"Solitary and alone I set this ball in motion," is an expression of Benton's which, some years ago, was as familiar with every schoolboy as a "household word." The crowning result was the greatest political achievement of the Senator. With the passage of the expunging resolution the victory over the Bank coalition was complete, and Benten was at the zenith of his glory. The pen which did the "expunging" was sent by Mr. Benton as a souvenir to General Jackson, and the old chief prized it highly.

The inauguration of Mr. Van Buren as President in 1837the great financial revulsion of that year--the extra session of Congress in September-the passage of the ten million loan, and the failure to pass the Sub-Treasury law-these events followed in quick succession. Throughout the violent financial contest which ensued, and which lasted from session to session till 1840, Mr. Benton was ever foremost of the advanced guard of the Democracy, his grand ideas throughout being, not only the separation of the Government finances. from the Banks, but the establishment of a universal Hard Money Currency. Hence his soubriquet of "Old Bullion;" hence the term "Benton's mint-drops," which was formerly applied to our gold coins. How thoroughly have subsequent events proved the correctness and the sagacity of this great statesman in his speeches on the currency question! Not in vain was his long battle waged against a vicious system sustained by a powerful interest; not in vain were his hard money speeches from 1829 to 1840. He saw the virtual triumph of his principles in the measures of the Government; he lived to see his doctrine vindicated by events.

No human agency could bring immediate relief to the country, and of course "immediate" relief was not brought by the Sub-Treasury. The hard times were attributed to the Democratic policy of Jackson, Benton, and Van Buren; and the campaign of 1840 terminated in the defeat of Van Buren and the Democracy by an overwhelming majority. It was like a tornado-it was a political revolution unparalleled. "A change!" was the cry-"a change! Things can't be made worse."

Gen. Harrison's administration ended with his death, a month after the inauguration—and then came Tyler, with his successive vetoes of the bill for a National Bank, which action was vigorously sustained by Benton, and approved by the Democratic party. The Whig Cabinet (save Webster) resigned, and a Congressional manifesto read Tyler out of the Whig party. The Bankrupt Law was passed and approved by Tyler; the Sub-Treasury act was repealed and Tyler approved the repeal. Then came the successive Bank acts, and Tyler's successive vetoes, as above stated. In all of these measures Benton was a prominent man on the Democratic side, fighting Mr. Clay and the Whigs on the Bankrupt Law, and the Bank; opposing the repeal of the Sub-Treasury, and against the High Tariff, which however passed. It was when Tyler's second Bank veto was brought before the Senate and read that another scene occurred very like that which followed the fulfilment of the Expunging Resolution,-Benton calling fiercely out for the arrest of the "Bank ruffians" of the gallery. The order was passed, and an arrest was made, before order could be restored.

The annexation of Texas was the rock upon which Benton split. He attributes it all to Calhoun, whom he charges with a plot to "blow Mr. Van Buren sky-high," by starting the idea of annexation. Certain it is, Mr. Van Buren's antiTexas letter killed him in the Baltimore Convention of 1844.

A curious and remarkable history is that of the events which terminated in the annexation of Texas and the war with Mexico. Mr. Benton, Mr. Van Buren, and a class of Democrats who followed their lead, were grieved and disappointed at the action of the Baltimore Convention in 1844. Whatever hopes may have been entertained by others, it is certain that Mr. Van Buren's friends hoped and expected his renomination, and that these, and the friends of Benton, swallowed Mr. Polk's nomination with not the best grace. It was hoped, however, that the project for annexing Texas, which Benton resolutely attributed to what he believed to be the "machinations" of Calhoun, might yet be prevented; and with this end in view, Mr. Polk, in advance of his inaugura

ration, was approached with all the appliances which could be brought to bear for that purpose. Unconditional annexation-whether the result be peace or war-was the plan of President Tyler and Mr. Calhoun, the Secretary of State; preliminary negotiation, and peace at all hazards, was the policy of Benton and Van Buren; and it was claimed that this policy had been successfully urged upon Mr. Polk, who was now about to be inaugurated.

It was the last night of the session (March, 1845,) President Tyler's last day in office, when a compromise between the House plan and the Senate, or Benton's negotiation plan, was agreed upon by blending the two plans together, and leaving the choice to the President. The Bentonians did not expect President Tyler to act on an issue which properly belonged to Mr. Polk; but in this they were mistaken, for on the very night (Saturday night,) that the blended resolutions passed, President Tyler signed them, and assuming the initiative, sent off his special messenger with the unconditional House plan of annexation as his offer to Texas. When Monday morning came Mr. Tyler was gone from the White House; but the work was done, and his messenger was on his way to Texas with the Mexican war in his pocket.

