It was only a few days after this, May 16, that a letter was received in the Senate addressed “His Excellency, the Vice-President.” Adams said that he supposed that it was intended for him but was improperly directed. “He asked the opinion of the Senate, laughingly, and concluded it was against all rule. I [Maclay] said that until we had a rule obliging people to be regular we must submit to their irregularities, more especially of this kind. Mr. Morris said the majesty of the people would do as they pleased. All this I considered as sportive. But Adams put a serious question: Should the letter, so directed, be read? John Langdon [Senator from New Hampshire] and sundry others said yes, and read it was. It proved to be from Loudon, the printer, offering to print for the Senate.” III. POWERFUL LEADERS SUPPORT TITLES. That Adams was honest in his belief in titles, insignia of rank and outward exhibitions of authority, and that he took a leading part in the effort to establish them in the new government, is more than probable. In 1829 John Randolph of Virginia recorded: “I was in New York when John Adams took his seat as Vice-President. I recollect that I was a school boy at the time, attending the lobby of Congress when I ought to have been at school. I remember the manner in which my brother was spurned by the coachman of the then Vice-President for coming too near the ‘scutcheon of the viceregal carriage.’” In a letter to [James] Madison, Jefferson wrote that the question of titles had become serious in the two Houses. “J. Adams espoused the cause of titles with great earnestness. His friend, R. H. Lee, although elected as a Republican enemy to an aristocratic Constitution, was a most zealous second.... Had the project succeeded, it would have subjected the President to a serious dilemma and given a deep wound to our infant Government.” Under date of June 12, 1789, Senator William Grayson of Virginia wrote to Patrick Henry: “Is it not still stranger that John Adams should be for titles and dignities and preëminences, and should despise the herd and the ill-bred? It is said he was the _primum nobile_ in the Senate for titles for the President.” “Even Roger Sherman” [Congressman from Connecticut], wrote John Armstrong to General Gates, April 7, 1789, “has set his head at work to devise some style of address more novel and dignified than ‘Excellency.’ Yet, in the midst of this admiration, there are skeptics who doubt its propriety and wits who amuse themselves at its expense. The first will grumble and the last will laugh, and the President should be prepared to meet the attacks of both with firmness and good nature.”