I know, Mr. President, how unequal I have been to the apparently self-imposed task of presenting, in an appropriate manner, the merits of the illustrious deceased. But if I had remained silent on an occasion like this, when the hearts of my constituents are swelling with grief, I would have been disowned by them. It is for this reason――that of giving utterance to their feelings as well as of my own――that I have trespassed on the time of the senate. I would that I could have spoken fitter words; but such as they are, they were uttered by the tongue in response to the promptings of the heart. * * * * * Mr. SEWARD.――Mr. President: Fifty years ago, Henry Clay, of Virginia, already adopted by Kentucky, then as youthful as himself, entered the service of his country, a representative in the unpretending legislature of that rising state; and having thenceforward, with ardor and constancy, pursued the gradual paths of an aspiring change through halls of congress, foreign courts and executive councils, he has now, with the cheerfulness of a patriot, and the serenity of a Christian, fitly closed his long and arduous career, here in the senate, in the full presence of the republic, looking down upon the scene with anxiety and alarm, not merely a senator, like one of us who yet remain in the senate-house, but filling that character which, though it had no authority of law, and was assigned without suffrage, Augustus Cæsar nevertheless declared was above the title of Emperor, _Primus inter Illustres_――the Prince of the Senate. Generals are tried, Mr. President, by examining the campaigns they have lost or won, and statesmen by reviewing the transactions in which they have been engaged. Hamilton would have been unknown to us, had there been no constitution to be created; as Brutus would have died in obscurity, had there been no Cæsar to be slain. Colonization, Revolution, and Organization――three great acts in the drama of our National Progress――had already passed when the Western Patriot appeared on the public stage. He entered in that next division of the majestic scenes which was marked by an inevitable rëaction of political forces, a wild strife of factions and ruinous embarrassments in our foreign relations. This transition stage is always more perilous than any other in the career of nations, and especially in the career of Republics. It proved fatal to the Commonwealth in England. Scarcely any of the Spanish-American states have yet emerged from it; and more than once it has been sadly signalized by the ruin of the republican cause in France.