great peril in consequence of this procedure. A warm debate ensued in congress on a bill reported by a committee to whom the proclamation was referred, which declared that the laws then in force in the territory of Orleans, extended and had full force to the river Perdido. Mr. Pope, one of the committee, in a speech made at the time, explained the grounds which induced them to make the report, and was followed by Mr. Horsey, a senator from Delaware, in opposition. He pronounced the title of the United States invalid, thought it inexpedient to take possession of the territory by force, and questioned the right of the president to issue his proclamation to that effect. He declared that document both _war and legislation_, inasmuch as it authorized occupancy by military force, and invested a governor with all the authorities and functions in regard to the province in question, that he legitimately possessed in presiding over his own. His sympathies seemed to be strongly enlisted in behalf of the king of Spain, whose prospective loss he deplored in language of deep commiseration. His speech was in many respects able, but it had been much more appropriately delivered in Madrid at the foot of the Spanish monarch’s throne, and in the presence of his court, than at Washington, beneath the ægis of liberty, and surrounded by patriotic and intelligent freemen. Mr. Clay regarded with feelings of deep regret as well as surprise, this anti-republican effort, this unnatural attempt by a son of Freedom to support the unfounded pretensions of a foreign prince to a portion of her own blood-bought soil,――that soil from which he drew his sustenance, and on which were reared those institutions that constitute it an appropriate asylum for the down-trodden of every other nation beneath the canopy of heaven. Although laboring under a severe indisposition, he could not, while he possessed the power of utterance, sit tamely still and listen to such sentiments promulgated in the very temple of liberty. He rose to reply in that graceful, dignified manner, so peculiar to himself. As he drew up his tall form into that commanding attitude which he was accustomed to assume as preliminary to a mighty parliamentary effort, it could be easily discovered in his countenance, what was the nature of his feelings, and how deep the fountain of eloquence had been stirred within him, whose effusions, directed with unerring precision, were soon to bear his auditory away on their resistless tide, to the goal on which his keen eye was fixed. This speech of Mr. Clay may justly be regarded as one of the most finished specimens of argumentative eloquence, profound investigation, purity of diction, and logical reasoning, that the records of any legislative body can furnish. It evinced by its demonstrative and inferential character, the most thorough and patient examination of the subject, in all its minute details, and indicated most clearly his main design to be, not