It was in December, 1799, that this fiery and erratic genius took his seat in the House of Representatives.  John Adams had still sixteen months to serve as target for the sarcasm of the young talent of the nation.  To calm readers of the present day, Mr. Adams does really seem a strange personage to preside over a government; but the cairn reader of the present day cannot realize the state of things in the year 1800.  We cannot conceive what a fright the world had had in the excesses of the French Revolution, and the recent usurpation of General Bonaparte.  France had made almost every timid man in Christendom a tory.  Serious and respectable people, above forty, and enjoying a comfortable income, felt that there was only one thing left for a decent person to do,—­to assist in preserving the authority of government.  John Adams, by the constitution of his mind, was as much a tory as John Randolph; for he too possessed imagination and talent disproportioned to his understanding.  To be a democrat it is necessary to have a little pure intellect; since your democrat is merely a person who can, occasionally, see things and men as they are.  New England will always be democratic enough as long as her boys learn mental arithmetic; and Ireland will always be the haunt of tories as long as her children are brought up upon songs, legends, and ceremonies.  To make a democratic people, it is only necessary to accustom them to use their minds.

Nothing throws such light upon the state of things in the United States in 1800, as the once famous collision between these two natural tories, John Adams and John Randolph, which gave instantaneous celebrity to the new member, and made him an idol of the Republican party.  In his maiden speech, which was in opposition to a proposed increase of the army, he spoke disparagingly of the troops already serving, using the words ragamuffins and mercenaries.  In this passage of his speech, the partisan spoke, not the man.  John Randolph expressed the real feeling of his nature toward soldiers, when, a few years later, on the same floor, he said:  “If I must have a master, let him be one with epaulets; something which I can look up to; but not a master with a quill behind his ear.”  In 1800, however, it pleased him to style the soldiers of the United States ragamuffins and mercenaries; which induced two young officers to push, hustle, and otherwise discommode and insult him at the theatre.  Strange to relate, this hot Virginian, usually so prompt with a challenge to mortal combat, reported the misconduct of these officers to the President of the United States.  This eminently proper act he did in an eminently proper manner, thanks to his transient connection with the Republican party.  Having briefly stated the case, he concluded his letter to the President thus: