Discordant as these voices were, the debate was the next day enlivened by a discord more entertaining. Richard Stanford of North Carolina, one of the oldest members of the House, a close ally of Randolph, Macon, and Williams, made a speech which troubled the whole body of Southern Republicans.[170] Stanford voted for the twelve regiments in 1798, but like the majority of Republicans he did so in deference to a party caucus, in order to ward off the danger of a larger force. He said it was the only Federalist vote he ever gave, and he promised his friends never again to be caught in the same mistake. With candor intended to irritate, he arrayed the occasions on which his party had refused to increase the military establishment: first, in a state of actual hostilities in 1798; again, when Spain defied and insulted the government in 1805; still again, on the brink of a Spanish war during Burr’s conspiracy in 1806. He quoted Jefferson’s first Inaugural Address, which counted among the essential principles of the government “a well-disciplined militia, our best reliance in peace and for the first moments of war till regulars may relieve them;” and the Annual Message of 1806, which said, “Were armies to be raised whenever a speck of war is visible in our horizon, we never should have been without them; our resources would have been exhausted on dangers which have never happened, instead of being reserved for what is really to take place.” He quoted also pungent resolutions of 1798, speeches of Eppes and Wilson Cary Nicholas, of Varnum and Gallatin; he showed the amount of patronage once abolished but restored by this bill; and when at last he sat down, the Southern members were ruffled until even Macon lost his temper. Soon John Randolph rose again, and if Stanford’s speech was exasperating in its candor, Randolph’s was stinging in its sarcasm.[171] He treated the new defensive system with ridicule. The Navy Department, he said, had dwindled to a Gunboat Department. Congress built gunboats to protect shipping and coasts, and built forts to protect gunboats. The army was equally feeble; and both were at odds with the embargo:-- “When the great American tortoise draws in his head you do not see him trotting along; he lies motionless on the ground; it is when the fire is put on his back that he makes the best of his way, and not till then. The system of embargo is one system, withdrawing from every contest, quitting the arena, flying the pit. The system of raising troops and fleets of whatever sort is another and opposite to that dormant state.... They are at war with each other, and cannot go on together.” Even if not inconsistent with the embargo, the army was still useless:-- “My worthy friend from Georgia has said that the tigress, prowling for food for her young, may steal upon you in the night. I would as soon attempt to fence a tiger out of my plantation with a four-railed fence as to fence out the British navy with this force.”