It was then that Forsyth revealed the theory on which the Administration forces were to proceed. Why could not Clay indicate the purpose which impelled him? he asked. Was it for the purpose of impeachment? Then the call should have originated in the House, not the Senate. “When the President should be brought to our bar, and put on trial for his violation of the Constitution, that paper would be produced in support of the charge,” he continued. But why should the Senate call for it? It was accessible for all purposes of argument. He could understand the resolution only “as a desire to prompt the other House to proceedings by impeachment, and to condemn the President in advance.” But after Clay had reiterated the absurd explanation that he merely sought authentic verification of the genuineness of the Paper, the resolution was adopted.[692] The response of Jackson was immediately made in a dignified and unanswerable note of refusal. “As well might I be required to detail to the Senate the free and private conversations I have held with those officers on any subject relating to their duties,” he said.[693] It was a sharp rebuke, richly merited, and left Clay in an unenviable position. The next brush came in the prompt rejection by the Senate of the nominations of the Government directors who had furnished the report on which Jackson had based his charge of wrongdoing. The moment their names were sent to the Senate, Biddle began to deluge his senatorial friends with demands for their rejection. “They are unfit to be there [on the board],” he wrote Webster; “unfit to associate with the other members.”[694] In the Bank circles they were denounced as “spies,” and thus, in response to the demand of Biddle, they were rejected. Such was the intimacy of the relation between the party of the Opposition and the Bank of the United States. The sinister nature of this relationship is painfully illustrated in the case of Daniel Webster, who, two weeks after the opening of the session, had written Biddle of his rejection of a professional employment against the Bank, with the bald suggestion that “I believe my retainer has not been renewed or refreshed as usual,” and that “if it be wished that my relation to the Bank should be continued, it may be well to send me the usual retainers.”[695]