[Of Edward Livingston:] He is a man of splendid abilities, but utterly corrupt. He shines and stinks like rotten mackerel by moonlight.

John Randolph of Roanoke (1773–1833), the sharp-tongued Virginia congressman and senator, became famous for cutting personal character sketches delivered in conversation and in the political world of Washington. This remark targets Edward Livingston (1764–1836), a prominent New York and later Louisiana politician who served as mayor of New York City, U.S. representative and senator, and later as Andrew Jackson’s secretary of state and minister to France. Livingston’s reputation was long shadowed by a major financial scandal from his tenure as New York City’s chief administrative officer, when public funds went missing and he was held liable—an episode that opponents used to paint him as brilliant but morally tainted. Randolph’s line reflects that partisan culture of invective and moral judgment in early U.S. politics.

Randolph juxtaposes intellectual brilliance (“shines”) with moral decay (“stinks”), using a vivid sensory metaphor to argue that talent can make corruption more conspicuous rather than less. The “rotten mackerel by moonlight” image suggests something that glitters attractively at a distance yet repels on closer contact—an indictment of public figures whose eloquence and capability mask, but cannot erase, ethical rot. The phrasing also exemplifies Randolph’s rhetorical style: epigrammatic, theatrical, and designed to stick in memory. In a broader sense, the quote crystallizes a recurring theme in political discourse: competence without integrity is not merely insufficient but actively dangerous, because it can seduce audiences while enabling wrongdoing.