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Van Buren, the other
under Mr. Clay--were running a kind of tariff race, neck and neck, in
which Van Buren won. Mr. Clay, it is true, was not in Congress
then,--he was Secretary of State; but he was the soul of his party,
and his voice was the voice of a master. In all his letters and
speeches there is not a word to show that he then anticipated the
surplus, or the embarrassments to which it gave rise; though he could
not have forgotten that a very trifling surplus was one of the chief
anxieties of Mr. Jefferson's administration. Mr. Clay's error, we
think, arose from his not perceiving clearly that a protective tariff,
though justifiable sometimes, is always in itself an evil, and is
never to be accepted as the permanent policy of any country; and that,
being an evil, it must be reduced to the minimum that will answer the
temporary purpose.
In estimating Henry Clay, we are always to remember that he was an
orator. He had a genius for oratory. There is, we believe, no example
of a man endowed with a genius for oratory who also possessed an
understanding of the first order.


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