Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 9.djvu/118

THE WORLD'S FAMOUS ORATIONS But here there can be no such apology. Here no necessity can so much as be pretended. This act originates in pure, unmixed, personal idolatry. It is the melancholy evidence of a broken spirit, ready to bow at the feet of power. The former act was such a one as might have been perpe- trated in the days of Pompey or Caesar ; but an act like this could never have been consumonated by a Roman Senate until the times of Caligula and Nero. II ON THE CLAY COMPROMISE MEASURES^ (1850) I HAVE, senators, believed from the first that the agitation of the subject of slavery would, if not prevented by some timely and effective measure, end in disunion. Entertaining this opinion, I have, on all proper occasions, endeav- ored to call the attention of both the two great parties which divide the country to adopt some measure to prevent so great a disaster, but without success. The agitation has been permit- 1 This is perhaps the most famous of Calhoun's speeches. Being too ill to deliver it himself, he had carefully written it out, and on March 4, 1850, it was read by another senator, Calhoun being present. Calhoun died on March 31 of this year. Von Hoist, Calhoun's biog- rapher, writing of the scene in the Senate when the speech was delivered, says: " The galleries were hushed into the deepest silence by the extraordinary scene which had something of the impressive solemnity of a funeral ceremony." Mr. Schouler describes how Calhoun "listened to the delivery like some disembodied spirit, 108