Mr.Clay, in turn, did not conceal his hostility to the mode of adjustment proposed in the messages of the President, and defended his own with vigor and eloquence.

Reciting the measures demanded for a fair and lasting settlement, he said there were five wounds, bleeding and threatening the body politic, all needing to be healed, while the President proposed to heal but one.

He described the wounds, numbering them carefully on his fingers as he spoke.

Colonel Benton, who was vindictively opposed to the Omnibus Bill, made sport of the five gaping wounds, and believed that Mr.Clay would have found more wounds if he had had more fingers.

This strife naturally grew more and more severe, making for a time a somewhat serious division among the Democrats, and rending the Whig party asunder, one section following Mr.Clay with great zeal, the other adhering with tenacity to the administration.
DEATH OF PRESIDENT TAYLOR.
The quarrel was growing fiercer day by day, and involving all shades of political opinion, when it was suddenly arrested by the death of General Taylor on the 9th of July (1850).