In judging of the sincerity of his unrelenting opposition during the next eight years, it is well to bear in mind that before Jackson had perfected a policy, or proclaimed a principle, Mr. Clay attended a banquet given in his honor within a stone’s throw of the White House, at which he assailed the President with an intemperance of denunciation never exceeded in later years. This was evidently personal. One week after the inauguration he said to Mrs. Bayard Smith: “There is not in Cairo or in Constantinople a greater moral despotism than is at this moment exercised over public opinion here. Why, a man dare not avow what he thinks or feels, or shake hands with a personal friend, if he happens to differ from the powers that be.”[154] On the very day this remarkable statement was recorded by the chronicler of the Whig drawing-rooms, Adams wrote in his diary: “Mr. Clay told me some time since that he had received invitations at several places on his way to Lexington to public dinners, and should attend them, and that he intended freely to express his opinions.”[155] A little later Adams notes that while riding he passed Mr. Clay in a carriage driving toward Baltimore on his way to Kentucky--pale, stern, and sour. On that journey, and without having at that time any particular actions of the new Administration on which to base an attack, he spoke wherever the opportunity was afforded, and always with a vehement denunciation of President Jackson. The inauguration was over; the people from afar, having seen “their” President and visited “their” White House, had returned to their homes; and Henry Clay, the most consummate of politicians, one of the most eloquent of men, was already meditating upon the organized assault that was to be made upon the new régime. Now let us acquaint ourselves with the advisers with whom the President had surrounded himself officially. VI