Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 2.djvu/177

158 nineteen voted for conviction. So confused, contradictory, and irregular were these proceedings that Pickering's trial was never considered a sound precedent. That an insane man could be guilty of crime, and could be punished on ex parte evidence, without a hearing, with not even an attorney to act in his behalf, seemed such a perversion of justice that the precedent fell dead on the spot. Perhaps, from the constitutional point of view, a more fatal objection was that in doing what the world was sure to consider an arbitrary and illegal act, the Virginians failed to put on record the reasons which led them to think it sound in principle. In the Louisiana purchase they had acted in a way equally arbitrary, but they had given their reasons for thinking themselves in the right. In Pickering's case not a word was publicly spoken on either side; a plainly extra-constitutional act was done without recording the doctrine on which it rested.

The Republicans showed no hesitation. John Randolph's orders were obeyed without open protest. Senator Bradley of Vermont talked strongly in private against them; Senator Armstrong of New York would not support them; barely half the Senate voted in their favor; but Randolph forced his party forward without stopping to see how well his steps were taken, or how far he was likely to go. As though to intimidate the Senate, March 6, the day after the managers were defeated on the vote to hear Harper, Randolph reported to the House a resolution ordering