A biography of John Randolph, of Roanoke with a selection from his speeches |
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 | CHAPTER IV. A biography of John Randolph, of Roanoke |  |
CHAPTER IV.
DEBATES IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.—MR. RANDOLPH'S SPEECH.
He wished to submit a motion to the House, which would require, perhaps at
least justify, some general observations. During his unavoidable absence from
the House the present session, it had been some consolation to reflect, that if he
had been unable to participate any way in the measures which the wisdom of
the government might have devised to meet the necessity of the State, at least
these measures were not any ways retarded or impeded by any opposition of
his. True it is, that at the distance at which I was placed from the seat of
government, and the medium through which I viewed its measures, it was impossible
for me to discern anything like a system pursuing or about to be pursued
by the government of this nation. But this, sir, I attribute to my own
want of information, not to the want of decision or wisdom in the government.
I flattered myself that when I should have reached the seat of government, when
I should he on the spot, I should then at least be able to discern a regular
system of policy pervading the great councils of the nation. But, sir, using all
the means accessible to me during the time I have been here, I have been unable
to detect anything like design, anything like concert, anything like a plan about
to be pursued by this House in relation to our national concerns, I ought perhaps
to say, until this moment. But I understand, sir, at length the budget has
been opened; that a system has been brought forward for raising supplies by
about to make will stand. I had indeed supposed, sir, that when the government
should get into operation this session, the first act would be (if indeed we
could not build up) to pull down that which every one seemed to acknowledge
was inefficient, ridiculous, and hurtful. I allude to the celebrated non-intercourse
law; and I certainly should have felt it my duty to submit a motion on
that subject as soon as I took my seat, if I had not been informed that a bill was
in transitu between the two Houses to effect that object. Why, indeed, the
nation should have tolerated this acknowledged evil, I have never been able
to discover. I had supposed the first to have been to do away this confessed
evil, by way of preparation for some substantial good. In this, however, I
have been unfortunately mistaken. Whether the people of the United States
were ever to retrieve that flourishing commerce which had been so childishly
spoiled, it was not for me to determine. Commerce was a delicate and ticklish
thing: and when it had formed to itself new channels, like the mighty watercourse,
it was difficult indeed to turn it back to the old. But if the commerce of
the United States was ever to be regained, he would venture to say it would
never be brought about by means of additional duties. The embargo and nonintercourse—he
had almost forgotten to mention the non-importation act—had
changed the habits and feelings of the mercantile class in this country, as foreseen
and predicted; a system of smuggling and illegal trade, the most ruinous to
the fair trade, the most injurious to the agricultural interests, and destructive to
the revenue that could be conceived, had been organized. A man had nothing
to do but go into the market and give a premium to have his cotton or tobacco
placed in Liverpool or London, or to have an assorted cargo of prohibited goods
placed in any street in Baltimore or Philadelphia. Whether these habits will
ever be checked, it belongs not to me to predict, but they certainly never will
be checked by high duties operating as a premium upon smuggling. But it may
be said, the nation is in a situation that it may be necessary to act, to do something.
I agree, sir, that it is, although I hold it not to be the least of the gratifications
of a statesman to be apprised when it is necessary not to act. A proposition
is now in substance, and I wish to bring it in form, submitted to this
nation, whether they will encounter additional duties and loans, or whether
they will make a reduction in unprofitable establishments. I think if I have
not forgotten, that the secretary of the treasury, in his annual report, has stated,
that by an adequate reduction in the army and navy, the necessitous state of the
finances may be relieved. But perhaps, sir, it may be said, shall we, in the
present undecided state as respects the belligerents of Europe, make any movement
which shall indicate a disposition on our part to submit to those belligerents?
Certainly not. But, sir, is there any one who hears me who seriously
thought of war? or believed it a relation in which we could be placed? He for
one did not. War with whom? war with France? carried on where? By us
here and by France in old France; for she had no possessions in our neighborhood.
War with England? carried on where? In the hospitals of New
Orleans. Granting our situation with either of the belligerents was a hostile one,
He saw no use in keeping up an establishment, a costly set of tools, which we
could not, if we knew how to use. It is possible, however, that all this time I
may be under a mistake. That there is a system, that there is a plan, a concert,
and if indeed the old maxim be true, ars est celare artem, ours must be one of
the most refined systems; it eludes not only the sight but the touch. It would
elude even a chemical analysis. I would wish to ask the House, after all that
has been said or can be said on the subject, whether we must not (we may
make as many wry faces as we please) go back to that ground, if indeed
it be possible to regain it, which we have so childishly and wantonly abandoned?
We must. We may begin upon the system of loans and taxes, but the
people of the United States will tell us to stop, and we must obey. Will the
people consent to keep up an expensive military and naval establishment, of the
very existence of which they are ignorant until they are made acquainted with
them by burthensome taxes? A debt entailed upon their posterity for what? To
what earthly end? If you cannot keep up your army in time of peace, I ask in
the name of common sense, what will you do with it in time of war? Is there a
man who hears me who feels an atom of additional security for his person or
his property in the army of the United States? Has it been employed to protect
the rights of persons and property? Has it ever been employed but in violation
of the rights of persons and property? In the violation of the writ of habeas
corpus, and as a new modern instrument of ejectment? Sir, go through the
country and put to every freeholder in the land this question. Are you willing
to pay one-third more of duty and 100 per cent. on that third upon sugar,
coffee, &c., for the sake of the establishment of New Orleans? We may say
what we please, sir, but that expedition which, until now, surpassed every
other expedition ever undertaken—the famous expedition against Flushing—
when they had an army as well as climate to contend with—that expedition,
which even their own ministry dare not defend, but quarrel among themselves
who shall have the blame of it, was surpassed in disaster by the mortality at
New Orleans of the American army. And yet, sir, for this shadow, this skeleton—it
is indeed a skeleton of an army—the people of the United States are to
submit to loans and taxes. With respect to the navy, I say nothing of that.
Its exploits are already registered upon our journals, and the fact of the frigate
Philadelphia having run aground on the tail of the Horse-Shoe, is the only one
in our naval annals for several years past. With respect to the war, we have,
thank God, in the Atlantic, a fosse, wide and deep enough to keep off any immediate
danger to our territory. The belligerents of Europe know, as well as
we feel, that war is out of the question. No, sir. If your preparations were
for battle, the state physicians have mistaken the case of the patient. We have
been embargoed and non-intercoursed almost into a consumption; and this is not
the time for battle. If indeed the State was about to undergo inoculation for the
small-pox, this reduction would have been according to the best medical authority.
He would therefore submit to the House, under these views—the best he
had been enabled to take—two distinct propositions, in a single resolution, in
whether they would submit to encounter the European system of loans and
taxes, or whether they would reduce establishments, which to say the best of
them that could be said, were mere incumbrances. It was, he thought, about
nine years since he had made a similar motion in this House, which was the
precursor of the abolition of the internal taxes. He hoped the motion he was
about to make would be the harbinger of protection against the system introduced
into the House yesterday, that at least if it was not made the means of
taking off taxation, it might provide an antidote against it. He then moved
"that the military and naval establishments ought to be reduced." Not that he
was at all opposed to the reduction in any other article of expense. He
believed that many other and important reductions might be made in the
expenses of the government. The spirit of reform had long slept in this House.
He would go as far as any man in retrenching expenses; but he confessed his
object now was to take the bull by the horns. He considered these two objects
to be the great drains and sinks of the public treasure. "I do not profess a better
acquaintance with the public sentiment than others, but I believe, if you were to
propound the question to every man in the United States capable of judging, that
not merely but of them, (always excepting those who draw
emoluments from these establishments, and their immediate connexions, whether
in this House or out of it, the good honest yeomanry of the United States, who
never saw these things, whose only proof of their existence is in the money they
call for), would say in God's name let us have none of them. If we are to have
war, we know that we, the people of the United States, and not the invalids of
the hospitals of the Mississippi, must fight the battles."
The House agreed to consider the resolution; and the question being stated
on its passage, Mr. Eppes "presumed the gentleman did not ask of the House to
decide the question at a moment's warning. He had no objection to refer the
resolution to a committee of the whole House, and discuss it. If gentlemen on
this floor, who voted in 1807 for an increase in the army and naval establishments,
can find in the present position of affairs a sufficient ground to reduce
them, and at the present moment, when perhaps the first gale may bring the
news which may enable us to reduce them with honor;—if it is the intention
of gentlemen thus to stamp themselves with folly in having originally increased
them, I cannot coincide with them." Mr. Eppes made further objections, and
among others, "that there was a bill before the House to increase the duties.
It is reported in blank, and the rates will be fixed at the pleasure of the House.
It is reported on the principle, which is fair, that they who incur the debt
should pay. The deficit in the revenue should be supplied by those who incurred
the expense that caused it. It is perfectly consistent for the gentleman
from Virginia to vote for the repeal of the non-intercourse, because he voted
against it when it passed. It is perfectly consistent in him to reprobate every
measure taken for four or five years past, because he did so at the time. During
the year 1809 our revenue was about ten millions; during this, it will probably
be about eight. The reduction of the army will not do away the necessity
cannot avoid this year, and perhaps some years to come, increasing the duties."
Mr. Randolph said, "he had no idea of provoking the discussion which had
commenced. He was willing to submit his proposition to the same committee
which had under consideration the gentleman's proposition for raising additional
revenue, and let gentlemen take their choice. If Congress did mean to lay additional
duties, it would be necessary to keep them on not only this year, but
many more. He had not expected from the gentleman from Virginia, who is at
the head of the Committee on Finance, such an opinion on the subject of indirect
taxation as was to be gathered from his observations. What would be the
effect of laying additional duties for one or two years? The effect would be,
that the articles on which the duty was laid would not be imported, because
they would have to compete in the market with those already imported at a
less duty, and, moreover, would have to contend against the well grounded expectation
that in a short time the duty would be taken off; so that, instead of
getting revenue, you diminish it by additional duties, because the very articles
which are to produce the revenue will cease to be imported. There is no
clearer question in finance, or even in arithmetic, than this. His colleague had
said, that the revenue having diminished, heavier duties must be imposed on
certain articles. Why? Because the articles, forsooth, are imported under a
disadvantage, owing to the increase of our domestic manufactures. If so, if, in
order to get revenue, higher duties were to be laid on imported articles, not able
to contend in the market under only the present duties, it was altogether a
new plan to him. It must be of the new school of finance. It was altogether
incomprehensible. With respect to the principle, that those who incur debts
should pay them, he agreed with his colleague; and although he was not one
of those who incurred the debt, he was willing to pay it. They would unquestionably,
by this system of duties, destroy what revenue was left, arising
from duties on imports and tonnage. He rather suspected his colleague had
fallen into a small mistake when he spoke of ad valorem duties on goods imported.
He ought to have said on articles dutied; for, under the present régime,
they did not amount precisely to the same thing; and if we got back, which
we did not know to be practicable, to the old system, we should find an
increase of revenue, notwithstanding the rivalry of our own manufactures.
"One word more and I have done, at least for the day. One of the objects
which induced me to submit the motion which is before you, and one
which ought to weigh in its favor, is this, that this planting our soldiers in a
swamp, like so much rice, which my colleague wishes to see brought to light,
and in which I concur, has had one effect; it has given the coup de grace to the
recruiting service, which never was a very flourishing branch of our home manufacture
of a standing army. If it be true, as alleged, that dead men tell no
tales, it is also true that they can draw no rations. But I can demonstrate, however
true in common sense, that it is not true in the treasury; for there never
has been an instance of one dollar refunded in the army or navy for persons
not in place, although the estimate is always made on the calculation that the
not reprobated every measure for four or five years past. I had the honor of
proposing a measure,—that of arming the militia,—which was adopted, with
what grace I will not say, the contract bill, and the alteration in the articles and
rules of war."
We have thus given these speeches of an early period, when Mr. Randolph's
faculties were sound and strong, and while his judgment and experience were
ripe, his imagination in full bloom. It will be seen by these examples, not
particularly selected for their excellence, that he could confine himself to the
questions under debate; a trait which he lost at a much later period, while he
was in the Senate, as will appear on perusing his speech on the Panama resolution;
and would also on that of the judiciary bill, had we inserted it. In
the debate which arose between him and Mr. Montgomery, and which we shall
give presently, on his motion to repeal the non-importation act, we enjoy Mr.
Randolph's happiest vein. His irony and raillery are inimitable. He, however,
maintained an imperturbable countenance of gravity throughout; and although
it was enough to provoke him to have such a presumptuous amendment
offered to his resolution, by a young member of little experience and consequence
in the House, yet he maintained his temper, and was so artful in his
address, that many members could not perceive any just reason for Mr. Montgomery
to get angry, by inferring that Mr. Randolph's remarks concealed or
conveyed a sarcasm against himself.
Mr. Randolph's resolution for reducing the army and navy was referred to
the Committee of the Whole, to which was referred the bill for imposing additional
duties. The question was afterwards divided. That under the head of
the army was sent to some committee, but no reduction was agreed upon at that
session. That in reference to the navy was sent to a select committee, of which
Mr. Randolph was chairman. He reported a bill soon afterwards, recommending
a reduction of the navy, with the exception of three frigates and three sloops
of war, and that the gun-boats and other small vessels should be sold, except
their guns. He supported the bill in a speech of two hours' duration. The
bill encountered strong opposition. The friends of the navy rallied in its favor,
and to their resolute succor that arm of our national defence is indebted for its
salvation, and the opportunity it soon afterwards acquired of repaying its friends
with a full meed of glory and fame for their discernment, patriotism, and forethought,
while it fought itself into universal favor.
On the 31st of March, 1810, Mr. Randolph moved the following resolution:
"Resolved, That the act interdicting commercial intercourse ought to be repealed."
Mr. Montgomery, of Maryland, offered an amendment, "that provision
ought to be made by law for maintaining the rights, honor and independence of
the United States against the edicts of France and England." A motion was
made to postpone the resolution. Mr. Randolph opposed it, and also the
amendment. He said he considered the amendment a substitute for his resolution,
in its object and definite in its terms, this amendment dealt only in pompous and
lofty generalities.
The Speaker observed that the House had not agreed to consider the amendment.
"If the Speaker," continued Mr. R., "will give himself the trouble to
attend for a few moments, he will see that the whole bearing of my observations
will go to show the impropriety of postponing my motion, since it involves the
very serious inconvenience and disadvantage of postponing also the weighty
amendment of the gentleman from Maryland. I am willing to admit that my
proposition is one of that unimportant description, which may, without any
serious national injury, be indefinitely postponed; but I pray the House not to
lose by such a measure, the precious project of the gentleman from Maryland,
who is, no doubt, ready to submit it to a committee for asserting the rights, the
honor and independence of the nation, against the two great belligerents of Europe.
It would be matter of serious national calamity, if, after being near five months
in session, after sanctioning a proposition in substance little differing from this
of the gentleman, when no substitute has been hatched under the wings of the
different committees—it would be a serious national loss, if this vast project,
vast it must be, being circumscribed by no limits (the indefinite is a principal
ingredient of the sublime)—if this vast project, now ready for delivery, should
perish in this unfortunate way." The Speaker, Mr. Varnum, observed, that
the question was to postpone till to-morrow, and not indefinitely. Mr. R.
said, he had misapprehended the question, and wished the Speaker had corrected
him sooner. "I hope, however, that the House will not agree to postpone
this question even till to-morrow. I hope if the amendment of the
gentleman from Maryland is to prevail,—and really, sir, I have a sort of longing
to see what he is about to bring forth, if it prevail,—I hope we shall be speedily
favored with the system he has devised for maintaining `the rights, the honor,
and the independence' of the nation against all assailants. At this late day it
would be unfortunate indeed if the only project which there is the least chance
of bringing to light should be smothered. The time is growing short. None
seem to think we shall sit longer than May. How does the gentleman who
made this motion know, but, that in my anxiety to get a glimpse of the project
I shall agree to incorporate his amendment with my resolution and let the subject
go to two different committees? I trust that the gentleman from Maryland will
be at the head of one of the committees, on which I certainly have no desire to be
placed; and should I be placed on the other, we shall each be acting in our
respective provinces. I in mine, desiring to get at a specified object and in the
most direct way; and he in his, supporting, Atlas-like, upon his shoulders the
vast interests of the State." Mr. Montgomery said in reply, "that he moved
the amendment with a view of the gentleman from Virginia being chairman of the
committee to whom the whole subject would be referred, and that the talents
which have been of so great a benefit to the nation for two or three years past,
might be again exerted, and something devised by way of resistance to the
decrees of France and Great Britain. That the gentleman might again have an
respect to the sarcasm against the generality of my proposition, I disregard it.
I acted from a sense of duty in proposing it, and shall continue to do so, regardless
of the gentleman's sarcasms. If the resolution be committed, and I a
member of the committee, I will exert my little talent to devise some means of
resistance. I do not say that I am competent to the task; it is for the gentleman
himself, with his vastly serviceable talents and extraordinary imagination, to
devise some strong, energetic measure. I have not moved the amendment with
the view of becoming the Atlas of our political world. I am no competitor of
the gentleman; I am not to be driven out of my course; and if the gentleman
expects to brow-beat me on this, or any other occasion, he will find that he has
mistaken his man." Mr. Rhea, of Tennessee, expressed a wish, that if gentlemen
were about to bring forth vast and grand projects, they would wait till the
post-road bill should enable them to transmit them with more facility through
the country.
After some remarks from Mr. Dana, about a trilateral, triangular, prismatic
war, which had been recommended by a committee at the second Session of the
tenth Congress, Mr. Randolph again took the floor. He said, "it was not at all
surprising that any man who could once bring his mind to believe that the non-intercourse,
as it was called and now practised, agreeably to the representation
of the Secretary of the Treasury, now on your table, was resistance to the
two great belligerents, could also believe that the repeal of the non-intercourse
laws would be resistance to them. But what, in fact, is the nature of the proposition
which it is moved to perform? It is proposed by me to do that immediately
and beneficially for ourselves and for the public, openly, in a manly and
direct way, which every one sees will be done in an indirect one, when Congress
adjourns. And if it be more resistance to the belligerents to adjourn and
sneak out of this non-intercourse, than to repeal it, be it so; but in the merit of
that sort of resistance I am determined not to participate. With respect to any
project which one so little acquainted with the course of public affairs as myself
the present winter, might be supposed capable of bringing forward, in order to
maintain our maritime rights against the European powers, I hope I may be
permitted to observe, without any intentional disrespect to the Executive, that
when he shall have done that which (I do not say he has not) the Constitution
prescribes to him as an imperious duty, I shall do mine. And surely it is a sufficient
stretch of presumption in me to propose to do away that which is allowed
to be mischievous in its operation, instead of attempting to build up with materials
utterly unfit for service, and on grounds with which, on account of my
absence during the present Session, I may be presumed to be less acquainted
than other members. When the President shall have done that which the Constitution
prescribes as his duty, it will be time enough for me to do mine. The
Constitution after having, in a preceding section, given to the President of the
United States certain powers, in the execution of which we are to presume he
is to be governed by a sound discretion, goes on to use this very strong and impressive
language: `He shall from time to time give to Congress information
as he shall judge necessary and expedient.' * * * If he on whom (do what
you will) the execution of those measures must ultimately rest, has recommended
no measures as necessary and expedient, it hardly behoves (I will not say
a member of this House, but) me to `step in where angels fear to tread;' and,
until the President of the United States shall disclose his plan of operations to
this House; until the efficient prime minister of this country, who has an almost
omnipotent control over our foreign affairs, and nearly as great over our domestic,"
(how applicable to the present time!) "shall disclose his sentiments, it is idle
and ridiculous for members of this House to be popping up in their seats, as the
shreds and patches and disjointed members of a syslem that can never make a whole
one. System supposes connection and sympathy of parts, and after giving as much
credit as you please to the independence of the two Houses of Congress, I speak
now of no undue influence, but of fair constitutional influence and duty too, the members
of this House cannot make a system of foreign policy which shall seem good
in the eyes of the President, and which he can exercise beneficially to the State,
unless he be consulted in some way directly or indirectly as to the nature and
extent of that system. It becomes a question whether the direct influence of
the President shall not supersede one of a worse kind, if such there be. The
President has a great duty to perform. I conclude that he is unable to devise
any system that he thinks now necessary, or he would have before now submitted
it. There is, then, no system. Far be it from me to attempt to make
one, especially out of such discordant materials." * * * *
On the 11th of April, 1810, Mr. Randolph introduced a resolution, "That
the members of this House go into mourning, by wearing crape on their left
arms, as a token of respect for the memory of Lieut. Col. William Washington
of the army of the Revolution."
