pass from him without self-reproach, would
drain it to the bottom. But if he have no choice in the case, if there
be no alternative presented to him but a dereliction of duty or the
opprobrium of those who are denominated the world, he merits the
contempt as well as the indignation of his country who can hesitate
which to embrace."

One could not require a better illustration of that faculty of
"apparently deep self-conviction" which Wirt had noted in the Chief
Justice.

Finally, it must be owned that Burr's case offered Marshall a tempting
opportunity to try out the devotion of Republicans to that ideal of
judicial deportment which had led them so vehemently to criticize
Justice Chase and to charge him with being "oppressive," with
refusing to give counsel for defense an opportunity to be heard, with
transgressing the state law of procedure, with showing too great liking
for Common Law ideas of sedition, with setting up the President as a
sort of monarch beyond the reach of judicial process. Marshall's conduct
of Burr's trial now exactly reversed every one of these grounds of
complaint. Whether he intended it or not, it was a neat turning of the
tables.

But Jefferson, who was at once both the most theoretical and the least
logical of men, was of course hardly prepared to see matters in that
light. As soon as the news reached him of Burr's acquittal, he ordered
Hay to press the indictment for misdemeanor--not for the purpose of
convicting Burr, but of getting the evidence down in a form in which it
should be available for impeachment proceedings against Marshall.
For some weeks longer, therefore, the Chief Justice sat listening to
evidence which was to be used against himself. But the impeachment never
came, for a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and the weakest
link in the combination against the Chief Justice was a very fragile one
indeed--the iniquitous Wilkinson. Even the faithful and melancholy Hay
finally abandoned him. "The declaration, which I made in court in his
favor some time ago," he wrote the President, "was precipitate.... My
confidence in him is destroyed.... I am sorry for it, on his account,
on the public account, and because you have expressed opinions in his
favor." It was obviously impossible to impeach the Chief Justice for
having prevented the hanging of Aaron Burr on the testimony of such a
miscreant.

Though the years immediately following the Burr trial were not a time of