Page:The Supreme Court in United States History vol 1.djvu/258

230 the law is highly approved here. Do you mean to admit that the Legislature has not a right to repeal the law organizing the Supreme Court, for the express purpose of dismissing the Judges, when they cease to possess the publick confidence? The Executive may seduce them by other appointments and accommodations, but the Legislature, or in other words, the people, have no checks whatever no them, no means of counteracting that seduction but impeachment, to which it may be difficult to resort for mere political depravity. My own opinion is not made up on this point; but were it in favor of the right suggested, I would certainly not exercise it in the present case. Perhaps it ought never to be exercised. I hope, however, the period is not distant when the sovereignty of the people will be so well established, understood and respected as to make a known hatred and hostility to that sovereignty, by avowing the application of the principles of the English common law to our Constitution or any other mode calculated to undermine it, good cause of impeachment.