The resolution was opposed by Mr. Smilie, of Pennsylvania, on the ground
that no such respect had been shown to the memory of Generals Greene, Wayne,
De Kalb, and others. Mr. Randolph said, it was far from his intention to lessen,
by any amplification of his, the impression of that merit which the bare mention
of the name of Gen. William Washington was calculated to make on the mind of
every man who heard him:—"It is not the least unequivocal proof of that
worth, that it was not extinguished by the effulgence of his great kinsman's
glory, with which it was brought daily into comparison. The reputation which
can stand such an ordeal as this, is beyond the praise or blame of an humble
individual like me. If to the proposition an objection should be raised on the
score of the rank which that officer bore in the late American army, permit me
to suggest that it is a testimony to valor, not rank. It is not in rank to add to
the infamy of an Arnold, or the glory of a Washington." The resolution was
lost. Afterwards, in order that by the rejection of the resolution, it might not
be inferred that the House intended any disrespect, or an intention to wound the
feelings of the surviving relatives of the deceased, the House passed a resolution
deprecating any such intention. Among some additional remarks of Mr. Randolph,
and Gen. Washington to the shield of Fabius.
In the session of 1811, Mr. Randolph did not appear in his seat till the 23d of
January. The House had then before it a bill to re-charter the Bank of the United
States, which had undergone considerable discussion. With a view of bringing
the debate to a close, the House had agreed to hold a night session. Several
motions had been made to adjourn, without effect. Mr. Randolph then repeated
the motion, giving as a reason that he was fatigued after his long journey, and
felt himself unfitted to go through a night's sitting, and the House adjourned.
The bill, however, was indefinitely postponed the next day by a vote of 65 to 64,
Mr. Randolph voting against the postponement.
February 2d, 1811, the non-intercourse law was to go into operation. A
bill was before the House concerning commercial intercourse, being a supplementary
act; likewise a bill to admit to entry all vessels arriving from Great Britain
after the 2d of February. As Mr. Randolph, the year before, had moved to
repeal the non-importation act, so he now moved that the Committee on Foreign
Relations be instructed to bring in a bill to repeal the act respecting commercial
intercourse between the United States, Great Britain, and France. He was
opposed by his old antagonist, Mr. Eppes. Mr. Randolph had offered some
prefatory remarks in support of his motion, and in answer to Mr. Eppes, he
observed, "It would give him pleasure to comply with the request of his colleague,
to offer his resolution separately, and not as an amendment to Mr.
Eppes' motion to refer the bill back to the Committee of Foreign Relations, were
it not this non-importation law went into operation this day. The truth was,
if there were to be any operation at all in point of fact; if the medicines were to
work; if it were to have any practical effect, he would let it pass. But although,
in point of fact, it would do the belligerents no harm, and unquestionably do us
no good, it would be made an engine for sinking the value of the property of
his constituents. He was opposed to this sort of legislative quackery. It impaired
our own constitution to the injuring our health, without affecting our
enemies. He thought the gentleman had stated there had been no case in which
the Berlin and Milan decrees had applied to our property since the 1st of
November. In the name of common sense, of what consequence is it to us, if
we are plundered and robbed, whether it be under one decree or another? Will
the gentleman say that there is no case in which our property has been robbed,
and the proceeds put into the French treasury? It is of no matter or consequence
to us whether we are murdered and robbed on the high way, or the rights
of hospitality be disregarded, and we murdered in our beds, under the protection
of the law. As relates to us the question is altogether immaterial. There is a
deeper dye of depravity in one case than in the other, as relates to the offender;
not a shade of difference as relates to the offended. If seems, sir, that we attend
of late so much to mode, that if we were not robbed and plundered after this
particular manner, we may be robbed and plundered to our heart's content after
another fashion. The question with us is whether we are robbed and plundered.
It may be matter at Paris whether there is so much in the mode, but as
taken. * * * His colleague had justified the seizure of our property in French
ports as a retaliation for the alleged seizure of French property in our ports,
which he allowed not to have taken place. Was it of any consequence to the
people of the United States, if they were plundered under false and stale pretences,
what those pretences were? One word on the subject of the faith said
to have been pledged by the Act of May last. It cannot have been so pledged.
Pledged to whom? to Great Britain? Unquestionably not. To France?
Unquestionably not. What is our law? A rule of action to whom? For
ourselves. We have been aggrieved by the two great belligerents of Europe:
we pass a law for the regulation of our own conduct, the operation of which is
to depend upon certain contingencies. Is that a pledge of faith to either of these
parties? Unquestionably not. But this it does not become me to prove. It
behoves my colleague to show how it is a pledge of our faith. With regard to
the anxiety of the President to maintain peace, he presumed there could be no
doubt about it. He never doubted it. He submitted to the House whether the
late occurrences did not afford an opportunity of getting rid of this wretched
system of lame expedients, in which they have embarked since the abandonment
of the embargo. It might be said that in a short time news might be received of
the repeal of the Orders in Council, which would, in the opinion of some, render
this motion unnecessary. The law is a rule of conduct for us, and no foreign
nation has a right to know of its existence; and if news of the rescinding of the
Orders in Council were to arrive this day, he should still be clearly of opinion
that they ought to repeal this law. He looked upon the law as being mischievous;
as having no operation on the Orders in Council and Bonaparte's decrees.
If it had none, why retain it? Why keep it up here as a germ of difficulty?
Let us have clear stays! Let us have a tobula rasa, and if we must fight, let us
fight without parchment chains about our hands."
These speeches afford examples of beautiful declamation, and although they
are not deep, profound, and statesmanlike, yet they are much more tolerable,
pleasant and digestible, than many long, elaborate, documentary ones, delivered
on these occasions, fertile, if in nothing else, in the generation of these monstrous
and overgrown productions of the brain, which were mostly still-born in
the labor-pains of parturition. To observe the anxiety and restlessness of
members to get the floor, and catch the eye of the Speaker, in which struggle
there would frequently be half-a-dozen up at a time, while some were in labor
of their speeches, and others just beginning to conceive, was a most ludicrous
scene. Mr. Randolph never entered into a contest of that sort, but if he saw an
eagerness in members to give their views, he generally waited till the last one
had concluded, and the question was ordered to be put. In the remarks of his, on
his motion to reduce the army and repeal the non-importation act, we see that
he is keenly sensitive on the subject of the monstrous wrongs inflicted on us by
the hostile governments of Great Britain and France. He opposes these weak
measures of non-intercourse and restrictions as totally inefficient, and unworthy
the character of a proud and free people, and yet, strange as it may appear, when
of a long speech against the measure, he affected to be driven to tears, that
two such enlightened and kindred nations, that equally worshipped the only
true and living God, should imbrue their hands in each other's blood.
We may mention here, that the House having determined to come to a final
decision, after a long discussion of the bill in relation to our foreign intercourse,
had decided to hold an evening session on the 27th of February. They had
hardly met, however, for that purpose, before Mr. Randolph entered, and immediately
moved to postpone the bill till the morrow, alleging, as an excuse, that
he was not prepared to vote, and was too much fatigued to sit it out. The
Intelligencer states that much irritation was caused by the motion between him
and Mr. Eppes, but does not give the particulars. It is probable that it was on
this occasion that on Mr. Randolph charging Mr. Eppes with saying what was
not true, in imputing to him as a motive that led him to make the motion, a wish
to delay, embarrass, and finally defeat the bill, that the challenge passed from
Mr. Eppes, mentioned some time before. Mr. Cheeves, of S. C., endeavored to
make peace between them, and though a friend to both, said he felt obliged to
rise (the first time in his life for such a purpose), to call the gentleman from Virginia,
Mr. Randolph, to order. Mr. R. in reply, said he appreciated his motives,
but could not find any other words than those he had used, that the gentleman
from Virginia, Mr. E., had said that which was not true. Could he (said he)
dive into his bosom and there discover the motives which actuated him? He
must therefore repeat the words. I am afraid Mr. Randolph's temper was exexasperated
that night, and his irritability increased by another cause, besides the
insufficient one furnished by Mr. Eppes' remarks.
On the 4th of November, 1811, Congress was convened in pursuance of a
proclamation of the President. Mr. Clay was chosen Speaker, although he had
for the first time appeared as a member in the House. When the message and
accompanying documents were proposed to be referred to different standing and
select committees, which is called dissecting the message, Mr. Randolph
opposed it, on the ground that members would then have no opportunity of discussing
its merits, or giving their opinions on the policy of the measures recommended
by the President. He wanted more time for that purpose, and moved
the committee to rise and report progress. The motion was opposed by Mr.
Smilie and Mr. Findlay of Pennsylvania, on the ground of the delay it would
occasion, and that every opportunity would be afforded to the gentleman from
Virginia to discuss the propriety and the policy of the different measures recommended
by the executive, when the committees made their reports. Mr. Randolph
said, "He was not ready for the question. The memory of the worthy
gentleman from Pennsylvania was not very good. It is not to be wondered at.
Age brings its experience, and many valuable qualities, but it does not improve
the memory. He himself felt the effects of it, and much more might the gentleman
from Pennsylvania. He did not believe that the course now proposed to be
taken with the message was the same that had always been pursued. He recollected
that when he first had the honor of a seat in the House, the message of the
He would ask the gentleman from Pennsylvania by what magic or other power
he has been able to dive into his bosom to know that he meant to make strictures
on the message? The gentleman goes on to state that if I have any such observations
to make, this is the accepted hour. Why this? Why more than any
other hour this week? Why do gentlemen, just when we have got into a committee
on the message, show such an aguish trepidation to get out of it? Is the message
of so little importance that they will not give it attention? They will not
say so. The gentleman from Pennsylvania says, that when these committees
report, every gentleman will have an opportunity of expressing his opinions on
the several parts into which it will be dissected. But the gentleman must
know, that even in physics, much less in politics, all the parts are not always
equal to the whole. That, however true it may be in mathematics, that all the
parts are equal to the whole, it is not so in politics. Suppose one of these committees
report, and the report comes under consideration, members would be
excluded from touching upon other portions of the message. If this course be
pursued, I give you warning (said he), that if some gentleman of this House,
who has not signed the 39 Articles, shall rise to make his observations, and
shall notice any part of the message not before the House, he will be called to
order, and informed that that part of the message is yet sleeping with a select
committee. But the gentleman asks, why not now go into the discussion?—
when it is known the documents are with the printer, and not within reach of
the House. The true course is the one which I have suggested, a course which
will be acceptable to the nation. Why (said he) send out such reams of the
National Intelligencer by mail but to inform the people? If no discussion is to
take place on the message, through what channel are these committees to receive
the opinion of this House? Are they to go to work blindfolded? On Spanish
relations, for instance, what member possesses the faculty of looking into the
heart, and of saying, what is the opinion of the House on that subject? Would
it not be better (said he) to come to some resolution which should be directory to
these committees? To act otherwise, was putting the cart before the horse.
This course would avoid commitments and recommitments;—he hoped, therefore,
the committee would rise and report progress."
The motion after debate, and further remarks by Mr. Randolph, was modified
by his accepting the amendment offered by Mr. Macon, his friend, to let the subject
lie on the table till to-morrow. But the House refused the motion. He observed,
among other things, that he wished to say one word in reply to a remark
of the gentleman from Pennsylvania, which at the time he believed out of order.
He had said, "if gentlemen can justify themselves in protracting the public
business—well. He had no other views than the interests of his constituents."
An insinuation that other gentlemen have other views, and that other gentlemen
can justify themselves for protracting public business. Mr. R. "made no profession
of patriotism in that House. His property was in terra firma, and he
was born in the State which he represented, and he loved it the better for it.[3]
friend from North Carolina had said the other day, the public business will not
be done till the roads are good in the spring. He hoped, however, that while
the gentleman from Pennsylvania is satisfied with his own motives, he will
allow other gentlemen to have as clear consciences as himself."
On the 21st of November, 1811, the Speaker, Mr. Clay, communicated to the
House, a petition from Matthew Lyon, of Kentucky (formerly of Vermont),
stating that he had been prosecuted and convicted under the sedition law, and
that one part of his punishment had been a heavy fine ($1000), which he prays
may be refunded. One member moved it be referred to the committee of claims,
while others preferred a select committee.
Mr. Randolph said he had no doubt it would be recollected that, at the first
session of Congress under the administration of the present President, the session
of May, 1809, a committee was raised to inquire whether any and what prosecutions
had been instituted before the Courts of Common Law, and to report such
provisions as in their opinion may be necessary for securing the freedom of
speech and of the press. Congress adjourned, after a short session, in June.
The chairman of that committee was directed to address letters to the clerks of
the several courts in which such proceedings had commenced. These answers,
received in the recess (all except one, which the chairman had found among
his private papers during the present session), were transmitted to the clerk of
this House, in whose possession it is presumed they now are. The chairman of
that committee, at the two succeeding sessions, by the visitation of God, and
from circumstances beyond his control, for the first time since he had the honor
of a seat on this floor, was prevented from attending his duty till the session
had considerably advanced, otherwise he would have felt it obligatory on him to
have called the attention of Congress to this subject. It was his intention, at
the present session, without knowing anything about this petition, to have
called the attention of the House, among other things, to it, at an early day.
He thought it behoved this House, as the guardian of the public purse and public
weal, to take care that the stream of public justice be preserved pure and free
from pollution: and whether persons have suffered by prosecutions under the
Sedition Law, or under the Common Law of England, as modified by the laws
of the United States, in their corporate capacity, he was for affording them relief.
He wished to see if any of our citizens had received injury from prosecutions of
this kind; and, if they had, to redress the wrong by such a prospective measure
as would prevent the occurrence of similar mischief. It seems idle, said Mr. R.,
for any man to undertake, by statute, to do that which the great charter of our
confederation has endeavored to do in vain. It is, it appears, impossible to
prevent men, heated by party and seeking only the gratification of their own passions,
from trampling in the dust the charter which we have sworn to support.
For, though our Constitution has said, in the broadest terms which our language
knows, that the freedom of speech and of the press should not be abridged, men
have been found, so lost to all sense of their country's good, as to pass the act
commonly called the Sedition Act, and to send out our judges to dispense, not
statutory provisions, similar abuses. But though, formed as we are, we cannot
attain perfection, we ought, in imitation of a divine example, to aspire to it, and
endeavor to preserve, in purity, the great Magna Charta of our country. The
subject might appear frivolous to others. Mankind has very little improved
since this truth was promulgated. He knew that men, intent on worldly
things, with their snouts grovelling in the mud, who hold everything but sordid
pelf, and still more disgraceful office, as dross and dust, would not think it worth
while to attend to things of this kind. Nor did he wish to set himself up for a
political Pharisee, and thank God that he was not as other men. He then moved
to amend the reference by adding to it, "With instructions to inquire what prosecutions
have been instituted before the courts of the United States for libels
under the Sedition Law, or Common Law, and by what authority; and to make
such provision as they may deem necessary for securing the freedom of speech
and of the press." He hoped this amendment would be agreed to. It is evident,
when we came into power, when we succeeded to our predecessors, proper measures
were not taken for purifying the violent temper of the day, for preventing
the recurrence of prosecutions of this kind. He recollected having heard, at the
close of the administration of the second President of the United States, one of
the most beautiful pieces of declamation, from a gentleman from South Carolina,
which he had ever heard, in which he conjured the House to re-enact the Sedition
Law, because, said he, we are about to surrender the government into the
hands of men in whom we have no confidence, and I wish to retain this law
as our shelter, because, by this, if we are prosecuted for a libel, we can give the
truth in evidence. He said he did not believe the gentleman believed a word of
what he said. He did not suppose that a prosecution for a libel under the Common
Law, could take place under a republican administration. He thought the
gentleman was making the best apology he could for the Sedition Law, and that
he was glad to find himself in a minority on his motion for continuing it. But,
said he, experience teacheth. I find it possible even for the Pharisees themselves
sometimes to slide—sometimes to fall. He thought it due to our country and to
ourselves, that, whatever abuse existed, without stopping to inquire whether the
sufferer was a Catholic or a Protestant, a Federalist, a Democrat, or a Monarchist,
to redress the wrong. What would be said in a court of justice, in a case
of murder? It would not be thought worth while to inquire what was the
offender's politics, or whether honest or the contrary. He considered honest
men as of right politics. It unfortunately happens, said he, that some men
make up in zeal what they know themselves to be wanting in honor and
honesty. The amendment was agreed to, and the petition referred. A bill was
reported favorable to the petitioner. It met with much opposition, and did not
pass; and, although similar ones have been frequently introduced since, I am
not sure that that measure of redress has yet been offered to the sufferer or his
representative.
Mr. Randolph had also given offence to his talented colleague, Philip P.
Barbour, by a reply to some remarks of his against the position assumed by
Mr. Randolph in some important debate. It happened that two other members
on Mr. Randolph. When he got up to notice them in his rejoinder, he
used the quotation from Lear, "The little dogs and all, Blanch, Tray, and
Sweetheart, see, they bark at me," and pointed with his finger to each of the
guilty members as he repeated the words. This called up Mr. Barbour, who
demanded, in a passionate tone, whether he alluded to him by his expression of
little dog. Mr. R., in explanation, deprecated any wish or intention of wounding
the feelings or of having any dispute with his colleague, and there the matter
ended. During one of our night sittings, of which we had many, Mr. Randolph
moved the House to adjourn. It was late, much confusion prevailed, and
while he was making some observations in support of his motion, one of his
colleagues entered, and before he reached his seat, staggered about over the
chairs and desks, in a state far short of sobriety. A member got up and begged
Mr. R. to speak a little louder, as he could not understand what he said. Mr.
R., looking at his colleague, as he reclined with his head on his desk, observed
that he should be glad if the gentleman was the only one present to whom his
remarks were unintelligible. Many of the members were worn out, and from
having had a sleepy dose administered to them by the long-winded harangues
of some of the opposition (one of whom had bored the House with a speech of
three hours' duration), were overtaken with sleep. Mr. Randolph! asked
"What was the use of sitting here? The House is far from being wide awake to
the important question before it." And leaving his place, went about among the
dozing members, saying, here is one fast asleep! and shaking him, told him he
had better be at home in bed. From him he proceeded to the rest in succession,
till he had effectually aroused them and brought them to a rather shameful consciousness
of their awkward situation, to the no small amusement of the
rest.
In January, 1816, considerable discussion took place in both Houses, on the
bill for carrying into effect the convention of commerce between Great Britain
and the United States, entered into the 3d of July the year before, between
Messrs. Gallatin, Clay, and J. Q. Adams with Messrs. Goulburn, Robinson,
and William Adams, on the part of Great Britain. The debate principally
turned, not so much upon the treaty, but the necessity of the passage of a law
to carry it into effect, and also to modify or repeal some of the acts laying discriminating
duties on goods imported from Great Britain. On the 25th of January,
Mr. R. addressed the House the second time on the subject. When he
took his seat yesterday, said, he, "he had considered the bill then and now under
discussion, as one of perhaps as trivial a nature as ever engaged the attention
of this House, or of any legislative body. But of this bill, it might be
said, vires acquirit eundo, and of this, perhaps, he was about to afford the House
some proof, by adding his little rill to swell the torrent of debate to which the
bill had given rise. He had no intention to utter one word on the subject till he
had heard doctrines against which he felt himself bound to enter his solemn
protest. He might say of this bill, as of some diseases, the danger arose from
the mode of treatment; in the doctor, not in the disease. He hoped the gentleman
doctrines from him to-day, against which he felt it his duty to protest. * * *
If he understood the gentleman, he had declared that a treaty, being in the nature
of a compact, touching the interests of other nations than our own, it
therefore followed that the treaty-making power, so long as it confined itself to
its own sphere, that of contract, so long as it received equivalents for what it
gave, whether real or nominal, according to the gentleman's doctrine, no matter,
they are not to be ripped up, not to be examined. That inasmuch as the interests
of two nations instead of one are concerned in all treaties, therefore the
treaty-making power is paramount to the legislative power. * * * That
treaties, being paramount, repealed the laws of the land, so far as they came in
collision with any article of a treaty which was confined to the legitimate objects
of a treaty, viz. to contracts with another nation. But the gentleman from
South Carolina had, with peculiar infelicity of illustration, drawn examples
from despotic governments. Would a treaty made by the Sultan of Constantinople,
or the Emperor of France, go to repeal a law of Turkey or France?
Certainly it would. For what are the laws of a despotic government but the
breath of the sovereign, call him what you will? And was that an analogy on
which to found a construction of our constitution, on which the gentleman had
bestowed so high but not undeserved an eulogium? No. It was because a
treaty made by a despotic power will repeal the law of the land there, that a
treaty made by presidential authority will not repeal a law of the land here. To
come to the gentleman's experimenta crucis, and try the strength of his argument,
that a treaty is paramount to the law of the land. Suppose the treaty of
peace had contained a provision for ceding the whole or a part of Canada as an
equivalent for Jamaica, or for Ireland; would the gentleman consider such a
stipulation, although in the nature of a contract, as amounting to a law of the
land? But he might be told, that that which is paramount to the law of the
land is not paramount to the constitution, and that the constitution prohibits the
cession of a state or part of a state to a foreign power. It was unquestionably
true, whatever might be his opinion, that such is not the universal opinion, although
it might perhaps be proved by the event, that as the United States had
acquired, heretofore, territory by treaty, we have also parted with territory by
treaty. As in the instance of Moose Island, and it may be in the instance of
the new boundary line to be run between us and Canada, that it may be so run as
to take off a part of the territory which was a part of the United States, yes, a
part of the good old thirteen United States.
