Mr. Clay introduced resolutions to the senate, calling for a copy of the documents in which the secretary pretended to find precedents, justifying the course he had pursued, which passed the senate, and, on the thirteenth of December, Mr. Taney placed in the hands of that body, a communication, which contained, however, nothing satisfactory, or contemplated by the resolutions. Mr. Clay declared the ground which the secretary assumed, untenable, and, on the twenty-sixth of December, introduced resolutions to the senate, pronouncing his reasons for removing the deposits, as communicated to congress, unsatisfactory and insufficient, and that the president, in dismissing the secretary of the treasury because he would not, in violation of his sense of duty, remove, as directed, the public money, had assumed the exercise of a power over the treasury of the United States, not granted by the constitution and laws, and dangerous to the liberties of the people. In defence of these, Mr. Clay made one of his ablest speeches, and forcibly demonstrated the unconstitutionality and illegality of the procedure of the president and secretary. He foretold, with prophetic accuracy, the fatal consequences which would flow from it, and depicted in glowing colors the dangers that threatened the best interests of the nation. These resolutions passed the senate, and, on the seventeenth of April, 1833, the president communicated to the senate his celebrated protest――a document perfectly characteristic of him, replete with the most arrogant assumptions and declarations. This led to a warm and protracted debate, in which Messrs. Clay, Poindexter, Sprague, Frelinghuysen, and Southard, joined, whose powerful arguments drove the president from the last vestige of the fallacious grounds he had assumed, and scattered the doctrines of his protest to the winds. The senate, by a vote of twenty-seven to sixteen, excluded it from the journals, and maintained that the president possessed no right to protest against any of its proceedings. During the discussion, Mr. Leigh, of Virginia, paid Mr. Clay a rich and merited compliment, for his services in allaying the spirit of nullification at the south, in 1832 and 1833. ‘I cannot but remember,’ said he, ‘when all men were trembling under the apprehension of civil war――trembling from the conviction, that if such a contest should arise, let it terminate how it might, it would put our present institutions in jeopardy, and end either in consolidation or disunion; for I am persuaded that the first drop of blood which shall be shed in a civil strife between the federal government and any state, will flow from an irremediable wound, that none may ever hope to see healed. I cannot but remember, that the president, though ♦wielding such a vast power and influence, never contributed the least aid to bring about the compromise that saved us from the evils which all men, I believe, and I, certainly, so much dreaded. The men are not present to whom we are chiefly indebted for that compromise; and I am glad they are absent, since it enables me to speak of their conduct, as I feel I might not without, from a sense of delicacy. I raise my humble voice in gratitude for that service, to _Henry Clay_ of the senate, and _Robert P. Letcher_, of the house of representatives.’