University of Virginia Library

"I well remember the Compromise Act, and the part taken
in that discussion by the distinguished member from Virginia,
whose name has been mentioned, and whose death I most
sincerely lament. At that time, we were members of the
other House. Upon one occasion, during the night session,
another member from Virginia, through fatigue and the offensive
exhalations from one of the surrounding lamps, fainted in
his seat, and was borne to the rear of the Representatives' Hall.
Calling someone to the Speaker's chair, I left my place to learn
the character and extent of his illness. Returning to the desk,
I was met in one of the aisles by Mr. Randolph, to whom I had
not spoken for several weeks. `Ah! Mr. Speaker,' he said, `I
wish you would leave Congress and go to Kentucky. I will
follow you there or anywhere else.' I well understood what he
meant, for at that time a proposition had been made to the
Southern members, and the matter partly discussed by them,
of leaving Congress in the possession of the Northern members,
and returning home, each to his respective constituents. I
told Mr. Randolph that I could not then speak to him about
the matter, and requested him to meet me in the Speaker's
room early the next morning. With his usual punctuality, he
came. We talked over the Compromise Act, he defending his
favorite position, and I defending mine. Through the whole,
he was unyielding and uncompromising to the last. We parted,
shook hands, and promised to be good friends, and I never met
him again during the session." "Such," continued Mr. Clay,
"was the part Mr. Randolph took in that discussion, and such
were his uncompromising feelings of hostility towards the
North and all who did not believe with him. His acts came
near shaking this Union to the center and desolating this fair land.
The measures before us now and the unyielding and uncompromising
spirit are like them and tend to the same sad and dangerous
end—dissolution and desolation, disunion and ruin."[5]

"The anniversary of Washington's birthday," wrote
Randolph, "will be a memorable day in the history of my life,
if indeed any history shall be attached to it. Yesterday, I
spoke four hours and a half to as attentive an audience as ever
listened to a public speaker. Every eye was riveted upon me,
save one, and that was sedulously and affectedly turned away.
The ears, however, were drinking up the words as those of the
royal Dane imbibed `the juice of cursed hebenon,' though not,
like his, unconscious of the leprous distilment; as I could
plainly perceive by the play of the muscles of the face, and
the coming and going of the color, and the petty agitation of
the whole man, like the affected fidget and flirt of the fan,
whereby a veteran coquette endeavors to hide her chagrin
from the spectators of her mortification.

"This person was no other than Mr. Speaker himself, the
only man in the House to whose attention I had a right. He
left the chair, called Cobb to it, paced the lobby at the back of it
in great agitation, resumed, read MSS, newspapers, printed
documents on the table (i.e. affected to read them), beckoned
the attendants, took snuff, looked at his shoe-buckles, at his
ruffles, towards the other side of the House, everywhere but at
me. I had mentioned to him as delicately as I could that,
being unable to catch his eye, I had been obliged (against my
will, and what I thought the rule of order and decorum in
debate) to look elsewhere for support. This apology I expected
would call him to a sense of what was due to himself
and his station as well as to me; but it had none effect. At
last, when you might have heard a pin drop upon the carpet,
he beckoned one of the attendants and began whispering to the
lad (I believe to fetch his snuff-box). `Fooled to the top of my
bent,' I `checked in mid volley' and said: `The rules of this
House, Sir, require, and properly require, every member, when
he speaks, to address himself respectfully to Mr. Speaker; to
that rule, which would seem to imply a correlative duty of
respectful attention on the part of the Chair, I always adhere;

---

451

"He replied in a subdued tone of voice, and with a manner
quite changed from his usual petulance and arrogance (for it is
generally one or t'other, sometimes both) (a) `that he had paid
all possible attention' &c., which was not true, in fact; for,
from the time that I entered upon the subject of his conduct
in relation to the bank in 1811 (renewal of old charter), and
in 1816 (the new bank), and on internal improvements, &c.,
(quoting his words in his last speech, that `this was a limited,
cautiously restricted government') and held up the `Compromise'
in its true colors, he never once glanced his eye upon me but to
withdraw it, as if he had seen a basilisk.

"Some of the pretenders to the throne, if not the present
incumbent, will hold me from that day forth in cherished
remembrance. I have not yet done, however, with the Pope
or the pretenders. Their name is legion. . . .

"Remember me kindly to all friends; respectfully to Mr.
Roane [Judge Spencer Roane of Virginia]. Tell him that I
have fulfilled his injunction, and I trust proved myself `a
zealous, and consistent, and (I wish I could add) able, defender
of State Rights.' I have yet to settle with the Supreme
Court. . . ."[6]

"You may keep Missouri out of the Union by violence," he
said, "but here the issue is joined. She comes forward in the
person of her Presidential and Vice Presidential Electors instead
of that of her Representative; and she is thus presented
in a shape as unquestionable as that of New York, Pennsylvania,
Massachusetts, or the proudest and oldest State in the Union.
She comes forward by her attorneys, her electors. Will you
deny them admittance? Will you thrust her electors and her
only from this Hall? . . . I made no objection to the votes of New
Hampshire, Maine or Vermont. I have had as good a right to
object to the votes of New Hampshire as the gentleman from
New Hampshire has to object to the votes of Missouri. Who
made thee, Cain, thy brother's keeper? Who put Missouri
into [the] custody of the honorable gentleman from New
Hampshire. The electors of Missouri are as much homines
probi et legales as the electors of New Hampshire. This is no
skirmish, as it has been called. This is the battle when Greek
meets Greek; it is a conflict now to be decided between the
phalanx and the legion, whether the impenetrability of the one
or the activity of the other shall prevail. Let us buckle on our
armour; let us put aside all this flummery, these metaphysical
distinctions, these legal technicalities, these special pleadings,
this dry minuteness, this unprofitable drawing of distinctions
without difference; let us say now, as we have said 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."[8] (a)

"The same two single gentlemen rolled into one [a fat
member of Congress from Virginia]," Randolph wrote to Dr.
Brockenbrough, "told me that M—e expressed a desire to
maintain the relations of peace and amity and social intercourse
with me; that he did not stand upon etiquette; did not
require any gentleman to pay him the respect of a call in the
first instance; gave examples to that effect, some of which I
know to be true (N. B. election coming on), and that he should
have sent his invitations to me as well as to the rest, but that
he thought they would not be acceptable; that I had repelled,
etc., etc., etc.

"Whereupon I said that I had not seen said great man
but once (Friday, the 11th, riding by, after Mr. King's
speech in the Senate) since the Georgetown sheep-shearing,
in the spring of 1812; that I had called more than once
that spring on him and Madame, and not at home was the
invariable reply; that he had invited Garnett, as it were, out
of my own apartment that year, to dine with General Moreau,
Lewis and Stanford, the only M. Cs. that lodged there besides
myself, and omitted to ask me, who had a great desire to see
Moreau; that I lacqueyed the heels of no great man; that I
had a very good dinner at home, which I could not eat, although
served at an hour that I was used to; and that I
was very well, as I was, &c. Hodijah Meade writes Archer
that I am becoming popular, even in Amelia. Perhaps the
great man has heard something to this effect."[9] (a)

"I am now down, abraded, by long-continued stretch of
mind and feeling. We may now cry out `Ichabod,' for our
glory is departed. I made last night my final effort to retrieve
our fortunes, and the Virginia delegation (to do them justice,
sensible when too late of their error) did what they could to
second me. I do them this justice with pleasure. If there
was one, I did not note the exception. Had they supported
me from the first, we could have carried 38,000 or 38,500.
S—e [Smyth] of W—[Wythe County] got alarmed at my
earnest deprecation of the conduct of the majority, of which he
was one, and came to me repeatedly, and tried to retrace his
steps. So did some others (i.e., `try back'), but the mischief
had gone too far to be remedied. Our fathers have eaten
grapes, and my teeth, at least, are set on edge. I am sensible
that I have spoken too much, and, perhaps, my friends at a
distance may think me more faulty in this respect than they
would do, had they been on the spot; for, since my first (also
unpublished) opposition to the `Yazoo' bill, I have never
spoken with such effect upon the House, as on Saturday last:
and I am certain by their profound attention last night that I
lost nothing even with them that divided against me, at least
the far greater part of them. If in this I shall find by the
representation of others that my self-love has deceived me, I
will be more than ever on my guard against that desperately

---

459

"I rise," he said, "to announce to the House a fact which
I hope will put an end at least for this day to all further jar or
collision here or elsewhere among the members of this body.
Yes, for this one day at least, let us say, as our first mother
said to our first father,

I arise to announce to the House the not unlooked for death of
a man who filled the first place in the public estimation in the
first profession, in that estimation, in this, or in any other
country. We have been talking of General Jackson, and a
greater man than him is not here but gone forever! I allude,
Sir, to the boast of Maryland and the pride of the United
States—the pride of all of us, and particularly the pride and

---

460

---

461

"Mr. Pinkney breathed his last about 12 o'clock (midnight).
The void cannot be filled. I have not slept, on an average,
two hours, for the last six days. I have been at his lodgings,
more than half a mile west of mine, every day, by sunrise—
often before—and this morning before daybreak. I heard
from him last night at ten, and sat up (which I have not done
before for six weeks) until the very hour that he expired. He
died literally in harness. To his exertions in the Dudley
cause, and his hard training to meet Tazewell in the Cochineal
Case, as 'tis called, may be fairly ascribed his death. The
void will never be filled that he has left. Tazewell is second
to no man that ever breathed; but he has taken almost as
much pains to hide his light under a bushel as P. did to set his
on a hill. He and the Great Lord Chief are in that par nobile;
but Tazewell, in point of reputation, is far [behind] both
Pinkney and Marshall."[18] (a)

"My friends, for such indeed you have proved yourselves
to be, through good and through evil report, I throw myself
on your indulgence, to which I have never yet appealed in
vain. It is now just five years since the state of my health
reluctantly compelled me to resist your solicitations (backed
by my own wishes) to offer my services to your suffrages. The
recurrence of a similar calamity obliges me to retire for a while
from the field of duty.