The mass of testimony furnished by Mr. Benton upon this point, is supported by the peace policy which governed Mr. Polk in the prosecution of the war. He nominated Colonel Benton to the post of Cammanding Lieutenant-General of all our forces in Mexico, not to push the war to the utmost, but to make the earliest possible peace-though the nomination was not confirmed. To this end, also, the efforts of Mr. Benton, as Chairman on Military Affairs in the Senate, were mainly directed; and to this end that "pass was given to Santa Anna; and Mr. Trist was sent down as a special peace plenipotentiary, and Senor Atreha; and to this end of the earliest possible peace, the treaty which Mr. Trist made without authority, was accepted by Mr. Polk and ratified by the Senate. All these facts go to prove Mr. Benton's view of Mr. Polk's peace alternative of annexation. Had Mr. Tyler passed the resolutions over to the incoming President,

what then would have been the result? The other alternative would then have prevailed. Negotiations would have settled the Texas boundary; there would have been no war; we should not have acquired California, and the gold of that country might have remained undiscovered to this day. That midnight messenger of Mr. Tyler to Texas was thus the avant courier of the mighty commercial revolution which has followed throughout the civilized world. Upon such small incidents hang the greatest events in human history.

The Mexican war and the Oregon question chiefly occupied the administration of Mr. Polk; and in the business of the war, the varied knowledge and experience of Mr. Benton made him eminently useful as the Senate's Chairman on Military Affairs.

Upon the Oregon question the speeches of Benton were against the doctrine of "fifty-four forty or fight," and effectual in reducing our legitimate claims and our Oregon boundary to the line of forty-nine. His old maps, old treaties and their red lines, and old historical facts, and anecdotes, were here applied with remarkable effect.

Mr. Benton, in his senatorial history, makes short work of the bill establishing a territorial government for Oregon, including the Missouri compromise slavery prohibitionThere was a most excited and desperate contest, however, in the Senate upon that prohibition. (August, 1848.) Mr. Benton, for it, and Mr. Calhoun, against it, being the principals in the debate.

In the discussion of the Compromise measure of 1850, Mr. Benton was mainly instrumental in breaking down Mr. Clay's Omnibus bill, and including each measure thereof to its own merits. At this point a division which had sprung up in the Missouri Democracy-Benton and anti-Benton-resulted in the defeat of Benton for the Senate. He then ran for the House as the Benton candidate for St. Louis, was elected, and distinquished himself in opposition to the Kansas Nebraska bill.

Subsequently, he was defeated for Congress, and again as a candidate for Governor of Missouri in 1855, when he

personally "stumped the State," making numerous speeches and undergoing hardships and fatigues seldom encountered by men of his age. Latterly he has lived in Washington, where his valuable works, the "Thirty Years' View," and the "Abridgement of the Debates in Congress," were made up. He worked on the latter down to the very night preceding his death.

A writer of ability, in the New York Leader, under the initials "T. N. C.," who was well acquainted with Mr. Benton, makes the following just remarks in regard to his peculiar traits of character and acquirements:

"If we take the most brilliant period in Colonel Benton's public career, which spreads itself over some seven years of his life-from 1830 to 1837 -there can be found in it no evidence of greater ability or talent than at that time was in the possession of many whose names are scarcely now known, and whose acts are only remembered when spoken of with the events of their day. It is well to bear in mind that at the period to which we allude, the country was in the possession of the highest order of talent in its national councils; and it is more owing to this fact, and to the departure of those great minds from among us, one by one, that the death of Col. Benton receives its importance and interest, than, in truth, to any true greatness of mind which he possessed while living. He was, in fact, the last of the survivors of those eminent men, whose acts and talents distinguished the times in which they flourished; and it is but natural that he should have received the sympathies of a people whom he had served so well and served so faithfully, and that all due honor should be awarded to him. Long before his death he had become a subject of much interest; and his movements and words, as he passed along, were noted and greatly commented upon by the press of the country. To a mind naturally vain and satisfied of its own superiority, even in those days when it was not enfeebled by age or impaired by over-exertion, such flattering attentions were well calculated to increase his confidence in his own powers, and to cause him to place upon them an estimate which posterity will not be willing that they should receive. Our opinions, be it understood, are formed from a close acquaintance with Mr. Benton of some twenty-five years' standing. And whilst we may find it necessary to differ from much that has recently been written and said of him, yet, to those who knew the man while living, and under whose eyes our sketch may chance to fall, the truthfulness of our picture will at once be recognized.

"To give to Mr. Benton the title of a great man is only to misuse that word, and to convey to it a meaning and a nature that would be doing it injustice; for Mr. Benton is not justified in receiving that distinction from