His action, at all times, has been thoroughly consistent with his declared opinions, and with the earnest attachment to the Union, avowed in his congressional speeches and in his public addresses every-where. In 1850 and in 1861 his course was the logical sequence of his opinions, maintained and asserted from his introduction to public life. To save the Union, upon the only basis upon which it could rest as a guarantee of liberty,--the basis of absolute equality among the States; to blend Federal power and States' Rights, was the grand, paramount object to which all his aspirations and all his investigations of political science were directed. Repudiating the power of a State to nullify an act of Congress, and yet not surrender its normal relations as a member of the Union, he always asserted the right of secession, in the last resort, as an original, inherent, and vital attribute of State Sovereignty. The Federal Government, to his mind, was a mere agent of the States, created by them for a few general and intestate purposes, but having in it no principle subversive of the paramount sovereignty of the States. Rapidly extending its power by enactments of Congress and judicial constructions, he foresaw, and sought to counteract, its tendency to obliterate all State individuality, and ultimately absorb into its own keeping the liberties of the people. With dread and indignation, he contemplated its progress towards that _monstrum horrendum_, a consolidated democracy--the Union of to-day, in which we see that the _will of the majority is the sole measure of its powers_. Such was his consistency, and such his sagacity, as vindicated in the light of subsequent events, and patent to the eyes of the world to-day. Who can now doubt which was the better and more logical theory? Clay said: "I owe allegiance to two sovereignties, and only two: one is to the sovereignty of this Union, and the other is to the sovereignty of the State of Kentucky." Thus he held to the paradox of an _imperium in imperio_, that obvious absurdity in our system of government, a divided sovereignty. In his ardent Unionism, the great exponent of expediency disavowed allegiance to the _South_, though still holding to his allegiance to Kentucky. But suppose Kentucky asserts her sovereignty, and chooses to unite with the South, what, then, becomes of State Sovereignty and State allegiance? Just here was the _hiatus_ in Clay's logic, and, closely pressed by Davis, he emphatically declared his _first_ allegiance to the Union as the supreme authority; and the State Sovereignty of Clay's conception was seen to be as intangible and unreal as the "baseless fabric of a vision." Far more fair in its semblance, noble in its proportions, and beautiful in its harmonies, was the ideal of Davis. In his speech on the compromise measures, July 31, 1850, he said: