Young politicians should study this period of their country’s history.  If ever again a political party shall rule the United States for sixty years, or for twenty years, it will be, we think, a party resembling the original Republican party, as founded in America by Franklin, and organized under Jefferson.  Its platform will be, perhaps, something like this:  simple, economical government machinery; strict construction of the Constitution; the rights of the States scrupulously observed; the suffrage open to all, without regard to color or sex,—­open to all, but conferred only upon men and women capable of exercising it.

John Randolph agreed upon another point with Mr. Jefferson:  lie was an abolitionist.  But for the English debt which he inherited, it is extremely probable that he would have followed the example of many of the best Virginians of his day, and emancipated his slaves.  He would, perhaps, have done so when that debt was discharged, instead of waiting to do it by his last will, but for the forlorn condition of freedmen in a Slave State.  His eldest brother wrote, upon the division of the estate, in 1794: 

“I want not a single negro for any other purpose than his immediate emancipation.  I shudder when I think that such an insignificant animal as I am is invested with this monstrous, this horrid power.”

He told his guardian that he would give up all his land rather than own a slave.  There was no moment in the whole life of John Randolph when he did not sympathize with this view of slavery, and he died expressing it.  But though lie was, if possible, a more decided abolitionist than Jefferson, he never for a moment doubted the innate superiority of a Virginia gentleman to all the other inhabitants of America.  He had not even the complaisance to take his hair out of queue, nor hide his thin legs in pantaloons.  He was not endowed by nature with understanding enough to rise superior to the prejudices that had come down to him through generations of aristocrats.  He was weak enough, indeed, to be extremely vain of the fact that a grandfather of his had married one of the great-granddaughters of Pocahontas, who, it was believed, performed the act that renders her famous at Point of Rocks on the Appomattox, within walking distance of one of the Randolph mansions.  It is interesting to observe what an unquestioning, childlike faith he always had in the superiority of his caste, of his State, and of his section.  He once got so far as to speak favorably of the talents of Daniel Webster; but he was obliged to conclude by saying that he was the best debater he had ever known north of the Potomac.