Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 3.djvu/473

1807.
 * "My friend," he wrote to Nicholson, "I am standing on the soil of my native country divested of every right for which our fathers bled. Politics have usurped the place of law, and the scenes of 1798 are again revived. Men now see and hear, and feel and think, politically.  Maxims are now advanced and advocated which would almost have staggered the effrontery of Bayard or the cooler impudence of Chauncey Goodrich when we were first acquainted."

All this work was but skirmishing. The true struggle had still to come. So long as the President dealt only with grand jurors and indictments, he could hardly fail to succeed; but the case was different when he dealt directly with Chief-Justice Marshall and with the stubborn words of the Constitution, that "no person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court." The district-attorney was ready with a mass of evidence, but the chief-justice alone could say whether a syllable of this evidence should be admitted; and hitherto the chief-justice had by no means shown a bias toward the government. Hay was convinced that Marshall meant to protect Burr, and he wrote to the President on the subject: —


 * "The bias of Judge Marshall is as obvious as if it was stamped upon his forehead. I may do him injustice, but