Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 3.djvu/479

1807. that the allusion had not been taken as personal; but the unpleasant impression remained. "The gentleman plainly insinuated the possibility of danger to the court," persisted the defence; and Luther Martin added, —


 * "I do not know whether it were intended by this observation that your honors should be apprehensive of an impeachment in case you should decide against the wishes of the government. I will not presume that it was used with that view, but it is susceptible of being so misunderstood, however innocently or inadvertently it may have been made."

August 31 the chief-justice read his decision. Much the longest of Marshall's judicial opinions; elaborately argued, with many citations, and with less simple adherence to one leading thought than was usual in his logic,—this paper seemed, in the imagination of Marshall's enemies, to betray a painful effort to reconcile his dictum in Bollman's case with the exclusion of further evidence in the case of Burr. To laymen, who knew only the uncertainties of law; who thought that the assemblage on Blennerhassett's island was such an overt act as might, without violent impropriety, be held by a jury to be an act of levying war; and who conceived that Burr, although absent from the spot, was as principal present in a legal sense such as would excuse a jury in finding him guilty,—an uneasy doubt could not fail to suggest itself that the chief-justice, with an equal effort of