"But the gentleman had said something of the effect of a contract on an individual
or an oath previously taken. What analogy (Mr. R. asked) was there
between the absurd and preposterous conduct of an individual who attempts to
tie himself up by an oath from imprudence, from the gambling-table, from the
bottle, from squandering his estate, and the acts of government, especially as
those acts are affected by the acts of two branches of the government farthest
removed from the people, who do not speak their sense as much as we do. He
adverted to the observation of the gentleman from South Carolina, that the President
of war by making a treaty of peace, over which this House could have no control.
He agreed with that gentleman, that the power of putting an end to the
calamities of war by making a treaty of peace, was the most important ever
granted by a free people except the exercise of the power to declare war. He
agreed with him also, that after Congress had declared war, the President and
the Senate might restore peace; but he could not agree with him that a treaty,
although it should confine itself to what the gentleman called a contract, was
tantamount to law, and competent to repeal a law. Suppose that the treaty of
peace had been a treaty of alliance, and had stipulated that the United States
should levy an army of 100,000 men, that they should be sent to the Continent
to aid the British, Russian, Prussian, and Austrian army at the Battle of Waterloo.
Would this House have been bound to raise the men? Would Congress
have been bound to provide the means for maintaining them? Certainly
not. * * * In the declaration of war, it had been urged by the gentleman
from South Carolina, that the House had acted in a judicial capacity. In a judicial
capacity! He had heard it asked, he said, in and out of this House,
whether the House had acted judiciously in declaring war, but he never heard
it before agitated whether the House had acted judicially on the occasion. He
had never before heard it doubted, whether the Congress in passing an act had
acted judicially or legislatively." (Here Mr. Calhoun made a brief explanation
and statement of the extent of his position.) Mr. Randolph thanked the gentleman
for having stated his argument exactly as he understood it. He would
put it to this House, to the nation, to every man, woman and child in the nation.
Suppose the treaty of London had been unsuspended by the truce of
Amiens, would the declaration of war with Great Britain have put an end to
that treaty? It would: and would that act have been a judicial act, when the
consent of the President and Senate was necessary to our acting at all? Did
the gentleman mean to say, that when the treaty with France was repealed by
an act making war during Mr. Adams' Administration, it was repealed by a
judicial act? Was it possible? Was there a man wide awake who could advance
such an opinion? This House, he said, acted judicially when it decided
on the qualifications of a member; the Senate, when it tried an impeachment.
"But how could that be a judicial act which begins, `Be it enacted by the Senate
and House of Representatives." Go to the Secretary of State's office, if the
rolls be still in existence, and see in what that act differs from any other. The
title is as plain, the parchment as smooth. This act, which repealed an existing
treaty, which treaty could not be revived after peace, unless renewed and
again ratified, differs in no respect or form or solemnity from the simplest law
ever made for the relief of a petitioner before this House. It does not differ
from any other legislative act, and you have no judicial power, so far as my recollection
now supplies me, beyond the right to try the title to a member's seat,
and the right to expel a refractory and disorderly member."
Mr. R. said he did not mean to enter into the comparison between the constitution
of Great Britain and that of the United States, considering it irrelevant.
under it, whether legislative or judicial, provided the precedents are taken from
good constitutional times. For he would never take precedents under any administration
during times of great turbulence or excitement, when the best of
us are under temptations, to which most of us yield, of carrying our passions
and prejudices into public life. With all due submission to the gentleman from
South Carolina, and to this House, he did declare that the President and Senate
did not and never had possessed the power, by any contract with a foreign
power, of repealing any law of the land or enacting any law in its stead.
This is too dangerous a power to be given to the President and the Senate under
such a sweeping clause. If this bill had passed the house sub silentio, if it had
been carried or rejected, he never should have thought much of it, for it would
never have assumed to him that aspect which it had done since this morning—
since the gentleman had asserted that so long as they confined themselves to the
legitimate sphere of contract, the President and Senate might exercise a power
superior to all law whatever. Mr. R. said he was happy that the gentleman
had dissipated in a degree the horrid phantom which had so much alarmed, not
his imagination, but his judgment. The gentleman had admitted that there was
a certain influence, a certain constitutional check on the President and Senate of
the United States. For example, impeachment as regards the President, and
public opinion as regards the Senate; and that the spirit of the Constitution
would at all times meliorate the power, which, in the gentleman's opinion, the
President and Senate possessed of violating any law of the land. He granted
that was the case, and that the first reflection on it had caused him to depreciate
this bill below its actual importance. For he really had thought the House was
making a great deal out of nothing, swelling a mole-hill into a mountain, until
he heard the debate, when he became convinced, that so far as the power of the
House of Representatives was important in the Constitution of the United
States, so far as it behooves the House to hold the power which had been conferred
on them by the nation for the nation's good; that so far, this was a question
of importance. That the time would ever come when the President of
the United States should dare to negotiate a treaty which should meet with the
decided reprobation of the people, was another question. That the time would
come when the House of Representatives should have the incivility to refuse to
pass laws to carry into effect such a treaty, was also another question. "I do
not believe," said he, "that either of these periods will happen in my lifetime,
or in yours, because I believe, sir—I hope I am not mistaken—that the good
sense of the people of the United States, if it please God to permit us to remain
in peace—that their good sense, in spite of all the efforts to swell up great standing
armies, mighty navies, heavy taxes, and to advance the glory (as it is called)
of the government under which I live, in the blood and misery of the people;
that they will put an end, as they have once before put an end, to such projects—the
same in kind, but differing in degree. * * * * * *
Suppose that a part of the contract by this treaty had been, that each party
should burn and destroy, or dismantle an equal number of ships of the line and
within the legitimate sphere of contracts, it would have been a bargain, it
would have even reciprocity; it would have kept the word of promise to the
ear, but broke it to the hope. But then comes in the power of impeachment.
The great remedy! I have no idea of it. It has been tried and found wanting—in
the case of a member of the other House, and in the case of a high
judicial officer. The power of impeachment appeared to him not the daily
bread, but the extreme medicine of the Constitution. He had no faith in it.
He had no faith in a course of mercury to restore health and vigor to that constitution
which was broken down and destroyed by disease. Impeachment
may be a terrible punishment to the young and aspiring; but to those who
are retiring from the political theatre amidst the plaudits of a great part of the
nation over which they preside, such a punishment had no terrors."
Mr. Randolph took an active part on the revenue bills, as the one for continuing
the present rates of duties, or what were called the double duties, as well as
the bill to continue in force the acts laying a duty on bank notes and notes discounted,
and that laying a duty on sugar refined in the United States; and although
they severally encountered his opposition, they all passed by considerable
majorities. On the 26th of the month, on the revenue bill, Mr. Randolph
occupied the whole day in delivering his speech on the state of the nation, and
as he had not concluded when the committee rose, he spent the greater part of
the next day in the same manner. He spoke afterwards at great length in reply
to Mr. Pinckney of Maryland, on the British commercial treaty, but having already
given his sentiments on the subject, we do not deem it necessary to add
his second attempt, though it fully equalled, if not surpassed, the first in power
of argument and happy illustration.
On Friday, the 9th of February, Mr. Randolph offered some remarks in support
of his resolution of inquiry into the constitutionality of the appointment of
P. B. Porter, as commissioner under the late treaty of Ghent. "The House
would recollect," he said, "that at the time he had submitted notice of his motion,
he had distinctly stated that it was not for him to pronounce whether the
office in question was or was not created during the time for which the late
members of this House had been elected to serve. Some very obliging friend
had been kind enough to hint to him that perhaps he had not pondered on the
subject so well as he ought, before bringing it before the House; that this office
under the authority of the United States, being created by the treaty, was called
into existence, although it remained vacant until lately, at the moment when
the exchange of ratifications took place. This might or might not be; for what
was this argument but to assume (he would say, to beg) the very question concerning
the treaty-making power, which this House had already decided in the
negative, viz. that a treaty, without the intervention or instrumentality of this
House, is, ipso facto, the law of the land. He should be extremely ashamed
ever to venture so crude a motion before this House as this would have been, if
he had not taken into consideration, with deep and mature consideration too, the
point which some were obliging enough to suppose he had overlooked, and
which he had heard, he did not say, uttered on this floor, in respect to the treaty-making
power, this case of the honorable member from New York, who
had recently vacated his seat in this House, came fully under the purview of
the article of the Constitution; and he would go farther, as special pleading
was the order of the day, and say, if it did not come within its purview, in this
view of the subject, it nevertheless would in another. It did not follow that,
because the appointment in question did not come within the purview of this
section, for particular reasons, it might not, for some other very substantial reason,
which was not disclosed, but about which he had no concealment, as he
had not, nor never would have, about public men or measures."
He then read the clause of the 6th article of the Constitution, in these words;
"No Senator or Representative shall, during the time for which he was elected,
be appointed to any civil office under the authority of the United States, which
shall have been created, or the emoluments whereof shall have been increased
during such time."' Mr. Forsyth thought the terms of this motion did not embrace
the question which he understood it was the gentleman's desire to place
before the House; the acceptance of a civil office not being an offence against
any provision of the Constitution. He should be pleased to see it modified so as
to place the question entirely before the House.
Mr. Randolph had no objection to any modification which should attain his
object. Had not the gentleman vacated his seat in this House? Was he amenable
to the order of the Speaker, as a member? How did his seat become
vacated?—By his acceptance of a civil office under the United States, which the
gentleman from Georgia had said was no offence against the Constitution. "No,"
said Mr. R., "it is neither an offence against the Constitution, nor contra bonos
mores, that I know; but there is a modification of the proposition which may
make it contrary to the Constitution. The committee is to try that question.
Is there not an issue made up?" Mr. R. said, he had no more doubt that this
appointment was a breach of the Constitution, than the acceptance of another
office by a late member of this House; the office having been created and the
salary fixed a few days before his term of service expired, was an evasion of
the provision of the Constitution he had just read.
Mr. Forsyth, having modified the resolution, said he should still vote against
it. The appointment of a committee he thought unnecessary. The gentleman
from Virginia supposed the office had been created during the time for which
the gentleman had been elected. But the person named in the resolve had been
elected to serve from the 4th of March, 1815, to the 4th of March, 1817. The
office he had accepted had existed prior to the 4th of March, 1815, or it is not
yet created. Either it has no existence, or it has existed from the day on which
the ratifications of the treaty of peace were exchanged—the 18th of February,
1815.
Mr. Randolph said, "the gentleman's dilemma, which he had so triumphantly
presented to this House, carried on its horns no terrors for him. The gentleman
ought to be obliged to him, by giving him timely notice of this motion, to enable
attending a bull-fight of the Portuguese, in their ancient and better days.
The horns of the animal turned out were covered with leather—they threatened,
but wounded not; and that is the case with the horns with which the
gentleman makes full butt at me. The gentleman says that the office to which
the late member from New York was appointed, was in existence from the 18th
of February, 1815; or, because the House has not definitely acted on the treaty,
the office itself is in embryo, ready to be called, but not yet springing into existence.
Would the gentleman tell the House—would he tell the nation—that to
appoint to an office not in existence, and to accept an office that has no existence,
is no offence? On the contrary, if the office was not in existence, the indecent
hurry of rewarding a political partisan with some of the fruits of the war,
which was concocted under his auspices, called for the decisive interference and
correction of this House. So much for that horn of the dilemma—that horn, he
thought, was sawed off. The other will not remain on much longer. But this
office was created by the treaty. Does it therefore follow that it does not come
within the purview of part of the provision of the Constitution which I have
read? There was not an instant of time, from the creation of the office, be it
created when it will, that the accepter of the office was not a member of this
House. The precise time when a new Congress commences, mathematically,
is at midnight of the 3d of March; politically, at the moment when the index of
the clock of this hall, set backwards or forwards to suit purposes, pointed to 12."
Mr. R. proceeded some time longer, in the same strain; but, as the process of
sawing off horns may appear rather tedious, we shall not exhaust the reader's
patience by giving a more particular report of it.
Mr. Forsyth, in reply, said he regretted the gentleman from Virginia supposed
he had come to the House with his horns sharpened to wound him. Whilst he
continued a member of the House, with the gentleman, all he hoped for was to
be able to escape his horns. After some further debate, the resolution was
agreed to—70 to 55 votes.
Mr. Randolph watched, with much interest, the Bank Bill, as it slowly progressed
through the House, and which he opposed on every opportunity. He
spoke repeatedly on it, both on some of its provisions, as well as on the general
merits and powers of the measure at large. On the clause which limits the
choice of directors to citizens of the United States, he moved to add "native,"
which was agreed to. He also advocated the bill for changing the mode of
compensation to members of Congress, from a per diem allowance of six dollars,
to a salary one of fifteen hundred dollars a session, which passed on the 8th
of March, 1816, by a majority of 81 to 67. Though the act became very unpopular,
and cost many members of the majority their seats, and, among others, enabled
the humble writer of this sketch to recover his; yet, Mr. Randolph stood
too strong in the confidence of his constituents to be in the least disturbed on
account of it. This was a very important session. Among the stirring questions
that agitated the members, in and out of the House, that of the presidency
was none of the least. On the 16th of March, a caucus was held of the Republican
of nominating candidates for the offices of President and Vice President, at
which General Samuel Smith, of Maryland, presided. Mr. Clay submitted a
resolution against the expediency of a caucus recommendation; but, it being
voted down, and the canvass eventuating in the nomination of James Monroe,
by sixty-five votes, and W. H. Crawford, fifty-four, for the presidency, Mr. Clay
submitted the resolution, which was concurred in without opposition, recommending
James Monroe to the people of the United States, as a suitable person for
President, and D. D. Tompkins as Vice President, for the term of four years,
commencing on the 4th of March next. Mr. Randolph, being an opponent, on
political grounds, of the two candidates, as well as of the principle of the caucus
system of nomination, would not attend the meeting, though it was to eventuate
so highly honorably to his native State. On the 8th of April, the bill for chartering
a Bank of the United States came back from the Senate, with several
amendments, when Mr. Randolph took occasion to move an indefinite postponement
of the bill and amendments, and sustained his motion by a few remarks,
and also answered the objections of other members, particularly of Mr. Calhoun,
the great champion and father of the bill. His motion was lost by 91
noes to 67 ayes, which indicated the fate of the bill, and it accordingly became
a law a few days afterwards. He spoke three hours, on the 6th of April,
against the passage of the Tariff Bill, or, as it was called, the bill for regulating
the duties on imports and tonnage, which passed by 88 ayes to 54 noes.
We may be permitted here to remark, that the session commencing December,
1815, and ending the last of April, 1816, was one of the most important, in relation
to the character of the country (which was fully vindicated), and in the
amount and magnitude of the business transacted, as great as that of any previous
one. This first session of the 18th Congress has been considered an era
in our national legislation. It extended a ministering hand to heal the wounds
which had been inflicted by the late war. It provided for the numerous claims
for services and losses during that period, establishing the currency, which had
become very much disordered, on a specie basis; the creation of a National
Bank, for equal exchanges and facilitating the fiscal operations of the government;
providing permanent and substantial means for the increase and maintenance
of the navy; for the payment of the militia that had been called into service;
providing pensions for the widows and orphans of militia killed or who
died in the service; granting bounties in land to certain Canadian volunteers;
for improving the navy pension fund; and other measures in relation to the
revenues, internal and external. We are happy to add that the prosperity of
the country was such, that the revenues yielded enough to meet all these extraordinary
expenses, and to enable the government of Mr, Monroe to commence
the grateful task of liquidating the national debt, which had accumulated to
about one hundred and fifty millions, and which was ultimately most honorably
discharged in the administration of General Jackson. Although Mr. Randolph
was confined at home by indisposition, and did not attend till some time in January,
yet he amply made up for lost time, entered into the discussion of every
perhaps as much to the purpose) than he had done at any previous session.
His main speech, on the Internal Taxes, lasted for three hours, and he spoke as
long on the National Bank; in fact, the whole of his speeches, on the various
subjects which were discussed during the session, if collected, would fill a tolerable
volume. It will also be perceived, how well he supported those propositions
which he himself introduced; and he seemed to rise with the opposition
which they encountered, and appeared determined not to yield the palm of victory
to any competitor or combination of talent, and seldom failed in his readiness
of rejoinder and powers of extemporaneous oratory, to carry his point.
He had been out of his seat since April, 1813, when he was supplanted by Mr.
Eppes, but he seemed to have gained strength and new vigor by his two
years' rustication.
The Compensation Act of the last session had excited much opposition
throughout the country. Many of those members who voted for it, felt the
security of their seats rather frail. Many had to give way to the popular torrent,
and none but the most powerful, such as Mr. Clay, Colonel Johnson, and
Mr. Randolph, were able to breast it. The House introduced a bill, early in
January, 1817, with a view of modifying or repealing it. Mr. Randolph openly
and manfully justified his vote. He said, the auction of popularity differed in
one respect from all others—the first bidder standing in the same relation to the
transaction as the last bidder does at other auctions. Hence, it could be no
cause of surprise that, at all times when any measure within the scope of public
contemplation, should be peculiarly odious, a great anxiety is manifested as to
who shall be foremost in the repeal; or, otherwise, if the measure was entirely
desirable, the same struggle should take place in the race who should be first to
reach the goal. He, for one, had been extremely glad that the House had, on
this occasion, so far, at least, not been wanting in a sense of decent self-respect.
He hoped the committee would not understand him to intend to enter into the
merits of the bill, or to commit himself for the support of it, on its final passage;
but he had no hesitation in saying, if it was to pass, it ought not
to pass in the shape in which it had been offered by the committee. "What
urgency was there in this case? Would any member show him that there was
a great urgency that the act of the last session should be repealed as to the remaining
part of this session, and that the law should be further modified by an
increase of the compensation, 33 and 1-3 per cent. This body ought not to act
on every frivolous impulse. It ought not to act on any temporary excitement.
The people of the United States are the sovereigns of the United States. The
government is theirs, because the soil is theirs. The country is theirs. They
have a right to be heard. But what have we heard from the public on this subject,
except a solitary petition this morning, from some part of Pennsylvania,
for a repeal of the law? Now, with all due respect for public opinion, where
is the necessity for the passage of the bill on your table? If this House is to
act on this subject—if it is to undo or patch up the act of the last session—if this
House is to offer something like a tub to the great leviathan of popularity—
situation otherwise shall we stand? In what predicament shall we present ourselves
to our constituents, going on the principle that these constituents are hostile
to the law? Thank God, mine have said nothing to me about it. No,
sir. I do not think mine will say anything to me on that score. What will
we say to the people who have been clamoring about it, when they are told
that we have repealed the act, and taken the difference of 33 and 1-3 more than
we should have had if we had never passed it. I would not wish to stand in
a more pitiable, I would add pitiful, condition before the people than with this
bill in my hand, as amendatory of the act of the last session. Without now
giving an opinion on the merits of the bill, reserving himself till the bill be more
fully before the House, he said he rose to offer an amendment, which he believed
would supersede the amendment of the gentleman from Kentucky. He
said he should not pledge himself to vote for the bill, even if his amendment
was agreed to. He did not wish to entrap the House, but to show what he
thought ought to be done, if we moved in this business at all. He proposed to
strike out the whole bill, and, in lieu thereof, insert a clause to repeal entirely
the law of last session, and require a deduction from the amount of pay of the
members, as shall, during the past and present sessions, make the amount of
pay equal to six dollars a day. The act of the last session was retrospective
and retroactive in its operation; and if the House touched the law of the last
session, they ought to take up the matter where they did at the last session, and
any law now passed should be retrospective in the same manner. He thought
each Congress ought to take upon itself the responsibility of assessing its own
pay. That to do so was a duty devolving on it, from which he thought it had
no right to shrink. If, now, they had assessed it too high in their own opinion,
they ought to refund the excess." Mr. R. spoke two or three times more
on the subject. He stated that, from the proceedings of the Legislature of his
own State, he gathered an auspicious judgment in favor of his own course upon
this question. Some member in his Legislature, had lately introduced a resolution,
hoping to make political capital out of it, condemning the act of the last
session in most reproachful terms. But, after reaching the Senate, it was
thrown on the table, where it still lies, like bad money, nailed to the counter.