"Should the mild climate of France and the change of air
restore my health, you will again find me a candidate for your
independent suffrages at the next election (1823).

"I have an especial desire to be in that Congress, which will
decide (probably by indirection) the character of the executive
government of the Confederation for, at least, four years—
perhaps forever; since now, for the first time since the institution
of this government, we have presented to the people
the army candidate for the Presidency, in the person of him
who, judging from present appearances, will receive the support
of the Bank of the United States also. This is an union
of the purse and sword, with a vengeance; one which even the
sagacity of Patrick Henry never anticipated, in this shape
at least. Let the people look to it, or they are lost forever.
They will fall into that gulf, which, under the artificial military
and paper systems of Europe, divides Dives from Lazarus, and
grows daily and hourly broader, deeper, and more appalling.
To this state of things we are rapidly approaching, under an
administration, the head of which sits an incubus upon the
State, while the lieutenants of this new Mayor of the palace
are already contending for the succession; and their retainers
and adherents are with difficulty kept from coming to blows,
even on the floor of Congress. We are arrived at that pitch of
degeneracy when the mere lust of power, the retention of place

---

463

"My Dear Bet: On Saturday, I had the pleasure to receive
your letter of the 10th of last month; and a great one it was;
for, altho' I took somewhat of a French leave of you, I do assure
you, my dear, that `my thoughts, too, were with you on the
ocean.' Among my treasures, I brought a packet containing
all the letters I have ever received from you; and the reading
over these, and talking of you to a young Irish gentleman,
whose acquaintance I happened to make on board the steamboat,
was the chief solace of my voyage. It was a short one,
although a part of it was somewhat boisterous, and the press
of sail carried by our ships (the packets more especially),
when those of other nations are under reefed and double-reefed
topsails, exposes them to greater danger, while it shortens
their voyage; and yet such is the skill of our seamen that
insurance is no higher upon our bottoms than upon European
ones. Indeed, our voyages reminded me of our tobacco crop.
You see I can't `sink the tailor.' The vessel is out so short
a time that she avoids many dangers to which dull sailers are
exposed.

---

464

"We made the coast of Ireland at noon on Good Friday, and,
at twelve, on the following night, we were safe in the Regent's
Dock, in Liverpool. When you consider that we had to come
the North Passage (that is, between the coast of Ireland and
Scotland), and, crooked as our path was, to go out of our way
to Holyhead for a pilot, it was an astonishing run. The first
land we made in Ireland was Runardallah (liquid n, as in
Spanish), or the Bloody Foreland, bearing on our lee (starboard),
bore S.E.E. 6 leagues—an ominous name. Falconer's
beautiful poem, The Shipwreck, will render you mistress of the
sea-phrases. The coast of Donegal, far as the eye can reach,
is lonely, desolate, and naked; not a tree to be seen, and a single
Martello tower the only evidence that it was the dwelling-place
of man. Not even a sail was in sight; and I felt a
sensation of sadness and desolation, for we seemed more forsaken
and abandoned than when surrounded only by the world
of waters. This is the coast to which our honest American
(naturalized) merchants smuggle tobacco, when piracy under
Arligan colors or the slave-trade is dull. Tory Island rises,
like the ruins of some gigantic castle, out of the sea. I presume
that it is basaltic, like the Giant's Causeway, of which we
could not get a distinct view; but Fairhead amply compensated
us. I must not forget, however, the beautiful, revolving
light of Ennistra Hull, which, at regular intervals of time,
broke upon us like a brilliant meteor, and then died away;
while that on the Mull of Cantire (mistaken by our captain,
who had never gone the North Passage before, for Rachlin, or
Rahery, as the Irish call it) was barely visible. It is a fixed
light, and a very bad one. After passing Fairhead, I `turned
in,' and was called up at dawn to see Ailsa Craig, which our
captain maintained would be too far distant to be seen in our
course, while I as stoutly declared we must see it if we had
light. And here, by the way, my dear, I found my knowledge
of geography always gave me the advantage over my companions,
and rendered every object doubly interesting. The
Irish Channel swarmed with shipping, and, as we `neared'
the Isle of Man, and her Calf, I looked out for Dirck Hatteraick
and his lugger. We hugged the Irish shore; Port Patrick,
a nice little white town on our right; but the green hills of

---

465

"Although our pilot, and the captain too, declared the thing
to be impossible, we did get `round the rock,' and, passing a
forest of masts in the Mersey, were safely moored at quarter-past
twelve, in the dock, where ships are put away under lock
and key, like books in a book-case.

"After a very sound and refreshing sleep, I rose and went
ashore, in search of breakfast; for not a spark of fire, not even a
candle or lamp, can be brought into the dock, on any pretext
whatsoever. At the landward gate, I stopped, expecting to be
searched, but the guard did not even make his appearance; so,
on I passed, with little Jem, a wicked dog of a cabin-boy, carrying
my bundle, to the King's Arms, in Castle Street; but I
had hardly commenced my breakfast, when the femme d'affaires,
in the person of a strapping Welsh wench, who had
tried before to put me up two pairs of stairs, entered the room,
and with well dissembled dismay, `begged my pardon, but the
room was engaged' (it was the best in the house) for the `Lord
Bishop of the Isle of Man, and the—the—Dean of—of Canterbury.'
Here again my knowledge of England, to say nothing
of innkeepers, stood me in good stead. I coolly replied that
they would hardly arrive before I had finished breakfast, and

---

466

"After receiving every civility from the collector, Mr. Swainson,
and from my countrymen, Mr. James King, Mr. Maury,
and Mr. Haggerty, and seeing the docks, and the Islington
market, I was impatient to leave Liverpool, which bears the
impress of trade upon it, and is, of course, as dull as dull can
be. The market is of new erection, and, I believe, altogether
unique; far surpassing even that of Philadelphia, not only in
the arrangement (which is that of a square, roofed, well lighted
and unencumbered with carts, and unannoyed by a public
street on each side of it), but in the variety and delicacy of its
provisions. Here, for the first time, I saw a turbot, and Mr.
King bought half a one for our dinner, for which he paid half a
guinea. The variety and profusion of the vegetables, and
the neat, rosy-cheeked `Lancashire witches,' that sprinkled
them with water to keep them fresh, who were critically clean
in their dress and persons, was a most delightful spectacle.
Whatever you buy is taken home for you by women whose
vocation it is; and Mr. King's house is two miles off, at the
beautiful village of Everton, commanding a fine view of the
Mersey and the opposite coast of Cheshire. For a full account

---

467

"On Wednesday morning, April 10th, I set out alone, in a
post-chaise; and now you must take an extract from my
`log-book.' "[20]

"Over Delamere Forest, a rough barren tract for eight
miles. Very likely government have inclosed and planted it;
for the `forest' contained not a tree or shrub; and individuals
also have done much in this way. At present, the trees are
almost knee-high. At Kelsah, we leave the forest and emerge
into the rich pastures and meadows of Cheshire. To Chester
—the Albion Hotel; drive to Eaton Hall, Lord Grosvenor's;
return—dine; misconduct of inn-keeper, who put me into his
own filthy bed-chamber; (town full, it being assize time).
Remove to the Royal Hotel; visit the cathedral, and `let my
due feet never fail to walk the studious cloister's pale,' &c.
At every turn, since I came from Liverpool, I have been breaking
out into quotations from Milton and Shakespeare. Bad
Latin in a bishop; epitaph; and worse scholars in the Royal
School. None of the boys could give the Latin of their coronation
banner, and I offered half a guinea to him who would
complete the following lines: `Vir bonus est quis? Qui consulta
patrum, qui'—and translate them. Only one boy could
supply `leges juraque servat,' and he began `Vir bonus est quis'—
`He is a good man'—so I took up my half guinea and walked
out, thinking of Mr. Brougham and his bill.

