will not dogmatically
say that no man ever saw a proof of this sage aphorism."

This sounds strangely in republican America. The like was not heard in the
fresher days of the republic. Let us contrast with it the language of that
truly national man whose life and death we now commemorate and lament: I
quote from a speech of Mr. Clay delivered before the American Colonization
Society in 1827:

"We are reproached with doing mischief by the agitation of this question.
The society goes into no household to disturb its domestic tranquillity.
It addresses itself to no slaves to weaken their obligations of obedience.
It seeks to affect no man's property. It neither has the power nor the
will to affect the property of any one contrary to his consent. The
execution of its scheme would augment instead of diminishing the value of
property left behind. The society, composed of free men, conceals itself
only with the free. Collateral consequences we are not responsible for.
It is not this society which has produced the great moral revolution which
the age exhibits. What would they who thus reproach us have done? If they
would repress all tendencies toward liberty and ultimate emancipation,
they must do more than put down the benevolent efforts of this society.
They must go back to the era of our liberty and independence, and muzzle
the cannon which thunders its annual joyous return. They must renew the
slave trade, with all its train of atrocities. They must suppress the
workings of British philanthropy, seeking to meliorate the condition of
the unfortunate West Indian slave. They must arrest the career of South
American deliverance from thraldom. They must blow out the moral lights
around us and extinguish that greatest torch of all which America presents
to a benighted world--pointing the way to their rights, their liberties,
and their happiness. And when they have achieved all those purposes their
work will be yet incomplete. They must penetrate the human soul, and
eradicate the light of reason and the love of liberty. Then, and not till
then, when universal darkness and despair prevail, can you perpetuate
slavery and repress all sympathy and all humane and benevolent efforts
among free men in behalf of the unhappy portion of our race doomed to
bondage."

The American Colonization Society was organized in 1816. Mr. Clay, though
not its projector, was one of its earliest members; and he died, as for
many preceding years he had b