He thought the nation, after seeing such lavish expenditures in support of the
army and navy, and after the usual allowances to Commodores Hull, Decatur,
and Bainbridge, in order that they might live like gentlemen, could not begrudge
to their watch-dogs the moderate compensation which the act of the last session
allowed them. The bill was finally amended so as to repeal the act of the last
session, leaving the compensation to be fixed by the next Congress, and, in that
state, passed by a great majority. At the next session, the question was again
agitated, and the daily compensation was fixed at eight dollars, and the same
sum for every twenty miles travelling to and from the seat of government. It
was for his vote on the act of the previous session, that Mr. Clay encountered
a most formidable opposition in the person of John Pope. The public is, no
doubt, well acquainted with the touching anecdote of the rifle, by which Mr.
into his seat again. Mr. Randolph was too firmly seated to encourage any candidate
in the attempt to remove him; while the successor of the writer, apprehensive
of an impending danger of his re-election, or from some other cause,
prudently retired, and left the post open to his ready occupancy. Colonel R. M.
Johnson saved his election, like Coriolanus, by showing his scars, and saying,
like him, "These are my wounds, which are yours in private."
Mr. Randolph did not attend during the session of 1818, being detained at
home by indisposition. A half brother of his, however, Henry St. George
Tucker, took his seat in the House, as a representative from the Winchester
district. He was but little inferior to Mr. Randolph as a debater, and took the
lead in the discussion of a bill he introduced, as one of the Committee on Roads
and Canals, in which he spoke in favor of internal improvements generally.
He differed therein, as well as on many other points of policy, from his brother,
and there appeared no such evident marks of familiar affection and attachment
between them, during the time they served together, as we were led to expect
from their near relationship. Mr. Tucker's disposition was most unlike his
brother's. He was extremely amiable, modest, polite and conciliating, and was
never known to lose his temper during the whole period of his public service.
He was, at the end of four years, promoted to a seat on the bench of the High
Court of Appeals, in his native State, which both his disposition and talents
enabled him to fill with justice and honor.
Mr. Randolph was called up, on the Navy Appropriation Bill, on the 28th of
December, 1819, on account of what he considered a very great irregularity
which had grown up in the Treasury Department, of transferring the unexpended
balance of appropriations from one head to another branch of expenditure, on
the responsibility of the Secretary of the Treasury, provided the deficient branch
happened to be of a consonant character. Mr. Randolph said, it was no part of
his business to enter into the merits or demerits of the question now before the
House; but to state a fact, which every member would bear in mind through
the whole of this discussion, that the abuse which had been so eloquently exposed
to the House (by Mr. Clay) had not extended as far back as the administration
of Mr. Jefferson, during the whole of which, no such practice had obtained
at the Treasury, or elsewhere. The practice, he said, grew out of that
celebrated law of March the 3d, 1809—that famous, or, to speak freely but
correctly, infamous law—which, without fear of correction from any side of
the House, he pronounced to be the offspring of a dirty intrigue. During the
administration of Thomas Jefferson, there had been no occasion to resort to any
such law—no such practice had prevailed as had grown out of that act. During
the greater part of that administration, such had been his access to the Treasury
Department, and such the duties imposed upon him by this House, he spoke of
his own knowledge and fearlessly, in saying the expenditures had been generally
within the appropriation. No sum appropriated to one object had been
devoted to another; but, at the end of every two years, every appropriation, for
reasons found in the Constitution, did, by the act of 1799, cease and determine.
nation, he hoped they would except that period—a period in which the nation
had made one of its most expensive acquisitions—the purchase of Louisiana. If
his memory did not much deceive him, the Secretary of War then contrived,
without any of this hocus-pocus legerdemain of transfers of appropriations, to
take possession of the country, without any additional expenditure in the military
department. At that time, we maintained about three thousand men, at an
expense of about nine hundred thousand dollars per annum. Compare the expenditures
at that time with those of the present, and, making every allowance
for the advance in the price of articles of subsistence, or, in other words, for the
depreciation of our miserable paper money, a large amount might be carried to
the credit of the administration of which he spoke. He also made some remarks
in answer to Mr. Lowndy, who had followed him in the debate. He
said (after replying to Mr. Lowndy), that gentlemen entirely mistook him, if
they supposed that, knight-errant like, he came tilting here, to break a spear
with powers and principalities. Nothing was farther from his intention. He
said there were certain signs in the political horizon, which he hailed with some
degree of pleasure. He had some hope that the term of twenty years is the sum
of our political cycle, and that we are coming back to the good old times of responsibility
and specification; and he concluded by denying that provisions and
the great staples of the country, as had been alleged, were higher than in the
years 1802 to 1804. He took part in the debate on several subjects of minor
importance, among others, in opposition to Mr. Cuthbert's resolution to inquire
into the expediency of establishing a registry of slaves, with a view more effectually
to prevent their importation. He agreed with the mover that the United
States possessed the power of putting an end to the slave-trade, but he could not
go with him so far as to admit that they had the power to select the means. He
never refused an inquiry, when asked; but he could not help thinking that this
may end in another shape—a question which has been, unfortunately, too often
agitated, and might again agitate this body: He meant the definitiveness of the
powers of this government. He denied that the government could, under the
plea of means, do that which they could not, under that of ends. It was by this
hocus-pocus the government found itself enabled to create a great bank, the
happy consequences of which we are now reaping. Where was the use, he
asked, of any limitations at all? When we want to do anything, we have
only to call it means necessary for authorized purposes.
On Mr. Strothers' resolution, proposing to publish, at the expense of the
House, a certain number of copies of the secret Journal of the old Congress of
the Federation, Mr. Randolph, though not opposed to the object of the mover,
proposed to refer it to a select committee to inquire into its expediency. Among
other observations, he quoted a remarkable saying of the most remarkable man,
"that we should wash our dirty linen at home." The resolution afterwards
passed. On the 22d of February, Mr. Randolph introduced the following resolution:
"Resolved, That provision be made by law for the support of the family of
Mr. Randolph's remarks not having been distinctly heard by the reporter of
the National Intelligencer, and he being dissatisfied with the form in which they
appeared, thought proper to give them as corrected by himself, in a note to the
editors, of the 24th. He said he rose to offer a motion. He believed it was
difficult for any member of this House, certainly it was not possible for him, to
keep pace with the honorable gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Lowndes)
in the race of honor and public utility. That gentleman, in the motion which
had just been adopted, anticipated him in part in a proposition which he (Mr.
R.) had intended on this particular day, for reasons which would suggest themselves
to the mind of every one, to offer to the House. When he had this morning
heard the Tower guns announcing the return of the birth-day of Washington,
the thought had come across his mind, in reference to certain proceedings
in this House and elsewhere, "This people draw nigh unto me with their lips,
and honor me with their mouth, but their hearts are far from me." His purpose
was, he said, to make a motion in relation to the wife and children of the
late Oliver Hazard Perry, of the United States Navy. It was his opinion, whether
correct or not, that the country owed more to that man, in its late contest
with Great Britain, than to any other, always excepting Isaac Hull,—that man
who had first broken the prestige, the cuirass of British invincibility. He had
frequently, he said, heard persons of that country speak in terms of admiration
of the achievement of Captain Hull, in his escape from a fleet of the enemy in
the Constitution frigate, of the admirable seamanship which he had displayed,
of his professional skill; but he had never heard any of them speak in cordial
applause of his achievement with the Guerrière, that proud frigate of the first
class, which had carried her name, in defiance, emblazoned in large letters on
her foretop-sail, that the American picaroons might beware of his majesty's ship,
and make no mistakes. That was an event on which they were generally silent,
or their praise very faint. He believed that old England would consent
that forty Packenhams, with all their legions, should have been buried on the
alluvial lands of the Mississippi, to take back the single action of the Guerrière;
because that action had done more than any other to open the eyes of
Europe, and dispel the illusion of British supremacy on the ocean. Next in
glory to the victory over the Guerrière, is that on Lake Erie by the gallant Perry.
And this, Mr. R. said, is not inferior in lustre to any event in the naval history
of England, from that of La Hogue under Admiral Russell. One, said he, has
shown us the way to victory in single ships, the other in fleets. Shall we suffer
his family to melt up the plate that was given him by his countrymen, by
corporations, and by legislative bodies, in compliment to his gallantry, to buy
bread? He would say no more, but at once offer the resolution, which was
unanimously adopted.
Although the Missouri question was agitated at the session of 1820, and Mr.
Randolph, on the 3d of February, delivered his views upon it at length, yet as
it was again more fully debated at the succeeding session, when he entered
the two periods, and to give a connected series throughout, it is thought
best to defer the presentation of his views on the subject for the present, to
afford an opportunity of giving his observations on other subjects during the
interval, particularly on a motion he made on the 20th of February, in the following
form:
"Ordered, That the clerk do prepare, and lay before this House, a statement
of the annual amount of the contingent expenses thereof, from the commencement
of the present Government to the 30th of November last; distinguishing
the expense of stationery, printing, fuel, lights, furniture, and attendants, with
a statement of the nature and amount of the perquisites of each."
Mr. Randolph rose to make a motion, which, he said, he should prefer to
have been made by any other member than himself, but which he felt it his
duty to bring forward. He trusted that, whatever others might think, or however
others might act, he should never feel a disposition to shrink from a discharge
of his duty. It was impossible, he said, for any man to see what was
going on here, abuse heaped upon abuse, like Pelion upon Ossa, until it was
impossible to tell where it would end;—it threatened to reach the skies. The
House, he said, was emphatically entrusted with the purse-strings of the nation.
He hoped it would not prove to be the case, that the people had, according to a
well known maxim, trusted the lamb to the custody of the wolf. It behooves
the House, as the grand inquest of the nation, also to inquire into abuses of
every description, but first to pluck the beam out of its own eye, before it attempted
to take out the mote from its brother's eye. It had been his misfortune,
especially since the agitation of this Missouri question, not to be able to
sleep of nights, and he consequently often arose before daybreak. These early
risings had been the means of putting him on the scent, he was not sure of the
true game, but of something like peculation or abuses, in a very small way, in
the contingent expenses of this House. It behooves us, said he, as the guardians
of this imperium in imperio, if we are arraigned at the public bar, much
more if we arraign others, that we appear with clean hands, that there be no
blot or stain on them. "In the course of my lucubrations, I have sometimes
started a question which, although we may approximate to the truth, is as impossible
to be ascertained as the quadrature of the circle, and will no doubt be
discovered with the solution of that opprobrium of geometry, the philosopher's
stone, the perpetual motion, or the grand arcanum, the elixir vitæ, when men
shall quaff immortality and joy, or rather misery;—for death, sir, with all its
terrors, is our best friend, if we knew how to use life, and comes to deliver us
from the vexation and strife of this trumpery world. I have," said Mr. R., "endeavored
to ascertain the pay of a member of Congress, but, with all the means
I could employ, it has eluded my search, and will continue to do so, I have no
doubt, to the end. Those who write circular letters and keep up a voluminous
correspondence, and those who received more letters than others, receive, through
the privilege of franking and stationery, a greater compensation than others.
He would mention one fact to show how it is in the nature of abuse to grow on
for the first time in twenty years, a present, at this session, of a knife; and he
believed he should carry it home as a spolia opima, and hand it down as a trophy
of his public service, of some twenty years, nearly fourteen of which,—
just double the time that Jacob served for Rachel,—had been spent in opposition
to what is called Government, for he commenced his political apprenticeship in
the ranks of opposition; and could he add fourteen more to them, he supposed
some political Laban would double his servitude and condemn him to toil in the
barren field of opposition, for he despaired of seeing any man elected President
whose conduct he could entirely approve. He should never be in favor at court,
for he had, somehow or other, as great an alacrity at getting into a minority as
Sir John Falstaff had at sinking. It was perhaps the place he was best fitted
for, as he had not strength to encounter the drudgery and detail of business.
Habit had rendered it familiar to him, and, after all, it was not without its
sweets as well as its bitters, since it involved the glorious privilege of finding
fault,—one very dear to the depraved condition of poor humanity. In relation
to the contingent fund of this House, he said that when he had the honor of
being on the Committee of Ways and Means, they were so incessantly pestered
with accounts for candles, and wood, and molasses, and water, and what not,
that at last, at his suggestion, a committee was raised to audit and settle the account
of the contingent expenses of this House. People were constantly coming
to that committee and complaining that they could not get paid, although
the clerk showed their receipts in full. They were asked, how was this? and
were answered, they were obliged to give receipts in full to the clerk before
they could get their contracts, and then he would not pay them, it being a personal
engagement of his own. They were told by the committee that it was
an affair between them and the clerk; that they had bought the contracts by
letting the clerk have the use of their money, and that if their sweet turned out
a sour, they must make the best of a bargain creditable to neither party, and
made at our, as well as their expense. Whether they ever got paid Mr. R.
did not know. He knew that the clerk was a public defaulter, and he was not
sure the balance due by him was ever paid. He cast no imputation on the present
clerk. The abuse of which he complained was not under his control."
Mr. Randolph then read his resolution, and concluded by wishing the accounts
of the two houses kept separate; they would, he thought, constitute a curiosity.
His resolution was adopted.
SPEECH OF MR. RANDOLPH ON THE MISSOURI QUESTION.
That most exciting question, the admission of Missouri into the Union, was
again agitated in Congress, in the Session of 1821. It arose from the circumstance
of her having inserted a clause, the 4th, in the 26th article of the Constitution,
which her late convention had adopted, prohibiting any free persons
of color, or mulattoes, from entering or settling within the State. The great
difficulty seemed to arise from the friends, as well as foes, of Missouri equally
the condition that she should, by an act of her legislature, sitting as a convention
in that regard, repeal that obnoxious clause; the friends of slavery wishing to
admit her without any restrictions, and the opponents refusing it except upon
the terms offered. Among the former was Mr. Randolph. During the recess,
the election of President had taken place, and Mr. Monroe had been re-elected
by an almost unanimous vote, having received 218 votes. In taking the necessary
measures to meet the Senate in the official canvass in the House, on the
14th day of February, Mr. Clay, as chairman of the committee, reported two
resolutions, the second one providing, that if any objection be made to the
counting of the votes of Missouri, by the President of the Senate, he should state
it then; were the votes of Missouri to be counted the result would be this,—for
James Monroe 231 votes, if not counted, 218; but in either event James
Monroe is elected President of the United States. The question being stated on
this, the second resolution, Mr. Randolph said, "That he could not consent to
this special verdict, as it had been called, in the case of Missouri. He could
not recognize in this House, or the other, singly or conjointly, the power to
decide on the votes of any State. Suppose you strike out Missouri and insert
South Carolina, which has also a provision in its constitution repugnant to the
Constitution of the United States; or Virginia, or Massachusetts, which had a
test, he believed, in its constitution; was there any less power to decide on their
votes, than on those of Missouri? He maintained that the electoral college was as
independent of Congress as Congress was of them; and we have no right to
judge of their proceedings. He would rather see an interregnum, or have no
votes counted, than see a principle adopted which went to the very foundation
on which the presidential office rested. Suppose a case in which some
gentleman of one House or the other should choose to object to the vote of some
State, and say that if it be thus, such a person is elected, if it be otherwise,
another person is elected, did anybody ever see the absurdity of such a proposition?
He deemed the resolution erroneous, and in a vital part, on the ascertainment
of the person who had been elected by the people, chief magistrate of
the United States, the most important officer under the constitution—the monarch—for
whoever in any country commands the army and navy, collects and
distributes the revenue, is a king, call him what you will. The time of the
House was precious, and he would not say all he felt and thought on the subject."
The Senate being present, and their president having counted the votes of all the
other States, opened the package containing the vote of the State of Missouri,
and handed it to the tellers to be counted. Mr. Livermore of New Hampshire
objected, because Missouri was not a State of this Union. The Senate, on motion,
then withdrew. Mr. Floyd of Virginia then submitted the following:
"Resolved, That Missouri is one of the States of this Union, and her vote
ought to be received and counted."
Mr. Floyd supported his resolution by a few observations. Mr. Archer of
Maryland moved to postpone it indefinitely. Mr. Randolph said that "it was not
without reluctance that he offered himself to the attention of the House at this
object which he had in view could, according to his own views of propriety, be
effected by the course which he had recommended to this House. It was no part
of his nature nor his purpose, to inflate to a greater magnitude this exaggerated
question of the admission of Missouri into the Union. But the question had now
assumed that aspect, which, had it depended on him, it should have taken at an
earlier period of the session. It was not only congenial with the principles and
practices of our free government, but unless he was deceived, with the principles
and practice of that country from which we have adopted, and wisely adopted,
our manly institutions, that on any occasion when any person presents himself
to a representative body, with credentials of a title to a seat, he shall take his
seat and perform the functions of a member until a prior and a better claim shall
be preferred and established. It was seen that, but the day before yesterday, the
committee of elections came forward with a report stating that the qualifications
and returns of certain members were perfect, who have been acting and legislating,
and on whose votes the laws of the land have depended for the last
three months. Just so it ought to have been with regard to the representation
from the State of Missouri. She has now presented herself for the first time in
a visible and tangible shape. She comes into this House, not in formâ pauperis,
but claiming to be one of the co-sovereignty of this confederated government,
and presents to you her vote, by receiving or rejecting which, the election
of your chief magistrate will be lawful or unlawful. He did not mean by the
vote of Missouri, but by the votes of all the States.
"Now comes the question, whether we will not merely repel her, but repel
her with scorn and contumely. Cui bono? she might add, quo warranto? He
should like to hear from the gentleman from New Hampshire (Mr. Livermore),
where this House gets its authority. He should like to hear some of the learned
(or unlearned) sages of the law, with which this House, as well as all our
legislative bodies, abounds, show their authority for refusing to receive the votes
of the State of Missouri. He went back to first principles. The Electoral
Colleges are as independent of this House as we are of them. They had as
good a right to pronounce on their qualifications as this House has of its members.
Your office, in regard to the electoral votes, is merely ministerial, to
count the votes—and you undertake to reject votes! To what will this lead?
Do you ever expect to see the time when there shall be in the presidential chair,
a creature so poor, so imbecile,[4]
not only not worthy of being at the head of the
nation, but not worthy of being at the head of a petty corporation. Do you
ever expect to see in that office an animal so poor as not to have in this House
retainers enough to reject the votes of any State, which, being counted, might
prevent his continuance, and their continuance, and that of their friends, in
office? He spoke not of the present incumbent. He was not so wanting in
common decency and decorum. He spoke in reference not only to what was
past, but to that which was prospective, and which every man who looks the
shortly happen. He undertook to say that if this House, by an indefinite postponement,
should—for the form was immaterial—or in any other way, and it
would be observed, in the first instance, in the person of Missouri, of this much
injured, long-insulted, and trampled-upon member of this confederacy, was this
example to be set,—if you do, for the first time, now refuse to receive the votes
of a State, it will be created into precedent, and that in the lifetime of some of
those who hear me, for the manufacture of precedents by this House. The
wisest men may make constitutions on paper, as they please. What was the
theory of this constitution? It is that this House, except upon a certain contingency,
has nothing to do with the appointment of president and vice-president
of the United States, and when it does act, must act by States, and by States only
can it act on this subject, unless it transcend the limits of the constitution. What
was to be the practice of the constitution as now proposed? That an informal
meeting of this and the other House is to usurp the initiative, the nominative
power, with regard to the two first officers of the government; that they are to
wrest from the people their indefeasible right of telling us whom they wish to
exercise the functions of the government, in despite and contempt of their decision.
Is there to be no limit to the power of Congress? No mound or barrier
to stay their usurpation? Why were the electoral bodies established? The
constitution has wisely provided that they shall assemble, each by itself, and
not by one great assembly. By this means, assuredly, that system of intrigue
which was matured into a science, or rather into an art here, was guarded
against. But he ventured to say, the electoral college of this much despised
Missouri, acting conformably to law and to the genius and nature of our institutions,
if it were composed of but one man, was as independent of this House
as the House was of it. If, however, per fas aut nefas, the point is to be carried,
if the tocsin is to be sounded, if the troops are to be rallied and Missouri
is to be expelled with scorn from our august presence—how august, Mr. Speaker,
I leave it with you to decide—there are those who will be willing to take her
to their arms. And in point of mere expediency, he would ask of gentlemen—
he put the suggestion in that shape, because he believed they were inaccessible
to any other consideration—in point of expediency, he asked them, what were
they now doing but riveting those ties by which Missouri would, he trusted,
for ever be bound to that section of the country by which, with whatever reason,
her rights have been supported on this floor? I do look with a sentiment
I cannot express, I look with a sentiment of pity—and that has been said to be
nearly allied to love, as I know it to be allied to a very different emotion—I look
with pity on those who believe that, by their feeble efforts in this House, governed
by forms and technicalities—your sergeant-at-arms and committees of attendance
and mummeries, such as belong to other countries where I have never travelled,
and trust in God I never shall—they can stop the growth of the rising
empire of the west. Let gentlemen lay a resolution on the table: let it be engrossed
in a fair hand, and do you, sir, Mr. Speaker, sign it, that the waves of
the Mississippi shall not seek the ocean, and then send your sergeant-at-arms
physical or moral, under your control." Mr. Archer, of Virginia, opposed the
resolution in a few remarks. And Mr. Randolph again addressed the House.