"Stopped at a small house of call to beg an idle pin. Old
man and wife showed me their cows; their tenderness to the
motherless lamb, and pity of me. Their gratitude to their
cow, which, said the dame, `when my house was burnt, maintained
our whole family, old and unsightly as she looks, by
making me — pounds of butter a week.' "[21]

"My Dear Bet, . . . I left the old farmer (Evans) and his
dame (for he has a small farm under Mr. Whittemore, member
for the borough of Bridgenorth), as well as his ale-house. I
left the old couple fondling their lamb, and caressing it and
their kine; one a Hereford red, with a fine calf, which they had

---

469

---

470

"Mr. Randolph, the distinguished American, then rose to
return thanks for this mark of respect towards the United
States of America. He said that, after the eloquence, which
had already been displayed upon this great subject, it would
be an act of presumption, scarcely excusable in any stranger,
but unpardonable in him, to intrude his unpremeditated
expressions upon them, after the able speeches they had not
only heard but felt. (Applause.) He was, however, impelled
by a double motive, which he could not resist, to offer himself
for a few moments to their attention: first, to discharge an act
of duty in behalf of his native land, in the absence of its
official representative; an absence as unexpected by himself as
it was unforeseen, and which had cast upon him a duty he felt
inadequate to perform—that of thanking the meeting for the
grateful sense they had expressed towards America, and also to
assure them that all that was exalted in station, in talent and
in moral character among his countrymen was, as in England,
firmly united for the suppression of this infamous traffic
(loud applause). It was delightful to know that Virginia, the
land of his sires, the place of his nativity, had for half a century

---

472

"This," said he in his first speech, "is perhaps one of the
finest and prettiest themes for declamation ever presented to a
deliberative assembly; but it appears to me in a light very
different from any that has as yet been thrown upon it.

"I look at the measure as one fraught with deep and deadly
danger to the best interests and to the liberties of the American
people; and, so satisfied, Sir, am I of this, that I have been
constrained by that conviction to overcome the almost insuperable
repugnance I feel to throwing myself upon the
notice of the House; but I feel it to be my duty to raise my
voice against both these propositions. . . .

"My intention in rising at present is merely to move that the
committee rise and that both of the resolutions may be printed.
I wish to have some time to think of this business; to deliberate,
before we take this leap in the dark into the Archipelago,
or the Black Sea, or into the wide mouth of the La Plata. I
know that the post of honor is on the other side of the House;
the post of toil and of difficulty on this side; if, indeed, any body
shall be with me on this side. It is a difficult and an invidious
task to stem the torrent of public sentiment, when all the
generous feelings of the human heart are appealed to. But,
Sir, I was delegated to this House to guard the interests of the
People of the United States; not to guard the rights of other
people; and, if it was doubted, even in the case of England—
that land fertile above all other lands (not excepting Greece
herself) in great men—if it was doubted whether her interference
in the politics of the Continent, though separated from
it only by a narrow firth, were either for her honor or advantage;
if the effect of that interference has been a monumental
debt that paralyzes the arm, that certainly would have struck
for Spain, can it be for us to seek, in the very bottom of the
Mediterranean, for a quarrel with the Ottoman Porte? And
this while we have an ocean rolling between? while we are in
that sea without a single port to refit a ship; and while the
Powers of Barbary lie in succession in our path. Shall we open
this Pandora's box of political evils? . . . Are we prepared
for a war with these pirates? Not that we are not perfectly
competent to such a war, but does it suit our finances? Does
it suit, Sir, our magnificent project of roads and canals? Does

---

475

"This Quixotism, in regard either to Greece or to South
America, . . . is not what the sober and reflecting minds of
our people require at our hands. Sir, we are in debt as individuals,
and we are in debt as a nation; and never, since the
days of Saul and David, or Cæsar and Cataline, could a more
unpropitious period have been found for such an undertaking.
The state of society is too much disturbed. There is always
in a debtor a tendency either to torpor or to desperation;
neither is friendly to such deliberations. But I will suspend
what I have further to say on this subject. For myself, I see
as much danger, and more, in the resolution proposed by the
gentleman from Kentucky, as in that of the gentleman from
Massachusetts. The war that may follow on the one is a
distant war; it lies on the other side of the ocean. The war
that may be induced by the other, is a war at hand; it is on the
same Continent. I am equally opposed to the amendment
which has been since offered to the original resolutions. Let
us look a little further at all of them. Let us sleep upon them
before we pass resolutions, which, I will not say, are mere
loops to hang speeches on, and thereby commit the nation to
a war, the issue of which it is not given to human sagacity to
calculate."[34]

"It is with serious concern and alarm," he declared in his
second speech, "that I have heard doctrines broached in this
debate fraught with consequences more disastrous to the best
interests of this people than any that I ever heard advanced,
during the five and twenty years since I have been honored

---

476

"There was another remark that fell from the gentleman from
Massachusetts, of which I shall speak, as I shall always speak
of anything from that gentleman, with all the personal respect
which may be consistent with freedom of discussion. Among
other cases forcibly put by the gentleman why he would
embark in this incipient crusade against Mussulmen, he stated
this as one—that they hold human beings as property. Ah,
Sir, and what says the Constitution of the United States on this
point?—unless, indeed, that instrument is wholly to be excluded
from consideration; unless it is to be regarded as a
mere useless parchment, worthy to be burnt, as was once
actually proposed. Does not that Constitution give its sanction
to the holding of human beings as property? Sir, I am
not going to discuss the abstract question of Liberty or Slavery,
or any other abstract question. I go for matters of fact.
But I would ask gentlemen in this House, who have the misfortune
to reside on the wrong side of a certain mysterious
parallel of latitude, to take this question seriously into consideration:
whether the Government of the United States is

---

477

"Sir, I am afraid, that, along with some most excellent
attributes and qualities, the love of liberty, jury trial, the
writ of habeas corpus, and all the blessings of free government
that we have derived from our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, we have
got not a little of their John Bull, or rather John Bull-dog,
spirit; their readiness to fight for anybody, and on any occasion.
Sir, England has been for centuries the game-cock of
Europe. It is impossible to specify the wars in which she has
been engaged for contrary purposes; and she will with great
pleasure see us take off her shoulders the labor of preserving the
balance of power. We find her fighting, now for the Queen of
Hungary, then for her inveterate foe, the King of Prussia, now
at war for the restoration of the Bourbons, and now on the eve
of war with them for the liberties of Spain.

"These lines on the subject were never more applicable than
they have now become:

"If we pursue the same policy, we must travel the same road,
and endure the same burdens, under which England now
groans. But, glorious as such a design might be, a President
of the United States would, in my apprehension, occupy a
prouder place in history who, when he retires from office, can
say to the people who elected him: `I leave you without a
debt' than if he had fought as many pitched battles as Cæsar,
or achieved as many naval victories as Nelson. And, what,
Sir, is debt? In an individual it is slavery. It is slavery of the
worst sort, surpassing that of the West India Islands; for it
enslaves the mind as well as it enslaves the body; and the
creature who can be abject enough to incur, and to submit to,
it, receives in that condition of his being, perhaps, an adequate
punishment. Of course, I speak of debt, with the exception of
unavoidable misfortune. I speak of debt caused by mismanagement,

---

478

"Let us adhere to the policy laid down by the second as well
as the first founder of our Republic; by him who was the
Camillus, as well as the Romulus, of the infant State, to the
policy of Peace, Commerce, and honest Friendship with all
nations, entangling alliances with none; for to entangling
alliance we must come, if you once embark in projects such
as this. And, with all my British predilections, I suspect I
shall, whenever that question shall present itself, resist as
strongly an alliance with Great Britain as with any other power.
We were sent here to attend to the preservation of the peace
of this country, and not to be ready, on all occasions, to go to
war, whenever anything like what, in common parlance, is
termed a turn up, takes place in Europe. . . .

"What is our situation? We are absolutely combatting shadows.
The gentleman would have us to believe his resolution
is all but nothing; yet, again, it is to prove omnipotent, and
fill the whole globe with its influence. Either it is nothing, or
it is something. If it is nothing, let us lay it on the table and
have done with at once; but if it is that something, which it
has been on the other hand represented to be, let us beware
how we touch it. For my part, I would sooner put the shirt
of Nessus on my back than sanction these doctrines—doctrines
such as I never heard from my boyhood till now. They go the

---

479

"With the argument of the President, however," he said,
"I have nothing to do. I wash my hands of it, and will leave
it to the triumph, the clemency, the mercy of the honorable
gentleman from Kentucky—if, indeed, to use his own language,
amid the mass of words in which it was enveloped, I have
been able to find it. My purpose in regard to the argument of
the gentleman from Kentucky is to show that it lies in the
compass of a nut shell; that it turns on the meaning of one of
the plainest words in the English language. I am happy to be
able to agree with that gentleman in at least one particular, to
wit: in the estimate the gentleman has formed of his own
powers as a grammarian, philologer, and critic; particularly as
those powers have been displayed in the dissertation with
which he has favored the committee on the interpretation of
the word `establish.'

" `Congress,' says the Constitution, `shall have power to
establish (ergo, says the gentleman, Congress shall have power
to construct) post-roads.'

"One would suppose, that, if anything could be considered
as settled by precedent in legislation, the meaning of the
words of the Constitution must, before this time, have been
settled by the uniform sense in which that power has been
exercised from the commencement of the Government to the
present time. What is the fact? Your statute-book is loaded
with acts for the `establishment' of post-roads, and the Postmaster
General is besieged with petitions for the `establishment'
of post-offices; and yet we are now gravely debating on
what the word `establish' shall be held to mean! A curious
predicament we are placed in; precisely the reverse of that of
Molière's citizen, turned gentleman, who discovered, to his
great surprise, that he had been talking `prose' all his life
long without knowing it—a common case. It is just so with
all prosers, and I hope I may not exemplify it in this instance.
But, Sir, we have been for five and thirty years establishing
post-roads, under the delusion that we were exercising a power
specially conferred upon us by the Constitution, while we

---

481

"Miserable, indeed, would be the condition of every free
people, if, in expounding the charter of their liberties, it
were necessary to go back to the Anglo-Saxon, to Junius and
Skinner, and other black-letter etymologists. Not, Sir, that
I am very skilful in language: although I have learned from
a certain curate of Brentford, whose name will survive when
the whole contemporaneous bench of Bishops shall be buried
in oblivion, that words are the counters of wise men, and the
money of fools, and that it is by the dexterous cutting and
shuffling of this pack, that is derived one-half of the chicanery,
and more than one-half of the profits, of the most lucrative
profession in the world. And, Sir, by this dexterous exchanging
and substituting of words, we shall not be the first nation
in the world which has been cajoled, if we are to be cajoled, out
of our rights and liberties.

