unciations of the second President Adams's personal character were
as outrageous as his condemnation of parts of his policy was just. Mr.
Clay, though removed from the arena of debate by his appointment to
the Department of State, was still the object of his bitter sarcasm;
and at length he included the President and the Secretary in that
merciless philippic in which he accused Mr. Clay of forgery, and
styled the coalition of Adams and Clay as "the combination of the
Puritan and the Blackleg." He used language, too, in the course of
this speech, which was understood to be a defiance to mortal combat,
and it was so reported to Mr. Clay. The reporters, however,
misunderstood him, as it was not his intention nor his desire to
fight. Nevertheless, to the astonishment and sorrow of his religious
friends, he accepted Mr. Clay's challenge with the utmost possible
promptitude, and bore himself throughout the affair like (to use the
poor, lying, tory cant of the last generation) "a high-toned Virginia
gentleman." Colonel Benton tells us that Mr. Randolph invented an
ingenious excuse for the enormous inconsistency of his conduct on this
occasion. A duel, he maintained, was private war, and was justifiable
on the same ground as a war between two nations. Both were lamentable,
but both were allowable when there was no other way of getting redress
for insults and injuries. This was plausible, but it did not deceive
_him_. He knew very well that his offensive language respecting a man
whom he really esteemed was wholly devoid of excuse. He had the
courage requisite to expiate the offence by standing before Mr. Clay's
pistol; but he could not stand before his countrymen and confess that
his abominable antithesis was but the spurt of mingled ill-temper and
the vanity to shine. Any good tory can fight a duel with a respectable
degree of composure; but to own one's self, in the presence of a
nation, to have outraged the feelings of a brother-man, from the
desire to startle and amuse an audience, requires the kind of valor
which tories do not know. "Whig and tory," says Mr. Jefferson, "belong
to natural history." But then there is such a thing, we are told, as
the regeneration of the natural man; and we believe it, and cling to
it as a truth destined one day to be resuscitated and purified from
the mean interpretations which have made the very word sickening to
the intelligence of Christendom. Mr. Randolph had not achieved the
regeneration