On the evening of the 4th of February I attended a public meeting for the relief of the Irish.  It was held in the New Commercial Exchange, and was the first public meeting I had had an opportunity of attending in America.  The Commercial Exchange is a fine large building, supported by pillars, and containing an area on the ground floor that would accommodate about 1,500 people.  It is but ill-adapted for a public meeting, having no seats or benches.  I found about 800 gentlemen present, but no ladies.  Nor was that to be wondered at; for out of the 800, about 799 were spitting, 600 smoking cigars, 100 chewing tobacco, and perhaps 200 both chewing and smoking at the same time, for many of those people chew one end of the cigar while burning the other.  There was a large platform, and a great number of gentlemen were upon it.  Governor Johnson was the president, assisted by lots of vice-presidents.  When I entered, a tall old gentleman, with rather high cheek bones, and a voice somewhat tremulous and nasal, was speaking.  He descanted, in a second or third rate style, on the horrors of famine in Ireland,—­its horrors especially as seen in the family.  Coming to a period, he said, “It is under these circumstances that I want you to put your hands into your pockets, and pull out something, and throw it into the lap of starving Ireland!” This caused the most tremendous cheering I ever heard,—­“bravo—­bravo—­bravo,—­whoo—­hoo—­whoo!” The last sound was to me altogether new.  Not having learned phonography, I can give you no adequate notion of it; but it was a combination of the owl’s screech and the pig’s scream.  The favoured orator continued his speech a little longer, and at the close there was a storm of applause ten times more terrific than the former.  And who was the speaker?  It was none other, as I subsequently ascertained, than the celebrated Henry Clay!  In departing from the tone of eulogy in which it is fashionable to speak of him, I may be charged with a want of taste and discrimination.  That I cannot help.  My simple object in these letters is to tell how Transatlantic men and manners appeared to my eye or ear.  Before I went to America my respect for Henry Clay was very great.  I am sorry to say it is not so now.  I have closely examined his conduct in reference to “the peculiar institution,” and find it to have been that—­not of a high-minded statesman and true philanthropist—­but of a trimming, time-serving partisan.  He has been a main pillar of slavery; and as the idol of the Whig party, a great stumbling-block in the way of those who sought the overthrow of that system.  The man of whom I have thus freely, yet conscientiously expressed myself, is nevertheless thus spoken of in the New Englander, a quarterly review of high character now open before me:—­“We intend to speak in the praise of Henry Clay.  His place among the great men of our country is permanently fixed.  He stands forth prominent above the politicians of the hour, in the midst of the chosen few who are perpetual guardians of the interest and of the honour [slavery?] of the nation.  The foundations of his fame are laid deep and imperishable, and the superstructure is already erected.  It only remains that the mild light of the evening of life be shed around it.”