"In the course of the observations, which the gentleman
from Kentucky saw fit to submit to the Committee, weresome
pathetic ejaculations on the subject of the sufferings of our
brethren of the West. Sir, our brethren of the West have
suffered [from the same cause] as our brethren throughout the
United States, although with them the cause exists in an aggravated
degree, from the acts of those to whom they have
confided the power of legislation, by a departure—and we have
all suffered from it—I hope no gentleman will understand me
as wishing to make any invidious comparisons between different
quarters of our country—by a departure from the
industry, the simplicity, the economy, and the frugality
of our ancestors. They have suffered from a greediness of
gain that has grasped at the shadow while it has lost the
substance; from habits of indolence, of profusion, of extravagance;
from an apery of foreign manners and of foreign
fashions; from a miserable attempt at the shabby genteel,
which only serves to make our poverty more conspicuous.

---

482

"With these few remarks, permit me now to recall the attention
of the committee to the original design of this Government.
It grew out of the necessity, indispensable and unavoidable
in the circumstances of this country, of some general
power, capable of regulating foreign commerce. Sir, I am old
enough to remember the origin of this Government; and,
though I was too young to participate in the transactions of
that day, I have a perfect recollection of what was public
sentiment on the subject. And I repeat, without fear of
contradiction, that the proximate, as well as the remote,
cause of the existence of the Federal Government was the
regulation of foreign commerce. Not to particularize all the
difficulties which grew out of the conflicting laws of the States,
I will refer to but one, arising from Virginia taxing an article
which Maryland then made duty-free; and to that very policy
may be attributed, in a great degree, the rapid growth and
prosperity of the town of Baltimore. If the old Congress had
possessed the power of laying a duty of ten per cent. ad valorem
on imports, this Constitution would never have been called
into existence.

"But we are told that, along with the regulation of foreign
commerce, the States have yielded to the General Government,
in as broad terms, the regulation of domestic commerce—I
mean the commerce among the several States—and that the
same power is possessed by Congress over the one as over the
other. It is rather unfortunate for this argument that, if it
applies to the extent to which the power to regulate foreign
commerce has been carried by Congress, they may prohibit
altogether this domestic commerce, as they have heretofore,
under the other power, prohibited foreign commerce.

"But why put extreme cases? This Government cannot go
on one day without a mutual understanding and deference
between the State and General Governments. This Government
is the breath of the nostrils of the States. Gentlemen
may say what they please of the preamble of the Constitution;

---

483

"I remember to have heard it said elsewhere that, `when
gentlemen talked of precedent, they forgot they were not in
Westminster Hall.' Whatever trespass I may be guilty of
upon the attention of the Committee, one thing I will promise
them, and will faithfully perform my promise. I will dole out
to them no political metaphysics. Sir, I unlearned metaphysics
almost as early as Fontenelle, and he tells us, I think,
it was at nine years old. I shall say nothing about that word
municipal. I am almost as sick of it as honest Falstaff was
of `security'; it has been like ratsbane in my mouth ever since
the late Ruler of France took shelter under that word to
pocket our money and incarcerate our persons, with the most
profound respect for our neutral rights. I have done with the
word municipal ever since that day. Let us come to the
plain, common sense construction of the Constitution. Sir,
we live under a government of a peculiar structure, to which
the doctrines of the European writers on civil polity do not
apply; and, when gentlemen get up and quote Vattel as applicable
to the powers of the Congress of the United States, I
should as soon have expected them to quote Aristotle or the
Koran. Our Government is not like the consolidated monarchies
of the Old World. It is a solar system; an imperium in
imperio; and when the question is about the one or the other,
what belongs to the imperium and what to the imperio, we gain
nothing by referring to Vattel. He treats of an integral
government; a compact structure, totus teres atque rotundus.
But ours is a system composed of two distinct governments;

---

484

"I said," Randolph further declared, "that this Government,
if put to the test, a test it is by no means calculated to
endure, as a government for the management of the internal
concerns of this country, is one of the worst that can be conceived,
which is determined by the fact that it is a government
not having a common feeling and common interest with the
governed. I know that we are told, and it is the first time that

---

485

"But, Sir, how shall a man from Mackinaw, or the Yellow
Stone River, respond to the sentiments of the people who live
in New Hampshire. It is as great a mockery—a greater mockery
than it was to talk to these colonies about their virtual
representation in the British Parliament. I have no hesitation
in saying that the liberties of the colonies were safer in the
custody of the British Parliament than they will be in any
portion of this country, if all the powers of the States, as well
as those of the General Government, are devolved on this
House; and, in this opinion, I am borne out, and more than
borne out, by the authority of Patrick Henry himself.[45] . . .

"It is not a matter of conjecture merely, but of fact, of
notoriety, that there does exist on this subject an honest
difference of opinion among enlightened men; that not one or
two, but many States in the Union see, with great concern and
alarm, the encroachments of the General Government on their
authority. They feel that they have given up the power of the
purse, and the sword, and enabled men, with the purse in one
hand and the sword in the other, to rifle them of all that they
hold dear. . . . We, too, now begin to perceive what we have
surrendered; that, having given up the power of the purse and
the sword, everything else is at the mercy and forbearance of
the General Government. We did believe there were some
parchment barriers—no! what is worth all the parchment
barriers in the world—that there was, in the powers of the
States, some counterpoise to the power of this body; but, if
this bill passes, we can believe so no longer.[46]

"There is one other power," further said Randolph, fingering
the string, to which Fear and Passion were as obedient as wild
beasts to the lyre of Orpheus, "which may be exercised, in
case the power now contended for be conceded, to which I ask
the attention of every gentleman who happens to stand in the
same unfortunate predicament with myself—of every man who
has the misfortune to be, and to have been born, a slaveholder.

---

486

"It is the fashion to praise the Chief Justice's opinion in the
case of Ogden against Gibbons. But you know I am not a
fashionable man; I think it is unworthy of him. Lord Liverpool
has set him an example of caution in the last speech of the
king; one that shames our gasconading message. I said it was
too long before I read it. It contains a great deal that has no
business there, or indeed anywhere. Mr. Webster's phrase
`unity,' which he adopts, is a conceit (concetto), and a very poor
one, borrowed from Dr. Rush, who with equal reason pronounced
disease to be a unit. Now, as this theory of the
Doctor had no effect whatever upon his practice, and that alone
could affect his patients, it was so far a harmless maggot of
the brain. But, when that theory was imbibed at a single
gulp by his young disciples, who were sent out annually from
Philadelphia, it became the means of death not to units, or
tens, or hundreds, but thousands, and tens of thousands.

"A judicial opinion should decide nothing and embrace nothing
that is not before the court. If he had said that `a vessel,
having the legal evidence that she has conformed to the
regulations, which Congress has seen fit to prescribe, has the
right to go from a port of any State to a port of any other with
freight or in quest of it, with passengers or in quest of them,
non obstante such a law as that of the State of New York under
which the appellee claims,' I should have been satisfied.

"However, since the case of Cohen vs. Virginia, I am done
with the Supreme Court. No one admires more than I do the

---

488

"I differ from you about `his being a Virginian'; not that I
doubt the fact, but take my word for it he is becoming every
day more and more known out of the State and occupies a
large space in the public eye. I think he can be elected easily
against anyone yet talked of."[49]

"If Miss Roane should honor our metropolis with her
presence, I shall make it a point to call upon her, if, for no
other cause, from the very high respect in which I held her
father whilst living, and hold his memory, being dead. I consider
him as a great loss to his country, not only in his judicial
character, but as a statesman, who formed a rallying-point for

---

489

"May I be pardoned," he said, "for adverting to the fact—
I know that comparisons are extremely odious—that, when we
look to Salem and Boston, to parts of the country, where skill
and capital and industry notoriously exist, we find opposition
to this bill; and that, when we look to countries, which could

---

491

"If," he said, "under a power to regulate trade you prevent
exportation; if, with the most approved spring lancets, you
draw the last drop of blood from our veins; if secundum artem
you draw the last shilling from our pockets, what are the
checks of the Constitution to us? A fig for the Constitution!
When the scorpion's sting is probing us to the quick shall we
stop to chop logic? Shall we get some learned and cunning
clerk to say whether the power to do this is to be found in the
Constitution, and then, if he, from whatever motive, shall
maintain the affirmative, like the animal, whose fleece forms
so material a portion of this bill, quietly lie down and be
shorn."[56]

"I am surprised that the votaries of humanity—persons
who cannot sleep, such is their distress of mind at the very
existence of negro slavery—should persist in pressing a measure,
the effect of which is to aggravate the misery of that
unhappy condition, whether viewed in reference to the slave,
or to his master, if he be a man possessing a spark of humanity;
for what can be more pitiable than the situation of a man,

---

493

"It costs me nothing, Sir," he said, "to say that I very much
regret that the zeal which I have not only felt, but cherished,
on the subect of laying taxes in a manner which, in my judgment,
is inconsistent, not merely with the spirit, but the very
letter, of the Constitution, should have given to my remarks,
on this subject, a pungency, which has rendered them disagreeable,
and even offensive, to the gentleman from Delaware.
For that gentleman, I have never expressed any other
sentiment but respect—I have never uttered, or entertained,
an unkind feeling towards that gentleman, either in this House
or elsewhere, nor do I now feel any such sentiment towards
him. I never pressed my regard upon him; I press it upon no
man. He appears to have considered my remarks as having a
personal application to himself. I certainly did not intend to
give them that direction, and I think that my prompt disclaimer
of any such intention ought to have disarmed his
resentment, however justly it may have been excited. He has
been pleased, Sir, to say something, which, no doubt, he thinks
very severe, about my head and my heart.

