annals of these confederated States, if, instead of endeavouring to untie the solemn covenants of the Constitution by the casuistical niceties of a corrupt morality, they boldly assaulted the bulwarks of the government in open civil war, and incurred the penalties of treason, instead of resting as they now do, under the dishonour of unworthy subterfuges to secure themselves, or rather their citizens, from the legal consequences of their guilt. In the ferocious meditations of the deadliest misanthropy nothing so atrocious has ever been projected on the theatre of human wickedness, as this scheme of our Northern brethren to loose the social and legal bonds of our slaves, put daggers into their hands and tutor them in the diabolical creed, that they subserve the cause of humanity by plunging these daggers into the hearts of the daughters of the South, after they have befouled their more than vestal purity in the coarse embraces of barbarian lust. We confess, however, that in the mood of our deepest indignation at this worse than vandal invasion of our homes, we have never been able to stifle the fraternal shame which rises in our bosom, that they are our own brothers and sisters of the North who are thus disgracing the name of man and woman, and bringing ruin on our common heritage of freedom.

Mr. Randolph opposed the Compromise, as it has been absurdly called, of 1820, which accompanied the admission of Missouri into the Union; and in this he showed his wisdom.

In December, 1825, Mr. Randolph was elected from Virginia, to fill a vacancy, for two years, in the United States Senate. During the session of 1826, in his speech on the Panama Mission, which we heard, he cast such opprobrium on Mr. Clay, then Mr. Adam's Secretary of State, that the latter challenged him. Mr. Randolph accepted the challenge. There was not, perhaps, any public man in the country towards whom Mr. Randolph felt so much ill will as Mr. Clay. This had grown out of political hostility beginning in 1812, on the war measures. Yet Mr. Randolph determined not to shoot at Mr. Clay. And it was only upon the occurrence of circumstances on the ground, and under the influence of a remonstrance previously made by his friends, that he was induced to fire once at Mr. Clay. On receiving Mr. Clay's second shot he fired his pistol into the air. But it is a mortifying record to be made by the pen of history, of two such men attempting to destroy one another.

After the expiration of the term in the Senate, Mr. Randolph was re-elected to the House, but his health was so feeble that he was rarely in attendance on the deliberations of the body. In 1829 he was elected a delegate to the Convention to frame a new Constitution for Virginia. Here he met Madison, Monroe, Marshall, and other distinguished sons of Virginia. On no theatre did Mr. Randolph ever appear to greater advantage than in this Convention. He pursued a course so wise, and acted in so conciliatory.

a spirit, that he left the Convention with the kind remembrance of all its members. His conservative course may be inferred from this one remark in one of his speeches, which we record as particularly apposite to the present times of Constitutional change: "Sir, the great opprobrium of popular government is its instability. It was this which made the people of our Anglo-Saxon stock ding with such pertinacity to an independent judiciary, as the only means they could find to resist this vice of popular governments." The innovation of an elective judiciary is doing more to destroy the high character of the American Bar and to degrade our institutions, than any other cause, or perhaps than all other causes put together. We warn the people to look to the independence and the learning of their judiciary.

In September, 1829, Mr. Randolph was offered the mission to Russia by General Jackson. Mr. Randolph accepted the mission. He remained in Russia but a few months, because of ill health. This was the last act of his political life.

