[52] The writer of this article recalls a scene which occurred in his presence in the United States Senate early in 1851. Mr. Clay was speaking of the antislavery agitators and of the Free-Soil party, and said, with much bitterness, "We have put them down,--down,--down, where they will remain; down to a place so low, that they can never get up again." John P. Hale, never at a loss for a reply, immediately arose and said, "The Senator from Kentucky says that I and my friends have been put down,--down,--down, where we shall have to stay. It may be so. Indeed, if the Senator says so, I am afraid it _must_ be so. For, if there is any good authority on this subject, any man who knows by his own personal and constant experience what it is to be put down, and to be kept down, it is the honorable Senator from Kentucky." Mr. Clay's aspirations had been so often baffled, that this was a very keen thrust. The writer spoke to Mr. Hale shortly after, and he said, "I do not think Mr. Clay will forgive me that hit; but I could not help it. They may have got us down, but they shall not trample upon us." [53] O'Connell, in an album belonging to John Howard Payne, writes this sentence after his name. Transcriber's Notes: Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed. Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced quotation marks retained. Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained. Page 39: "Appeltons' Journal" was punctuated that way in the original book and on the masthead of the Journal itself. Page 46: "generalties" was spelled that way in the original book and in some copies of "The Poestaster" itself. Page 220: Greek transliteration in curly braces was added by Transcriber. Page 309: Opening quotation mark before "unfailing good sense" was added by Transcriber. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Nineteenth Century Questions, by James Freeman Clarke