Alexandria Gazette

MR. CLAYTON OF GEORGIA
Nothing gives more satisfaction to a candid and ingenious mind, than to make acknowledgement of wrong, when wrong has been committed; and certainly nothing is more honorable.—
Mr. CLAYTON, of Georgia, in a recent speech in the House of Representatives, thus concluded his remarks:
Mr. Speaker, this is the first fair opportunity that has presented itself to make satisfaction for wrongs which I believe I myself have committed, not from motive, for I entertain that passion against no human being, but from an overwrought and incautious zeal. In my opposition to the bank on a former occasion, I have carefully reviewed my remarks, and find reflections which are unworthy of me and the cause they were designed to support. They were calculated to wound the feelings of many high and honorable men in and out of the bank, and if such has been the effect I can offer no higher reparation than the public expression of my regret.—
I retract every thing personal either in fact or tendency, and rejoice that when I have done a wrong my sense of justice inclines me to redress it; neither a dictate of false pride nor a dread of even deserved reproach shall ever interpose between the injury of which I have been the unguarded cause, and the due retribution necessary to its full attainment. I do not pretend that this is a sentiment peculiar to myself, it exists in every mind to some extent, and sooner or later is apt to exert its just control. Sir, the day may yet come when the present Chief Magistrate shall feel and owe its sway. When he shall have reached the repose of private life, removed from the tempests of political strife: When he shall have ceased to be useful to flatterers and sycophants and standing upon that critical confine where the time past of a long life, is to be reviewed in the short span of that which is soon to end; if no other wrong of which he has been the author shall extort its merited confession that at least of the injured Duane will wring a repentant sigh. His imagination must wander into the innocent family of this abused individual from whose quiet bosom he was reluctantly withdrawn, and after surveying the peace which he has disturbed, the feelings he has tortured, the friendship with which he has sported, the integrity he has distrusted, the independence he has despised, and above all, that spotless reputation his minions have attempted to defame, if his heart shall not obey the dictates of the generous sentiment I have described, it will be wanting, greatly wanting, in a principle, with which even his fame of battle cannot compare and will justly reduce the glory of his military fortunes to an empty pageant.