through the admission of Missouri into the Union, as a slave State. He
has resisted a late promising movement in Kentucky in favor of
emancipation; and lastly, in one of his most elaborate speeches, made
just before the late presidential election, the proceedings of the
abolitionists were reviewed and condemned, and he utterly renounced all
sympathy with their object. By way of apology for his early
indiscretion, he observes, "but if I had been then, or were _now_, a
citizen of any of the planting States--the southern or southwestern
States--I should have opposed, and would continue to oppose, any scheme
whatever of emancipation, gradual or immediate."

In this extract, and throughout the whole speech, slavery is treated as
a pecuniary question, and the grand argument against abolition, is the
loss of property that would ensue. Joseph John Gurney, who appears to
have been favorably impressed by Henry Clay's professions of liberality,
his courteous bearing, and consummate address, manifested a laudable
anxiety that so influential a statesman should be better informed on the
point on which he seemed so much in the dark; he therefore addressed to
him his excellent "Letters on the West Indies," of which the great
argument is, that emancipation has been followed by great prosperity to
the planters, and attended with abundant blessings, temporal and
spiritual, to the other classes, and that the same course would
necessarily be followed by the same results in the United States. He has
accumulated proof upon proof of his conclusions supplied by personal and
extensive investigation in the British Colonies. But Henry Clay shews no
sign of conviction. Yet though he made to us the absurd remark, already
quoted, on Joseph John Gurney's work, I have too high an opinion of his
understanding to think him the victim of his own sophistry. He is a
lawyer and a statesman. He is accustomed to weigh evidence, and to
discriminate facts. I have little doubt that all my valued friend would