abolitionists for gratuitously republishing the
advertisements for runaway slaves, the Kentucky orator says:--
"And like a notorious agitator upon another theatre, they would hunt down
and proscribe from the pale of civilized society the inhabitants of that
entire section. Allow me, Mr. President, to say that whilst I recognize
in the justly wounded feelings of the Minister of the United States at
the Court of St. James much to excuse the notice which he was provoked to
take of that agitator, in my humble opinion he would better have
consulted the dignity of his station and of his country in treating him
with contemptuous silence. He would exclude us from European society, he
who himself, can only obtain a contraband admission, and is received with
scornful repugnance into it! If he be no more desirous of our society
than we are of his, he may rest assured that a state of perpetual non-
intercourse will exist between us. Yes, sir, I think the American
Minister would best have pursued the dictates of true dignity by
regarding the language of the member of the British House of Commons as
the malignant ravings of the plunderer of his own country, and the
libeller of a foreign and kindred people."
The recoil of this attack "followed hard upon" the tones of
congratulation and triumph of partisan editors at the consummate skill
and dexterity with which their candidate for the presidency had absolved
himself from the suspicion of abolitionism, and by a master-stroke of
policy secured the confidence of the slaveholding section of the
Union. But the late Whig defeat in New York has put an end to these
premature rejoicings. "The speech of Mr. Clay in reference to the Irish
agitator has been made use of against us with no small success," say the
New York papers. "They failed," says the Daily Evening Star, "to
convince the Irish voters that Daniel O'Connell was the 'plunderer of his
country,' or that there was an excuse for thus denouncing him."
The defeat of the Whigs of New York and the cause of it have excited no
small degree of alarm among the adherents of the Kentucky orator. In
this city, the delicate _Philadelphia Gazette_ comes magnanimously to the
aid of Henry Clay,--
"A tom-tit twittering on an eagle's back."
The learned editor gives it as his opinion that Daniel O'Connell is a
"political beggar," a "disorganizing apostate;" talks in its pretty way
of the man's "impudence" and "falsehoods"
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