Volume III Part 22 (2/2)

But alas for Chase! He had committed another grave offense--he had called William Wirt ”_young_ gentleman” in spite of the fact that Wirt was actually thirty years old and a widower. Perhaps Chase did not know ”of these circ.u.mstances”; still, ”if he had, considering that Mr. Wirt was a widower, he certainly erred on the right side ... in calling _him_ a _young_ gentleman.”[545]

When the laughter of the Senate had subsided, Martin, dropping his sarcasm, once more emphasized the vital necessity of the independence of the Judiciary. ”We boast” that ours is a ”government of laws. But how can it be such, unless the laws, while they exist, are sacredly and impartially, without regard to popularity, carried into execution?” Only independent judges can do this. ”Our property, our liberty, our lives, can only be protected and secured by such judges. With this honorable Court it remains, whether we shall have such judges!”[546]

Martin spoke until five o'clock without food or any sustenance, ”except two gla.s.ses of wine and water”; he said he had not even breakfasted that morning, and asked permission to finish his argument next day.

When he resumed, he dwelt on the liberty of the press which Chase's application of the Sedition Law to Callender's libel was said to have violated. ”My honorable client with many other respectable characters ... considered it [that law] as a wholesome and necessary restraint” upon the licentiousness of the press.[547] Martin then quoted with telling effect from Franklin's denunciation of newspapers.[548]

”Franklin, himself a printer,” had been ”as great an advocate for the liberty of the press, as any reasonable man ought to be”; yet he had ”declared that unless the slander and calumny of the press is restrained by some other law, it will be restrained by club law.” Was not that true?

If men cannot be protected by the courts against ”base calumniators, they will become their own avengers. And to the bludgeon, the sword or the pistol, they will resort for that purpose.” Yet Chase stood impeached for having, as a judge, enforced the law against the author of ”one of the most flagitious libels ever published in America.”[549]

Throughout his address Martin mingled humor with logic, eloquence with learning.[550] Granted, he said, that Chase had used the word ”d.a.m.ned”

in his desultory conversation with Triplett during their journey in a stage. ”However it may sound elsewhere in the United States, I cannot apprehend it will be considered _very_ offensive, _even_ from the mouth of a judge on this side of the Susquehanna;--to the southward of that river it is in familiar use ... supplying frequently the place of the word 'very' ... connected with subjects the most pleasing; thus we say indiscriminately a very good or a d.a.m.ned good bottle of wine, a d.a.m.ned good dinner, or a d.a.m.ned clever fellow.”[551]

Martin's great speech deeply impressed the Senate with the ideas that Chase was a wronged man, that the integrity of the whole National Judicial establishment was in peril, and that impeachment was being used as a partisan method of placing the National Bench under the rod of a political party. And all this was true.

Robert Goodloe Harper closed for the defense. He was intolerably verbose, but made a good argument, well supported by precedents. In citing the example which Randolph had given as a good cause for impeachment--the refusal of a judge to hold court--Harper came near, however, making a fatal admission. This, said Harper, would justify impeachment, although perhaps not an indictment. Most of his speech was a repet.i.tion of points already made by Hopkinson, Key, and Martin. But Harper's remarks on Chase's charge to the Baltimore grand jury were new, that article having been left to him.

”Is it not lawful,” he asked, ”for an aged patriot of the Revolution to warn his fellow-citizens of dangers, by which he supposes their liberties and happiness to be threatened?” That was all that Chase's speech from the bench in Baltimore amounted to. Did his office take from a judge ”the liberty of speech which belongs to every citizen”? Judges often made political speeches on the stump--”What law forbids [them] to exercise these rights by a charge from the bench?” That practice had ”been sanctioned by the custom of this country from the beginning of the Revolution to this day.”

Harper cited many instances of the delivery by judges of political charges to grand juries, beginning with the famous appeal to the people to fight for independence from British rule, made in a charge to a South Carolina grand jury in 1776.[552]

The blows of Chase's strong counsel, falling in unbroken succession, had shaken the nerve of the House managers. One of these, Joseph H.

Nicholson of Maryland, now replied. Posterity would indeed be the final judge of Samuel Chase. Warren Hastings had been acquitted; ”but is there any who hears me, that believes he was innocent?” The judgment of the Senate involved infinitely more than the fortunes of Chase; by it ”must ultimately be determined whether justice shall hereafter be impartially administered or whether the rights of the citizen are to be prostrated at the feet of overbearing and tyrannical judges.”

