The spectacle of simple and hardy Speaker Macon in his homespun suit enjoying all the luxuries of Europe and the farthest East, while Pinkney and Armstrong paid for them in the spoils of American merchants, was quaintly humorous; but no one felt its sting of satire. Even the typical South Carolinian, David R. Williams,--a man second to none in courage and independence of character,--wished to hide behind the embargo for fear of war:-- “I see no other honorable course in which peace can be maintained. Take whatever other project has been hinted at and war inevitably results. While we can procrastinate the miseries of war, I am for procrastinating. We thereby gain the additional advantage of waiting the events in Europe. The true interests of this country can be found only in peace. Among many other important considerations, remember that the moment you go to war you may bid adieu to every prospect of discharging the national debt.”[327] The Secretary of the Treasury had only a month before officially asserted the contrary; but any excuse for avoiding war seemed to satisfy the House. From the beginning to the end of this long and ardent debate not one member from any quarter of the Union ventured to say--what every man in the United States would have said ten years later--that after the formal and fixed decisions of France and England war existed in fact and should be declared in form. With all John Randolph’s waywardness and extravagance, he alone shone among this mass of mediocrities, and like the water-snakes in Coleridge’s silent ocean his every track was a flash of golden fire. At moments he struck passionately at his own favorite companions--at Macon and Williams--as he struck at Jefferson. The steady decline of public spirit stung his pride. “It was in that fatal session of 1805-1806 that the policy of yielding to anything that might come in the shape of insult and aggression was commenced. The result was then foretold. It has happened.”[328] Speaker after speaker revelled in narrating the long list of insults and outrages which America had endured in patience. “The House will pardon me,” said Randolph,[329] “if I forbear a minute recapitulation of the wrongs which we have received not only from the two great belligerents of Europe, but from the little belligerents also. I cannot, like Shylock, take a pleasure in saying, ‘On such a day you called me dog; on such a day you spit upon my gabardine.’”