"How easy, Sir, would it be for me to reverse the gentleman's

---

495

"But, Sir, I do not think this. I never thought it; and,
therefore, I cannot be so ungenerous as to say it; for, Mr.
Speaker, who made me a searcher of hearts? of the heart of a
fellow-man, a fellow-sinner? Sir, this is an awful subject!
better suited to Friday or Sunday next (Good Friday and
Easter Sunday), two of the most solemn days in the Christian
calendar, when I hope we shall all consider it, and lay it to
heart as we ought to do.

"But, Sir, I must still maintain that the argument of the
gentleman is suicidal. He has fairly worked the equation,
and one-half of his argument is a complete and conclusive
answer to the other. And, Sir, if I should ever be so unfortunate
as, through inadvertence, or the heat of debate, to fall
into such an error, I should, so far from being offended, feel
myself under obligation to any gentleman who would expose
its fallacy, even by ridicule, as fair a weapon as any in the
whole Parliamentary armory. I shall not go so far as to maintain,
with my Lord Shaftesbury, that it is the unerring test of
truth, whatever it may be of temper; but, if it be proscribed as
a weapon as unfair as it is confessedly powerful, what shall
we say (I put it, Sir, to you and to the House) to the poisoned
arrow?; to the tomahawk and the scalping-knife? Could the
most unsparing use of ridicule justify a resort to these weapons?
Was this a reason that the gentleman should sit in
judgment on my heart?; yes, Sir, my heart, which the gentleman
(whatever he may say) in his heart believes to be a frank
heart, as I trust it is a brave, heart. Sir, I dismiss the gentleman
to his self-complacency; let him go; yes, Sir, let him go,
and thank his God that he is not as this publican."[60]

"The tariff is finished (in our House at least), and so am I.
I was sent for on Tuesday in all haste to vote upon it; when I
got there, the previous question was taking, and the clerk
reading the yeas and nays.

"At the end, Gilmore (a fine fellow, by the way, although
a Georgian and a Crawford man) moved for a call of the House.
When that was over, Wilde, from Georgia, moved to amend
the title. I, as big a fool as he, got up to tell him what an
ass he was. (By the way, for `Smith's verses on the old continental
money,' which the reporter put into my mouth—why
or wherefore he only can tell—read what I actually did say:
Swift's verses on the motto upon Chief Justice Whitshed's coach.)
So much for reporters. That over, Drayton, of S. C., who is
the Purge of the House, got up to make another motion to
amend. By this time, the noisome atmosphere overcame me,
and I left the hall; Mr. D. on his legs; but a copious effusion of
blood from the lungs has been the consequence. It came on in
about thirty minutes after I got home; so that the debate on the
amendment of the tariff bill has the honor of my coup de grâce."[63]

"Fellow-citizens, Friends and Freeholders! A recurrence
of the same painful disease, that drove me from my post some
two years ago, again compels me to ask a furlough; for I cannot

---

497

"I confess that I was not without some misgivings that
all was not right. Holding myself aloof from the intrigues and
intriguers of Washington, I had remained a passive spectator
of a scene, such as I hope never again to witness. Not that I
was without a slight, a very slight, preference, in the choice of
the evils, submitted to us for our acceptance. I inclined
towards Mr. Crawford for some reasons which were private
and personal, and with which it is unnecessary to trouble you;
but, chiefly, because you preferred him to his competitors, and
because, if elected, he should, in a manner, be compelled to
throw himself into the hands of the least unsound of the
political parties of the country; that he would, by the force of
circumstances, be constrained to act with us (the People);
whilst the rival candidates would, by the same force of circumstances,
be obliged to act against us and with the tribe of
office-hunters and bankrupts that seek to subsist upon our
industry and means. The number of these that infest Washington,
especially during a first session of Congress, and, above
all, about the termination of an administration, is inconceivable
to those who have not seen the swarm.

"I said that I had some misgivings that all was not as it ought
to be. But, when I read the reply of Mr. Crawford, I had not
a shadow of doubt remaining in my mind. It is the most
triumphant and irresistible answer that ever met the accusation
of a base and perjured informer."[64] . . .

"His name is Jacob Harvey, son of Joseph Massey H., a
Limerick merchant, attached to the Society of Friends—what

---

498

"In the name of heaven," said I, "Mr. Randolph, what is
the matter? Do you know that it will soon be ten o'clock and
the steamboat waits for nobody? You promised me last night
to have everything packed up and ready when I called, and
here you are not even dressed yet!"

"I cannot help it, Sir," replied he. "I am all confusion this
morning; everything goes wrong; even my memory has gone
`a good wool gathering.' I am just writing a farewell letter to

---

499

"Do you remember any part of the quotation?", said I.
"Perhaps I can assist you with the rest, as time is precious."

"It begins," replied he, `How have I loved thee, oh Jacob,'
but, for the life of me, I can not recollect the next words. Oh!
my head! my head! Here do you take the Bible and run your
eye over that page, whilst I am writing the remainder of my
address."

"My dear sir," said I, "you have not time to do this now,
but let us take letter, Bible and all on board the steamboat
where you will have ample time to find the passage you want
before we reach the packet."

"Sir," said he, "much as I was prepared to see misery in
the south of Ireland, I was utterly shocked at the condition
of the poor peasantry between Limerick and Dublin. Why,

---

500

"There never was such a country on the face of the earth
as England; and it is utterly impossible that there ever can
be any combination of circumstances hereafter to make such
another country as old England now is—God bless her! But
in Ireland the Government and the church, or the lion and the
jackal, have divided the spoils between them, leaving nothing
for poor Pat but the potatoes."[70]

"This date says everything. I arrived here on Sunday
afternoon, and am now writing from the Grand Hotel de Castile,
Rue Richelieu and Boulevard des Italiens; for, as the
French say, it `gives' upon both, having an entrance from
each.

"I need not tell either of you that it is in the very focus of
gayety and fashion; and, if the maître d'hotel may be credited, it
is always honored by the residence of `M. le Duc de Davuansaire,'

---

502

"But how do you like Paris?"

"Not in the least. And I stay here only waiting for my letters,
which are . . . to the return of this day's post from London.
To you I need not say one word of the Lions of Paris, but will,
in a word, tell you that crucifixes, and paintings of crucifixions,
and prints of Charlotte Corday and Marie Antoinette &c., are
the fashion of the day; that the present dynasty is infirmly
seated in the saddle; and that, by little and little, every
privilege, acquired not by the designs of its authors, but by
the necessary consequences of such a Revolution, will be taken
from the People; nay, I am persuaded that the lands will be
resumed, or (what is the same thing) an ample equivalent will
be plundered from the public, to endow the losers with. At
the next session of the deputies, the measure of reimbursing
the emigrants—a measure, the very possibility of which was
scouted only three years ago [will be enacted]. The Marquis
de La Fayette had sailed for the United States about ten days
before my arrival here. I am sorry he has taken the step.
It will do no good to his reputation, which, at his time of life,
he ought to nurse. I take it for granted that Ned Livingstone,
or some other equally pure patriot will propose another donation
to him; the last, I think, was on the motion of Beau
Dawson. I hope I may be there, to give it just such another
reception as M. Figaro had at my hands; although it is certainly
a species of madness (and I hear that this malady is
imputed to me) to be wearing out my strength and spirits,
and defending the rights (whether of things or of persons) of a
people who lend their countenance to them that countenance
the general plunder of the public, in the expectation either that
they may share in the spoil, or that their former peculations
will not be examined into.

"I consider the present King of France and his family to be as

---

503

"But to return to Paris. It is wonderfully improved since
you saw it; nay, since the last restoration, but it is still the
filthiest hole, not excepting the worst parts of the old town of
`Edinboro,' that I ever saw out of Ireland. I have dined, for
your sake, chez Beauvilliers, and had bad fare, bad wine, and
even bad bread, a high charge and a surly garçon. Irving,
whom you know by character, (our ex-minister at Madrid),
was with me. He says all the Traiteurs are bad, and the crack
ones worst of all. I have also dined with Very, the first restaurateur
of the Palais Royal, four times; on one of which occasions
I had a good dinner and a fair glass of champagne—next
door to Very, once, at the Café de Chartres—with Pravot—
Pastel; all in the Palais Royal; all bad, dear, and not room
enough, even at Beauvilliers' or Very's, to sit at ease. I can
have a better dinner for half a guinea at the Traveller's, in a
saloon fit for a prince, and where gentlemen alone can enter,
and [with] a pint of the most exquisite Madeira than I can get here
for fifteen francs. I have dined like a marketman for 5 fr., 10
sous; that is the cheapest. All the wine, except le vin ordinaire,
is adulterated shockingly. The English made every thing
dear, and spoiled the garçons and filles, whose greediness
is only equalled by their impudence. Crucifixes, madonnas,
and pictures and prints of that cast, with Charlotte Corday
&c. &c., are the order of the day. Paris swarms with old
priests who have been dug up since the Restoration, and they
manufacture young ones (Jesuits especially) by hundreds at a
single operation.

