ve his fortunes
by practice at the bar. Few men without either a professional or a
private income can afford a long-continued public service. Although the
members of Congress were paid, the pay was not large enough,--only eight
dollars a day at that time. But Clay's interval of rest was soon cut
short. In three years he was again elected to the House of
Representatives, and in December, 1823, was promptly chosen Speaker by a
large majority. He had now recovered his popularity, and was generally
spoken of as "the great pacificator."

In Congress his voice was heard again in defence of internal
improvements,--the making of roads and canals,--President Monroe having
vetoed a bill favoring them on the ground that it was unconstitutional
for Congress to vote money for them. Clay, however, succeeded in
inducing Congress to make an appropriation for a survey of such roads as
might be deemed of national importance, which Mr. Monroe did not
oppose. It was ever of vital necessity, in the eyes of Mr. Clay, to open
up the West to settlers from the East, and he gloried in the prospect of
the indefinite expanse of the country even to the Pacific ocean. "Sir,"
said he, in the debate on this question, "it is a subject of peculiar
delight to me to look forward to the proud and happy period, distant as
it may be, when circulation and association between the Atlantic and the
Pacific and the Mexican Gulf shall be as free and perfect as they are at
this moment in England, the most highly improved country on the globe.
Sir, a new world has come into being since the Constitution was
adopted.... Are we to neglect and refuse the redemption of that vast
wilderness which once stretched unbroken beyond the Alleghany?" In these
views he proved himself one of the most far-sighted statesmen that had
as yet appeared in Congress,--a typical Western man of enthusiasm and
boundless hope.

Not less enthusiastic was he in his open expressions of sympathy with
the Greek struggle for liberty; as was the case also with Daniel
Webster,--both advocating relief to the Greeks, not merely from
sentiment, but to strike a blow at the "Holy Alliance" of European
kingdoms, then bent on extinguishing liberty in every country in Europe.
Clay's noble speech in defence of the Greeks was not, however, received
with unanimous admiration, since many members of Congress were fearful
of entangling the United States in European disputes and wars; and the
movement came to naug