The southern press., 1851-08-04
Etom TIE L~savsxsViIis Is. C.) Herald.
r. Henry Clay 0f Kontueky--NO. 1.

Etom tie L~sssxsollls Is. C.) Herald.
Ts Henry clay u Kentucky 4.
Sir-More thsn forty years Of your life have
been spent in the public service, and as states
man and party leader your name has filled Nc
uncomfortable space in the public view. Already
your biographers, emulous Of the distinction ol
recording the deeds which have given you such
an unenviable notoriety, have entered the arena
and have We'd with each other in the task OF
pampering your inordinate vanity, by spreading
upon the historic page gilded pictures OF your
public acts In their efforts to makeyou Presi-
dent, they have given you credit for patriotism,
which you never possessed, and disinterested-
ness of purpose of which you never had any
conception. They have deceived the public, as
we'll as yourself You are now old, sir, and your
career is drawing to close. The tinsel with
which your partisans have CLOSED over long
public career Of selfish ambition, cannot much
longer conceal from wronged and indignant
people, whose rights you have violated, the
dangerous and detestabIe deformities of your
public character. Soon posterity will demand
more truthful and impartial chroniclers Of the
public life and character Of politician and cab-
net minister, who under the specous garb OF a
pretended patriotism, has contributed so much
to change the character of the government, and
to PROSTATE the Constitution of the country.
When you shall have disappeared from the stage
of action, those who have ministered to your
ambition and your vanity, to escapeyo coarse
denunciations, 80 derogatOry to the American
Senate, and to the rank and character Of an
American Senator, and the hungry expectan nts
who have tawned upon you, with the hope Of
profiting by your influence and elevation, will
no longer have motive to praise you, or to
conceal the vices of your pubic character
Justice aud truth will then demand an exposure
Of the crimes you have committed against the
Constitution, which you have so often sworn to
preserve inviolate; and the judgment which a
coming age will pronounce upon you, will be
so whitening, that could you be conscious of it,
even your unparalleled effrontery could not
sustain you under the scathing inhction.
A Southern man and a stakeholder, your first
public act in the State of your adoption, to
whose people you looked for patronage and
support, and among whom you sought retreat
from poverty and obscurity in your native land,
was an incendiary assault upon its slave institu-
tions, and upon the social and political rights of
the South, which you have since 80 fatally be-
trayed, for the purpose Of placing upon your
read the Presidential diadem, as the reward of
your treachery. In the arts of the demlgogue,
which abilities of high order have enabled you
to reduce to a science, you have distanced all
competition, in an age so fruitful in the produc-
ton of that dangerous and despicable character.
An avowed friend of the abolition of slavery
pretended enthusiast in the cause OF liberty
distinguished disciple of the incompatible
schools of Mirabeau and Danton--the most con-
sistent emancipationist of the age-a professed
republican, and practical consolidationist, by
your unequalled skill in the arts Of deceit and
dissmulatioE like an actor on the stage, by as
suming costume and set of principles adapted
to the time, circumstance and place, you have
succeeded to an unprecedented degree in de-
ceiving a confiding people into the belief that
the fictitious part you played was real. and that
you are patriot and republican. SO we'll, sir,
have you played the part of political magician,
that at the moment the Constitution is expiring
from the blows you inflicted upon it with your
dagger, you are eloquently pronouncing eulo-
gums upon the blessings of freedom, and at the
same moment laying the foundations, broad and
deep, of consolidated despotism upon the ruins
of republican liberty. Inscriptions about the
means of reaching the object Of your ambition,
few statesmen of modern times have combined
in one character so many elements calculated to
intiict ncurable wounds upon the institutions Of
the State.
l.
in expedient and resource, you have by your
countenance and encouragement, aided with all
the influence of your example, the incendaries
of the North, whose leader in the work of eman-
cipation you are, to assassinate the public peace,
and who only await your bidding, to light up
the fire of servile war. And yet your agency
in the internal plot, by your skill in political
legerdemain, is concealed from public view. A
statesman thus gifted with such extraordinary
qualities for stratagem and mischief, whose po-
litica code imposes no restraints upon his ex-
cesses, and who, upon every great question
which has agitated the public mind during his
whole political life, has been found advocating
with plausible but untruthful eloquence, first
one side and then the other, and who has been
consistent only in his ambitious thirst for power
and his ceaseless desire to see the abolition of
our Southern institutions accomplished, could
not fail to achieve for himself an unenviable dis
tinction. And, sir, of all your extraordinary
qualities, that one which has enabled you for 80
long period of time, through the many impor-
tant political epochs, in which you have borne
distinguished part, to conceal from the Southern
mind your selfish ambition, and your agency in
bringing upon the country 30 many fearful evils,
is not the least remarkable 1t shows, sir, the
perfection to which you have carried the arts of
political knavery. At all times ready to offer up
The South a sacrifice the victim of your ambi-
lion, to make yourself popular at the North,
'hrice have you, by your intrigues for the Presi-
tency, brought the country to the verge of civil
war. And Notwithstanding your American sys-
tenn has plundered the South, under color Of law,
Of thousand millions, for the benefit of your
nallies-notwithstanding your "compro- |
misses" have put in jeopardy fifteen hundred mil
ions more-notwithstsnding your last ocompro. |
mise" con6scated fer your abolition associates
an immense territory, the rghtful property of
the South, and as consequence, the Southern
horizon presents TO your gaze now only one un-
'roken line of storms, fast thickening into
weeping tempest, and with the glare Of the
lightning Of civil war in your face, still you effect
'ot 10 see The peril ohich you hare brought upon
hat Union which you profess TO loue so much, and
till true to your instincts, and standing upon
he brink of the grave, your thirst for power is
yet unappeased
1t may be worth your while, sir to pause and
inquire why you have so long labored in vain--