That Breckinridge and his friends were angry at this check need not be said; but they were forced to wait several days for Bradley’s return, before Breckinridge could move and obtain, February 2, the discharge of the special committee, and recover control of the Bill. Burr was never given another opportunity to annoy his party by using his casting vote; but meanwhile symptoms of hesitation appeared among the Northern democrats, even more significant than the open insubordination of Burr. On the day when Breckinridge succeeded in discharging the special committee, Senator Ross of Pennsylvania presented a memorial from the Philadelphia Bar, declaring their conviction that the actual Circuit Court was a valuable institution, which could not be abolished without great public inconvenience; and this memorial was enforced by a letter in strong terms, signed by A. J. Dallas, Jefferson’s own district attorney, and by the Republican Attorney-General of Pennsylvania, Governor McKean’s son. The behavior of Senator Armstrong raised a fear that the Livingstons were not to be depended upon; and hardly had the Bill passed the Senate, February 3, by a vote of sixteen to fifteen, than Armstrong resigned his post in order to let De Witt Clinton take it. In the House, Dr. Eustis of Boston, alone among the Republicans, opposed the repeal; but the tone of the debate and of the press showed that few Northern democrats cared to risk the odium of a genuine assault on the authority of the Supreme Court. Another and still sharper hint was soon given to the Virginians. At the moment when the Bill coming before the House roused there an acrimonious debate, in which the Federalists assumed a tone that exasperated and alarmed their opponents, the anniversary of Washington’s birthday occurred. The Federalist Congressmen were accustomed to give, February 22, what was called a banquet,--a practice which verged so closely on monarchism that Jefferson made a secret of his own birthday, for fear that his followers should be misled by the example into making him a monocrat against his will. Either at Burr’s secret instigation, or in a spirit of mischief, the Federalists this year, on the pretence that they had voted for Burr as President only a year before, invited him to their banquet. “We knew,” wrote Bayard to Hamilton,[60] “the impression which the coincidence of circumstances would make upon a certain great personage; how readily that impression would be communicated to the proud and aspiring lords of the Ancient Dominion; and we have not been mistaken as to the jealousy we expected it would excite through the party.”