These articles contained in themselves a virtual impeachment of not only Mr. Chase but of all the Judges of the Supreme Court. (John Quincy Adams.)
We shall bring forward such a specimen of judicial tyranny, as, I trust in God, will never be again exhibited in our country. (John Randolph.)
We appear for an ancient and infirm man whose better days have been worn out in the service of that country which now degrades him. (Joseph Hopkinson.)
Our property, our liberty, our lives can only be protected by independent judges. (Luther Martin.)
"We want your offices, for the purpose of giving them to men who will fill them better." In these frank words, Senator William Branch Giles[430] of Virginia stated one of the purposes of the Republicans in their determined attack on the National Judiciary. He was speaking to the recently elected young Federalist Senator from Massachusetts, John Quincy Adams.[431]
They were sitting before the blazing logs in the wide fireplace that warmed the Senate Chamber. John Randolph, the Republican leader of the House, and Israel Smith, a Republican Senator from Vermont, were also in the group. The talk was of the approaching trial of Samuel Chase, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, whom the House had impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors. Giles and Randolph were, "with excessive earnestness," trying to convince the doubting Vermont Senator of the wisdom and justice of the Republican method of ousting from the National Bench those judges who did not agree with the views of the Republican Party.
Giles scorned the idea of "an independent judiciary!" The independence claimed by the National judges was "nothing more nor less than an attempt to establish an aristocratic despotism in themselves." The power of the House to impeach, and of the Senate to try, any public officer was unlimited.
"If," continued Giles, "the Judges of the Supreme Court should dare, as they had done, to declare acts of Congress unconstitutional, or to send a mandamus to the Secretary of State, as they had done, it was the undoubted right of the House to impeach them, and of the Senate to remove them for giving such opinions, however honest or sincere they may have been in entertaining them." He held that the Senate, when trying an impeached officer, did not act as a court. "Removal by impeachment was nothing more than a declaration by Congress to this effect: You hold dangerous opinions, and if you are suffered to carry them into effect you will work the destruction of the Nation."[432]
Thus Giles made plain the Republican objective. Judges were to be removed for any cause that a dominant political party considered to be sufficient.[433] The National Judiciary was, in this manner, to be made responsive to the popular will and responsible to the representatives of the people in the House and of the States in the Senate.[434]
Giles, who was now Jefferson's personal representative in the Senate,[435] as he had been in the House, bore down upon his mild but reluctant fellow partisan from Vermont in a "manner dogmatical and peremptory." Not only must the aggressive and irritating Chase be stripped of his robes, but the same fate must fall upon "all other Judges of the Supreme Court except the one last appointed,"[436] who, being a Republican, was secure.[437] Adams rightly concluded that the plan was to "have swept the supreme judicial bench clean at a stroke."[438]