Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v2.djvu/101

 Randolph of Roanoke 85 tional questions by the Federal Court in cases involving the validity of state legislation. Taylor in a number of very able books and pamphlets discussed the same subject; but he treated also the nature of the Union in a manner so critical and acute that, more nearly than any one else, he foreshadowed Calhoun and suggested the clear undimmed features of state sovereignty. Naturally we cannot omit from this list of Southern advocates Robert Y. Hayne (1791-1839), who was Webster's opponent in the "great debate" of 1830; for he made a deep impression and presented Calhoun's theories with eloquence and vigour. Among the men of Congress who indulged in far-flung speech and whom we shall have to class as orators, John Ran- dolph (i 773-1 833) of Roanoke claims our first attention. Totally without the qualities for party leadership, unable to retain the devotion or following of friends, unable to handle a big constitu- tional question with confident learning and logic, unable to de- velop theories and to win people by the force of his argument or the steady adherence to a cause and a principle, he never- theless played a conspicuous r61e during the first quarter of the nineteenth century, and, if we judge now only by the records of his speeches, he was gifted with a power of expression, a cutting brilliant invective and devilish cleverness in criticism and attack, such as few speakers have ever possessed. He was essentially a busy fault-finder, an active, alert, denunciatory enemy, at his best — or perhaps we should say, his worst — ^when dealing out taunts and pouring out the vial of his wrath on the less gifted but more wise. It should also be said of him that by his vehement defence of the slavery interest, though he professed opposition to slavery in itself, and by his attack on the growing power of the Federal government, he prepared the way for the later arguments and positions of Calhoun, the real leader of the South. One passage will illustrate almost as well as many the character of his declamation : " We are the eel," he said of the South," that is being flayed, while the cookmaid pats us on the head and cries, with the clown in King Lear, 'Down, wantons, down! . . .' If, under a power to regu- late trade, you prevent exportation; if, with the most approved spring lancets, you draw the last drop of blood from our veins; if, secundum artem, you draw the last shilling from our pockets, what