Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 2.djvu/259

240 anger showed itself in an act which at first alarmed and then amused his enemies. Hurrying from the Senate chamber to the House, he offered a Resolution for submitting to the States an amendment to the Constitution: "The judges of the Supreme and all other courts of the United States shall be removed by the President on the joint address of both Houses of Congress." His friend Nicholson, as though still angrier than Randolph, moved another amendment,—that the legislature of any State might, whenever it thought proper, recall a senator and vacate his seat. These resolutions were by a party vote referred to the next Congress.

Randolph threatened in vain; the rod was no longer in his hands. His overthrow before the Senate was the smallest of his failures. The Northern democrats talked of him with disgust; and Senator Cocke of Tennessee, who had voted "Guilty" on every article of impeachment except the fifth, told his Federalist colleagues in the Senate that Randolph's vanity, ambition, insolence, and dishonesty, not only in the impeachment but in other matters, were such as to make the acquittal no subject for regret. Madison did not attempt to hide his amusement at Randolph's defeat. Jefferson held himself studiously aloof. To Jefferson and men of his class, Randolph seems to have alluded, in a letter written a few weeks later, as "whimsicals," who "advocated the leading measures of their party until they were