Thus, refraining from personalities, and frowning upon the party aspect of the controversy, the most clever of the Bank’s champions, speaking with the cunning of the proverbial “Philadelphia lawyer,” attempted, too late, to undo the work Clay had done to serve a selfish end. The night after the conclusion of the speech found him at the White House, one of numerous guests, and Jackson sought him, devoted himself to him with an embarrassing assiduity, and thanked him for advocating his cause without indulgence in personal abuse. But it was not every Philadelphia lawyer that was to be looked upon so kindly in Jacksonian circles. In the midst of the struggle in the House a series of Bank articles began to appear in the “National Gazette” over the signature of “Vindex.” It was just at the time Joseph Hopkinson, the Federal Judge for eastern Pennsylvania, began to haunt the floor and lobby of the House--a privilege he enjoyed by virtue of previous membership in that body. His activity among the members became so open as to create comment, and the “National Gazette” made a laborious attempt to explain his presence. It was a purely social visit. He had come on the invitation of the Judges of the Supreme Court. It was natural that he should delight in renewing old friendships. This explanation gave Blair his opportunity, in a column editorial, to assail the Philadelphia jurist as a lobbyist, to insist that he had disqualified himself to sit on any Bank case, and to challenge the “National Gazette” to deny that he was the author of the “Vindex” articles. “But further we would inquire,” wrote Blair, “whether the judge is not a debtor of the Bank as well as its anonymous vindicator? We believe he is--and it is difficult to say whether the judge’s extreme solicitude and activity in behalf of the Bank arises from its pecuniary favors, the bonds of family affection which bind him to Mr. Biddle, his son having married Mr. Biddle’s sister, or the old Federal feeling which always distinguished him, and which inclined him against his country during the last war, and prompted his speech after its close, declaring the Nation was disgraced by the peace.”[744] Such was the bitterness and such were the blunt weapons in evidence in the contest even in the House.