neck, and the cart about to leave his body, to prove to him that his conviction was according to law and justice, as to prove that this sub-treasury measure ought to be abandoned.” It was sufficient for him to say that “the nation wills the repeal of the measure, the nation decrees the repeal of the measure, the nation commands the repeal of the measure, and the representatives of nineteen states were sent there instructed to repeal it.” This had been almost exactly Benton's language in passing the expunging resolution four years before.
Silas Wright answered with keen irony that, after a campaign such as the country had witnessed, the presidential election might be interpreted as meaning that the capitol should be taken down, and a log cabin ornamented with coon-skins put in its place, as well as that the sub-treasury law should be repealed. The Democrats still had a majority in the Senate, and Clay's resolution failed. The same fate had his land bill, which he urged in an elaborate speech. The session remained without any result of importance. But Clay lost no opportunity to make his opponents understand that soon both houses would be in the hands of the Whigs, and that then all his measures would be speedily consummated. “Clay crows too much over a fallen foe,” John Quincy Adams wrote in his Diary. He would have “crowed” less had he known the disappointments in store for him.
First those trials came upon him which he who
