ith Thomas Jefferson. The
phrase "masterly inactivity" is Randolph's; and it is something only
to have given convenient expression to a system of conduct so often
wise. He used to say that Congress could scarcely do too little. His
ideal of a session was one in which members should make speeches till
every man had fully expressed and perfectly relieved his mind, then
pass the appropriation bills, and go home. And we ought not to forgot
that, when President John Quincy Adams brought forward his schemes for
covering the continent with magnificent works at the expense of the
treasury of the United States, and of uniting the republics of both
Americas into a kind of holy alliance, it was Randolph's piercing
sarcasm which, more than anything else, made plain to new members the
fallacy, the peril, of such a system. His opposition to this wild
federalism involved his support of Andrew Jackson; but there was no
other choice open to him.

Seldom did he display in Congress so much audacity and ingenuity as in
defending General Jackson while he was a candidate for the Presidency
against Mr. Adams. The two objections oftenest urged against Jackson
were that he was a military chieftain, and that he could not spell.
Mr. Randolph discoursed on these two points in a most amusing manner,
displaying all the impudence and ignorance of the tory, inextricably
mingled with the good sense and wit of the man. "General Jackson
cannot write," said a friend. "Granted," replied he. "General Jackson
cannot write because he was never taught; but his competitor cannot
write because he was not teachable." He made a bold remark in one of
his Jacksonian harangues. "The talent which enables a man to write a
book or make a speech has no more relation to the leading of an army
or a senate, than it has to the dressing of a dinner." He pronounced a
fine eulogium on the Duke of Marlborough, one of the worst spellers in
Europe, and then asked if gentlemen would have had that illustrious
man "superseded by a Scotch schoolmaster." It was in the same
ludicrous harangue that he uttered his famous joke upon those schools
in which young ladies were said to be "finished." "Yes," he exclaimed,
"_finished_ indeed; finished for all the duties of a wife, or mother,
or mistress of a family." Again he said:

"There is much which it becomes a second-rate man to know,
which a first-rate man ought to be ashamed to know. No head
was ever clear and sound that w