New Hampshire Statesman And State Journal

FROM THE PENNSYLVANIA WHIG.

Of Mr CLAY but one opinion could ever prevail
as it respects talents, acquirements, and the comprehensive
scope of a lofty and wide-sweeping intellect.
Educated to the highest reach of the bar
—versed in its most profound and exalted practice—
starting a politician in early life, and subsequently
disciplined in all the variations of the art of the
statesman, skill of the negociator, and the persuasive
powers of the orator—to doubt of his fitness
for the highest station in the Republic, would
evince as much want of understanding, as it would
display the bigotry of a contracted mind, and the
malice of a malignant heart. On that subject no
difference of opinion has ever been seriously entertained
by those whose opinions are worthy of estimation.
His only culpability was voting for a minority
candidate—and this he shared in common
with Louis M'Lane, now Secretary of the Treasury,
and Mr Amos Kendall, Francis P. Blair, M. M.
Noah, and a long list of the chosen band of demagogues,
not forgetting Mr Thomas Ritchie, who
now hail as the immaculats of the "greatest and
the best."
The public benefactions of Mr Clay, however,
to this Republic, and to the world, can never be
expunged from the page of history, nor obliterated
from the hearts of his countrymen. As the Pioneer
of the Liberty of the Republics of South
America, his fame is erected on a rock that repels
the waves of faction, and drowns the senseless
clamor of infuriate rapacity, eager only for its pay,
and senseless alike to the claims of genius and the
prosperity of the nation. As the champion of the
American System, when our national industry,
like an orphan boy, was ragged, houseless and unprotected,
his services and his eloquence will never
be forgotten; and the fruits of his labor will survive
even the wreck of our liberty, if to be wrecked
it is unhappily doomed. We pass over his
countless minor services to his country, as insignificant
items in a career so colossal, and a character
so brilliant.