John Randolph next rose. Just thirty years old, with a sarcasm of tone and manner that overbore remonstrance, and with an authority in the House that no one contested, Randolph spoke the voice of Virginia with autocratic distinctness. His past history was chiefly marked by the ardor with which, from 1798 to 1800, he had supported the principles of his party and encouraged resistance to the national government. He had gone beyond Jefferson and Madison in willingness to back their theories by force, and to fix by a display of Virginia power the limit beyond which neither Executive, Congress, nor Judiciary should pass. Even then he probably cared little for what he called the “parchment barriers” of the Constitution: in his mind force was the real balance,--force of State against force of Union; and any measure which threatened to increase the power of the national government beyond that of the State, was sure of his enmity. A feather might turn the balance, so nice was the adjustment; and Randolph again and again cried with violence against feathers. In the Louisiana debate, Randolph spoke in a different tone. The Constitution, he said, could not restrict the country to particular limits, because at the time of its adoption the boundary was unsettled on the northeastern, northwestern, and southern frontiers. The power to settle disputes as to limits was indispensable; it existed in the Constitution, had been repeatedly exercised, and involved the power of extending boundaries. This argument was startling in the mouth of one who had helped to arm the State of Virginia against a moderate exercise of implied powers. Randolph asserted that the right to annex Louisiana, Texas, Mexico, South America, if need be, was involved in the right to run a doubtful boundary line between the Georgia territory and Florida. If this power existed in the government, it necessarily devolved on the Executive as the organ for dealing with foreign States. Thus Griswold’s first objection was answered. Griswold objected in the second place that the treaty made New Orleans a favored port. “I regard this stipulation,” replied Randolph, “as a part of the price of the territory. It was a condition which the party ceding had a right to require, and to which we had a right to assent. The right to acquire involves the right to give the equivalent demanded.” Randolph did not further illustrate this sweeping principle of implied power.