---

504

"Monsieur, whom you saw at Edinburgh, is remarkable, as
I hear, for consuming a hat per day, when one is each morning
put upon his toilet. Hats were not so plenty then. . . .

"Except a few of the English, with which people Paris swarms,
I have not seen, either in the streets or elsewhere, anything
that by possibility might be mistaken for a gentleman. The
contrast in this respect with London is most striking; indeed I
would as soon compare the Hottentots with the French as
these last with the English. No Enquirer yet received, and I
pine for news from home."[74]

"I have barely time, before the closing of the mail, to
acknowledge the receipt of your friendly letter, and to express
my hearty concurrence in the gratification you feel at the
election of my brother. I could wish, indeed, that my name
had been withheld, yet hope that its withdrawal, even at the
time it took place, was not too late to manifest my deference
to him. God preserve him long as an honor to his station and
the old Dominion. I cannot but think that this occurrence
will reanimate his spirit and restore him to that activity in the

---

507

"I was in New York when he [John Adams] first took his
seat as Vice President. I recollect—for I was a schoolboy at
the time—attending the lobby of Congress when I ought to
have been at school. I remember the manner in which my
brother was spurned by the coachman of the then Vice President
for coming too near the arms emblazoned on the escutcheon
of the Vice Regal carriage. Perhaps, I may have some of
this old animosity rankling in my heart, coming from a race,
who are known never to forsake a friend or forgive a foe. I am
taught to forgive my enemies; and I do, from the bottom of
my heart, most sincerely, as I hope to be forgiven; but it is my
enemies not the enemies of my country, for, if they come here
in the shape of the English, it is my duty to kill them; if they
come here in a worse shape—wolves in sheep's clothing—it is
my duty and my business to tear the sheep-skins from their
backs, and, as Windham said to Pitt, open the bosom and expose
beneath the ruffled shirt the filthy dowlas. This language was
used in the House of Commons where they talk and act like
men; where they eat and drink like men; and do other things
like men, not like Master Bettys. Adams determined to take

---

508

"The step you are about to take," he added with a characteristic
protrusion of his long forefinger, "applies the match
to the powder; and, be there 25 barrels or 50 barrels, there is
enough to blow not the first of the Stuarts but the last of another
dynasty sky-high, Sir! Yes, Sir, sky-high!"[85]

"I did maintain," said he, "the rights of the President; but
from the moment he sent us this message, from that moment,
did my tone and manner to him change; from that moment was
I an altered man, and, I am afraid, not altered for the better.

"Sir, if he would leave to the Senate the decision of the question,
I would agree with him; but the evil genius of the
American House of Stuart prevailed. He goes on to say that
the question `involves a departure, hitherto, so far as I am
informed, without an example, from that usage, and upon
the motives for which, not being informed of them, I do not feel
myself competent to decide.' If this had been prosecuted for a
libel, what jury would have failed to have found a verdict on
such an innuendo? That we were breaking away from our
own usages to gratify personal spleen? I say nothing about
our movements, because he was not informed of them. The
innuendo was that our motives were black and bad. That
moment did I put, like Hannibal, my hand on the altar, and
swear eternal enmity against him and his, politically. From
that moment I would do any thing within the limits of the
Constitution and the law; for, as Chatham said of Wilkes, `I
would not, in the person of the worst of men, violate those
sanctions and privileges which are the safeguard of the rights
and liberties of the best; but, within the limits of the Constitution
and the law, if I don't carry on the war, whether in
the Peninsula or any where else, it shall be for want of
resources.' "[90]

"Who made him a judge of our usages? Who constituted
him? He has been a professor, I understand. I wish he had
left off the pedagogue when he got into the Executive chair.
Who made him the censor morum of this body? Will anyone
answer this question? Yes or no? Who? Name the person.
Above all, who made him the searcher of hearts, and gave him
the right, by an innuendo black as hell, to blacken our motives?
Blacken our motives! I did not say that then. I was more
under self-command; I did not use such strong language. I
said, if he could borrow the eye of Omniscience himself, and
look into every bosom here; if he could look into that most
awful, calamitous, and tremendous of all possible gulfs, the
naked unveiled human heart, stripped of all its coverings of
self-love, exposed naked, as to the eye of God, I said, if he
could do that, he was not, as President of the United States,
entitled to pass upon our motives, although he saw and knew
them to be bad. I said, if he had converted us to the Catholic
religion, and was our Father Confessor, and every man in this
House, at the footstool of the confessional had confessed a bad
motive to him by the laws of his Church, as by this Constitution,
above the law and above the church, he, as President
of the United States, could not pass on our motives, though we
had with our own lips told him our motives, and confessed they
were bad. I said this then, and I say it now. Here I plant
my foot; here I fling defiance right into his teeth before the
American people; here I throw the gauntlet to him and the
bravest of his compeers, to come forward and defend these
miserable dirty lines: `Involving a departure, hitherto, so far
as I am informed, without example, from that usage, and upon
the motives for which, not being informed of them, I do not
feel myself competent to decide.' Amiable modesty! I
wonder we did not all at once fall in love with him, and agree
una voce to publish our proceedings, except myself; for I quitted
the Senate ten minutes before the vote was taken. I saw what
was to follow; I knew the thing would not be done at all, or

---

513

"I was unable to see Mr. Randolph until the morning of the
1st of April, when I called on him for the purpose of delivering
the note. Previous to presenting it, however, I thought it
proper to ascertain from Mr. Randolph himself whether the
information which Mr. Clay had received—that he considered
himself personally accountable for the attack on him—was
correct. I accordingly informed Mr. Randolph that I was the
bearer of a message from Mr. Clay, in consequence of an attack
which he had made upon his private as well as public character
in the Senate; that I was aware no one had the right to question
him out of the Senate for anything said in debate, unless he
chose voluntarily to waive his privileges as a member of that
body. Mr. Randolph replied that the Constitution did protect
him but he would never shield himself under such a subterfuge
as the pleading of his privilege as a Senator from Virginia;
that he did hold himself accountable to Mr. Clay; but he said
that gentleman had first two pledges to redeem; one that he
had bound himself to fight any member of the House of
Representatives who should acknowledge himself the author
of a certain publication in a Philadelphia paper; and the other
that he stood pledged to establish certain facts in regard to a
gentleman whom he would not name; but he added he could
receive no verbal message from Mr. Clay—that any message
from him must be in writing. I replied that I was not authorized
by Mr. Clay to enter into or receive any verbal

---

514

"Mr. Randolph accepts the challenge of Mr. Clay. At the
same time, he protests against the right of any minister of the
Executive Government of the United States to hold him
responsible for words, spoken in debate as a Senator from
Virginia in crimination of such minister or the administration
under which he shall have taken office. Colonel Tatnall, of
Georgia, the bearer of this letter, is authorized to arrange with
General Jesup (the bearer of Mr. Clay's challenge) the terms
of the meeting to which Mr. Randolph is invited by that
note."[93]

"Mr. Randolph informs me that the words used by him in
debate were as follows: `That I thought it would be in my
power to show evidence sufficiently presumptive to satisfy a
Charlotte (County) jury that this invitation was manufactured
here—that Salazar's letter [The Mexican Minister's
letter inviting the United States to the Congress] struck me as
bearing a strong likeness in point of style to the other papers.
I did not undertake to prove this but expressed my suspicion
that the fact was so. I applied to the administration the
epithet, `puritanic—diplomatic—black-legged administration.'
Mr. Randolph, in giving these words as those uttered by him
in debate, is unwilling to afford any explanation as to their
meaning and application."[94]

"I heard it all," he says, "and, though sharp and cutting,
I think it might have been heard had he been present without
any manifestation of resentment by Mr. Clay. The part
which he took so seriously to heart, that of having the Panama
invitations manufactured in his office, was to my mind nothing
more than attributing to him a diplomatic superiority which
enabled him to obtain from the South American Ministers the
invitations that he wanted; and not at all that they were
spurious fabrications. As to the expression `blackleg and puritan,'
it was merely a sarcasm to strike by antithesis, and which,
being without foundation, might have been disregarded."

"Mr. Randolph," says Hamilton, "sent for me. I found
him calm but in a singularly kind and confiding mood. He
told me that he had something on his mind to tell me. He
then remarked: `Hamilton, I have determined to receive
without returning Clay's fire: nothing shall induce me to harm
a hair of his head; I will not make his wife a widow or his
children orphans. Their tears would be shed over his grave;
but, when the sod of Virginia rests on my bosom, there is not
in this wide world one individual to pay this tribute upon mine.'
His eyes filled, and, resting his head upon his hand, we remained
some moments silent."

