The conversation is too long to extract
in full, but a few sentences will convey its purport:--
"He treated with the utmost contempt the idea of an _independent_
judiciary.... And if the judges of the Supreme Court should dare, _as
they had done_, to declare an act 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 of Representatives 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. * * * And a
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. _We
want your offices_, for the purpose of giving them to men who will fill
them better."[13]
Jefferson, though he controlled a majority in the Senate, failed by a
narrow margin to obtain the two-thirds vote necessary to convict Chase.
Nevertheless, he accomplished his object. Chase never recovered his old
assurance, and Marshall never again committed a solecism in judicial
manners.
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