“A late arrival from London,” he wrote again,[312] April 24, “presents a very unexpected scene at St. James’s. Should the revolution stated actually take place in the Cabinet, it will subject our affairs there to new calculations. On one hand the principles and dispositions of the new Ministry portend the most unfriendly course. On the other hand, their feeble and tottering situation and the force of their ousted rivals, who will probably be more explicit in maintaining the value of a good understanding with this country, cannot fail to inspire caution. It may happen also that the new Cabinet will be less averse to a tabula rasa for a new adjustment than those who formed the instrument to be superseded.”
Jefferson’s reply to these suggestions showed no anxiety except the haunting fear of a treaty,—a fear which to Monroe’s eyes could have no foundation. “I am more and more convinced,” the President wrote April 21,[313] “that our best course is to let the negotiation take a friendly nap;” and May 1 he added:[314] “I know few of the characters of the new British Administration. The few I know are true Pittites and anti-American. From them we have nothing to hope but that they will readily let us back out.” In view of George Canning’s character and antecedents and of Spencer Perceval’s speeches, Jefferson’s desire to be allowed to back out of his treaty was superfluous. That Canning and Perceval would make any effort to hold him to his bargain was quite unlikely, but that they would let him back out was still more so. They had in view more expeditious ways of ejecting him.
Nevertheless Madison was allowed to perfect his new instructions to Monroe and Pinkney. May 20 they were signed and sent. Before they reached London a British frigate had answered them in tones which left little chance for discussion.
CHAPTER XIX.
March 30, 1807, in a room at the Eagle Tavern in Richmond, Aaron Burr was brought before Chief-Justice Marshall for examination and commitment. Although Burr had been but a few days in the town, he was already treated by many persons as though he had conferred honor upon his country. Throughout the United States the Federalists, who formed almost the whole of fashionable society, affected to disbelieve in the conspiracy, and ridiculed Jefferson’s sudden fears. The Democrats had never been able to persuade themselves that the Union was really in danger, or that Burr’s projects, whatever they were, had a chance of success; and in truth Burr’s conspiracy, like that of Pickering and Griswold, had no deep roots in society, but was mostly confined to a circle of well-born, well-bred, and well-educated individuals, whose want of moral sense was one more proof that the moral instinct had little to do with social distinctions. In the case of Burr, Jefferson himself had persistently ignored danger; and no one denied that if danger ever existed, it had passed. Burr was fighting for his life against the power of an encroaching government; and human nature was too simply organized to think of abstract justice or remote principles when watching the weak fight for life against the strong. Even the Democrats were more curious to see Burr than to hang him; and had he gone to the gallows, he would have gone as a hero, like Captain Macheath amidst the admiring crowds of London.
Between Captain Macheath and Colonel Burr was more than one point of resemblance, and the “Beggar’s Opera” could have been easily paralleled within the prison at Richmond; but no part of Burr’s career was more humorous than the gravity with which he took an injured tone, and maintained with success that Jefferson, being a trivial person, had been deceived by the stories of Eaton and Wilkinson, until, under the influence of causeless alarm, he had permitted a wanton violation of right. From the first step toward commitment, March 30, to the last day of the tedious trials, October 20, Burr and his counsel never ceased their effort to convict Jefferson; until the acquittal of Burr began to seem a matter of secondary importance compared with the President’s discomfiture.
Over this tournament the chief-justice presided as arbiter. Blennerhassett’s island, where the overt act of treason was charged to have taken place, lay within the chief-justice’s circuit. According as he might lean toward the accused or toward the government, he would decide the result; and therefore his leanings were a matter of deep interest. That he held Federalist prejudices and nourished a personal dislike to Jefferson was notorious; but apart from political feelings he had given no clew to his probable legal bias except in his recent decision upon the case of Bollman and Swartwout. In discharging these two agents of Burr on the ground that no overt act of levying war was alleged against them, Marshall had taken occasion to define the law of treason as a guide to the attorney-general in the coming indictment of Burr:—
“It is not the intention of the Court to say that no individual can be guilty of this crime who has not appeared in arms against his country. On the contrary, if war be actually levied,—that is, if a body of men be actually assembled for the purpose of effecting by force a treasonable purpose,—all those who perform any part, however minute, or however remote from the scene of action, and who are actually leagued in the general conspiracy, are to be considered as traitors. But there must be an actual assembling of men for the treasonable purpose, to constitute a levying of war.”
On the strength of this opinion, the attorney-general undertook to convict Burr of treason for the acts committed under his direction at Blennerhassett’s island, although at the time when these acts were committed Burr himself was in Kentucky, two hundred miles away.
The task was difficult, and Burr’s experience as a lawyer enabled him to make it more difficult still. He retained the ablest counsel at the bar. First of these was Edmund Randolph, prominent among the older Virginia lawyers, who had been attorney-general and Secretary of State in President Washington’s Cabinet. Edmund Randolph’s style of address was ponderous, and not always happy; to balance its defects Burr employed the services of John Wickham, another Virginian, whose versatility and wit were remarkable. A third Virginian, Benjamin Botts, was brought into the case, and proved a valuable ally. Finally Luther Martin was summoned from Baltimore; and Martin’s whole heart was with his client. In defending Justice Chase, Luther Martin had made a great name; but hatred for the Democrats and their President became a secondary passion in his breast. His zeal for Burr was doubled by a sudden idolatry which the sexagenarian conceived for Burr’s daughter Theodosia, who came to her father’s side at Richmond.