Congress, told
Iredell that that feeble old gentleman in mufflers, with his head
bowed wearily down upon the bar, was "the greatest of orators."
"Iredell doubted it; and, becoming impatient to hear him, they
requested him to proceed with his argument, before he had intended to
speak.... As he arose, he began to complain that it was a hardship,
too great, to put the laboring oar into the hands of a decrepit old
man, trembling, with one foot in the grave, weak in his best days, and
far inferior to the able associate by him." Randolph then gives an
outline of his progress through the earlier and somewhat tentative
stages of his speech, comparing his movement to the exercise "of a
first-rate, four-mile race-horse, sometimes displaying his whole power
and speed for a few leaps, and then taking up again." "At last,"
according to Randolph, the orator "got up to full speed; and took a
rapid view of what England had done, when she had been successful in
arms; and what would have been our fate, had we been unsuccessful. The
color began to come and go in the face of the chief justice; while
Iredell sat with his mouth and eyes stretched open, in perfect wonder.
Finally, Henry arrived at his utmost height and grandeur. He raised
his hands in one of his grand and solemn pauses.... There was a
tumultuous burst of applause; and Judge Iredell exclaimed, 'Gracious
God! he is an orator indeed!'"[425] It is said, also, by another
witness, that Henry happened that day to wear on his finger a diamond
ring; and that in the midst of the supreme splendor of his eloquence,
a distinguished English visitor who had been given a seat on the
bench, said with significant emphasis to one of the judges, "The
diamond is blazing!"[426]

As examples of forensic eloquence, on a great subject, before a great
and a fit assemblage, his several speeches in the case of the British
debts were, according to all the testimony, of the highest order of
merit. What they were as examples of legal learning and of legal
argumentation, may be left for every lawyer to judge for himself, by
reading, if he so pleases, the copious extracts which have been
preserved from the stenographic reports of these speeches, as taken by
Robertson. Even from that point of view, they appear not to have
suffered by comparison with the efforts made, in that cause, on the
same side, by John Marshall himself. No inconsiderable portion of his
auditors were members of the bar; and those keen a