taken, as, for instance, that the convention, as it could do no legislative act and did not require the concurrence of the executive, was not really the legislature, but only the persons constituting the legislature acting in a body of their own as electors; and further, his position that after the convention had organized it could proceed with the election as long as it had a quorum. Having completed a most lawyer-like and concatenated argument, which is a wonderful exhibition of concise and exhaustive extemporaneous reasoning, he rises to the higher plane of statesmanship and justice, in which he shows in a vivid light what a monstrous evil it would be to approve the factious withdrawal of the majority of the Iowa senate from the convention. Note especially the many questions asked him by different members, and the readiness and satisfactoriness of his answers.[102] It is all in all one of the best samples of Toombs's dispassionate debate to which I can refer. Very probably the democrats would have done right by Harlan had it not been for Bayard's argument, the special effectiveness of which was the use he made of the case of his own election, in 1839, to the United States senate by the Delaware legislature. As he stated it, it was this: There being a majority of one in the Delaware house of representatives in favor of the opposite party, a majority of that house refused to go into the joint balloting. Bayard was elected, and it was maintained by his party, the democrats, that a majority of the members of the two houses had authority to proceed; but he hesitated, and at last consulted Silas Wright, of New York. The latter gave a decided opinion that such an election was invalid. Whereupon Bayard succumbed, and his State was without a senator for two years. I cannot help feeling that if Wright had considered the subject and bottomed it on true principle, as Toombs afterwards did, Bayard would have settled down in the opposite conclusion, and he and Toombs in concert would have forced their fellow-democrats of the United States senate into doing justice to an opponent.