realized. Pharaoh's country was cursed with plagues, and his hosts were
lost in the Red Sea, for striving to retain a captive people who had
already served them more than four hundred years. May like disasters
never befall us! If, as the friends of colonization hope, the present and
coming generations of our countrymen shall by any means succeed in
freeing our land from the dangerous presence of slavery, and at the same
time in restoring a captive people to their long-lost fatherland with
bright prospects for the future, and this too so gradually that neither
races nor individuals shall have suffered by the change, it will indeed
be a glorious consummation. And if to such a consummation the efforts of
Mr. Clay shall have contributed, it will be what he most ardently wished,
and none of his labors will have been more valuable to his country and
his kind.

But Henry Clay is dead. His long and eventful life is closed. Our country
is prosperous and powerful; but could it have been quite all it has been,
and is, and is to be, without Henry Clay? Such a man the times have
demanded, and such in the providence of God was given us. But he is gone.
Let us strive to deserve, as far as mortals may, the continued care of
Divine Providence, trusting that in future national emergencies He will
not fail to provide us the instruments of safety and security.

NOTE. We are indebted for a copy of this speech to the courtesy of Major
Wm. H. Bailhache, formerly one of the proprietors of the Illinois State
Journal.




CHALLENGED VOTERS