He had been honored with the Phi Beta Kappa oration, annually delivered on the eve of the Yale Commencement, then in September. A polished literary effort was expected. He broke tradition, courtesy, and every implied obligation in the choice of his subject. In August he sent to the committee his paper for their acceptance or refusal. It was entitled "The Extent and Power of Political Delusions," and was an out and out campaign document. The presidential election was due in November! Further, Bishop made political capital of the anticipated refusal of his paper, which was not sent him until the eleventh hour. The readers of the morning paper, wherein the committee offered an apology for the change of speakers at the Society's meeting to be held that night, were confronted by the announcement that the refused address would be given to all who cared to listen to it in the parlors of the White Haven church that same evening, and by the still further notice that copies of it were fresh from the printer's hands and were ready to be distributed to the remotest parts of the state. Needless to state, the Phi Beta Kappa audience dwindled away to swell the crowd of fifteen hundred, wherein Bishop gleefully counted "eight clergymen and many ladies." The address met with great favor, and the Wallingford Republicans at their celebration of March 11, 1801, in honor of the election of Jefferson and Burr, asked Mr. Bishop to be their orator. [n] To top Bishop's insult,--as it was regarded by every friend of the Standing Order,--came in the following spring Jefferson's displacement of Elizur Goodrich, President Adams's appointee as collector of the port of New Haven, and the substitution of Samuel Bishop. President Jefferson considered himself at liberty to make this change; and all the more so because President Adams had made the appointment as one of his last official acts, when he must have known it would have been unacceptable to the incoming Republican administration. The merchants of New Haven immediately united in a petition to President Jefferson, in which they declared that Samuel Bishop was too old to perform the duties of the office, and, moreover, not acquainted with accounts. Assuming that his son Abraham would assist him, they denounced the latter as "entirely destitute of public confidence, so conspicuous for his enmity to commerce and opposition to order, so odious to his fellow citizens, that we presume his warmest partizans would not have hazarded a recommendation of him." Notwithstanding this protest the appointment was continued, the President pointing out the honors bestowed upon the father and the care with which he, Jefferson, had investigated the case before acting upon it. Reproving the authorities for so long excluding the Republicans entirely from office, Jefferson expressed his regret at finding upon his accession to the presidency not even a "moderate participation in office in the