Grand juries denounced it in Vermont and Georgia; the State legislature denounced it in Massachusetts; town-meetings protested against it; county conventions sat upon it; all classes and parties united in condemning it, and the brunt of this sweeping popular reproval fell upon the House of Representatives. Close as the House stood to the people, its want of popularity was evident,--as Calhoun, with his usual insight, bore witness. The House had as a body few friends and no protection against popular tempests. The first to suffer, it was always the last to escape. One after another the weaker members gave way, and either declined re-election or were not re-elected. The chiefs succeeded for the most part by personal popularity in maintaining their hold on their districts, although several leading members lost their seats. Even against so feeble and factious a body as the Thirteenth Congress, such condemnation would have seemed exceptional; but the peculiarity that made this popular reproof singular and suggestive was the popular admission that the Fourteenth Congress, for ability, energy, and usefulness, never had a superior, and perhaps, since the First Congress, never an equal. Such abilities were uncommon in any legislative body, American or European. Since Federalist times no Congress had felt such a sense of its own strength, and such pride in its own superiority; none had filled so fully the popular ideal of what the people’s representatives should be. That this remarkable body of men should have incurred almost instantly the severest popular rebuke ever visited on a House of Representatives, could not have been mere accident.