sition to the
administration; and the General of course concluded, that the Speaker
designed, in ruining him, merely to further his own political schemes.
How he boiled with fury against Mr. Clay, his published letters
amusingly attest. "The hypocrisy and baseness of Clay," wrote the
General, "in pretending friendship to me, and endeavoring to crush the
Executive through me, makes me despise the villain."

Jackson, as we all know, was triumphantly sustained by the House. In
fact, Mr. Clay's speech was totally unworthy of the occasion. Instead
of argument and fact, he gave the House and the galleries beautiful
declamation. The evidence was before him; he had it in his hands; but,
instead of getting up his case with patient assiduity, and exhibiting
the damning proofs of Jackson's misconduct, he merely glanced over the
mass of papers, fell into some enormous blunders, passed over some
most material points, and then endeavored to supply all deficiencies
by an imposing eloquence. He even acknowledges that he had not
examined the testimony. "It is _possible_," said he, "that a critical
examination of the evidence _would_ show" that Arbuthnot was an
innocent trader. We have had occasion to examine that evidence since,
and we can testify that this conjecture was correct. But why was it a
_conjecture_? Why did Mr. Clay neglect to convert the conjecture into
certainty? It fell to him, as representing the civilization and
humanity of the United States, to vindicate the memory of an honorable
old man, who had done all that was possible to prevent the war, and
who had been ruthlessly murdered by men wearing the uniform of
American soldiers. It fell to him to bar the further advancement of a
man most unfit for civil rule. To this duty he was imperatively
called, but he only half did it, and thus exasperated the tiger
without disabling him.

Four years passed. In December, 1823, General Jackson reappeared in
Washington to take his seat in the Senate, to which he had been
elected by his wire-pullers for the purpose of promoting his interests
as a candidate for the Presidency. Before he left home two or three of
his friends had besought him to assume a mild and conciliatory
demeanor at the capitol. It would never do, they told him, for a
candidate for the Presidency to threaten to cut off the ears of
gentlemen who disapproved his public conduct; he must restrain himself
and make friends. This advice he followed. He was reconciled wit