"Supposing he had been misunderstood, he wished to explain. His position
had been misunderstood. It had been said, and pertinently said, that Missouri
might be admitted into the Union in more ways than one. His position then
was, that this is the first instance in which Missouri has knocked at the door
and demanded her rights. It is now for us, by permitting her to come in, or
rather by refraining from extruding her from this hall, to determine whether she
shall now be one of this commonwealth, or as the fashion is to call it, of our
empire. He said he had no doubt that Congress might drive Missouri into the
wilderness, like another son of Hagar. If we do, we drive her at our own
peril. If either the worthy member or senators from Missouri, whose long forbearance
had excited surprise in no man's breast more than his own; he did
not mean to blame them for pursuing the counsels of cooler heads than his—had
presented themselves here, would you (addressing the Speaker) have felt yourself
bound to exclude them from the communion, with more than papal power
—not only from the cup of wine, but from the bread of life itself. Let me tell
my friend before me (Mr. Archer), we have not the power which he thinks we
possess: and if there be a casus omissus in the constitution, I want to know
where we are to supply the defect. You may keep Missouri out of the Union
by violence, but here the issue is joined and she comes forward in the persons
of her electors, instead of representative, and she was thus presented in a shape
as unquestionable as that of New York or Pennsylvania, or the proudest and
oldest State in the Union. Will you deny them admittance? Will you thrust
her electors and her's only from this hall? I made no objection to the vote of
New Hampshire. I had as good a right to object to the vote of New Hampshire,
as the gentleman from New Hampshire has to object to the vote of Missouri.
The electors of Missouri were as much the homines probi et legales
as those of New Hampshire. This was no skirmish, as the gentleman from
Virginia had called it. This was the battle where Greek meets Greek. Let us
buckle on our armor, let us put aside all this flummery, these metaphysical distinctions,
these unprofitable drawings of distinctions without differences; let us
say now, as we have on another occasion, we will assert, maintain, and vindicate
our rights, or put to every hazard, what you pretend to hold in such high
estimation." Mr. R. then alluded to the election of Jefferson and Burr, when they
were told as now, they must withdraw their opposition: that a dissolution of
the Union was threatened, that volcanoes began to play, that earthquakes yawned
beneath us. "We would not give way. We appealed to the good sense of
the nation, and I now appeal to this nation, whether this pretended sympathy
for the rights of a few free negroes is to supersede the rights of the free white
population of ten times their whole number." He went on in the same strain
some minutes longer, but as enough has been said on this subject we will bring
it to a close. It is well known that every effort to admit Missouri into the Union
was defeated. The times looked portentous. Every patriot felt alarmed, and
stability of the Union. A preserver appeared in the person of Mr. Clay. He
poured oil on the agitated waters, and calmed the troubled seas. By a resolution
introduced by him to appoint a select committee of twenty-three, by ballot, in
union with one appointed by the Senate, a compromise was effected, and a resolution
reported almost unanimously by the committee, of whom he was chairman,
which restricted the State of Missouri from passing any act, pursuant to
the 4th clause of the 26th article of her constitution, prohibiting the citizens of
either of the States of this Union from enjoying the privileges and immunities to
which such citizen is entitled under the constitution of the United States, and
that the said State shall declare their assent to this provision, as a fundamental
condition, and transmit the same to the President by the 4th of November next:
whereupon the President, by proclamation, shall announce the fact, and the
said State, without any further proceedings, shall be admitted into the Union.
On the 26th of February, 1821, the resolution was taken up, the previous question
was ordered: and the main question was put and carried in the affirmative,
and the resolution passed by a vote of 87 to 81. During the whole period of
this exciting debate, there were enough votes of the slaveholding States and
their allies to decide the question in favor of the admission of Missouri. And
yet these unreasonable members obstinately held out, and jeopardized the safety
of the Union, by joining with the enemies of slavery in keeping Missouri out
of the pale of the Union. And for what? The enemies of slavery acted from
principle, the false friends of Missouri from a blind and obstinate pride of opinion,
which they would wilfully maintain even at the risk of a dissolution of
the Union. And what, after all, was the peace-offering that Mr. Clay so fortunately
held out? Nothing but a simple guaranty by that State, to the citizens
of the United States, the privileges and immunities which they enjoy in
every other State! In the terms of the compromise, even the delicacy of the
friends of Missouri is not offended, for the words "free persons of color and
mulattoes" are not once mentioned; and yet it had the effect of magic in healing
all the differences that had arisen between the respective parties.
There is ten years' interval between the delivery of these speeches and the
first, and yet we find no falling off in the mental faculties of Mr. Randolph.
He is still distinguished as a debater and a powerful extemporaneous speaker.
So far, there does not appear any foundation for the charge of the Washington
correspondent of the New York Tribune, that Mr. Randolph was deranged as
early as 1800!
About the 22d of March, 1820, the meeting between Commodores Decatur
and Barron took place at Bladensburg, where Decatur fell, and, what appears
rather anomalous, Barron's large size saved him. Both shots took about the
same level of direction, but Barron being two or three inches taller than his antagonist,
received his ball in the hip joint, within one inch of the cavity of the
abdomen, while his ball penetrated the body of Decatur about half an inch
above. Randolph constituted himself undertaker and chief mourner at the
funeral, and acted as marshal of the day, probably from the old Grecian maxim,
naturally assume their appropriate station at the head of affairs. He
was much busied, from the time the funeral procession left the residence of the
deceased, in riding up and down the ranks and keeping off intruders and maintaining
order and regularity. The next morning, as soon as the Journal was
read, he moved the House to adjourn, as a token of respect for the memory of
his friend. The motion was opposed by Mr. Speaker Taylor, of New York,
on the ground that the deceased had fallen in violation of the laws of God and
man. Mr. Randolph, in reply, quoted the answer of our Saviour, "Render
unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's," and unto Maryland the right she possessed
of visiting every infraction of her laws upon the party offending. If
his friend had violated the laws of God, he stood at his bar to receive his sentence.
"In violating the laws of God and man!" said he. "The lion was
dead that thus received the kick." And Mr. Taylor looked as if he felt the
application. The House refused the motion.
On the 24th, in consequence of the failure of his previous motion, that the
House should adjourn over to attend the funeral of the Commodore, he then
moved that it should then adjourn, for the purpose of enabling such members as
felt so disposed, to attend at four o'clock that afternoon, the hour appointed. To
obviate the appearance of any opposition to so reasonable a request, Mr. Holmes
moved the House do now adjourn, and the motion prevailed. It appeared that
the report of Mr. Randolph's speech on his first motion, gave him such high
displeasure, that he was induced on the 28th to offer a resolution for the exclusion
of Gales and Seaton from the hall of the House as reporters. The resolution
was not urged at the time, in order to afford them an opportunity to furnish
Mr. Randolph, according to his expressed wish, the name of the person who
gave the editors the information as the groundwork of his speech. The explanation
they offered in answer to Mr. Randolph's request, was to the effect that
the report to which he alluded was derived from sources entitled to credit, particular
care being taken not to impute to him (Mr. R.) any language which may
be subject to misrepresentation. They added that his speech on the subsequent
day was reported, and would be submitted to him for revision. They alleged
also that business caused both their reporters to be absent at the time Mr. Randolph
addressed the House, and that they obtained their information from some
of the members on the adjournment of the House. Mr. Randolph was not satisfied
with this apology, but put his resolution to the vote. It found but little
favor with the House, only eight voting for it, while 140 voted against it.
SPEECH OF JOHN RANDOLPH ON APPROPRIATIONS FOR THE INDIAN
DEPARTMENT, JANUARY 4, 1822.
Mr. Randolph moved to recommit the bill to a committee of the whole House,
to bring into mature discussion and review the undefined appropriation asked
for by the Secretary of War. "Unreasonable jealousy of the executive government
often led to the opposite extreme, a blind confidence in the governing power.
that this House also was as free from unreasonable jealousy as any reasonable
body ought to be. In fact, jealousy in public life was like that same `green-eyed
monster' in the domestic circle, which poisoned the source of all social
happiness. It was extraordinary and yet apparent that the case had occurred
in which confidence had lost its true character, and taken another which he
would not name in this House. It was remarkable as well on the other side of
the Atlantic as this, that a general suspicion had gone abroad, that the department
which emphatically holds the purse-strings of the nation, was more remiss
than any other in guarding against the expenditure of its subordinate
agents. If it should be generally and unanswerably understood that the body
whose duty it is to guard the public treasure from wasteful expenditure, had
abandoned their trust to a blind confidence in the dispensers of public patronage,
they must immediately and justly lose all the confidence of the community.
He had heard yesterday with astonishment a proposition to surrender inquiry to
a confidence in the integrity and ability in the officer who had made the requisition.
When this House should be disposed to become a mere chamber in
which to register the edicts, not of the President, but of the heads of departments,
it would be unimportant whether the members of this House professed to
represent 35,000 freemen, or collectively the single borough of Sarum.
This proceeding was to him unprecedented. He had himself once been personally
acquainted with the proceedings of the Committee of Ways and Means,
and he had brought in many bills to make partial appropriations—no, not many
of them, for the business in those days had been so conducted as not to leave
much room for them—but he had brought in such bills, and supported them
too, and he would again support such bills when they were necessary. He
would give to the government his confidence when it was necessary, and he
would not give it to the government, nor to any man further than that, unless
to his bosom friend. But there was a wide difference between voting for an
advance for the service of the current year, and voting for the same sum to
cover a deficiency of the past year, under cover of an advance for the present
year. He wished this bill to be recommitted, that the appropriation might be
put on its proper footing. While I am up, said he, I will make one remark;
that by the best estimate I am able to make, and that estimate has been fortified
by the remarks that have fallen from others, these Indians cost us on the system
of civilisation and conciliation, rather more than if they were black, and
our property, and working on our estates for our benefit. And this without reciprocity;
for though the master be bound for the whole expense of food and raiment
for his servant, he is entitled to the benefit of his services in return. The
United States ought not to be expected wholly to clothe and feed these people;
they ought at least to do some little for themselves. It was astonishing what
a fondness the people of the frontiers had for having their throats cut. A gentleman
had yesterday told the House that this money for the Indian department
was to prevent these people from having their throats cut. But what did the
representatives of the frontier people in this House say? Why, that they had
and care nothing for your defence." The bill was recommitted. During
the year 1821 the returns of the late census had been made, and in January,
1822, a ratio of representation was proposed to be fixed upon. With this view,
on the 7th of the month, Mr. Campbell, as chairman of the subject, reported a
resolution fixing the ratio at 40,000, based upon the total amount of numbers,
9,625,734. As Virginia had increased very little in her population, and other
States had gained large accessions to their numbers, the adoption of the proposed
ratio would cause Virginia to lose a member in the House, and thus the
sceptre would be transferred from Judah. This thought roused all Mr. Randolph's
State pride. He could not bear the idea of his State being thus degraded
to a second, and even a third rank, in point of population. When the apportionment
bill was taken up on the 19th of January, various rates were proposed
as best suited the views of members of those States who desired to save the
smallest fractions, from 35,000 up to 75,000, Mr. Tucker of Virginia proposing
38,000 as the most convenient for Virginia, by leaving to her its present delegation,
and saving the legislature the trouble of making new arrangements of the
districts. The Committee of the Whole had agreed upon 42,000, which would
give the House 200 members.
After Mr. Saunders of North Carolina had addressed the House, in a
maiden speech of one hour's duration, in favor of that ratio, Mr. Randolph
arose. He said, "it required a very great share of legislative intrepidity for any
man, and more than he possessed, to attempt to debate any question in regard to
which there is a moral assurance the majority is decidedly against you. The
few words he had to say on this unpromising subject, would be on a question
wherein he trusted from present appearances and some other indications he
should be in the majority; and that was the question in concurring with the
Committee of the Whole in their amendment of this bill. He must be permitted
to state, altogether unimportant as the fact was, that although he had been
one of the committee to bring in this bill, he had not yet tried any ratio, either
in the State, one of whose representatives he was, nor in the district which he
represented, nor in any one county of which the district was composed. It
would indeed be exceedingly disingenuous in him not to say, that in glancing
his eye over the table of calculation, he had perceived that one number, he
believed it was 38,000, would eminently conduce to the advantage of the State
of Virginia, and that some of the numbers would be extremely injurious to her
relative weight in this body and in the presidential elections, and consequently
in her influence on the government of the United States. But while I make
this declaration, I know it to be as unimportant as the individual who addresses
you. I cannot enter into the reasoning which goes to show that 200 members,
or this ratio of 42,000, or what not, is to serve some great political purpose,
whilst one member more or less, or 1000 in the ratio more or less, would
produce a calamitous effect. To such prescience which could discover such important
effects from such causes he had no claim; but this he would say, it was
made an objection to the constitution by some of the greatest men this country
a vital objection to George Mason's putting his hand to the constitution, that the
representation in Congress was limited, not to exceed one member for every
30,000 souls; whilst on the other hand a most unbounded discretion was given
over the increase of the ratio. It was an objection to the constitution, on the
part of some of the wisest men this country ever produced. It was an objection
on the part of Patrick Henry, whose doubts, I need not ask you, Mr.
Speaker, to recur to—I fear you have been too familiar with them in the
shape of verified predictions—whose doubts experience has proved to be prophetic.
On a question of this sort, shall we be told of the expense of compensating
a few additional members of this body? He knew we had, in a civil point
of view, perhaps the most expensive government under the sun. We had, taking
one gentleman's declaration, an army of legislators. There was a time, and
he wished he might live to see it again, when the legislators of the country outnumbered
the rank and file of the army, and the officers to boot. I wish I may
see it again. Did any man ever hear of a country ruined by the expense of its
legislation? Yes, as the sheep are ruined by so much as is required for the
nourishment of the dogs. As to the civil list, to pay a host of legislators, is it
their pay that has run up the national debt? Is it their pay that produces defalcations
of the revenue? Did mortal man ever hear of a country that was ruined
by the expense of its civil list, and more especially by the legislative branch of it?
He was no believer in actual or modern magic. He gave no credit to Sir Kenelm
Digby's sympathetic power, or to Plato's visions of the importance of the number
10. To go by any rule of that sort, some might prefer an odd number; three, because
it was the number of the Graces; nine, because it was that of the Muses: and those
miserable dupes who adventure in lotteries, generally endeavor to hit on an odd
number. He could not conceive how it happened that, in a former Congress,
they had been so blind to the magic of numbers as to overlook the number 100,
notwithstanding which one of that body signed himself centumvir, as one of the
number of whom that council was composed. After all the wire-drawn speculations
on this subject, however, we must come down to the suitability—if I
may use the word—to the fitness of things, as the great philosopher Bacon
would have said. We must take a number that is convenient for business, and
at the same time sufficiently great to represent the interests of this great empire.
This empire, he was obliged to say, for the term republic had gone out of fashion.
He would warn, not this House, for they stood in no need of it, but the good,
easy, susceptible people of this country, against the empiricism in politics, against
the delusion that because a Government is representative, equally representative,
if you will, it must therefore be free. Government, to be safe and to be free,
must consist of representatives having a common interest and a common feeling
with the represented. But, as he believed he would be better understood by an
example, he would put it. I put a case of the United States entering into a joint-partnership
with the Emperor of China, of a political kind, and that they were
to allow us a representative for every 30,000 souls, claiming for themselves a
representative for every 100,000 souls. Would a legislature so constituted be
would have, a majority of the whole number of members. When I hear of
settlements at the Council Bluffs, and of bills for taking possession of the mouth
of the Columbia River, I turn, not a deaf ear, but an ear of a different sort to the
sad vaticination of what is to happen in the length of time: believing, as I do,
that no Government extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific can be fit to govern
me, or those whom I represent. There is death in the pot, compound it how
you will. No such government can exist, because it must want the common
feeling and common interest with the governed, which is indispensable to its
existence. Whilst the gentleman from North Carolina was entertaining the
House, he confessed very much to his satisfaction, he had made a few cursory
notes, to which, with the leave of the House, he would recur. In answer to
the argument, that the first House of Representatives consisted of but sixty-five
members, Mr. Randolph said he well remembered that House. He saw it often,
and that very fact was, he said, to him a serious objection to too small a representation
on this floor. The truth is, said he, we came out of the old constitution
in a chrysalis state, under unhappy auspices. The members of the body
that framed the constitution were second to none in respectability. But they had
been so long without power,—they had so long seen the evils of a government
without power, that it begot in them a general disposition to have king Stork
substituted for king Log. They organized a Congress to consist of a small
number of members, and what was the consequence? Every one, in the slightest
degree conversant with the subject, must know, that on the first step in any
government depends, in a great degree, the character and complexion of that
government. What, I repeat, was the consequence of the then limited number
of the representative body? Many, very many, indeed all that could be called
fundamental laws were passed by a majority, which, in the aggregate, hardly
exceeded in number the committee which was the other day appointed to bring
in the bill now on your table; and thereby, said he, hangs (not a tale, but) very serious
ones, which it is improper to open here and now. Among the other blessings
which we have received from past legislation, we should not have been sitting
at this place if there had been a different representation. Those who administered
the government were in a hurry to go into the business of legislation
before they were ready—and here I must advert to what had been said with
regard to the redundance of debate. For my part, said he, I wish we could
have done nothing but talk, unless, indeed, we had gone to sleep for many
years past; and coinciding in the sentiment which had fallen from the gentleman
from New York, give me fifty speeches, I care not how dull or how stupid,
rather than one law on the statute book; and if I could once see a Congress
meet and adjourn without passing any act whatever, I should hail it as one of
the most acceptable omens. I once held this opinion, with the exception of the
appropriation laws. But as they have of late been executed, which the powers
that be are not bound to respect, I find we may dispense with them as well as
with any others." Mr. Randolph then noticed another view which had been
taken, that the higher numbers were favorable to the smaller States, not only as
the elections of President; he would say nothing of the Vice-President of the
United States, because the first was the object to which the eye of the public
was generally turned, and of the minor object he had not yet heard spoken.
On this argument, Mr. Randolph made some remarks, importing that he did not
allow it much weight. "Another member had said that a particular number was
the best, because it was perfectly fair with regard to Rhode Island. But it was not
equally so for Delaware, nor perhaps for any other State. What an idea of
fairness was this! It was like the address of the blind man upon colors, who
said that the sound of the trumpet was red, because it sounded whenever the
soldiers marched along, and he had heard they wore red coats. But it seemed,
according to the argument of another member, unless we have large and prosperous
districts, there would not be sufficient room to select from each district a
potent, grave and reverend seigneur to take his seat on this floor. This is like
saying that unless you create high salaries, you cannot get men to take offices;
and yet, make the salaries what you will— I will say no more. It seemed,
too, that any analogy taken from the British House of Commons—which he had
not heard urged in the only manner in which it could be urged, except that the numbers
were not too great to admit of the due exercise of legislative powers—was
not applicable to the present subject, because that body is composed in a great
measure of placemen and pensioners. He would not say that he was on this
occasion reminded of the fable of the fox and the flies, but this he would say,
that the placeman, snug and warm in his place, or the pensioner secure of
receiving his quarterly supply, or any one of the number who by indirection
arrive at the same object, the plunder of the people, was to his view, in everywise
as fit, proper, and if he might use the word which he had lately heard on
this floor for the first time, as reliable a representative as the man who is in
search of a place or pension. But his worthy friend would tell the House that
this was a description of persons whom, when once the people have ascertained
their character, they withdraw their confidence from. He hoped it might be so
hereafter, but there was one misfortune about it, which was that the mischief is
done before the people find out the true character of their men, and that it is in
doing this very mischief that their character developes itself. The people can
shut the stable-door, to be sure, and lock it too, but it is after the steed is gone.
After all, he feared little impression was to be made by the terrible array of
figures before the House, which he had not eyes or brains to encounter by representations
of this kind. One thing, however, was certain, that if 187 members
were not too many ten years ago, 200 were not too many now. He did not
pretend to lay down any rule by which an arithmetician, any more than a geometrician,
could work this problem. It depended on things which are infinitely
variable, on combinations infinitely diversified, and must be settled at least by a
good plain common sense, and by no flourishes of the pen or of rhetoric.
"The case of a State wisely governed by its legislature, that of Connecticut,
for example," he argued, "would be preposterously applied to this government,
representing as it does more than a million of square miles, and more than
population. To say that 200 shall be the amount of our representation, and
then to proportion that number among the States, would be putting the cart before
the horse, or making a suit of clothes for a man and then taking his measure.