As a parliamentary debater, Mr. Randolph must be placed in the first rank. He said more things to be remembered, uttered more brilliant coruscations of thought, shot more and keener shafts of sarcasm, than any other speaker of his time. His oratory, though not of that strong logical sort where all the propositions are linked together in the strict forms of argumentative phraseology, was yet always to the point, every proposition telling upon the subject, in the fewest words, and those the most positive and plain in their signification, and the whole lighted up with the most brilliant illustrations. There was too, a strong common sense predominant in his speeches, which, clothed in his polished and brilliant diction, was extremely captivating. Of historical allusion, happily apposite to the topic or occasion, his speeches were often replete. In the latter part of his life, his speeches were often rambling, as if his mind was loosed from its moorings. In sarcasm, however, he was always unrivalled. He was master of all the weapons of personal hostility. He had the keenest eye to discover the tenderest point in his adversary's private or political character, and the quickest invention to devise the weapon exactly fitted to wound him there, and the most skilful hand to wield the weapon, of any man known to parliamentary history. Though burning with rage, he would seem as cool as if every passion were lying quiet in his bosom, and would, with all the deliberation of a careful shot, cast at his victim those withering sarcasms which were such a terror to his enemies. Sometimes he would shake his finger at his adversary before he said a word, and then send a deadly shot at him. At other times, he would pronounce the bitterest things, with his eyes fixed upon the Speaker of the House, then turning towards the person for whom it was meant, and pointing towards him, would say, "the gentleman understands it." His sarcasm was not of that angry

kind which burns by its intense heat, but rather of that contemptnous sort which freezes by its deadly coldness. Neither was it of that general scope which can be applied to more than one person, and on more than one occasion, but it always had a special and peculiar application, which made it ten times keener, and the more dreaded, as it always exposed some special, personal, or intellectual defect, or moral obliquity, or delinquency. For example: In some bill relative to West Point Military School, he said to a worthy member from Maryland, a Mr. Little, who had been a watchmaker, and had rather pertinaciously opposed the views of Mr. Randolph expressed on the floor, "I am, Mr. Speaker, in my conduct towards the gentleman from Maryland, governed by a maxim of law, De minimis non curat lex." Then taking his watch from his pocket, and holding it up to the view of the Speaker, said, "I have sir, a great deal more confidence in the gentleman's knowledge of tic-täcs, than I have in his knowledge of tactics." On another occasion, a gentleman of social position, but not remarkable for talent, had by concert with others, at the appointed hour, for several days, called the previous question, and cut off Mr. Randolph from speaking. At last, suspecting that the member was instigated by others, Mr. Randolph rose from his seat and said, "Mr. Speaker, the gentleman reminds me of a Dutch clock, that has been wound up by its owner, so that, at a certain hour every day, it cries out, "cuckoo! cuckoo !" But I do not complain, it is his vocation." And in the debate on the Panama mission, in speaking of the pretended coalition between Adams and Clay, he said, "This is a coalition between Blifil and Black George, a union until now, never heard of between a puritan and a blackleg." The charge that Mr. Clay had said, when he took the office of Secretary. of State, "Give me patronage, and I will have power;" and the remark ascribed to Mr. Adams when he was chosen President by the House of Representatives, "that he wished the question could be submitted to the people," were worked up in the speech from which we made the last quotation, in the following manner: "This is the first administration that has openly run the principle of patronage against that of patriotism, that has unblushingly avowed, aye, and executed its purpose of buying us up with our own money. Sir, there is honour among thieves! Shall it be wanting then, among the chief captains of our administration? I hope not, sir. Let Judas have his thirty pieces of silver, whatever disposition he may choose to make of them, whether they shall go to buy a Pottersfield in which to inter this miserable Constitution of ours crucified between two gentlemen suffering for conscience sake, under the burden of the two first offices of the government, forced upon one of them by the forms of the Constitution against its spirit, and his own, which is grieved that the question cannot be submitted to the people." Mr. Clay sent the challenge of which we have

spoken, because of the scathing personalities of this speech, ever word of which we heard, and such another we hope never to hear again. It may, perhaps, be thought wrong, to rehearse these trenchant sarcasms. With equal propriety might it be said, that in describing a wasp, we should say nothing of his sting. Or, that in writing of Juvenal or Butler, we should say nothing of his satire.

