Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 2.djvu/232

1804. been at times arrogant; but from this moment he began the long series of personal assaults which made him famous, as though he were the bully of a race course, dispensed from regarding ordinary rules of the ring, and ready at any sudden impulse to spring at his enemies, gouging, biting, tearing, and rending his victims with the ferocity of a rough-and-tumble fight. The spectacle was revolting, but terrific; and until these tactics lost their force by repetition, few men had the nerve and quickness to resist them with success.

"Past experience has shown," he cried, "that this is one of those subjects which pollution has sanctified." He treated the majority of the House as corruptionists, "As if animated by one spirit, they perform all their evolutions with the most exact discipline, and march in a firm phalanx directly up to their object. Is it that men combined to effect some evil purpose, acting on previous pledge to each other, are ever more in unison than those who, seeking only to discover truth, obey the impulse of that conscience which God has placed in their bosoms?" He fell upon Granger: "Millions of acres are easily digested by such stomachs.  Goaded by avarice, they buy only to sell, and sell only to buy.  The retail trade of fraud and imposture yields too small and slow a profit to gratify their cupidity.  They buy and sell corruption in the gross." He hinted that the Administration was to blame: "Is it come to this?  Are heads of executive departments to be brought into this House, with all the influence and patronage attached to them, to extort