Though Mr. Madison may have been for a time a special target for this kind of partisan rancor, it was by no means confined to him. Jefferson had a very pretty talent for exasperating his enemies, and nobody could long divide with him the distinction of being the best hated man in the country. A curious instance of it was given when the question was discussed, both in the First and Second Congresses, as to the successor to the presidency in case the office should become vacant by the deaths of both President and Vice-President. A bill was sent down from the Senate to the House providing, in case such a thing should ever happen, that the president _pro tempore_ of the Senate, or, should the Senate have no temporary president, the speaker of the House of Representatives, should succeed to the vacant office. The House sent back the bill with an amendment substituting the secretary of state for the succession in the possible vacancy instead of the presiding officers of the two houses of Congress. Madison was very earnest for this amendment, but the Senate rejected it, and the House finally assented to the original bill. It was shown in the course of the debate that according to the doctrine of chances the office of president would not devolve, through the accident of death, upon a third person oftener than once in about eight hundred and forty years. The rejection of the amendment naming the secretary of state as the proper person to succeed to the presidency, in the improbable event supposed, was nevertheless resented by the Republicans as a direct reflection upon Mr. Jefferson. Nor did the Federalists deny it. With grim humor they seized upon the opportunity, apparently, to announce that not with their consent should he ever be president, even by accident, though he should wait literally eight hundred and forty years. It was a long-range shot, but there could not have been one better aimed.