CHAPTER XI.

THE Bill repealing the new Judiciary Act, having passed the Senate, February 3, was taken into consideration by the House, in Committee of the Whole, February 4, and caused the chief debate of the session. By common consent Giles and Bayard were accepted as the champions of the two parties, and their speeches were taken as the official arguments on either side. The men were equal to their tasks. For ten years William Branch Giles had been the most active leader of the extreme Republicans. A Virginian, born in 1762, he began his career as a Member of Congress in 1791, by opposing the creation of a national bank. In 1793 he distinguished himself by an attack on Secretary Hamilton, charging him with peculation. In 1796 he led the opposition to Jay's Treaty. After opposing Washington's administration with consistency and severity during six years, he retired from Congress in 1798 in order to oppose Washington's successor with more effect in the legislature of Virginia. With James Madison, John Taylor of Caroline, and Wilson Cary Nicholas, he had taken an active part in the Resolutions of 1798, and his remarks in the debate of December, 1798, showed that he carried the extreme conclusions

of the Virginia school to their extreme practical consequences.1 He "said that the measures of our present government tended to the establishment of monarchy, limited or absolute. If . . . the government were a social compact, he pronounced monarchy to be near at hand, the symptoms and causes of which he particularly pointed out; and concluded that the State legislatures alone, at this time, prevented monarchy." In language perfectly intelligible to his friends he hinted that his party "had no arms, but they would find arms." Even men naturally benevolent, like Jefferson, could rarely resist the conviction that the objects of political opponents were criminal, but Giles exceeded every prominent partisan on either side by the severity of his imputations. As late as June, 1801, he wrote from Richmond to President Jefferson: 2 "The ejected party is now almost universally considered as having been employed, in conjunction with Great Britain, in a scheme for the total destruction of the liberties of the people." No man in the Union was more cordially detested by the Federalists; and even between parties that held each other in little or no respect, few men of so much eminence were so little respected as Giles. The dislike and distrust were mutual. Giles's nature was capable of no pleasure greater than that of exasper

1 The Virginia Report of 1799-1800, etc. Richmond, 1850, pp. 143-148.

2 Giles to Jefferson, June 1, 1801. Hamilton's History, vii.

ating his Federalist opponents; and he rarely enjoyed a better opportunity for irritation than on Feb. 18, 1802, when, with a great majority behind him, and with the consciousness of triumph attained, he broke into the dull debate on the Judiciary Bill.

Both sides were weary of the narrow question whether Congress had the power to remove Judges by legislation. Whether such a power existed or not, every one knew that the Republican majority meant to use it, and the Federalists were chiefly anxious to profit by the odium they could attach to its abuse. The Federalists, in a character new to them, posed as the defenders of the Constitution against sacrilegious attacks; while the Republicans, for the first time in their history as a party, made light of constitutional objections, and closed their ears to warnings in which they had themselves hitherto found their chief rhetorical success. With Giles's appearance on the floor the tedious debate started into virulence. He began by insinuating motives, as though he were still discussing the Alien and Sedition Laws in the Virginia legislature of 1798: "A great portion of the human mind," he began, "has been at all times directed toward monarchy as the best form of government to enforce obedience and insure the general happiness; whereas another portion of the human mind has given a preference to the republican form as best calculated to produce the same end." On this difference of opinion the two parties had been founded, the one wishing “to

place in executive hands all the patronage it was possible to create for the purpose of protecting the President against the full force of his constitutional responsibility to the people;" the other contending "that the doctrine of patronage was repugnant to the opinions and feelings of the people; that it was unnecessary, expensive, and oppressive; and that the highest energy the government could possess would flow from the confidence of the mass of the people, founded upon their own sense of their common interest." Thus patronage, or in other words the creation of partial interests for the protection and support of government, had become the guiding principle of the Federalists. For this purpose the debt was funded; under cover of an Indian war, an army was created; under cover of an Algerine war, a navy was built; to support this system, taxation was extended; and finally, by availing itself of French depredations on commerce, the Administration succeeded in pushing all the forms of patronage to an extreme. When the people at last rebelled, and the Federalists saw themselves in danger, "it was natural for them to look out for some department of the government in which they could intrench themselves in the event of an unsuccessful issue in the election, and continue to support those favorite principles of irresponsibility which they could never con

sent to abandon."

Whatever amount of truth was contained in these charges against the Federalists, they had the merit

of consistency; they reaffirmed what had been the doctrine of the party when in opposition; what Jefferson was saying in private, and what was a sufficient argument not so much against the circuit judges as against the Federalist Judiciary altogether; but the position seemed needlessly broad for the support of the technical argument by which Giles proved the power of Congress in regard to the measure under discussion:

"On one side it is contended that the office is the vested property of the judge, conferred on him by his appointment, and that his good behavior is the consideration of his compensation; so long, therefore, as his good behavior exists, so long his office must continue in consequence of his good behavior; and that his compensation is his property in virtue of his office, and therefore cannot be taken away by any authority whatever, although there may be no service for him to perform. On the other it is contended that the good behavior is not the consideration upon which the compensation accrues, but services rendered for the public good; and that if the office is to be considered as a property, it is a property held in trust for the benefit of the people, and must therefore be held subject to that condition of which Congress is the constitutional judge."

Assuming that the latter view was correct, Giles gave his reasons for holding that the new Judiciary should be abolished; and the subject led him into a history of the circumstances under which the Act passed, at the moment when the House of Repre