y do the
Abolitionists oppose colonization? To keep and amalgamate
together the two races, in violation of God's will, and to
keep the blacks here, that they may interfere with, degrade,
and debase the laboring whites. Show that the British nation
is co-operating with the Abolitionists, for the purpose of
dissolving the Union, etc."

This is so very absurd, that, if we did not know it to express Mr.
Clay's habitual feeling at that time, we should be compelled to see in
it, not Henry Clay, but the candidate for the Presidency.

He really thought so in 1843. He was perfectly convinced that the
white race and the black could not exist together on equal terms. One
of his last acts was to propose emancipation in Kentucky; but it was
an essential feature of his plan to transport the emancipated blacks
to Africa. When we look over Mr. Clay's letters and speeches of those
years, we meet with so much that is short-sighted and grossly
erroneous, that we are obliged to confess that this man, gifted as he
was, and dear as his memory is to us, shared the judicial blindness of
his order. Its baseness and arrogance he did not share. His head was
often wrong, but his heart was generally right. It atones for all his
mere errors of abstract opinion, that he was never admitted to the
confidence of the Nullifiers, and that he uniformly voted against the
measures inspired by them. He was against the untimely annexation of
Texas; he opposed the rejection of the anti-slavery petitions; and he
declared that no earthly power should ever induce him to consent to
the addition of one acre of slave territory to the possessions of the
United States.

It is proof positive of a man's essential soundness, if he improves as
he grows old. Henry Clay's last years were his best; he ripened to the
very end. His friends remarked the moderation of his later opinions,
and his charity for those who had injured him most. During the last
ten years of his life no one ever heard him utter a harsh judgment of
an opponent. Domestic afflictions, frequent and severe, had chastened
his heart; his six affectionate and happy daughters were dead; one son
was a hopeless lunatic in an asylum; another was not what such a
father had a right to expect; and, at length, his favorite and most
promising son, Henry, in the year 1847, fell at the battle of Buena
Vista. It was just after this last crushing loss, and probably in
consequence of it, that