I wished every day that the ladies would conduct themselves in a more dignified manner than they did in the Senate. They came in with waving plumes, and glittering in all the colours of the rainbow, causing no little bustle in the place, no little annoyance to the gentlemen spectators, and rarely sat still for any length of time. I know that these ladies are no fair specimen of the women who would attend parliamentary proceedings in any other metropolis. I know that they were the wives, daughters, and sisters of legislators, women thronging to Washington for purposes of convenience or pleasure, leaving their usual employments behind them, and seeking to pass away the time. I knew this, and made allowance accordingly; but I still wished that they could understand the gravity of such an assembly, and show so much respect to it as to repay the privilege of admission by striving to excite as little attention as possible, and by having the patience to sit still when they happened not to be amused, till some interruption gave them opportunity to depart quietly. If they had done this, Judge Porter would not have moved that they should be appointed seats in the gallery instead of below; and they would have been guiltless of furnishing a plea for the exclusion of women, who would probably make a better use of the privilege, from the galleries of other houses of parliament.
I was glad of an opportunity of hearing both the South Carolina senators soon after my arrival in Washington. They are listened to with close attention, and every indication of their state of feeling is watched with the interest which has survived the nullification struggle. Mr. Calhoun on this occasion let us a little into his mind; Mr. Preston kept more closely to the question before the body. The question was whether a vote of censure of the president, recorded in the minutes of the proceedings of the Senate the preceding session, should be expunged. The motion for the expunging was made by Colonel Benton, and rejected, as it had been before, and has been since; though it was finally carried, to the agony of the opposition, at the end of last session (February, 1837).
Mr. Preston was out of health, and unable to throw his accustomed force into his speaking; but his effort showed us how beautiful his eloquence is in its way. It is not solid. His speeches, if taken to pieces, will be found to consist of analogies and declamation; but his figures are sometimes very striking, and his manner is as graceful as anything so artificial can be. I never before understood the eloquence of action. The action of public speakers in England, as far as I have observed (and perhaps I may be allowed to hint that deaf persons are peculiarly qualified to judge of the nature of such action), is of two kinds; the involuntary gesture which is resorted to for the relief of the nerves, which may or may not be expressive of meaning, and the action which is wholly the result of study; arbitrary, and not the birth of the sentiment; and, therefore, though pleasing, perhaps, to the eye, perplexing to the mind of the listener. Mr. Preston's manner unites the advantages of these two methods, and avoids most of their evils. It is easy to see that he could not speak without an abundant use of action, and that he has therefore done wisely in making it a study. To an unaccustomed eye it appears somewhat exuberant; but it is exquisitely graceful, and far more than commonly appropriate. His voice is not good, but his person is tall, stout, and commanding, and his countenance animated.
Mr. Calhoun followed, and impressed me very strongly. While he kept to the question, what he said was close, good, and moderate, though delivered in rapid speech, and with a voice not sufficiently modulated. But when he began to reply to a taunt of Colonel Benton's, that he wanted to be president, the force of his speaking became painful. He made protestations which it seemed to strangers had better have been spared, that he would not turn on his heel to be president; and that he had given up all for his own brave, magnanimous little State of South Carolina. While thus protesting, his eyes flashed, his brow seemed charged with thunder, his voice became almost a bark, and his sentences were abrupt, intense, producing in the auditory that sort of laugh which is squeezed out of people by the application of a very sudden mental force. I believe he knew little what a revelation he made in a few sentences. They were to us strangers the key, not only to all that was said and done by the South Carolina party during the remainder of the session, but to many things at Charleston and Columbia which would otherwise have passed unobserved or unexplained.
I was less struck than some strangers appear to have been with the length and prosy character of the speeches in Congress. I do not remember hearing any senator (always excepting Colonel Benton) speak for more than an hour. I was seldom present in the other house, where probably the most diffuse oratory is heard; but I was daily informed of the proceedings there by the representative who was of our party, and I did not find that there was much annoyance or delay from this cause. Perhaps the practice may be connected with the amount of business to be done. It is well known that the business of Congress is so moderate in quantity, from the functions of the general government being few and simple, that it would be considered a mere trifle by any parliament in the Old World; and long speeches, which would be a great annoyance elsewhere, may be an innocent pastime in an assembly which may have leisure upon its hands.
