John Quincy Adams Digital Diary

21. Mr: White this day moved in Senate, an adjournment to Monday the last day of this month; upon which some debate was had; and the subject subsided, untill next Monday.— There was little business to do and the adjournment took place early— Sitting by the fire-side afterwards I witness’d a conversation between Mr: Giles and Mr: Israel Smith, on the subject of Impeachments— During which Mr: John Randolph came in and took part in the discussion— Giles laboured with excessive earnestness to convince Smith of certain principles, upon which not only Mr: Chase, but all the other Judges of the Supreme Court, excepting the one last appointed must be impeached and removed. He treated with the utmost contempt the idea of an Independent Judiciary— Said there was not a word about such an Independence in the Constitution, and that their pretensions to it were nothing more nor less than an attempt to establish an Aristocratic despotism in themselves.— The power of Impeachment, was given without limitation to the House of Representatives; the power of trying Impeachments was given equally without limitation to the Senate; 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— Impeachment, was not a criminal prosecution; it was no prosecution at all— The Senate sitting for the trial of Impeachments was not a Court, and ought to discard and reject all process of analogy to a Court of Justice. A trial and removal of a Judge upon Impeachment, need not imply any criminality or corruption in him— Congress had no power over the person, but only over the Office— 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.— In answer to all this, Mr: Smith only contended that honest error of opinion, could not as he conceived be a subject of impeachment— And in pursuit of this principle, he proved clearly enough the persecution and tyranny to which those of Giles and Randolph inevitably lead— It would, he said establish a tyranny over opinions, and he traced all the arguments of Giles to their only possible issue of rank absurdity— In all this Conversation I opened my lips but once, in which I told Giles that I could not assent to his definition of the term Impeachment. It was easy to see that Giles was anxious about Smith’s vote on the impeachment of Judge Chase— His manner was dogmatical, and peremptory— Smith’s was not merely mild, and hesitating, but continually conceding too 117too much, and to use an expression of Burke, “above all things afraid of being too much in the right.”— Mr: Smith has so often express’d these opinions that the friends of Judge Chase flatter themselves he will vote for an acquittal on the trial— But though in this instance his opinions are undoubtedly correct, I have no confidence in his firmness— His opinions were correct on the impeachment of Judge Pickering— But his vote abandoned them— Indeed Giles’s doctrines are very natural inferences from those upon which that case was decided, and I never can have any confidence in the resolute integrity of those, who shrunk from the convictions of their own Consciences at that Time. It is obvious that on Smith’s principles, Chase must be acquitted; for the Articles of Impeachment contain no charge, which indicates corruption, or turpitude— So that Smith and Giles were really trying the Judge over the fireside— Old Mathers the door-keeper saw this so plainly, that after they were gone he said to me “If all were of Mr: Giles’s opinion, they never need trouble themselves to bring Judge Chase here.”— I perceive also that the Impeachment system is to be pursued, and the whole Bench of the Supreme Court to be swept away, because their Offices are wanted— And in the present State of things I am convinced it is as easy for Mr: John Randolph and Mr: Giles, to do this as to say it.— This evening part of the family went to Mr: J. Mason’s of Georgetown; where they met Genl: Tureau, and other company— I did not go out.