The number of representatives ought to be sufficient to enable the constituent to
maintain with the representative that relation without which representative
government was as great a cheat as—transubstantiation, he was going to say—
as any in priestcraft, kingcraft, or in another craft which, great as the Diana of
the Ephesians, he would not name. When I hear it proposed elsewhere to
limit the numbers of the representatives of the people on this floor, I feel disposed
to return the answer of Agesilaus when the Spartans were asked for
their arms: `Come and take them!' (Quere—Was it not Leonidas, at Thermopylæ,
on whom this demand was made by Xerxes?) If you step out of your
threshold on matters that do not concern you, we have got a Roland for your
Oliver; we will increase your number, apportioning it somewhat more to the
population and wealth of the members of this community. And as the legislatures
are, as we are told, nearly all in session at this time, and the election can
be readily made, we will reduce your term of service to one year. It appeared
to be the opinion of some gentlemen, who seemed to think that He who made
the world should have consulted them about it, that our population would go on
increasing till it exceeded the limits of the theory of our representative government.
He remembered a case in which it had been seriously proposed, and by
a learned gentleman too, that inasmuch as one of his brethren was increasing
his property in a certain ratio, in the course of time it would amount
by progressive increase to the value of the whole world, and this man would
thus become master of the world. These calculations would serve as charades,
conundrums, and such matters, calculated to amuse the respectable class (much
interested in such matters) of old maids and old bachelors, of which Mr. R.
said he was a most unfortunate member. To this objection, that the number of
the house would soon become too great, to this bugbear, it was sufficient to
reply, that when the case occurred it would be time to provide for it. We will
not take the physic before we are sick, remembering the old Italian epitaph,
`I was well, I would be better, I took physic, and here I am.' He would not
have arisen, but from the apparent inconsistency of the vote he was about to
give with that which he gave on a like occasion ten years ago. At that time,
he said, there was no prospect of any such overreaching, aggrandizing spirit on
the part of the General Government which our wisest men now say they apprehend,
and he thought not without reason, and he was no alarmist. On the occasion
now referred to, he had voted, as well as he recollected, for a ratio of
37,000, and was willing now to go so far as to make the future representation
bear the same proportion to the present as the present bears to the past. He
would add one other remark: he would get rid of no difficulty which his past
political life might put upon him by subterfuge or evasion. He did not call on
those who had not sinned, to throw the first stone. He called upon those who
had passed through three-and-twenty years of political life with no greater inconsistency,
was continued, upon different proposed ratios, for several days longer.
On the 1st of February, Mr. Randolph again spoke, and proposed a ratio,
though he admitted without any prospect of success, of 30,000. I shall content
myself with making a few extracts, or culling some of the beauties of the
speech, and then, with the decision of the House on the final question, dismiss
the subject.
"He was in favor of making the House as numerous as the Constitution
would permit, always keeping within such a number as would not be inconvenient
to the House for the transaction of business. For in that respect the
legislature of a little Greek or Swiss republic might be as numerous as that of
the Kingdom of Great Britain. The only limit was the capacity to do business
in one chamber, and it was desirable to have as great a number as would keep
on this side of a mob. One of the most profound female writers of the present
age, and perhaps he might amend by striking out the word female, had pointed
out the superiority of the legislative body of England over that of France, from
the circumstance that, of the British Parliament, no man is permitted to read a
speech, but is obliged to pronounce it extempore; while, in the French Legislative
Assembly, the rage for making speeches was excited by the usage that any
member who could manufacture one, or get some one else to do it for him,
ascended the tribune and delivered, and afterwards published it,—and hence
their notion that an Assembly of more than 100, if composed of Newtons,
might be called a mob. The practice in England naturally forced out the abilities
of the House. The speaker was obliged to draw on his own intellectual
resources, and upon those talents with which Heaven had endowed him. Talents
descend from heaven—they are the gift of God. No patent of nobility
can confer them; and he who had the right, beyond a monarch's power to
grant, did conduct the public affairs of the country. By the contrary practice,
according to Madame de Staël, the French nation was cheated, and men passed
for more than they were worth. We have been told of corruptions, and of the
dicta of Sir Robert Walpole. That statesman had been slandered as much as
any man of modern times. This saying had been ascribed to him, he (Sir
Robert) always disavowed, although it had served to pull him down, for it was
easy to put a falsehood into circulation, but difficult to recall it: He said, `those
men (alluding to particular persons) had their prices;' not all men—and it was
understood that he always excepted William Shippen from it. A gentleman
from Georgia had feared a large ratio would introduce an oligarchy. But it
would be recollected that our Government, in its head, was monarchical. It was
useless to quarrel about words, for such is the fact; and, as some writers[5]
say,
not the best form of monarchy, the elective; but on this he would express no
opinion. There was another body that was oligarchical, the senate, and
an oligarchy of the worst sort, for the representatives of the State sovereignties
if the whole rays of Executive influence were to be concentrated upon it?
It would he consumed, or, like a diamond under a lens, would evaporate.
Nevertheless, there were dull speeches delivered in the Houses of Parliament as
well as here. Witness those of Mr. Fuller, or of Mr. Drake. This was one of those
cases in which the maxim, de mortuis nil nisi bonum, did not hold. He complained
of the growth of the contingent expenses of the House, which had been
incurred for the accommodation of the members, in a profusion of stationery, easy
arm-chairs, and a mass of printed documents that nobody reads! These accommodations,
like those at banks, did no good to those who made use of them. He
believed that an increased ratio would be one of the means of getting rid of these
incumbrances."
The ratio was fixed at 40,000, and on the 6th of February, that powerful
lever of legislation, the previous question, was put and carried. The bill was
read a third time, and on the main question—Shall the bill pass?—it was carried
in the affirmative, by 100 ayes to 55 noes—Mr. Randolph among the latter.
I had omitted to add, that two days previous to the final passage of the bill, Mr.
Randolph spoke the third time on it, and it was on that occasion that he spoke
so sensitively of the departing greatness of his native State, by fixing the ratio at
40,000, and the rapid strides of New York and Pennsylvania in population.
After proceeding some time, he observed: "I confess that I have (and I am not
ashamed to own it) an hereditary attachment to the State which gave me birth.
I shall act upon it as long as I act upon this floor, or anywhere else. I shall
feel it when I am no longer capable of action anywhere. But I beg gentlemen to
bear in mind, if we feel the throes and agonies which they impute to us at the sight
of our departing power, there is something in fallen greatness, though it be in the
person of a despot, something to enlist the passions and feelings of men even
against their reason—Bonaparte himself believed he had those who sympathized
with him. But if such be our condition, if we are really so extremely sensitive
on this subject, do not gentlemen recollect the application of another received
maxim in regard to sudden, I will not say upstart elevation, that some who are
once set on horseback know not, nor care not, which way they ride? He was
a man of peace. With Bishop Hall, I take no shame to myself for making
overtures of pacification, when I have unwittingly offended. But, sir, I cannot
permit, whatever liberties may be taken with me, I cannot permit any that may
be taken with the State of Virginia to pass unnoticed on this floor. I hope the
notice which I shall always take of them will be such as not only becomes a
member of this House, but the dignity of that ancient State."
On Monday, the 25th of February, Mr. Randolph got himself into an awkward
situation, by announcing prematurely the death of William Pinckney, a
senator from Maryland, and a distinguished jurist and orator. He had, it seemed,
obtained the information from one of the judges of the Supreme Court, who
came in while the House was in session, and gave the information to Mr. Randolph
as coming from a gentleman of the bar, who told him he had seen the
corpse. After delivering a handsome eulogium upon Mr. Pinckney, on his motion
as the journal was read the next morning, Mr. Randolph got up and apologized
to the House for having led them into the error, and moved that the entry
referred to on the journal be expunged, which, by unanimous consent, was
agreed to. Mr. Pinckney, however, died the same night, and both Houses
adopted the usual resolutions of wearing crape and attending his funeral. Mr.
Randolph's address, being entirely extemporaneous and sudden, was so eloquent
and happy that I cannot avoid inserting it here.
He arose to announce to the House the death of a man who filled the first
place in public estimation, in the first profession in that estimation, in this or
any other country. "We have been talking of General Jackson, and a greater
man than he is not here, but gone for ever! I allude, sir, to the boast of Maryland,
and the pride of the United States—the pride of us all, and particularly
the pride and ornament of that profession of which you, Mr. Speaker (Stephenson),
are a member, and an eminent one. He was a man with whom I lived
when a member of this House, and a new one too—and ever since he left it for
the other—I speak it with pride, in habits, not merely negatively friendly, but of
kindness and cordiality. The last time I saw him was on Saturday, the last Saturday
but one, in the pride of life and full possession and vigor of all his faculties,
in that lobby. He is now gone to his account (for as the tree falls so it must lie),
where we must all go; where I must soon go, and by the same road too,—the
course of nature, and where all of us, put off the evil day as long as we may,
must also soon go. For what is the past but as a span, and which of us can
look forward to as many years as we have lived? The last act of intercourse
between us was an act, the recollection of which I would not now be without
for all the offices that all the men of the United States have filled or ever shall
fill. He had, indeed, his faults, his foibles; I should rather say, sins. Who is
without them? Let such, and such only, cast the first stone. And these foibles,
faults if you will, which everybody could see, because everybody is
clear-sighted with regard to the faults and foibles of others, he, I have no doubt,
would have been the first to acknowledge on a proper representation of them.
Everything now is hidden to us—not, God forbid!—that utter darkness rests
upon the grave, which, hideous as it is, is lighted, cheered, and warmed with
light from Heaven; not the impious fire fabled to be stolen from heaven by the
heathen, but by the Spirit of the living God, whom we all profess to worship,
and whom I hope we shall spend the remainder of the day in worshipping, not
with mouth honor, but in our hearts, in spirit and in truth; that it may not be
said of us also, `This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoreth
me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.' Yes, it is just so, he
is gone. I will not say that our loss is irreparable, because such a man as has
existed may exist again. There has been a Homer, there has been a Shakspeare;
there has been a Milton, there has been a Newton. There may be another
Pinckney, but there is none now. And it was to announce this event that I
have risen. I am (said Mr. Randolph) almost inclined to believe in presentiments.
I have been all along as well assured of the fatal termination of that
limbs before sun-rise to the door of his sick chamber (for I would not intrude
upon the sacred grief of the family) almost every morning since his illness
From the first I had almost no hope."
Mr. Randolph concluded by moving that the House now adjourn, which motion
was unanimously agreed to. Mr. Randolph was not only premature in
announcing this event, but in occupying the place of some member from Maryland.
The mournful lot should, by courtesy, have fallen to John Nelson, as the
youngest member. He betrays also some portion of his prevalent failing or foible,
affectation, in stopping in the majestic march of his grief to show his learning
by telling us about Promethean fire being stolen from heaven, when he and
his audience should have been in the melting mood, could his feelings have been
strong enough to have burst open his fountain of tears. Si vis me fiere, dolendum
est primum ipsi tibi. He assumes the novel and unusual character of preacher,
quotes texts of Scripture, exhorts his honorable congregation in the Apostolic
precept, to worship God in spirit and in truth, to which exhortation the members
paid about as much obedience as if it came from the pulpit. 'Tis more to
the manner we object than to the matter of the address, which, upon the whole,
is worthy the orator or his subject; one portion of it, indeed, challenges our admiration
and praise, where he speaks of a Homer, a Shakespeare, a Milton, a
Newton, that have once appeared, and concludes that there may be another
Pinckney, "but there is none now." We have here a most beautiful climax,
ending in a sublime burst of sorrow.
The Supreme Court also entered into the spirit of grief for the death of Mr.
Pinckney, and on motion of Mr. Harper of Baltimore, formerly a member of
Congress from South Carolina, adjourned for the purpose of paying their last
tribute to his remains, by attending them from the place of his death. The Bar
also, on the motion of Mr. Clay, agreed to attend his funeral and wear crape on
the left arm as a token of their respect for his memory.
We may be here excused for recurring to the cause of Mr. Pinckney's death,
which has been of such frequent occurrence among leading professional gentlemen
of the bar, as to deserve the investigation of learned pathologists in general.
At the conclusion of a long and very powerful argument, he fell, apparently
lifeless, as if by an apoplectic stroke, was carried to his quarters insensible,
and never spoke intelligibly afterwards. Mr. Harper followed soon after
in a similar way, at the Baltimore Bar, and General Winder also, a distinguished
advocate at the same Bar, fell suddenly and expired in the midst of an argument.
We have had some instances in this city, in the persons of Thomas Addis Emmett
and James Wells, of a sudden termination of their mortal career in the midst
of their loftiest forensic efforts. I have witnessed at a Court in my native State
the ablest pleader fall dead at the conclusion of an animated and powerful argument.
Whether these sudden deaths are caused by the flow of blood to the
arteries of the brain by being stimulated with high excitement of the cerebral
organs, so as to cause rupture, from collapse of the heart or lungs, or from exhaustion,
we leave to the determination of the faculty, merely relating a fact in
never hear of such sudden disasters among the clergy, although their mental
and physical powers are equally tasked. Having asked the cause of this exemption
of a worthy divine, he said he presumed it was only a fulfilment of the
Scriptures that "the wicked shall fall and the righteous shall stand," applying
his biblical solution of the phenomenon, no doubt, to the whole class of the
legal profession, and not to these bright ornaments in particular.
The celebrated Godwin, who, in speaking of the Presidency of the United
States, remarks, "Still monarchy has one refuge left!" See his Enquirer.
HIS ELECTION TO THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES.
Mr. Randolph was elected senator in Congress, on December 17, 1825.
Among the candidates nominated, was Judge Henry St. George Tucker, his
half-brother, by the mother's side; William B. Giles, and Dr. John Floyd were
recommended, and each had his advocates in the legislative body. On the first
ballot, the vote stood, Tucker 65, Randolph 63, Giles 58, Floyd 40. According
to the rule of the House Mr. Floyd was dropt, and the second ballot stood,
Tucker 87, Randolph 79, Giles 60. Mr. Giles being likewise dropt under the
rules, and the members having prepared and deposited their ballots in the
boxes, Mr. Jackson, on the part of the friends of Mr. Tucker, rose and stated
to the House, that it was the desire of Mr. Tucker in no event to be placed in
competition with Mr Randolph. Considering that Mr. R. had no chance of
being elected, they had, on their own responsibility, put Mr. Tucker in nomination.
But as the collision was now between these two gentlemen, they thought
it due to Mr. Tucker's request and feelings to withdraw his name. Some conversation
then ensued, in which it was suggested that the ballot boxes ought to
be emptied and the ballots again collected. Mr. Jackson declared he did not
know the ballots had been put in the boxes, or he should have withdrawn Mr.
Tucker sooner. One gentleman remarked, that the person who had been last
dropt, ought, under these circumstances, to be again before the House. But
the chair decided, that as the ballots had all been deposited in the boxes, and
there being no mistake or irregularity, they must be counted under the rule of
the House. This was accordingly done, and the ballots stood, Randolph 104,
Tucker 80. Mr. Randolph having a majority, was declared duly elected.
Had not the friends of Mr. Tucker withdrawn him, it appears from this proceeding
he would have been elected, because 42, who voted on the first
ballot, did not vote on the last, and Mr. R's majority being only 24, while all
his friends voted. As he retained his seat in the Senate only two years, he
must have been elected to supply the place of a Senator who had resigned or
died, for the balance of his term. Having given some of his speeches while in
that body, as likewise others of a convivial nature during his visit to England
while a Senator, we may here give the final termination of his senatorial career,
to round off this short period of his legislative course. By his indiscriminate
abuse of the administration, his personalities, and his extravagant behavior on
the floor of the Senate, he lessened in no small degree the dignity of that body,
and rendered himself unpopular in his own State, particularly to his political
1827, a committee of five members, Linn Banks at the head of it, wrote the
following note to the governor, John Tyler.
"Sir: We understand that the friends of the administration and others will
support you for the Senate in opposition to Mr. Randolph. We desire to
understand distinctly whether they have your consent or not: and if not, will
you be pleased to say, whether you will abandon the chair of state at this time
to accept a seat in the Senate."
To which Mr. Tyler replied by note as follows:—
Your note handed to me last night by Mr. Goode, in which
you say, `understanding that the friends of the administration and others will
support you for the Senate in opposition to Mr. Randolph, you desire to understand
distinctly whether they have my consent, or not; and if not, request me to
say whether I will not abandon the chair of state at this time, to accept a seat
in the Senate,' deserves and shall have a candid reply. Let me premise that I
am unacquainted with the political preferences of those disposed to sustain me
for the Senate. Suffice it to say, that my political opinions on the fundamental
principles of the government are the same with those espoused by Mr. Randolph,
and I admire him most highly for his undeviating attachment to the constitution,
manifested at all times, and through all the events of a long political life; and
if any man votes for me under a different persuasion, he most grievously deceives
himself. Yon ask me whether I have yielded my consent to oppose him.
On the contrary, I have constantly opposed myself to all solicitations. I desire most
earnestly to be left at peace. There is no motive which could induce me to
seek to change my present situation for a seat in the Senate at this time. I
cannot admit that to be one in a body of forty-eight members is to occupy a
more elevated station than that presented in the chief magistracy of Virginia.
My private interests, intimately connected with the good of my family, are
more highly sustained by remaining where I am, than by the talked-of change.
There is then no consideration, public or private, which could lead me to desire
it. From the first to the last, everywhere and to all with whom I have conversed,
this has been my uniform language. Your last inquiry is one, which,
urged by those who felt disposed to sustain me, I have constantly declined
answering. Propriety and a due regard to consistency of deportment require
me to decline an answer now. Should the office, in opposition to my wishes (a
result which I cannot anticipate), be conferred upon me, I shall then give to the
expression of the legislative will such reflection and pronounce such decision as
my sense of what is due to it may seem to require. These explanations might
have been had by each and all of you, gentlemen, verbally if you had sought to
have attained them in that way, which might possibly have discovered a greater
degree of confidence in me. But as they are now given, you are at liberty to
use them in any mode you please, reserving to myself a similar privilege.
Mr. Tyler was elected by a majority of ten votes over Mr. Randolph, and
upon being notified of the result by the clerks of the two Houses, he signified
his acceptance of the office in a letter under date the 18th of January.
George W. Crump, being then in his seat in Congress as the representative
of the district, immediately on receiving the news, wrote a letter to his
constituents, withdrawing his own name from the list of candidates for the
ensuing election, in April, 1828, and joining with Mr. Randolph's other friends
in bringing forward their old and favorite representative. Mr. R. was accordingly
elected without opposition.
JOHN RANDOLPH'S SPEECH AT A DINNER GIVEN TO HIM IN RICHMOND, 10TH
MARCH, 1827.
On his arrival at Richmond from Washington on the 8th, several members of
the Legislature and the citizens felt desirous of manifesting their respect by giving
him a public dinner. They addressed to him the following letter:—
We take great pleasure in complying with the wishes of a number
of the members of the Legislature and citizens of Richmond, to ask the favor of
your company to a dinner at the Eagle Hotel, to-morrow, at 5 o'clock, as the
best mode they can adopt to evince the high sense they entertain of your distinguished
public services, and firmness in maintaining the principles of the Constitution,
and resisting the mischievous measures of an infatuated administration.
To which Mr. Randolph returned the following answer:—
The feebleness of my health admonishes me of the imprudence
I commit in accepting your very kind and flattering invitation, but I am unable
to practise the self-denial which prudence would impose. I have only to
offer my profound acknowledgments for an honor to which I am sensible of no
claim on my part except the singleness of purpose with which I have endeavored
to uphold our common principles, never more insidiously and vigorously assailed
than now, and never more resolutely defended and asserted.
About one hundred sat down to the table. Lynn Banks officiated as president,
B. W. Leigh as vice-president, and the utmost harmony prevailed. After
the regular toasts were drunk, the following toast was given:—
"John Randolph of Roanoke, the constant defender of the principles of the
Constitution, the fearless opponent of a mischievous administration."
Mr. Randolph arose and said, that he had only his poor thanks to offer for
the honor, as distinguished as unmerited, which had been conferred upon him.
He knew that of late years it had become a practice, that the person thus selected
as the object of distinction and hospitality, should make his acknowledgments
in a set speech. But as a plain and old-fashioned Virginian, it was, he
must be permitted to say, a custom more honored in the breach than the observance.
He felt assured that no declaration of his principles was called for on the
occasion. It would, indeed, be too severe a tax upon the courtesy of that intelligent
auditory, for him to attempt to gloss over what he had done or omitted to do.
He did not expect them to judge of those principles from any declarations that
he might see fit to make, instead of inferring them from the acts of his public life,
which had commenced in the last century and had terminated but a few days
ago. He concluded by drinking the health of the company, and wishing to the
members of the Assembly a safe and happy return to their families, their friends
and their constituents.
