to reply to Patrick Henry.  It was an open-air meeting.  No structure in Virginia could have contained the multitude that thronged to hear the transcendent orator, silent for so many years, and now summoned from his retirement by General Washington himself to speak for a Union imperilled and a government assailed.  He spoke with the power of other days? for he was really alarmed for his country; and when he had finished his impassioned harangue, he sunk back into the arms of his friends, as one of them said, “like the sun setting in his glory.”  For the moment he had all hearts with him.  The sturdiest Republican in Virginia could scarcely resist the spell of that amazing oratory.

John Randolph rose to reply.  His first sentences showed not only that he could speak, but that he knew the artifices of an old debater; for he began by giving eloquent expression to the veneration felt by his hearers for the aged patriot who had just addressed them.  He spoke for three hours, it is said; and if we may judge from the imperfect outline of his speech that has come down to us, he spoke as well that day as ever he did.  States’ Rights was the burden of his speech.  That the Alien and Sedition Law was an outrage upon human nature, he may have believed; but what he felt was, that it was an outrage upon the Commonwealth of Virginia.  He may have thought it desirable that all governments should confine themselves to the simple business of compelling the faithful performance of contracts; but what he insisted upon was, that the exercise by the government of the United States of any power not expressly laid down in the letter of the Constitution was a wrong to Virginia.  If John Adams is right, said he, in substance, then Virginia has gained nothing by the Revolution but a change of masters,—­New England for Old England,—­which he thought was not a change for the better.

It was unnecessary, in the Virginia of 1799, for the head of the house of Randolph to be an orator in order to secure an election to the House of Representatives.  He was elected, of course.  When he came forward to be sworn in, his appearance was so youthful, that the Clerk of the House asked him, with the utmost politeness, whether he had attained the legal age.  His reply was eminently characteristic of the tobacco lord:  “Go, sir, and ask my constituents:  they sent me here.”  As there was no one present authorized by the Constitution to box the ears of impudent boys on the floor of the House, he was sworn without further question.  It has often occurred to us that this anecdote, which John Randolph used to relate with much satisfaction, was typical of much that has since occurred.  The excessive courtesy of the officer, the insolence of the Virginia tobacconist, the submission of the Clerk to that insolence,—­who has not witnessed such scenes in the Capitol at Washington?