Lentulus on the throne, Gabinus clothed in purple, and Catiline approaching with an army, amidst the shrieks of mothers and the flight of vestal virgins. The Senate, in secret session, passed an act suspending the Habeas Corpus, and sent it to the House for its concurrence. Mr. Randolph, who was not so easily thrown into hysterics, opposed the bill in an able speech, and it was rejected by the House. br Towards the close of the session, a systematic attack seems to have been made by the friends of the administration upon Mr. Randolph. The men of inferior position were set at him by sinister influences. Mr. Randolph was too proud to notice them. At last, T. M. Randolph, the son-in-law of the President and his own relative assailed him. He, at once, challenged this gentleman; but an apology having been tendered by the assailant, it was accepted, and the difficulty settled. We record these things that the living may see, how contemptible, in the eyes of posterity, will appear all attempts of a party to overawe an independent man. Mr. Randolph returned home at the close of the session, broken in health, wounded in spirit by the course of his party; but, above all, grieved by the marriage of the lady of his early love. He was the most miserable of men. The world hardly tolerates the mention of the woes of disappointed love. But how is it just for history, in its dealings with the character of a man, to overlook the incidents which tried his soul? Mr. Randolph spoke of the lady of his affection as 66 one I loved more than my own soul, or the God that made it." And in years long after, in the dreams of feverish sleep, the name of this loved woman has been heard to escape his lips, mingled in the tenderest words of affection. To call these romantic attachments mere weaknesses, is to scandalise the chivalry of the human heart. Even the great Aristotle, the prince of philosophers, was swayed by the most romantic attachment to his wife Pythias; "and long after her death, he directed in his will that her ashes should be placed beside his own." The high-souled in all ages, warriors, statesmen, judges, philosophers and poets, have been so noted for romantic attachments, that they have been signalized for it in the pages of history. In looking then to Mr. Randolph, in the sequel of his life, always remember that you are contemplating a man, whose heart "Is lone as some volcanic isle; No torch is kindled at its blaze- Congress meets again. The restrictive policy had hurt ourselves more than England. The maritime measures of England and France were driving us from the ocean, and the commercial advantages of a neutral position were lost, while the evils of a war between our neighbours were afflicting us. In this state of things, Mr. Jefferson recommended an embargo on our vessels. The recommendation was adopted by Congress. Mr. Randolph said: "It was the Iliad of our woes." Mr. Jefferson's term now expired. Mr. Madison had been elected his successor. Mr. Randolph opposed his election, saying, "he wanted no more philosopher presidents." Bok A session of Congress was called. Madison sent a warlike message to Congress. In fact, the country was hot for war with England. In this Congress, (1811-12), Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun were representatives. Mr. Randolph, alluding to them, said: "We shall have war now, those young men have their eyes on the Presidential chair." Mr. Randolph opposed the war because he thought the country unable to carry it on successfully; and too, because he saw that the working of the government, in the exigencies of war, would introduce a policy destructive of the strict construction of the federal constitution. These were the avowed grounds for his opposition to the war. And was Mr. Randolph altogether wrong? In less than three years the government was compelled, by financial embarrassments, to make peace, without securing by any treaty stipulation, the object for which the war had been declared. The treaty of peace made no mention whatever of the impressment of our seamen; and yet this, with the outrages connected with it, was the cause of the declaration of war. It is, nevertheless true, that we obtained security against impressment by the heroic courage of our army and navy, and of our militia, and thus gained by the mere fact of war, what we failed to obtain by diplomacy. Henceforth, we have the best of all security against encroachments on our rights the security of the power to vindicate our rights, and the will to do it, as made manifest by the war. It is in time of war that governments can most easily usurp power. War was especially hazardous to the safe working of our federal government in its earlier period, before the resources of the country were developed and consolidated. It was important in framing the Constitution to give the federal government unenumerated incidental powers, as a means of carrying into effect the powers expressly granted. This is done at the end of the enumeration of the powers expressly granted to Congress. The only limitation on these incidental powers is their necessity. It is at once seen then, that incidental or implied powers may or may not be considered constitutional, as the necessities of the government rise or fall. When the government was involved in the Indian war of 1798, General Hamilton had argued, and successfully, that a national bank was necessary as a means of executing the granted power of making war. Accordingly, the bank was established as a fiscal aid to the government. Thus was introduced a principle of construction, not so much dependent upon the words of the Con 0 stitution as upon extrinsic and transient circumstances. It is sufficiently manifest that this principle of construction is subversive of the strict limitation of the Constitution to its granted powers. Mr. Randolph thought, that in the condition of the country in 1812, the force of this principle of latitudinous construction would be immensely augmented, in the straits in which the country would be placed by a war with England-and he was right. For, as a consequence of the war, the second national bank was established; many of its old opponents, with Madison at their head, supporting it, as justified by necessity as a means of executing a granted power. Another consequence of the war was, the protection of American industry as a substantive object independent of revenue. The incidental protection of American industry, under the revenue clause of the Constitution, had been always acknowledged as legitimate; but domestic manufactures had grown up during the periods of non-importation, and under the double duties on importations made necessary for revenue during the war; the advantage of a domestic supply of those articles necessary for national defence, and of those essential to individual comfort had been made manifest by the war. The question, therefore, of protection for the sake of protection, grew naturally out of these circumstances; and in the year 1816, protection instead of the incident, became the main object of legislation. The question of internal improvement, by the federal government, sprang, too, out of the exigencies of the war. The want of facilities in the transportation of munitions of war and of troops had been severely felt. Therefore, it was argued, the federal government