feat Van Buren would “never kick again.” Clay wrote to his friend Brooke: “The attempt to excite public sympathy in behalf of the 'little magician' has totally failed; and I sincerely wish that he may be nominated as Vice-President. That is exactly the point to which I wish to see matters brought.” Clay's wish was to be gratified. The rejection of Van Buren made it one of the darling objects of Jackson's heart to revenge him upon his enemies. He employed his whole power to secure Van Buren's election to the vice-presidency first, and to the presidency four years later. Both Clay and Calhoun had yet to learn what that power was. The dangers to which a candidate for the presidency is exposed when a member of the Senate, were strikingly exemplified by a curious trick resorted to by Clay's opponents. They managed to refer the question of reducing the price of the public lands to the Committee on Manufactures, of which Clay was the leading member, an arrangement on its very face unnatural. Clay understood at once the object of this unusual proceeding. “Whatever emanated from the committee,” he said, in a speech on the subject, “was likely to be ascribed to me. If the committee should propose a measure of great liberality toward the new states, the old states might complain. If the measure should lean toward the old states, the new might be dissatisfied. And if it inclined to neither class, but recommended a plan according to which there would be distributed impartial justice among all