The gallery of the splendid Hall of Representatives is not well contrived for hearing, and I rarely went into it for more than a passing view of what was going on; a view which might be taken without disturbance to anybody, as the gallery was generally empty, and too high raised above the area of the hall to fix the eye of the members. My chief interest was watching Mr. Adams, of whose speaking, however, I can give no account. The circumstance of this gentleman being now a member of the representative body after having been president, fixes the attention of all Europeans upon him with as much admiration as interest. He is one of the most remarkable men in America. He is an imbodiment of the pure, simple morals which are assumed to prevail in the thriving young republic. His term of office was marked by nothing so much as by the subordination of glory to goodness, of showy objects to moral ones. The eccentricity of thought and action in Mr. Adams, of which his admirers bitterly or sorrowfully complain, and which renders him an impracticable member of a party, arises from the same honest simplicity which crowns his virtues, mingled with a faulty taste and an imperfect temper. His hastiness of assertion has sometimes placed him in predicaments so undignified as almost to be a set-off against the honours he wins by pertinacious and bold adherence to a principle which he considers sound. His occasional starts out of the ranks of his party, without notice and without apparent cause, have been in vain attempted to be explained on suppositions of interest or vanity; they may be more easily accounted for in other ways. Between one day and another, some new idea of justice and impartiality may strike his brain, and send him to the house warm with invective against his party and sympathy with their foes. He rises, and speaks out all his new mind, to the perplexity of the whole assembly, every man of whom bends to hear every syllable he says; perplexity which gives way to dismay on the one hand and triumph on the other. The triumphant party begins to coax and honour him; but, before the process is well begun, he is off again, finding that he had gone too far; and the probability is, that he finishes by placing himself between two fires. I now describe what I actually saw of his conduct in one instance; conduct which left no more doubt of his integrity than of his eccentricity. He was well described to me before I saw him. "Study Mr. Adams," was the exhortation. "You will find him well worth it. He runs in veins; if you light upon one, you will find him marvellously rich; if not, you may chance to meet rubbish. In action he is very peculiar. He will do ninety-nine things nobly, excellently; but the hundredth will be so bad in taste and temper, that it will drive all the rest out of your head, if you don't take care." His countrymen will "take care." Whatever the heats of party may be, however the tone of disappointment against Mr. Adams may sometimes rise to something too like hatred, there is undoubtedly a deep reverence and affection for the man in the nation's heart; and any one may safely prophesy that his reputation, half a century after his death, will be of a very honourable kind. He fought a stout and noble battle in Congress last session in favour of discussion of the slavery question, and in defence of the right of petition upon it; on behalf of women as well as of men. While hunted, held at bay, almost torn to pieces by an outrageous majority—leaving him, I believe, in absolute unity—he preserved a boldness and coolness as amusing as they were admirable. Though he now and then vents his spleen with violence when disappointed in a favourite object, he seems able to bear perfectly well that which it is the great fault of Americans to shrink from, singularity and blame. He seems, at times, reckless of opinion; and this is the point of his character which his countrymen seem, naturally, least to comprehend.
Such is the result of the observations I was able to make on this gentleman when at Washington. I was prevented seeing so much of him as I earnestly desired by his family circumstances. He had just lost a son, and did not appear in society. It is well known in America that Mr. Adams will leave behind him papers of inestimable value. For forty years (I was told) he has kept a diary, full and exact. In this diary he every morning sets down not only the events of the preceding day, but the conversations he has had with foreigners, and on all subjects of interest. This immense accumulation of papers will afford such materials for history as the country has never yet been blessed with. Perhaps no country has ever possessed a public man, of great powers, and involved in all the remarkable events of its most remarkable period, who has had industry enough to leave behind him a similar record of his times. This will probably turn out to be (whether he thinks so or not) the greatest and most useful of his deeds, and his most honourable monument.
Those whose taste is the contemplation of great and original men may always have it gratified by going to Washington. Whatever may be thought of the form and administration of government there; however certain it may be that the greatest men are not, in this age of the world, to be found in political life, it cannot be but that, among the real representatives of a composite and self-governing nation, there must be many men of power; power of intellect, of goodness, or, at least, of will.