was and had been for two years of unsound mind.
To convict a man of misdemeanors for which he was not morally
responsible seemed a travesty on justice. Yet there was no other
constitutional device for removing him. Though Pickering never appeared
in person, the managers for the House pressed the prosecution; and
rather than leave the administration of justice to a demented judge, the
Senate pronounced the unhappy man "guilty as charged," and resolved
that he should be removed from office.

On the same day that the Senate reached this monstrous decision, March
12, 1804, the House voted to impeach Justice Samuel Chase, of the
Supreme Court. While the defiant words of Chief Justice Marshall in the
Marbury case were still rankling in Jefferson's bosom, Justice Chase had
gone out of his way to attack the Administration, in addressing a grand
jury at Baltimore. The repeal of the Judiciary Act, he had declared, had
shaken the independence of the national judiciary to its foundations.
"Our republican Constitution," said he, "will sink into a mobocracy--the
worst of all possible governments." To appreciate the effect of this
partisan outburst upon the President, one must recall that Chase was the
judge who had presided at the trials of Fries and of Callender, and who
had left the bench to electioneer for John Adams in the campaign of
1800. Jefferson immediately wrote to Nicholson, who was managing
Pickering's impeachment, raising the question whether "this seditious
and official attack on the principles of our Constitution" ought to go
unpunished.

Such was Jefferson's way of initiating the measures of the
Administration. His supporters in the House were not over-eager to take
up the gauntlet, but as usual the wishes of the President prevailed. The
management of the impeachment of Chase fell to John Randolph, who was as
ill-fitted by temperament for the difficult task as a man could be.
Instead of impeaching Chase for his indiscretion at Baltimore, Randolph
dragged into the indictment his conduct on the bench during the trials
of Fries and of Callender, and certain errors in law which he was
alleged to have committed. The effect of these latter items was to range
all the bench on the side of Chase, for if a mere mistake in judgment
was a proper ground of impeachment, no judge was safe in his tenure.
Justice Chase secured some of the best legal talent in the country to
conduct his defense; and the trial assumed from the outset a