Clay's speeches swayed listening senates and moved multitudes, but reading them is a disappointment. Between the two the difference is much the same as that between Burke and Charles James Fox. Fox was the parliamentary debater of England, the consummate leader of his party. His speeches, always listened to and cheered by a crowded House of Commons, perished with their delivery. Burke could never command a body of followers, but his parliamentary orations form brilliant and permanent chapters in the political literature of two continents. While Mr. Webster's name is so honorably perpetuated by his elaborate and masterly discussion of great principles in the Senate, he did not connect himself with a single historic measure. While Mr. Clay's speeches remain unread, his memory is lastingly identified with issues that are still vital and powerful. He advanced the doctrine of protection to the stately dignity of the American system. Discarding theories and overthrowing the dogma of strict construction, he committed the General Government irrevocably to internal improvements. Condemning the worthless system of paper money imposed upon the people by irresponsible State banks, he stood firmly for a national currency, and he foreshadowed if he did not reach the paper money which is based to-day on the credit and the strength of the government. Mr. Clay possessed extraordinary sagacity in public affairs, seeing and foreseeing where others were blinded by ignorance or prejudice. He was a statesman by intuition, finding a remedy before others could discover the disease. His contemporaries appreciated his rare endowments. On the day of his first entrance into the House of Representatives he was chosen Speaker, though but thirty-four years of age. This was all the more remarkable because the House was filled with men of recognized ability, who had been long in the public service. It was rendered still more striking by the fact that Mr. Clay was from the far West, from one of the only two States whose frontiers reached the Mississippi. In the entire House there were only fifteen members from the Western side of the Alleghanies. He was re-elected Speaker in every Congress so long as he served as representative. He entered the Senate at thirty, and died a member of it in his seventy-sixth year. He began his career in that body during the Presidency of Jefferson in 1806, and closed it under the Presidency of Fillmore in 1852. Other senators have served a longer time than Mr. Clay, but he alone at periods so widely separated. Other men have excelled him in specific powers, but in the rare combination of qualities which constitute at once the matchless leader of party and the statesman of consummate ability and inexhaustible resource, he has never been surpassed by any man speaking the English tongue.