"Information received from Col. Tatnall, since I got into
the carriage, may induce me to change my mind of not returning
Mr. Clay's fire. I seek not his death. I would not have
his blood upon my hands—it will not be upon my soul, if shed
in self-defense—for the world. He has determined by the use
of a long preparatory caution by words to get time to kill me.
May I not then disable him? Yes, if I please."

"And then," Benton says, "added with a beauty of expression
and a depth of feeling which no studied oratory can ever
attain, and which I shall never forget, these impressive words:
`I would not have seen him fall mortally, or even doubtfully,
wounded for all the land that is watered by the King of
Floods and all his tributary streams.' After uttering these
words, and again refusing to explain outside of the Senate any
words that he had used in it, and declaring positively that he
would not return Clay's fire the next time, Randolph resumed
his station opposite to his antagonist. Benton then withdrew
a little way into the woods, and kept his eyes fixed on Randolph,
knowing that he alone of the two duellists was now
in danger. Randolph received Clay's fire which knocked up
the gravel in the same place as before, raised his pistol and
discharged it in the air, and exclaimed: `I do not fire at you, Mr.
Clay,' and immediately advanced, and tendered his hand to
Clay. Clay, in the same spirit, met him half-way, and the two
shook hands; Randolph, whose coat skirt had been pierced by
Clay's bullet very near the hip, saying jocosely: `You owe me
a coat, Mr. Clay,' and Clay promptly and very happily replying:
`I am glad the debt is no greater."[98]

"On Monday, the parties exchanged cards, and social
relations were formally and courteously restored. It was
about the last high-toned duel that I have witnessed, and
among the highest-toned that I have ever witnessed, and so
happily conducted to a fortunate issue—a result due to the
noble character of the seconds as well as to the generous and
heroic spirit of the principals. Certainly, duelling is bad, and
has been put down, but not quite so bad as its substitute—
revolvers, bowie-knives, blackguarding and street-assassinations
under the pretext of self-defense."[100]

"I cannot write. I tried yesterday to answer your letter,
but I could not do it. My pen choked. The hysterica passio
of poor old Lear came over me. I left a letter for you in case
of the worst. It now lies on my mantel-piece. Perhaps, you
may, one time or other, see it. I am a fatalist. I am all but
friendless. . . . Benton begins to understand and to love me.
Nothing has stood in his way. No lions in his path. Had I

---

525

"I again repeat that I cannot write. But I shall be thankful
for your letters; as long as I could, I gave you what I had. I
too am bankrupt, and have as good a right to break as the
rest. God bless you both."[101]

"I know there are gentlemen," said Randolph, "not only
from the Northern, but from the Southern, States, who think
that this unhappy question—for such it is—of negro slavery,
which the Constitution has vainly attempted to blink, by not
using the term, should never be brought into public notice,
more especially into that of Congress, and most especially
here. Sir, with every due respect for the gentlemen who
think so, I differ from them, toto coelo. Sir, it is a thing which
cannot be hid—it is not a dry rot that you can cover with the
carpet, until the house tumbles about your ears—you might
as well try to hide a volcano in full operation—it cannot be
hid; it is a cancer in your face, and must be treated secundum
artem; it must not be tampered with by quacks, who never
saw the disease or the patient and prescribe across the Atlantic.
It must be, if you will, let alone; but, on this very principle of
letting it alone, it is that I have brought in my resolution. I
am willing to play what is called child's play—let me alone and
I will let you alone; let my resolution alone, and I will say
nothing in support of it; for there is a want of sense in saying
anything in support of a resolution that nobody opposes. Sir,
will the Senate pardon my repeating the words of a great man,
which cannot be too often repeated? `A small danger, menacing
an inestimable object, is of more importance, in the eyes of
a wise man, than the greatest danger which can possibly
threaten an object of minor consequence.' The question
before us is, is this an object of inestimable consequence? I
do not put the question to you, Sir. I know what your answer
will be. I know what will be the answer of every husband,
father, son, and brother, throughout the Southern States; I
know that on this depends the honor of every matron and
maiden—of every matron (wife or widow) between the Ohio
and the Gulf of Mexico. I know that upon it depends the
life's blood of the little ones which are lying in their cradles, in
happy ignorance of what is passing around them; and not the
white ones only, for shall not we too kill—shall we not react
the scenes which were acted in Guatemala, and elsewhere,
except I hope, with far different success; for if, with a superiority
in point of numbers, as well as of intelligence and courage,
we should suffer ourselves to be, as there, vanquished, we

---

527

"But I did immediately after this transaction," [the support
given by Henry Clay to Webster in the discussion of the Greek
Question], Randolph said, "write a letter to a friend which
letter, with its postmark and date, can now be produced,
stating that, according to my view of things, an alliance,
offensive and defensive, had been got up between old Massachusetts
and Kentucky, between the frost of January and
young, blythe, buxom and blooming May, the eldest daughter

---

528

"Randolph delivered yesterday the greatest speech of his
life and, as he said, the last of this session. The like of it was
never seen, heard nor felt before. He spoke for six complete
hours from one to seven. For six hours, he filled his vials from
the fountains of bitterness—filled them to overflowing—and
emptied them on heads high and low. For six hours, he trod
the wine-press of indignant wrath; for six hours the Senate
and a brilliant audience were fixed as the marble columns
which supported the dome of the chamber. The stenographer
was busy, but in vain. It is not for paper to tell that speech."

"Mr. Randolph's zeal and intrepidity have drawn a fiery
wasp's nest around his head. He has been exhibited in almost
every variety of shape to excite detestation or contempt. He
has been painted as a madman—as a malignant—as a dotard—

---

529

"A month has now elapsed since I landed in England, during
which time I have not received a line from any friend, except
Benton, who wrote to me on the eve of his departure from
Babylon the Great to Missouri. Missouri!, and here am I
writing in the parlor of the New Inn, at the gate of Mr. Coke's
park, where art has mastered nature in one of her least amiable
moods. To say the truth, he that would see this country to
advantage must not end with the barren sands and flat,
infertile healths (strike out the l; I meant to write heaths) of
the east country, but must reserve the vale of Severn and
Wales for a bonne bouche. Although I was told at Norwich
that Mr. Coke was at home (and by a particular friend of his
too), yet I find that he and Lady Anne are gone to the very

---

531

I see that Ritchie has come out against me. I looked for
nothing better. But why talk of such things?" . . .

" `The Portfolio reached me in safety.' So much had I written
of a letter to you in London, but I was obliged to drop my pen
in G. Marx' compting-house, and here I am, and at your service
at The Hague. . . .

"In my passage from London, I met with a serious accident,
that might have been fatal. We broke our engine, and, when
the pilot boarded us, I was desirous to get on board of his boat;
to do this, I had to cross the quarter-deck. The skylight of the
ladies' cabin was open, but (pour bienséance) the `orifice' was
covered with our colors, and the grating, being removed only
about 18 inches, a complete pit-fall or trap was made, into
which I fell, and my right side, immediately below the insertion
of the false ribs into the spine, was `brought up by the

---

532

"I have not seen Mr. Gallatin. Mr. John A. King, our
chargé d'affaires, was very polite to me. We met on neutral
ground at the Traveller's Club-House, in Pall Mall, No. 49.

"I am pleased with Holland. Cleanliness here becomes a
virtue. My companion's, Mr. Wms', passport wanting some
formularies, and our chargé (Mr. C. Hughes! oh for some of
Giles' notes of admiration!!!!) not being present, Sir Charles
Bagot has been good enough to do the needful. I waited upon
him in Mr. Wms' behalf, and was received by him with the
greatest warmth, asked to dine en famille (as I leave The
Hague to-morrow for Leyden), and told that any letters
brought to [the] dinner would be forwarded by his courier to
London. To him, therefore, I am obliged for a conveyance for
this.

"Apropos to Giles; I think I know him to the bottom, if he
has any bottom. I know also the advantage that will be
taken of me; the formidable array of enemies that I have to
encounter. I might have neutralized some of them; but, as
Bonaparte said on another occasion, `it is not in my character.'
Whatever may be the decision of the Virginia Assembly on my
case, I shall always say that a capricious change of her public
agents has never been the vice of the Government or the people
of Virginia, and that, whenever a man is dismissed from the
service of either, it is strong presumptive evidence (prima
facie) of his unfitness for the place. . . .

"Your intelligence about the election, about W. S. A., [Wm.
S. Archer] and W. R. J., [Wm. R. Johnson] and W. B. G.,
[Wm. B. Giles] was highly gratifying. I hope that my initials
are intelligible to you, for your Miss S., upon whom you say
Mr. M. D. was attending, is une inconnue à moi. I did not
know that you had any Richmond Belles, of whom the Beaux
could say, `I love my love with an S., because' &c., &c.

"Poor Stevenson, I think, has no daughter, or child, even.

---

533

"And so old Mr. Adams is dead; on the 4th of July, too, just
half a century after our Declaration of Independence; and leaving
his son on the throne. This is Euthanasia, indeed. They
have killed Mr. Jefferson, too, on the same day, but I don't
believe it. . . .

"Pray, has the Enquirer come out against me? I see something
that looks like it in the matter of Mr. D., of M—s.
Le vrai n'est pas toujours le vraisemblable. There is a dessous
de cartes there, that is not understood. But who does really
understand anything? The English know us only through
the medium of New York and Yankee newspapers, and, which
is worse, through the Yankees themselves. The only Virginia
papers, that I saw at the North and South American Coffee
House, were the Norfolk Beacon, ditto Herald, and Richmond
Whig. They don't take the Enquirer. What a pretty notion
they must have of us in Virginia. Adieu for the present."