has a right to construct roads and canals as an incident to the granted power of making war: the exigencies of the war, and the impression made by it upon the country, in fact, put the government upon a course of legislation which, before the end of Mr. Monroe's administration, had well nigh ignored all the limitations of the Constitution. Mr. Randolph foresaw these consequences, and therefore opposed the war; and a strict constructionist might even now, with all the acknowledged benefit of the war, in elevating the reputation of the country, from the imputation of having lost all heroism in the low pursuit of wealth, dispute whether the evils, which have resulted from unconstitutional, or at any rate, latitudinous legislation, caused by the war, do not more than balance its advantages. Yet, Mr. Randolph has been denounced for unworthy motives in opposing the administrations of Jefferson and Madison. This ungenerous judgment is always passed, by the public, upon public men who oppose any measure of their own party, to the denial of all independence of private opinion, rendering men slavish supporters of measures they disapprove, and, in some instances, even making them violate their oath to support the Constitution. Submission to such tyranny of party is unmanly and corrupt. A public man should co-operate with any party in any measure he may think right, and fight manfully against his own party when he thinks it clearly wrong. To contend for any other rule of action, is at best to make the end justify the means, and to introduce, into political life, the worst morality ascribed by Pascal, in his Provincal Letters, to the Jesuits. That the ethics of political life should be brought down to this low level, Mr. Randolph was not the man to consent. And for this, he has our unqualified respect, our profoundest admiration. The sycophants to party are as low creatures, in our eyes, as the parasites of monarchs. From April 1813, to the fall of 1815, Mr. Randolph was supplanted in Congress by Mr. Eppes, because of the course in politics, which we have just mentioned. But his constituents repented of their error, and, again, we find him a member of Congress at the important session of 1816. The consequences of the war, which we have indicated, on the legislation by Congress, were realized at this session, and the course of Mr. Randolph, as a strict constructionist, at this session, in opposing the bank and other kindred measures, is deserving of all praise. Never before did he display more brilliant eloquence, utter more things worthy of being remembered, and of being referred to now as lessons of instruction in political morals. His speeches, this session, would fill a volume. The history of Congress is the history of Mr. Randolph's life; but it would require a pen of fire to impart animation to a narra tive of the dull drama of Congressional life in the times we are reviewing. We, therefore, hasten to the session of 1820. Here it was that Mr. Randolph consummated his glory as a State-rights man, by opposing, in every form, all concession on the slavery question. He stood by the Constitution, disdaining to recognise in Congress the right, by legislation, so to mould the territory of the country, as to rear up States hostile to slavery. He saw, too, that if the people of the North would not stand by the sacred compact of the Constitution on the subject of slavery, they would not stand by any less solemn agreement. He, in fact, knew that all terms with fanaticism are, at best, a hollow truce, to be broken on the first plausible pretext. Missouri, had in 1819, applied for admission into the Union as a State. The North attempted to place upon her a prohibition to hold slaves, as a condition of her admission, and to be binding upon her afterwards. William Pinckney, then a Senator from Maryland, in the most searching, powerful, brilliant and thorough speech, ever made on a Constitutional question, utterly overthrew this ambitious project of dwarfing the new States for the purposes of sectional aggrandizement; and so overwhelming was his argument, that the fanatics of the North could hardly disguise from themselves, the impotence of their champions, when contrasted with this great master of law and forensic dialectics. His speech put an end to the question, whether it is competent for Congress to impose on a State any conditions in addition to those of the Consti tution; and the State was admitted without any such restriction. But the admission was accompanied with a restriction upon the extension of slavery, which admitted, that though Congress had no right to incline the tree, yet it could bend the twig. This restriction was imposed on the remainder of the Louisiana territory north and west of Missouri, and above the parallel of 36 degrees, 30 minutes; being a prolongation of the Southern boundary line of Virginia and Kentucky. It was all a clear gain to the anti-slavery party. It abolished slavery over an immense extent of territory, when it might then legally exist over nearly the whole of Louisiana, leaving it only in Florida and Arkansas territory, and opening no new territory to its existence. It was the greatest concession ever made by one section of a country holding a great local interest, to another section of that country who were hostile to that interest. It was the greatest sacrifice ever made for civil concord. But no sacrifice can satisfy the claims and appease the ferocity of fanaticism. The anti-slavery agitation soon began with new virulence; and when Carolina's great son, the lofty-minded Calhoun, foretold its destructive purposes and its inherent power of increase, so intent were the people, led on by politicians, upon the mere ends of party politics, that he was almost universally maligned as a disturber of the national tranquillity. But time has proved his sagacity. For, notwithstanding the result of the late presidential election, the portentous cloud of abolition hangs in darker folds and stretches farther along the political horizon, and wraps in its bosom more deadly elements of mischief, than at any time since it first rose as a foul exhalation out of the Serbonian bog of New England theology. Northern politicians, tutored by the pulpit and the schools, have brought to the interpretation of the Constitution, principles founded in a false morality and a blasphemous religion; a morality that ignores the most clearly pronounced obligations, and justifies itself by asserting that there is a higher law of God which authorizes a disregard of official oaths, when those oaths do not suit your private notions of what is right, in a matter that is already determined by the Constitution and the laws which the oaths have been taken to support. Whatever, in the destiny of this still hopeful nation, may be the final issue of this slavery agitation, it is certain impartial history will declare, that at least, those Northern States which framed the Constitution with their sister States of. the South, together with them constituting the old thirteen who first raised on high the flag of the stars and stripes amongst the ensigns of nations, and bore it over the bloody fields of the revolution, have dishonoured themselves and must have a judgment of perfidy pronounced against them. They would present a far less despicable character in the 12 |