On the 15th of April, Mr. Randolph received an invitation from the citizens
of Prince Edward County, to a dinner to be given at the Court House, among
whom were Doctor G. W. Cruness, the late member of Congress; to which
Mr. Randolph sent the following answer:—
Your very kind and flattering invitation found me confined by
a painful and distressing disease, which only leaves me power to express my
sense of the honor done me, and my regret at being unable to partake of the
hospitality and festivity of my Prince Edward friends, to whom I am bound by
every tie that can unite me to the kindest and most indulgent constituents that
ever man had.
Mr. Randolph was re-elected without opposition, but scarcely attended at all
the two or three succeeding sessions. In that of 1829 his health was very
infirm, though he attended at the seat of government, and took up his old quarters
at Dowson's, No. 2. He rode out almost daily on horseback, and the only
time I noticed him in his seat was toward the close of the session, upon the
passage of the Cumberland Road bill, which authorised the erection of tollgates
and the collection of tolls by officers appointed by the United States. He
arose to speak on its final passage, but being informed the previous question had
been taken, he sat down, and contented himself with publishing what he meant
to say, and which, though short, was characteristic, and concluded by declaring
the clause in relation to the toll-gates a nuisance, and calling upon his State to
abate it. She was not driven to that dangerous extremity, however, as the act
did not pass the Senate.
In 1830 Mr. Randolph was appointed by General Jackson, Minister to
Russia. When the news of this appointment was first circulated among the
members of Congress in May, they felt disposed to receive it with incredulity
informers, though classed among the honorable, to enlist their assent.[6] In June
he arrived at Norfolk for the purpose of embarking for Liverpool in the U. S.
ship Concord. While at Norfolk, he received an invitation to a public dinner,
at which, his health being proposed, he made a speech, in which he deprecated
the idea of receiving the people's money without rendering an equivalent in service,
and assured the audience that the pocketing the mere pittance of the outfit
was no inducement to his accepting the trust. That re infectâ aut factâ, as he
was sent on a special mission, and not as minister resident, home he should
return.
On the 28th he sailed from Norfolk, arrived at Liverpool on the 20th of July,
and proceeded to London with his Secretary of Legation, John Randolph Clay,
the son of his old friend, the honorable Joseph Clay of Philadelphia, who was
a member of Congress in the sessions of 1804 to 1808. He visited his place of
destination, St. Petersburgh, the September following, and was presented to the
Emperor and Empress by M. Poletica, who was an old acquaintance from having
resided at Washington as minister. He produced his credentials, but, in the
course of a week or so, he demanded his passports, and on the plea of infirmity
and the apprehended severity of the climate, started for England, leaving Mr.
Clay, a youth of only twenty years, as Chargé d'Affaires. It appeared afterwards,
upon his exhibiting his correspondence with the government, that he had
stipulated for the privilege of visiting the South of France, and his original instructions
authorized him to leave the court of the Emperor should his health
require it, and the affairs of the mission admit of his temporary absence. During
his short stay at St. Petersburgh he was thought to be insane, which his speedy
flight, or hegira, seemed to confirm. His presentation to the Emperor and his
royal consort is described as furnishing ridiculous scenes, from his strange appearance,
and that the latter could not restrain her risible propensities. He is
said to have shown his private papers, his correspondence with the President
and Secretary of State, urging him to accept the appointment. That appointment,
indeed, surprised his very friends, as well as those who knew that it
was not in his disposition to confine himself to the serious business of the post.
Upon his return to England, he despatched his servant Juba to Boston, in the
ship Fame, who arrived there in November with thirteen packages of his master's
with all its laughable circumstances, and informed Captain Turner of the
Concord, that he had abandoned the Russian mission, and should return home in
the fall. He laid his last commands upon Juba before he left Liverpool, to have
him buried under an old oak tree on his farm of Roanoke, with his face looking
westward; for should he die in England or on his return, he would have his
corpse preserved in spirits and sent home for that purpose.
He showed his correspondence in London, the first letter being from General
Jackson, inquiring whether he would accept the mission to Russia. The second
is the reply of Mr. Randolph, that he would accept it only on condition that he
should stay in Russia no longer than he might find it convenient; the other
portion of time to be spent in the South of Europe. The third letter was from
Mr. Van Buren, written immediately after, confirming the appointment on the
terms proposed, and placing a sloop of war at his disposal, to transport him
wherever he should direct. He returned home within the diplomatic year, settled
his accounts at the seat of government, received all the arrears of his salary
(the outfit he had already pocketed), which took every cent of the appropriation—returned
home, and was announced for Congress at the succeeding election
of April, 1831.[7]
We did not insert the whole of his speech on the Panama question in the
Senate, in 1826, on account of its great length; but one passage in it, we think,
deserves a place here, on account of its wit. After talking around the question
for hours, he remarked that "England had laid duties by way of bounty on the
produce of her slave population in Jamaica, and the West Indies generally, to
the amount of eight or ten millions of dollars a year, that their masters may not
run away from their slaves or starve with them."
The same speech, on the Panama question, which was delivered on the 1st
of March, denounced the South American States, among other transgressions,
for their folly in abolishing slavery. The speech was published the May following
in the Alvarado Mercury of Mexico. The editor says, "Mr. Randolph,
will obtain the highest encomiums at Madrid, abusing the privileges
nobly and wisely granted by free nations to their representatives. He insults,
quite at his ease, and in the most slanderous and malignant manner, the new
republics of America, whose sacrifices and zeal merit applause and respect. Let
the North Americans who reside among us speak to the confusion of this man,
and tell whether we are `lunatics and fools.' Fools and great fools must we
be, when we shall appoint a John Randolph a senator."
In May, 1826, after delivering two or three speeches, he passed through Baltimore
it was proposed to send Hamlet, and for the same reason, for he could tell a
hawk from a handsaw, and probably could see as deep into a mill-stone as
his prototype, and there was as much method in his madness. Before
he left Washington, he found himself involved in a quarrel with Mr. Clay, as
another ill consequence of that unfortunate Panama speech, which provoked
the enmity equally of nations and individuals. The meeting took place the 8th
of April, across the Potomac, at half past four in the afternoon; and as we have
previously given an account, though a brief and imperfect one of it, we will now
merely add one incident, which did not then occur to us, that while the parties
were at their appointed stations, and the pistol of Mr. Randolph was hanging
by his side (being a hair trigger, the use of which he had objected to), it went
off. It was soon perceived to be an accident, and so pronounced by Mr. Clay.
After exchanging shots, and receiving Mr. Clay's second fire, without injury,
Mr. Randolph fired his in the air, declaring that he would not fire at Mr. Clay;
they simultaneously approached each other, shook hands, and the affair then
honorably and happily closed.
Mr. Randolph arrived at Liverpool in July following, where he excited considerable
attention. His person, his dress, and his conversation, were carefully
dilated to satisfy public curiosity concerning him. At a public dinner given by
the corporation of Liverpool to Mr. Huskisson, and to which Mr. Randolph was
invited. Mr. H., after complimenting the mayor on the presence of one who
had been the ardent and efficient advocate of all that was morally and politically
good in his own country, and who entertained the most friendly feelings towards
England, proposed the health of Mr. Randolph." Mr. R., on rising to return
thanks, said, "that those who had experienced the sensations of a man suffering
from a protracted and uneasy voyage, and the privations incidental, on his
arrival at the wished-for shore, might form a small estimate of his, when he saw
the British land. But they could not appreciate his feelings, on the change from
all that is uncomfortable and cheerless to the animated and social reception he
had met with since his arrival in Liverpool." Mr. R., in a chaste and appropriate
manner, expatiated on the blessings we here enjoy, and which are fostered
and protected by the ablest ministers this country ever had. He said he could
never distinguish between the interests of America and England. Whatever
was beneficial to Liverpool could not but be highly useful to New York. The
interests of the cotton planter and the cotton spinner were one and the same.
The tobacco planter in America and the merchant and manufacturer in England
who converted that plant into a source of industry and wealth, had but a common
interest. After assuring the company that he felt proud of having English
blood in his veins, in concluding, he proposed the Town and trade of Liverpool.
Mr. Randolph also gave the following toast:—England and America, the
mother and daughter. He afterwards attended Mr. Huskisson in an aquatic excursion
in one of the steam packets. His health was again proposed by Mr.
Huskisson, no doubt to gratify the persons present by hearing him make a
speech, which he did, lauding the parent country and its institutions, and constitution,
him—all which were duly applauded. In conclusion, he gave by their leave,
as a toast—"their own Liverpool; not the town of which they were so justly
proud—not its trade, to which they daily toasted its prosperity—not its distinguished
and talented representative (Mr. H.) whose recent election did honor to
their choice,—but their noble Earl, the great and gifted man at the head of the
administration." (Great applause.)
The papers say that he talked incessantly, and instructed as well as delighted
the company. Among others of his sayings, were these. On one occasion
he was cheered, and he said, "gentlemen, Old England and Young America,
united for ever! Who shall divide them?" Loud cheers followed, and the band
struck up "Yankee Doodle." An Irishman asked Mr. Randolph what would
be the best cure for the miseries of Ireland. I will give it you in the words of
the Bible—"Muzzle not the ox that treadeth out the corn." The Irish peasant is
deprived of his due share of the fruits of the earth. Another gentleman observed,
that he did not think Mr. Cobbett qualified to sit in the House of Commons.—
"Cobbett not qualified to sit in the House of Commons? Why, he has qualified
himself for a seat in that House, as a lady of easy virtue qualifies herself
for the Magdalen Asylum, by a life of prostitution to all parties, and faithful to
none." Speaking of man, Mr. R. said, "he was naturally ignorant, and all
your contrivances of Church and State are, that A may be idle, while B works.
Talking of property, the sage said, `society cannot exist without property.' If
in political revolutions property be divorced from power, power will soon go in
search of property. A reaction then ensues. Property then goes in search of
power, and they become once more united. In all State revolutions (said he),
endeavor to keep down the dregs of society. You can easily blow away the
froth, but once you let the dregs get uppermost, depend upon it, that the draught
will be, not blue, but `black ruin.' " A gentleman was inquiring about the
State of Virginia. "Why (said Mr. R.) we vote for representatives vivâ voce,
on freehold suffrage, and we Virginians would as soon have our noses taken off,
as change the mode of voting by ballot." "Then, sir, your mode of voting is
the same with England." "Aye, to be sure," said Mr. R. "Have we not been
steering upon the same course ever since we left you? without tacking or taking
in sail, only we have thrown the King overboard,—God bless him!" He went
on longer in this style, and his conversation is represented as so fascinating, that
he could with difficulty escape the crowd that accompanied him. His dress is
described also, consisting of a blue coat, yellow silk neckcloth, and blue trousers.
The Liverpool paper terms him a Senator from the sister kingdom. He had
taken his passage to Liverpool from Philadelphia, in the ship Alexander,
Captain G. Baldwin, with whom he had a falling out, which accounts for his
voyage being so disagreeable. The cause of the quarrel is said to have arisen
from Mr. R.'s holding a conversation, late at night, with the mate, while the
Captain was below, on the 5th of June. Mr. Randolph wrote a letter to a
friend in New York, describing his treatment by the Captain on that occasion,
which he characterized as an abrupt and rude reprimand, for daring to violate
threatened to hold the Captain responsible, when they arrived at Liverpool, but
qualified the expression as meant to the owners, and not personally to himself.
The Captain threatened in turn to hold Mr. Randolph personally responsible,
as soon as they got on shore, to which Mr. R. replied, that barking dogs never
bite. Mr. Randolph's letter was published in the National Gazette, which meeting
the eye of the Captain, drew from him a long answer, in very angry terms.
He commenced by complaining of Mr. R.'s irritable temper from the time of his
stepping on board the ship at Newcastle, till the explosion took place. He
charges Mr. R. with having refused to pay his fare on board the steamboat from
Philadelphia, giving as an excuse that he was taken to the city against his will,
and that the owners were bound to place him on board, free of expense; and
further, the Captain states, rather than be detained, on account of this dispute,
the passengers paid the money. There is also a good deal said about the dog
and the duel, the particulars of which are not given, and which the Captain said
was not fully correct, though it is true, that in the affair of the dog, between himself
and a passenger, Mr. R. did ask his permission to take the animal with him,
and he consented. As to the duel, that Mr. R. did display his pistols on deck
with a view of intimidation, the offender being a passenger in the garb of a
Quaker. The Captain's letter is full of recrimination, but is too long to give
entire. Some of his charges were, that Mr. Randolph was full of murmuring
and fault-finding, vulgar, abusive, and so obscene, that two of the passengers
who had families on board, desired to have a separate table. The Captain assured
them that if he did not mend his manners, he should have another apartment
and table to himself, but that upon Mr. R.'s obtaining some hint of the
Captain's determination, he changed his conduct, and became more orderly the
rest of the voyage. He concludes by ascribing Mr. R.'s conduct to insanity or
the use of drink. I do not vouch for the truth of all the Captain's statement, as
from his great provocation, and the bias of his feelings, he may have given to it
too high a coloring. But from Mr. R.'s irritable disposition, and his dispute
with a passenger on another occasion, an honest Dutch captain, whom he
wished to have thrown overboard, we may conclude that it was in the main
not far from the truth. Mr. R. remained in England till the November following,
and he returned to New York early in December, and took his departure for
Washington to attend his seat in the Senate. It was during this session, "he
was in the vein," and was seized with the cacoethes loquendi, during which he
occupied so disproportionate a term of the session.
We may be permitted to mention here, though not in the order of time, that
during the recess, in July, 1829, he was elected one of the members of the convention
that met soon afterwards at Richmond to form a new constitution. In
a speech to the electors on the day of their meeting, he declared that he had drawn
the sword and thrown away the scabbard; that all changes were not improvements,
and that it never was known that the people ever improved their government
by change! On the right of suffrage, he said the non-freeholders talked about
physical force: but before he would consent to extend to them the right to tax his
to the introduction of every clause in the new constitution (but which were inserted
nevertheless) based upon true republican principles, and many of his constituents,
upon more mature reflection, expressed regret at his election to the
convention. He was there a silent observer of their proceedings, and only
spoke once, in answer to Chapman Johnson, in which he compared his puny
attack upon the positions taken by Judge Marshall to an attempt to capture Gibraltar
with a pistol. In an address to the people of the same county some
years before, about 1822, he stated that the election of General Jackson to the
presidency need not be dreaded, as it could, in no event, possibly occur. "The
people of the United States have not become so corrupt as to choose a man of
military talents to govern the national councils in opposition to Mr. Crawford,
or, indeed, to any other good man in the country." In the Senate in 1826, on
the judiciary bill, he said, "I shall vote for General Jackson at the next election,
whoever else shall be nominated. He is the first military man in the
country." In April, 1833, he attended the Newmarket races at Petersburg,
where, in an address to the party at the Jockey Club dinner, we discover another
backward somerset, and he is again found in the ranks of the enemies of
his late friend the General, notwithstanding the signal official favor he had conferred
on him, and for which the President had suffered no small share of contumely
and reproach. The papers stated that he trod the wine-press of wrath,
and, ranging through society from the highest to the lowest, he struck down
moral and political offenders on the right and left, even as Achilles the flying
squadrons of Troy. He might have been more fitly compared to Ajax in the
midst of the flock of sheep, which he, in one of his mad fits, took for his enemies,
and committed dreadful havoc among. He condemned General Jackson
for issuing his bloody Proclamation against South Carolina, and promised to
call on him at Washington, on his way to Philadelphia, and rectify all that
was amiss. In the February before, he attended a meeting at Rockingham
Court-House, well supplied with resolutions, and foreboding a wordy war. He
talked for several hours about everything. The Richmond Whig published an
extract of a letter giving an account of the proceedings. The writer says:—
"I can with truth say that I did not go there with the fashion so blindly
as to swallow the infernal doctrines of the Proclamation, as the people
of this county were about doing. Since the last Charlotte court the opinions of
the Republican party have assumed a totally different aspect. John of Roanoke
has completely revolutionized them. He spoke till near dark. As usual, he
talked upon everything. Negro education! He told the ladies that those of
them who sheeted their best beds and uncorked their best wines for a negro
preacher (the Rev. Mr. Erskine) were not far from having mulatto children.
It seemed about 800 persons were present, all of whom but three voted for his
resolutions (damnatory of General Jackson). But due allowance must be
granted for this ebullition of passion, as he was then on his last pilgrimage on
earth, his health being so feeble that he had to address the company from the
chair on which he sat. He arrived in Baltimore (as the American informs us)
the crowd. But the singularity of his equipage and proceeding were justifiable
causes for curiosity. Many wished to see what sort of a being was in the vehicle,
an old-fashioned English coach of revolutionary times, drawn by four
horses, with a postillion on one of the leaders, and Juba on the box. The editor
says he would have been more vexed if he had not created a sensation.
Such a number of spectators crowded around the public door of the tavern, that
he had to be carried in the arms of Juba through a private entrance.
On the 13th of January, 1831, when the appropriation bill came up for consideration,
a long and very warm discussion arose on the item of $9,000 for
one year's salary of Mr. Randolph as minister to Russia. It was moved to
strike it out, and Mr. Burgess, of Rhode Island, spoke at length and with much
bitterness against the absent minister. He did not spare Mr. Van Buren in his
long course of crimination. He charged him with having created the mission
for the express purpose of serving Mr. Randolph. "His mission," said he,
"will hereafter be regarded as an era in our foreign relations, and the residence
of Randolph at the court of Russia will be long talked of as a phenomenon
in diplomacy. For this we must give him the $9,000 demanded by the
Secretary. During his nine days' residence, what service did he render the
American people? The Secretary is satisfied, and we surely ought not to be
anxious about this great affair. We are told it is a matter exclusively within
the competency of the Executive, and therefore it is, I presume, that the representatives
of the people have no other vocation but to vote the promised and
required compensation. He certainly succeeded in that short time in rendering
himself very distinguished at the court of Russia, and therefore it may be said,
in giving equal celebrity to his country. He certainly gave voice to every
tongue of rumor in both hemispheres. * * * * With a perfect knowledge of
the man," said he, "the Secretary of State could not have contrived this mission
with any view to the public service. This man was sent out, not to benefit
the people abroad, but to relieve the administration at home. The erafty Secretary
had witnessed the political movements of this eccentric man. He feared
the comet might return again and visit his political hemisphere. He had seen it
blaze in perihelion, with `fear of change perplexing men in power.' Was it
not prudent to remove the star of malign influence to another sky? What
could such a man do for his country in the character of foreign minister? Just
what he has done; which was very much like what each man in the nation, of
all parties, who knew him, expected he would do. Genius he certainly has,
for he is original and unlike other men. If you please, he is eloquent; but, if
so, it is like himself, sui generis. These have enabled him to perform what he
has done. Could they qualify him for the services of a great diplomatic minister?
Do not these require sound judgment, deep and extensive and regular
thinking, laborious perseverance in business, and, above all, prudence and circumspection?
In his thirty years of public service, where are his monuments
of political wisdom and labors of patriotism? They are all of a piece, of one
uniform character, and this Russian residence will neither give the blush nor
his political life." In this attack upon the absent orator, on the very theatre of
his prowess, Mr. Burgess displayed more spirit than Marius upon entering the
city of Rome, during the detention of his rival Sylla in Greece, when a voice
seemed to be continually sounding in his ears, "dreadful is the den of even the
distant lion." But Mr. Randolph had a host of friends, able and ready enough
to defend him. The first that arose in his cause was his talented countryman
John S. Barbour. "It was said," he commenced, "on a former and appropriate
occasion by Mr. Randolph, that his feet had never been soiled by the dust
of the ante-chamber. He had been the light and ornament of the House and
the Senate, in times when friends and foes guided the destinies of this country.
He had never bent his knee where his heart owed no respect. We are arrogantly
called on by the gentleman from Rhode Island to point to the monuments
of the past services of Mr. Randolph that he has left behind him. Sir, it was
once said of a patriot, a soldier and a statesman, whose deeds of renown are
beyond the reach of praise or dispraise, that his monument was erected in the
hearts of his countrymen. Profiting by this figure, I beg leave to say, that Mr.
Randolph has left among us one monument of his great services. It rests in
the heart of the gentleman from Rhode Island, rising out of it to full view in
this debate; it is now seen sparkling in the glitter of his fancy, now casting its
malignant shadow over those services which justice and history have already
consecrated to patriotism and glory. Mr. Randolph's great exertions, united
with as devoted a band of patriots as ever combined to resist oppression in the
Senate, or withstand it in the field, overthrew the party to which the gentleman
from Rhode Island belonged. In that great struggle between liberty and power,
Mr. R. was true to the people. His matchless genius was exerted in favor of
the people, and this is his crime." * * * Mr. Burgess, some days afterwards,
replied at much length and with great severity, and was answered by Mr. Cambreleng,
among many others.