"It is now agreed on all hands that misery, crime and profligacy
are in a state of rapid and alarming increase. The Pitt
and paper system (for although he did not begin it, yet he
brought it to its last stage of imperfection) is now developing
features that `fright the isle from its propriety.'

"Your letter reached me in Paris where I was in a measure
compelled to go, in consequence of my having incautiously set
my foot in that huge man-trap, France. I had there neither
time nor opportunity to answer it, and now I have not power
to do it. The dinner to M. does, I confess, not a little surprise
me. I know not what to think of these times, and of the state

---

534

"I dined yesterday with Mr. Marx—it was a private party—
and took additional cold. This morning, my expectoration is
quite bloody, but I do not apprehend that it comes from the
lungs. It is disagreeable, however, not only in itself, but
because I have promised my Lord Chief Justice Best to visit
him at his seat in Kent, and another gentleman, also, in the
same county; `invicta,' unconquered Kent."

"Mr. W. J. Barksdale writes his father that a run will be
made at me by G—s [Giles] this winter. On this subject, I
can only repeat what I have said before—that, when the Commonwealth
of Virginia dismisses a servant, it is strong presumptive
evidence of his unfitness for the station. If it shall
apply to my own case, I cannot help it. But I should have
nothing to wish on this subject, if the Assembly could be put
in possession of a tolerably faithful account of what I have said
and done. I have been systematically and industriously misrepresented.
I had determined to devote this last summer
to a revision of my speeches, but my life would have paid
the forfeit, had I persisted in that determination. Many
of the misrepresentations proceed from the `ineffable stupidity'
of the reporters, but some must, I think, be intentional.
. . . In most instances, my meaning has been
mistaken. In some, it has been reversed. If I live, I will set
this matter right. So much for Ego.

"I see that Peyton R. advertises his land on — River.
This was the last of my name and race left whom I would go
and see. The ruin is no doubt complete. . . .

---

535

"Town is empty, and I live, a complete hermit, in London.
If you see the English newspapers, you will see what a horrible
state of society exists in this strange country, where one class
is dying of hunger and another with surfeit. The amount of
crime is fearful; and cases of extreme atrocity are not wanting.
The ministry will not find themselves upon a bed of roses when
Parliament meets."[107]

"To pretend indifference to the approaching election, would
be the height of affectation and falsehood; but, go how it may,
I trust that I shall bear myself under success or defeat in a
manner that my friends will not disapprove. I have ever
looked up to Virginia as to a mother whose rebukes I was
bound to receive with filial submission; and no instance of her
displeasure, however severe, shall ever cause me to lose sight
of my duty to her."[108]

"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
explicitly that you will not abandon the Chair of State at this
time to accept a seat in the Senate?"[114]

"But we would have humbly preferred John Randolph to
any other man. The Legislature had previously taken him
from the citizens of his District and placed him in the Senate.
Whatever had been his transgressions, they had passed a sort
of Act of Amnesty over him. He was in the office, he had
warred with the coalition at Washington in a manner which
had carried dismay into their ranks. Whatever were the
errors into which the excess of his sensibility had betrayed
him, (a) he had defended the ramparts of the constitution with
a zeal which never wavered and an eloquence which none could
equal. He seemed in some respects the very man who was
called for by the occasion. Corruption had cowered beneath
him, and the panders of public abuses were shrinking under
the matchless powers of the modern Chatham."[119]

"To us, however, he appeared as a man who had been
honored, not disgraced, and, when the bill came up for increasing
the compensation of the Post-Master General, he spoke
upon it with a dignity of manner, beauty of expression and
force and propriety of argument which charmed and delighted
his friends."[121]

"Your most welcome letter of Wednesday is just now
received. Every syllable in the way of anecdote is gratifying
in a high degree.

"My first impression was to resign. There were, notwithstanding,
obvious and strong objections to this course; my
duty to my friends, the giving of a handle to the charges of my
enemies that I was the slave of spleen and passion, and many
more that I need not specify. There was but one other course
left, and that I have taken, not without the decided approbation
of my colleague, and many other friends here. I

---

540

"which only leaves me power," he said, "to express my high
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."[131]

"Sir, it is the man who is now at the head of the opposition
to this administration; it is the man who was placed by you,
Sir, at the head of the principal committee of this House.
Yes, sir, he was placed there by aid of the vote of the very
people that he has derided and abused; and, if ill-health had
not prevented, would have been in that exalted station. It is

---

544

"the commanding general of the opposition force and occupying
the position of a commander in the rear of his troops;
controlling their movements; issuing his orders; directing one
subaltern where and how to move his forces; admonishing
another to due and proper caution and to follow his leader;
nodding approbation to a third, and prompting him to extraordinary
exertion."[136] (a)

"`But General Jackson is no statesman."' "Sir, I deny
that there is any instance on record in history of a man, not
having military capacity, being at the head of any government
with advantage to that government and with credit to himself.
There is a great mistake on this subject. It is not those
talents which enable a man to write books and make speeches
that qualify him to preside over a government. The wittiest
of poets has told us that

"We have seen Professors of Rhetoric who could no doubt
descant fluently upon the use of these said tools; yet sharpen
them to so wiry an edge as to cut their own fingers with these
implements of their trade. Thomas à Becket was as brave
a man as Henry the Second, and, indeed, a braver man—less
infirm of purpose. And who were the Hildebrands and the
rest of the Papal freebooters who achieved victory after
victory over the proudest monarchs and states of Christendom?
These men were brought up in a cloister, perhaps, but they
were endowed with that highest of all the gifts of heaven, the
capacity to lead men, whether in the Senate or the field. Sir,
it is one and the same faculty, and its successful display has
always received, and ever will receive, the highest honors
that man can bestow; and this will be the case, do what you
will, cant what you may, about military chieftains and military
domination. So long as man is man, the victorious
defender of his country will, and ought, to receive that

---

546

"A friend said to me not long since. `Why, General Jackson
can't write.' `Admitted'; pray, Sir, can you tell me of any
one that can write?; for I protest I know nobody that can.
Then, turning to my friend, I said: `It is most true that
General Jackson cannot write' (not that he can't write his
name, or a letter, &c.) `because he has never been taught;
but his competitor cannot write because he was not teachable';
for he has had every advantage of education and study. Sir,
the Duke of Marlborough, the greatest captain and negotiator
of his age, which was the age of Louis XIV, and who may
rank with the greatest men of any age; whose irresistible manners
and address triumphed over every obstacle in council, as
his military prowess and conduct did in the field; this great
man could not even spell, and was notoriously ignorant of all
that an undergraduate must know, but which it is not necessary
for a man at the head of affairs to know at all. Would
you have superseded him by some Scotch schoolmaster?
Gentlemen forget that it is an able helmsman we want for the
ship of State, and not a professor of Navigation or Astronomy.

"Sir, among the vulgar errors that ought to go into Sir
Thomas Browne's book, this ought not to be omitted: that
learning and wisdom are not synonymous, or at all equivalent.
Knowledge and wisdom, as one of our most delightful poets
sings;

"And not books only, Sir—speeches are not less deceptive.
I not only consider the want of what is called learning not to

---

547

"There is a class of men who possess great learning, combined
with inveterate professional habits, and who are ipso facto, or
perhaps I should rather say ipsis factis, for I must speak accurately,
as I speak before a professor [Edward Everett], disqualified
for any but secondary parts anywhere—even in the
cabinet. Cardinal Richelieu was what? A priest. Yes, but
what a priest! Oxenstiern was a chancellor. He it was who
sent his son abroad to see—quam parva sapientia regitur mundus
—with how little wisdom this world is governed. This administration
seemed to have thought that even less than little
would do for us. The gentleman called it a strong, an able
cabinet, second to none but Washington's first cabinet. I
could hardly look at him for blushing. What! Sir, is Gallatin
at the head of the Treasury?—Madison in the Department
of State? The mind of an accomplished and acute dialectician,
of an able lawyer, or, if you please, of a great physician, may,
by the long continuance of one pursuit, of one train of ideas,
have its habits so inveterately fixed as effectually to disqualify
the possessor for the command of the councils of a country.
He may, nevertheless, make an admirable chief of a bureau, an
excellent man of details, which the chief ought never to be.
A man may be capable of making an able and ingenious argument
on any subject within the sphere of his knowledge; but,

---

548

---

549

---

550

"Sir, what can the country do for me? Poor as I am, for I
am much poorer than I have been, impoverished by unwise
legislation, I still have nearly as much as I know how to use;
more certainly than I have at all times made a good use of;
and, as for power, what charm can it have for one like me? If
power had been my object, I must have been less sagacious
than my worst enemies have represented me to be (unless,
indeed, those who would have kindly shut me up in bedlam) if
I had not obtained it. I may appeal to all my friends to say
whether `there have not been times when I stood in such favor
in the closet that there must have been something very extravagant
and unreasonable in my wishes if they might not all have
been gratified.' Was it office? What, Sir, to drudge in your
laboratories in the departments, or be at the tail of the corps
diplomatique in Europe? Alas! Sir, in my condition a cup
of cold water would be more acceptable. What can the

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551

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552

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553