‘Ne’er yet did base dishonor blur our name.’
‘Standing securely upon our conscious rectitude, and bearing aloft the shield of the constitution of our country, your puny efforts are impotent, and we defy all your power. Put the majority of 1834 in one scale, and that by which this expunging resolution is to be carried in the other, and let truth and justice in heaven above and on earth below, and liberty and patriotism, decide the preponderance.
‘What patriotic purpose is to be accomplished by this expunging resolution? Is it to appease the wrath, and heal the wounded pride, of the chief magistrate? If he be really the hero that his friends represent him, he must despise all mean condescension, all grovelling sycophancy, all self-degradation and self-abasement. He would reject with scorn and contempt, as unworthy of his fame, your _black scratches_ and _your baby lines_, in the fair records of his country.’
The expunging resolution, however, passed, and thus the just resolution of Mr. Clay was stricken from the national records, but not from the _record of memory_; there will it live until her functions cease, the memento of a patriotic purpose to place the signet of a nation’s displeasure upon as unprincipled an act as any ruler of that nation ever perpetrated.