The above is a fair sample of the expressions of praise and regard, for his eminent services rendered, in connection with introducing those wise and sanative provisions which poured the balm of peace into the lacerated hearts of an afflicted people. Probably they were never more united in any one measure, than in that of expressing their gratitude to Mr. Clay, for his successful interference. And well did he merit it. The task which he performed was no easy one. It cost an amount of mental labor which cannot be easily estimated. Many sleepless nights were passed in exhausting thought, in revolving in his mind the subject, in all its aspects and details, with an anxiety to devise some remedy that would meet the exigencies of the case, that drank up the very sources of his existence. It required the mightiest effort of his great and varied powers, to prevent its strangulation at its inception. While in the hands of the committee, its enemies endeavored to cause the impression to be received, that the bill, as designed by Mr. Clay, could not pass; that there was not the slightest chance of its success; and several members of the committee were determined that it should not be reported to the senate in any form, and were more than once on the point of abandoning their places to secure this. ‘Gentlemen,’ Mr. Clay would say, ‘this subject has been committed to us, and we must not dismiss it in this manner; it is our duty to report it in some shape, and it _shall_, at all events, _be reported_.’ It appeared subsequently, from the testimony of Mr. Hugh L. White, on whom the duty of selecting the committee devolved, that _general Jackson had, in person, urged him to choose such members as were friendly to Mr. Verplanck’s bill, and consequently hostile to Mr. Clay’s_. It is matter of great surprise, that, under such circumstances, it should have passed at all, except with the entire abandonment of protection. More than sleepless vigilance was requisite, to bring it safely out from beneath the uplifted arms of a powerful party, led on by the executive himself, and place it on the statute book of the nation. Columbus hardly encountered fiercer storms, or braved greater dangers, in _discovering_ America, than Mr. Clay in originating, sustaining, and consummating, a measure that resulted in the preservation of a great portion of it from falling into the hands of the worst of all human enemies, _civil war_. Well did he deserve, then, the meed of praise which its inhabitants unanimously accorded to him. Most righteous was their decision, in relation to his motives――that they were _unimpeachably pure_. In these days of political degeneracy, it is refreshing to look back and suffer one’s vision to rest upon that spot on which he planted his feet, and fought his glorious, patriotic battle; their prints are still seen; they have gathered greenness with the lapse of years, presaging that the floods and storms of time will never obliterate or mar them.