ruth is, that John Randolph bolted for the
same reason that a steel spring resumes its original bent the instant
the restraining force is withdrawn. His position as leader of a party
was irksome, because it obliged him to work in harness, and he had
never been broken to harness. His party connection bound him to side
with France in the great contest then raging between France and
England, and yet his whole soul sympathized with England. This native
Virginian was more consciously and positively English than any native
of England ever was. English literature had nourished his mind;
English names captivated his imagination; English traditions,
feelings, instincts, habits, prejudices, were all congenial to his
nature. How hard for such a man to side officially with Napoleon in
those gigantic wars! Abhorring Napoleon with all a Randolph's force of
antipathy, it was nevertheless expected of him, as a good Republican,
to interpret leniently the man who, besides being the armed soldier of
democracy, had sold Louisiana to the United States. Randolph,
moreover, was an absolute aristocrat. He delighted to tell the House
of Representatives that he, being a Virginian slaveholder, was _not_
obliged to curry favor with his coachman or his shoeblack, lest when
he drove to the polls the coachman should dismount from his box, or
the shoeblack drop his brushes, and neutralize their master's vote by
voting on the other side. How he exulted in the fact that in Virginia
none but freeholders could vote! How happy he was to boast, that, in
all that Commonwealth, there was no such thing as a ballot-box! "May I
never live to see the day," he would exclaim, "when a Virginian shall
be ashamed to declare aloud at the polls for whom he casts his vote!"
What pleasure he took in speaking of his Virginia wilderness as a
"barony," and signing his name "John Randolph of Roanoke," and in
wearing the garments that were worn in Virginia when the great tobacco
lords were running through their estates in the fine old picturesque
and Irish fashion!

Obviously, an antique of this pattern was out of place as a leader in
the Republican party. For a time the spell of Jefferson's winning
genius, and the presence of a powerful opposition, kept him in some
subjection; but in 1807 that spell had spent its force, and the
Federal party was not formidable. John Randolph was himself again. The
immediate occasion of the rupture was, probably, Mr. Jefferson's
evident prefe