which was afterward avowed by George Kremer, a member of the house from Pennsylvania, appeared in a Philadelphia newspaper called the "Columbian Observer," charging Mr. Clay and his friends with the most flagitious intentions-in short with the design of selling their vote to the highest bidder.

Monstrous as were these intimations, they were calculated to carry some weight with the ignorant and unreflecting. By such persons, it would not be taken into consideration that Mr. Clay had already declined offices of the highest grade under Madison and Monroe-that, if either Jackson or Crawford had been elected through his agency, the first office in the gift of either would indubitably have been offered to him-that, in accepting office under Mr. Adams, it was universally understood at Washngton, he was conferring rather than receiving a favor—that he might not inaptly have been accused of acting an ungenerous It if, after bringing the Adams administration into power, he

had refused it the countenance so essential to its success-that he would have neglected the solicitations of all who acted with him from the west had he refused the secretaryship—and, in short, that in order to justify his vote it was incumbent on him to submit to the united voice of the friends of the new administration, and bring to it as much of his western strength as he could lend.

The "Columbian Observer," in which the precious epistle we have alluded to appeared, was a print sustained by Mr. Eaton, the friend, biographer, and colleague in the senate of General Jackson. The position of the writer of the letter, as a member of Congress, gave it a consequence which, utterly contemptible as it is, it would not otherwise, in any degree, have possessed. Mr. Clay deemed it incumbent upon him to notice it; and he published a card in the National Intelligencer, pronouncing the author of the letter, whoever he might be, "a base and infamous calumniator." This was answered by a card from Mr. George Kremer, in which the writer said he held himself ready to prove, to the satisfaction of unprejudiced minds, enough to satisfy them of the accuracy of the statements in the letter, so far as Mr. Clay was concerned.

The calumny having been thus fathered, Mr. Clay rose in his place in the house, and demanded an investigation into the affair

A committee was accordingly appointed by ballot on the 5th of February, 1835. It was composed of some of the leading members of the house, not one of whom was Mr. Clay's political friend. Although Mr. Kremer had declared to the house and to the public his willingness to bring forward his proofs, and his readiness to abide the issue of the inquiry, his fears, or other counsels than his own, prevailed upon him to resort finally to a miserable subterfuge. The committee reported that Mr. Kremer declined appearing before them, alleging that he could not do so without appearing either as an accuser or a witness, both of which he protested against !"

And yet, this same Mr. Kremer, a day or two before, when the subject of appointing an investigating committee came up, had risen in his seat in the house, and said: "If, upon an investigation being instituted, it should appear that he had not suf