Few men enjoyed a sally of wit more than Mr. Randolph, especially when it was dealt by a plain man against one somewhat presumptuous. During the administration of the second Adams, a representative from Ohio, who, having the cac loquendi,

spoke quite as often as he ought, at last received a good rebuke from the famous George Kremer of Pennsylvania. Kremer quoted Dutch in answer to the Ohio representative's Latin, to the great amusement of the House, and concluded his speech by saying that, "the Ohio representative reminded him of an old hen which requented his barn yard, that was always cackling, but never laid an egg." Mr. Randolph, who had an aversion to the Ohio representative, was so pleased with the rebuke given him by the old Pennsylvanian, that several mornings afterwards, on coming into the House, he would walk to the seat of the Pennsylvania representative and shake his hand; and might have continued to do so, had not the old Pennsylvanian, who regarded a pocket handkerchief as a useless piece of finery, as Mr. Randolph approached him one morning, blown his nose between his fingers and wiped them on his pantaloons. This was too much for the orator of Roanoke.

Mr. Randolph, in his latter days, was the impersonation of satire. He was very tall, slender and emaciated, with short body, long legs and arms, and a small head on a short neck. His mouth was very expressive, and his eyes keen and flashing. His voice was shrill and clear, and his enunciation and articulation, as perfect as that of any speaker we have ever heard. His most remarkable gesture, in speaking, was the shake of his long boney forefinger. When sitting in his chair silently, he looked like the spirit of satire "nursing his wrath to keep it warm."

To the common observer, Mr. Randolph, for the greater part of his life, seemed like a political comet, bent on destruction, by his disturbing evolutions. To the mere party man, he appeared to be moving contrary to any known law; because he was moving by the law of honesty. This was the law which made him move in that orbit, which appears so eccentric to the eye of the political astronomer, who has been accustomed to watch the motions of politicians moving in orbits lying in the same plane of selfish ambition. It has been asked, "where are the monuments of Mr. Randolph's statesmanship?" We answer, it is in his unswerving adherence to the State Rights view of the Constitution. From first to last, he strove to keep the powers and the patronage of the

federal government within the prescribed limits, of the Constitution. From first to last, he was a terror to selfish politicians. From first to last, he was the great political critic, scanning with an eagle's eye, the doings of every administration, and lashing with a whip of fire, every individual, for his own special part, in any misconduct which he saw enacted in the political drama. He was the most feared, by every party in power, of all the public men who have appeared on the theatre of politics in this country. We believe that fear of his terrible satire was a strong motive with General Jackson, in sending Mr. Randolph to Russia. For, as feeble as his health then was, such were still his powers, that Tristram Burges, during his absence in Russia, in a speech in the House of Representatives, compared him to the spirit of the earthquake walking over the ruins of cities desolated from his mere propensity for destruction. Homer did not more excel in the epic, Shakspeare in the drama, than Randolph did in spoken satire. His bitter utterances, that have come down to us, are but the mere lingering odor of those electric flashes which made the strongest administrations tremble Now the lion is dead, and the politicians have got rid of their fears, they are apt to think he was not so terrible after all.

It is time that history should unfold to the world, the real character of John Randolph. That he was, constitutionally, irascible and capricious, must be admitted, but when we think of the early loss of his dearest relations, of the special secret grief of his heart, aggravated by a fact, distressing above all others, constituted as man is, if we have any generosity in our natures, we must look leniently upon the failings of Mr. Randolph. But his dying declaration, "My life has been a protracted illness," lights up the darkness of his character, and lets in light to the mainspring of Mr. Randolph's eccentric violence. We find, too, an apology for his constitutional irascibility in his own remark, "I am a hair-trigger that sometimes goes off half-cocked." But a darker seal still remains to be broken: "I have lived in dread of insanity," he said to Mr. Benton, "in the gloom of the evening light, as the day was going out and the lamps not lit; no one present but themselves; he reclining on a sofa silent and thoughtful.

Mr. Randolph died in Philadelphia, in June, 1833, on his way to England for the benefit of his health. His mortal remains repose, not like those of British statesmen, amidst the storied walls of an ancient Abbey, but upon his ancestral estate, by the trunk of an ancient oak tree, chosen by himself, as his last resting place.