"Yet, in the face of all this, the senator has not only made the charge, but has said, in his place, that he heard, for the first time in his life, at the extra session, that I was opposed to a national bank! I could place the senator in a dilemma from which there is no possibility of escape. I might say to him, you have either forgot, or not, what I said in 1834. If you have not, how can you justify yourself in making the charge you have? But if you have--if you have forgot what is so recent, and what, from the magnitude of the question and the importance of the occasion, was so well calculated to impress itself on your memory, what possible value can be attached to your recollection or opinions, as to my course on more remote and less memorable occasions, on which you have undertaken to impeach my conduct? He may take his choice. "Having now established by the record that I have changed no opinion, abandoned no principle, nor deserted any party, the charge of the senator, with all the aspersions with which he accompanied it, falls prostrate to the earth. Here I might leave the subject, and close my vindication. But I choose not. I shall follow the senator up, step by step, in his unprovoked, and I may now add, groundless attack, with blows not less decisive and victorious. "The senator next proceeded to state, that in a certain document (if he named it, I did not hear him) I assigned as the reason why I could not join in the attack on the administration, that the benefit of the victory would not enure to myself, or my party; or, as he explained himself, because it would not place myself and them in power. I presume he referred to a letter, in answer to an invitation to a public dinner, offered me by my old and faithful friends and constituents of Edgefield, in approbation of my course at the extra session. "[Mr. CLAY. I do.] "The pressure of domestic engagements would not permit me to accept their invitation; and, in declining it, I deemed it due to them and myself to explain my course, in its political and party bearing, more fully than I had done in debate. They had a right to know my reasons, and I expressed myself with the frankness due to the long and uninterrupted confidence that had ever existed between us. "Having made these explanatory remarks, I now proceed to meet the assertion of the senator. I again take issue on the fact. I assigned no such reason as the senator attributes to me. I never dreamed nor thought of such a one; nor can any force of construction extort such from what I said. No; my object was not power or place, either for myself or party. I was far more humble and honest. It was to save ourselves and our principles from being absorbed and lost in a party, more numerous and powerful; but differing from us on almost every principle and question of policy.