At the conclusion of a speech of a half hour's duration, he observed, "My
task is finished. I engaged in this debate from a hard necessity; but, sir, it is
a duty I shall never shrink from, when called upon to discharge the obligations
of friendship. I have only to regret the absence of the gentleman calumniated,
who would have defended himself with infinitely greater ability. I now resign,
sir, all the honors of the ring, most cheerfully—all the vulgar triumph of
the fancy—to those who habitually indulge that exalted ambition. When humble
ambition, sir, is driven by hard necessity, to quit the `even tenor of its
way,' to grapple with a Cribb or a Molyneux, the severity of the punishment
should correspond with the enormity of the sacrifice. In rebuking calumny,
sir, to the best of my poor ability, I have not ruffled a feather of the imperial
eagle, towering in his pride of place. No, sir. Withered be the arm that
would harm the bold bird that sports and revels in the purple cloud of war, and
lights with a triumphant wing, on the standard of liberty. No, sir. The arrow
was aimed at an ill-omened follower of the camp—at the sable bird that hovers
over and lights upon the field, when the battle is lost and won, and claws on
sportsman pursues such game no further. He leaves his victim to rot upon the
plain, to the kind care of his dusky mourners, with none to chaunt its requiem
but myriads of cawing crows and croaking ravens."
We have not room to pursue the discussion further, which was kept up for
more than three weeks. Although it was on a subject of minor importance, the
nation was gratified with at least the worth of the sum in dispute, in genuine
eloquence; and the opposing champions seemed to emulate each other, both in
the acrimony of their vituperation and the graces of oratory. The motion to
strike out the $9,000 salary was lost by a large majority; but the people were
more fully satisfied with the propriety of the appropriation.
The contradiction between his professions and his acts never appeared more
glaring than in his acceptance of this appointment. In one of his previous
speeches he asks, "Was it office? What, sir! to drudge in the laboratories of
the departments, or to be at the tail of the corps diplomatique in Europe! Alas,
sir, in my condition a cup of cold water would be more acceptable. I shall retire
upon my resources. I will go back to the bosom of my constituents, and shall I
give them up for this—and for what? For the heartless amusement and vapid
pleasures and tarnished honors of this abode of splendid misery, or shabby splendor,
for a clerkship in the war office, or a foreign mission, to dance attendance
abroad instead of at home."
"The question of his accounts and allowances was brought before Congress
on the 12th of January, when the House by a vote of 95 to 91 refused the call for
a detailed statement of the claims and payments made to John Randolph as
minister for Russia, but resident in England. The belief was, that while in England
he charged the difference in exchange on the drafts he made on the Treasury,
with some other extravagant items."—Niles's Reg., vol. vii., p. 74.
DEATH OF MR. RANDOLPH.
Mr. Randolph reached Philadelphia in May, 1833, on his way to New York,
from whence it was his wish to embark again for Europe—it being, as he stated,
the last throw of the die. He was very low when he arrived, and continued to
sink, gradually, to the end. The lamp of life flickered in the socket, and even
its occasional flashes informed those around his bedside of the near approach of
death. He possessed the power and brilliancy of his intellect to a late hour.
One account states that, only two hours before his death, he talked and said he
felt as well as ever; in fact, that his health had recovered—and he wrote to
Virginia for the pedigree of a horse. "I am going," said he to a gentleman, "to
England.—It is the last throw of the die." It was but the last flickering of the
flame, that blazed up for a moment to go out for ever. The evening before his
death, his physician, with a laudable frankness, announced to him his approaching
end. He received the awful tidings without surprise or alarm; spoke of
his life as a protracted illness, and that it was time the scene of suffering should
close. He gave directions that his body should be conveyed to his late home,
Roanoke, and buried under a particular tree. A clergyman being in attendance,
read a portion of Scripture, during which he laid the accent on the word omnipotent,
on the penultimate syllable, when Mr. Randolph rose up, and supporting
himself on his elbow, repeated, twice, "Omnipotent—omnipotent," laying
the accent on the second syllable, fell back and expired, on Friday, the 20th of
May, 1833. A meeting of the citizens was convened, at 1 o'clock, at the court
room, to take some measure with regard to Mr. Randolph's death. Judge Hopkinson,
formerly a member of the House, was called to the chair. Mr. Sargeant (also
a member) made a forcible and eloquent address on the character and abilities
of the deceased, and a committee was appointed to confer with the personal
friends of Mr. Randolph, with a view of entering into arrangements for offering
a public tribute of respect to his memory. Owing to the warmth of the weather
and the inconvenience of the necessary delay a compliance with the request
would occasion, Mr. John S. Barbour, on the part of Mr. R.'s friends, on the
25th of May, declined the committee's invitation, in a most respectful note, and
the remains of Mr. Randolph were removed on board a vessel, to be taken to
at Richmond on the 28th, when the funeral service of the Episcopal Church was
read over it by the Rev. Mr. Lee—this being all the ceremony the deceased desired,
in a wish uttered a few weeks before. An immense procession followed
the corpse as far as Mayo's bridge; minute guns were fired by a detachment
of artillery, as a token of respect. Lieutenant Robert B. Randolph, a relation,
who had rendered himself famous by bearding the lion in his den—or,
pulling President Jackson's nose, on the 5th of the month—arrived in time to
Join the procession. Johnny and Juba, whose names have become classical,
and, as the account states, will go down to posterity in union with that of their
master, formed a conspicuous part of it. Public sympathy was excited by the
silent and unostentatious grief of these faithful servants, particularly the former,
at the sight of the tears which trickled down his cheeks, while they assisted in
placing the remains of their master in the hearse.
WILL OF MR. RANDOLPH.
In July, 1834, at the term of the General Court held at Richmond, a paper,
purporting to be the last will and testament of John Randolph, was offered for
probate on behalf of John Randolph Bryan, an infant and principal devisee, by
his next friend and grandfather, Judge Coalter. A motion was submitted on
behalf of Johnny, Juba and Essex, to permit them, for themselves and the other
slaves, to appear, as parties, and oppose the probate of the will, and to offer
another paper, as the last will, by which they and the other slaves were liberated.
The motion on behalf of the slaves was overruled by the court, on the
ground that, while in the condition of slaves, they could not legally be admitted
as parties to any proceedings other than a suit in formâ pauperis, or bill in
equity, for the recovery of their freedom. Upon this decision being announced,
the same motions were submitted in behalf of the Rev. Bishop Meade, one of
the trustees mentioned in the last paper, which were allowed, and he was made
a party on the record. The parties not being prepared, a subpæna duces tecum
was awarded to the clerk of the Court of Charlotte County, commanding him
to bring up the paper last offered, and commissions granted the parties to take
depositions of witnesses residing in London and Philadelphia, and the cause continued
till next term.
The will above offered for probate, was dated January, 1832, and contained
no clause for the manumission of his slaves. In fact, the will of 1822, being
his first one, in which their liberation was provided, was said to have been revoked,
or cancelled, by the erasure of his signature. The will of 1832 contains
this clause: "I do hereby appoint my friend, William Leigh, of Halifax, and
my brother, Henry St. George Tucker, President of the Court of Appeals, executors
of this my last will and testament, requiring them to sell all the slaves
and other personal property, and vest the proceeds in bank stock of the Bank
of the United States; and, in defect of there being such bank (which may God
grant for the sake of our liberties), in the three per cent. consols; and, in case
England), then in the United States three per cent. stock; or, in defect of such
stock, in mortgage of land in England." The General Court, on the 15th of
July, 1836, affirmed the validity of the various wills and codicils of John Randolph,
through the years 1819 and 1831. The most important feature established
is the emancipation of his slaves, now numbering about five hundred.
They settle the bulk of his estate on the Hon. William Leigh, Judge of the
General Court; but, he having renounced all benefit, in order to qualify himself
as a witness against the last will of 1832, the effect will be intestacy as to what
was bequeathed to him, amounting to one hundred and fifty thousand dollars!—
which will go to Mr. R.'s heirs at law. Eleven judges composed the court, and
all concurred in their opinions, except one. An appeal was taken to the High
Court of Appeals, which would sit in November. The following is the original
will of Mr. Randolph, and one of the codicils. Other codicils were made, but
have not been published in the Richmond papers:
"In the name of God—amen. I, John Randolph, of Roanoke, in the county
of Charlotte, do ordain this writing, written with my own hand, this 4th of
May, 1819, to be my last will and testament, hereby revoking all others whatever.
I give my slaves their freedom, to which my conscience tells me they
are justly entitled. It has a long time been a matter of the deepest regret to me,
that the circumstances under which I inherited them, and the obstacles thrown
in the way by the laws of the land, have prevented my manumitting them in
my lifetime, which is my full intention to do, in case I can accomplish it. All
the residue of my estate (with the exceptions herein made), whether real or
personal, I bequeath to William Leigh, Esquire, of Halifax, attorney at law, to
the Rev. William Meade, of Frederick, and to Francis S. Key, Esquire, of
Georgetown, in trust for the following uses and purposes, viz. 1. To provide
one or more tracts of land, in any of the States or Territories, not exceeding in
the whole, four thousand acres, nor less than two thousand, to be partitioned
and apportioned by them in such manner as may seem best, among said slaves.
2d. To pay the expense of their removal and of furnishing them with the necessary
cabins, clothes and utensils. 3d. To pay the expense, not to exceed four
hundred dollars per annum, of the education of John Randolph Clay, until he
shall arrive at the age of twenty-three, leaving him my injunction to scorn to eat
the bread of idleness or dependence. 4th. To pay to Theodoric Bland Dudley
ten thousand dollars. 5th. With the residue of said estate to found a college,
to be called Roanoke College. I give to Theodore B. Dudley all my books,
plate, household and kitchen furniture, and all my liquors; also my guns and
pistols, and the choice of six of my horses or brood mares, and my single
chaise, with my best riding saddle and valise. It is my wish and desire that my
executors give no bond or security for the trust reposed in them. In witness
whereof, &c., &c.
claims on Mr. Blodget's and Mrs. Randolph's estates should pass by the devisee
to the executors, who shall sell any portion, or the whole of my said estate, of
whatever nature it may be, the specified devises only excepted."
Among the testimony adduced, was the following, which strongly illustrates
the eccentricity of the character of the deceased. Doctor Brockenbrough, on
being questioned about Mr. R.'s religion, in 1819, said he was enthusiastic on
that subject, but he spoke and wrote on other subjects like a man of sense, and
witness did not think his religious enthusiasm went to the length of derangement.
At any rate, there are many who went as far on that subject, that are
not considered deranged. Witness thought Mr. Randolph under this strong
religious bias from 1818 to 1822. Thinks he did not use profane language
during that period—that he was really pious, and that his conduct was unusually
mild and forbearing. Witness was further examined as to various incidents in
Mr. Randolph's life, and certain extravagancies of conduct during his visit to
Richmond, in the years 1819 and 1826, and the intermediate years. Questioned
whether he thought Mr. R. deranged in 1826. Witness said he differed from
other persons who thought Mr. R.'s extravagancies arose from insanity. Witness
never saw him, where money was concerned, in which he was not perfectly
collected. If he had a bargain to make, he could be as cool as any man. In
1826, Mr. R. behaved wildly, and dressed in a strange manner; but he occasionally
conversed as rationally as ever. Mr. J. A. Chevallier said he was well
acquainted with John Randolph for thirty years preceding his death. He met
with him on board a steamboat, coming up from Norfolk to Richmond, the 14th
of April, 1820. Mr. Randolph had arrived there the day before, from Washington.
When he first saw him on board, Mr. Randolph appeared to be very
much excited by something that happened the day before. He stated that a
Frenchman, who was servant of M. Hyde de Neuville, the French minister,
and who had stood behind the chair of the minister while at dinner, had the
audacity and the impudence to sit down at his side at table, the day before, on
board the boat. That he had resented his insolence, and threatened to shoot
him with his double-barrelled gun, which he had with him (and which witness
saw), if he did not quit the table. Mr. Randolph abused the Frenchman very
much, and said he called him to his face, coquin and pollison. After breakfast,
Mr. Randolph came where the witness was sitting, took a seat by him, treated
him with politeness, and engaged in a conversation with him about French literature,
the etymology of French words, &c., which conversation he conducted
with much ability and learning, proving himself master of the subject. When
they arrived at City Point, Mr. Randolph's carriage and horses were got out
on the wharf, to enable him to proceed (witness understood) to Petersburgh.
Witness was then in the cabin, and a servant came and told him Mr. Randolph
wished to see him. When he went on the deck, Mr. Randolph was standing
on the wharf, and as soon as he saw the witness, he saluted him, waved his
hat over his head, and cried out, three times, "Vive le Roi," in a loud voice.
of Mr. Randolph's state of mind), says that Mr. R. was so variable in
his conduct and conversation, that he hardly knew what to think of his state of
mind. When he first saw Mr. R. on board the boat, and heard his statement
of the meeting with the Frenchman, he thought it very strange, and that Mr.
Randolph talked wildly about it. That afterwards, in their conversation on
French literature and other subjects, he seemed to be composed and rational.
That when he took leave of him, he acted like a madman, which might have
been occasioned by the quantity of porter he drank.
Mr. B. W. Leigh was questioned as to Mr. Randolph's attachment to a young
lady who was married about 1806. Says he thinks the lady's marriage took
place in 1807. Thinks Mr. Randolph's attachment to her a very strong one.
Should not say the effect upon his feelings was very obvious, but it had a strong
impression upon him. It was well known to witness that he was attached to
her, and that he felt the disappointment deeply; but he never spoke upon the
subject irrationally. He never attributed the defeat of his matrimonial connection
to the intrigues of others. He said if he and the lady had been left quite
alone, he believed their union would not have been prevented. There were interferences,
he said, neither intended to break off nor to urge on the match, but
which had an inauspicious effect. He never spoke disrespectfully of the lady's
relatives, and one of them (Major Eggleston) he always mentioned with respect
and kindness. He did not ascribe his disappointment to the interference of his
own relatives. Witness thought the attachment an enduring one, and that Mr.
Randolph retained it after the lady's marriage, and dwelt upon it more than he
should have done. Mr. Randolph spoke often to witness on the subject, but
witness never said anything in relation to it, as he thought it a matter which
ought not to be talked about. Has heard of his speaking on the subject to a
number of persons.
Did Mr. Randolph survive the lady?—Yes.
What impression did her death make upon him?—A painful one.
The lady was remarkable for the charms of her person and manners. In
reference to the Russian Mission, Mr. Leigh says,
"Mr. Randolph asked witness his opinion of the propriety of his accepting
the appointment. Witness endeavored to avoid expressing his opinion, but Mr.
Randolph insisted upon having it, and witness gave it in strong terms."
Did not this conversation indicate that Mr. Randolph was not in his right mind?
—No. It was his going about and exhibiting the correspondence between the
department of State and himself on the subject of his mission. It was not strange
that he should show it to his friends, but it was strange that he should show it to
persons with whom he had little or no intercourse, and in whom he had no
confidence. Witness believes his mind was highly excited on the question of
the acceptance of this mission, and the conversation with witness served to aggravate
it. Witness therefore regretted that Mr. Randolph had forced him to
give his opinion upon it. Mr. Randolph gave as a reason for his exhibiting the
not solicited the mission, but it was forced upon him. He demanded from witness
his opinion of the propriety of his course, insisting that he had a right to
know it.
Was not Mr. Randolph remarkable all his life for irritability?—He was.
He seemed sometimes like a man without a skin; but this sensitiveness varied
with the state of his health, and his health was bad all his life. When in
pain he was irritable in the extreme. It was difficult to describe the effect of
passion upon him. When in a public body he would sometimes be highly irritated,
but he appeared perfectly cool, and it was this control over his feelings
that enabled him to make those severe retorts for which he was distinguished.
When he was angry, he was very angry. He was quick to take offence, and
he never proportioned the measure of retaliation to the measure of the offence."
The case, as we stated, was carried up to the High Court of Appeals, and argued
the 17th December, 1836, but the Court did not deliver their opinions, nor
can I find any further trace of it.
In reading this Will, we must express our admiration at the magnanimity and
liberality of Judge Leigh in making a voluntary sacrifice of such a fortune to
become a legal witness in favor of the Will of 1819, that of 1832, if established,
doing great injustice to the heirs, as well as entailing slavery upon a numerous
body of faithful family servants, the value of whose labor had enriched him and
to whom he had promised their freedom. Such an act of disinterested humanity
would be thought most extraordinary in these times. We might say, it was almost
worthy the disinheritance of one's heirs for such a friend. We have also
another rare instance of generosity on the part of his half brother, Henry St.
George Tucker, who, rather than be his competitor in the election of United
States Senator, though his most ardent ambition might have been gratified, yielded
all to the ties of fraternal affection.
Soon after Mr. Randolph's death, a friend of his, an Irish gentleman as he
informed us, published some notes of him in the New York American, extending
to four or five numbers. Their acquaintance commenced on the first voyage
which Mr. Randolph took to England, March 16, 1822, in the ship Amity,
when the gentleman accompanied him, and spent some time with him in London.
He declares that he never travelled with so entertaining a companion, and
never met with his equal in diversity of knowledge. He relates many anecdotes
and remarkable sayings of Mr. Randolph, and thinks if his memory were
as good as Mr. Randolph's, he could write a large volume, under the several
heads of politics, history, classics, biography, and theology. Finding he was
an Irishman, Mr. Randolph, soon after their introduction, went up to him and
expressed the pleasure he felt at his acquaintance, as he loved the country and
admired her sons—and daughters too, as Miss Edgeworth was his favorite.
He said he knew her works almost by heart, and asked the gentleman to solve
a difficulty which had puzzled him in the geography of Ireland. Why is it, sir,
asked Mr. Randolph, that in every map of Ireland Ballinaslae is placed on the
wrong side of the river Suck? The gentleman confessed his ignorance at once
he came to know the localities of Ireland so minutely, he answered by books,
conversation, and the blessing of a memory which never forgot anything. The
gentleman soon discovered that Mr. Randolph was intimately acquainted with
every part of England and Scotland also, not only as to cities and towns, but
gentlemen's country-seats; and he knew the history of every celebrated horserace,
and of every race-horse in England. On the eve of sailing the gentleman
obtained a Washington paper which gave the news of the defeat of the bankrupt
bill. Upon communicating it to Mr. Randolph he thanked God for all his
mercies, and added that he was delighted to think that he had helped to give
that hateful bill a kick. This day week, said he, "I spoke for three hours
against it, and my friends, who forced me to make the effort, were good enough
to say I never had made a more successful speech. It must have had some
merit," continued he, "for I assure you that whilst I was speaking, although the
Northern Mail was announced, not a single member left his seat to look for letters,
a circumstance which had not occurred before during the session."
One of the company was an excellent chess player, and upon challenging Mr.
Randolph to play with him, Mr. Randolph replied that he had not played a
game of chess for seventeen years, and could not recur to the last game he
played but with unpleasant feelings, as it lost him a friend for ever. It was no
less an antagonist than Mr. Jefferson, who, according to Mr. Randolph, valued
himself more upon his skill at chess than in anything else. Very few could
beat him, and he could not bear defeat. He was aware of that, and constantly
declined playing with him because he knew he was his match. But one unfortunate
evening Mr. Jefferson touched his Virginia pride in so pointed a way that
he could not refuse, and they sat down at the game. Mr. Randolph soon cried
"checkmate," and Mr. Jefferson never forgave him afterwards.
He carried a large box of books with him to have bound in England. He
was asked why he had not had them done in Philadelphia or New York. He
answered that he did not feel disposed to patronise his Yankee task-masters,
who had imposed such a duty on foreign books. He declared he would no
longer wear what they made, nor eat what they raised, so long as his purse
enabled him to purchase supplies from Old England; and until he could have
his books bound south of Mason and Dixon's line, he would employ John Bull.
He refused to eat cod-fish because it came from New England. On Sundays he
used to read a chapter in the Bible, or a part of the Church Service, and once
made an extempore prayer, and he never would permit a reflection to be cast
upon religion without a very pointed rebuke. He had been corrupted for many
years, he confessed, by the infidelity which prevailed among the leading politicians
at Washington. In the year 1816, during a severe fit of sickness, he had
a remarkable vision which completely dispelled the delusions under which he
had surrendered his faith, since when he had been a firm believer in Christianity.
He had preserved a copy of the letter he had written to a friend immediately
after this vision, in which he even gave the words which were uttered in
his ears by this invisible monitor, but which words, unfortunately, the gentleman
the letter, and declared that it would make him miserable for any one to doubt
it. He vouched for the firm faith of the late Mr. Pinckney in the truths of revealed
religion, as he obtained them from his own lips a few days before his
death. But as to that of Mr. Jefferson he entertained a very different opinion.
| CHAPTER IV. A biography of John Randolph, of Roanoke | |