Nicholson denied that the House managers had ”resorted to the forlorn hope of contending that an impeachment was not a criminal prosecution, but a mere inquest of office.... If declarations of this kind have been made, in the name of the Managers, I here disclaim them. We do contend that this is a criminal prosecution, for offenses committed in the discharge of high official duties.”[553]

The Senate was dumbfounded, the friends of Chase startled with joyful surprise; a gasp of amazement ran through the overcrowded Chamber!

Nicholson had abandoned the Republican position--and at a moment when Harper had all but admitted it to be sound. What could this mean but that the mighty onslaughts of Martin and Hopkinson had disconcerted the managers, or that Republican Senators were showing to the leaders signs of weakening in support of the party doctrine.

At any rate, Nicholson's admission was an irretrievable blunder. He should have stoutly championed his party's theory upon which Chase had been impeached and thus far tried, ignored the subject entirely, or remained silent. Sadly confused, he finally reversed his argument and swung back to the original Republican theory.

He cited many hypothetical cases where an officer could not be haled before a criminal court, but could be impeached. One of these must have furnished cause for secret mirth to many a Senator: ”It is possible,”

said Nicholson, ”that the day may arrive when a President of the United States ... may endeavor to influence [Congress] by holding out threats or inducements to them.... The hope of an office may be held out to a Senator; and I think it cannot be doubted, that for this the President would be liable to impeachment, although there is no positive law forbidding it.”

Lucky for Nicholson that Martin had spoken before him and could not reply; fortunate for Jefferson that the ”impudent Federal Bulldog,”[554]

as the President afterward styled Martin, could not now be heard. For his words would have burned the paper on which the reporters transcribed them. Every Senator knew how patronage and all forms of Executive inducement and coercion had been used by the Administration in the pa.s.sage of most important measures--the Judiciary repeal, the Pickering impeachment, the Yazoo compromise, the trial of Chase. From the floor of the House John Randolph had just denounced, with blazing wrath, Jefferson's Postmaster-General for offering Government contracts to secure votes for the Yazoo compromise.[555]

For two hours and a half Nicholson continued,[556] devoting himself mainly to the conduct of Chase during the trial of Fries. He closed by pointing out the inducements to a National judge to act as a tyrannical tool of a partisan administration--the offices with which he could be bribed, the promotions by which he could be rewarded. The influence of the British Ministry over the judges has been ”too flagrant to be mistaken.” For example, in Ireland ”an overruling influence has crumbled [an independent judiciary] into ruins. The demon of destruction has entered their courts of justice, and spread desolation over the land.

Execution has followed execution, until the oppressed, degraded and insulted nation has been made to tremble through every nerve, and to bleed at every pore.”

The fate of Ireland would be that of America, if an uncontrolled Judiciary were allowed to carry out, without fear of impeachment, the will of a high-handed President, in order to win the preferments he had to offer. Already ”some of our judges have been elevated to places of high political importance.... Let us nip the evil in the bud, or it may grow to an enormous tree, bearing destruction upon every branch.”[557]

Caesar A. Rodney of Delaware strove to repair the havoc Nicholson had wrought; he made it worse. The trial was, he said, ”a spectacle truly solemn and impressive ... a trial of the first importance, because of the first impression; ... a trial ... whose novelty and magnitude have excited so much interest ... that it seems to have superseded for the moment, not only every other grave object or pursuit, but every other fas.h.i.+onable amus.e.m.e.nt or dissipation.”[558]

Rodney flattered Burr, whose conduct of the trial had been ”an example worthy of imitation.” He cajoled the Senators, whose att.i.tude he had ”observed with heartfelt pleasure and honest pride”; and he warned them not to take as a precedent the case of Warren Hastings, ”that destroyer of the people of Asia, that devastator of the East,”--murderer of men, violator of _zenanas_, destroyer of sacred treaties, but yet acquitted by the British House of Lords.

Counsel for Chase had spoken with ”the fascinating voice of eloquence and the deluding tongue of ingenuity”; but Rodney would avoid ”everything like declamation” and speak ”in the temperate language of reason.”[559] He was sure that ”the weeping voice of history will be heard to deplore the oppressive acts and criminal excesses [of Samuel Chase].... In the dark catalogue of criminal enormities, perhaps few are to be found of deeper dye” than those named in the articles of impeachment. ”The independence of the Judiciary, the political tocsin of the day, and _the alarm bell of the night_, has been rung through every change in our ears.... The poor hobby has been literally rode to death.”

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