Albert Beveridge

To such base uses can authority be put--with such peril to life and liberty is it invested--when unchecked by Constitutional limitation enforced by fearless and unprejudiced judges!

Men were arrested and thrown into prison on Wilkinson's orders, wholly without warrant of law.

No mere trial in court, no adherence to rules of evidence, no such insignificant fact as the American Constitution, must be permitted to stand between the people's aroused loyalty and the miscreant whom the Chief Executive of the Nation…

It seems incredible that a man so transcendently great as Hamilton--easily the foremost creative mind in American statesmanship--should have succumbed to personal animosities such as he displayed toward John Adams, and toward Aaron Burr.

Hamilton's open hostility, however, first showed itself when Burr, then but thirty-five years of age, defeated Hamilton's father-in-law, Philip Schuyler, for the United States Senate.

The western settlers (I speak now from my own observations) stand as it were, upon a pivot.

The touch of a feather would turn them any way....

I must have plenary evidence before I believe him capable of committing the hundredth part of the absurd & foolish things that are ascribed to him....

Then came a motion to reject the bill, followed by a brief and almost one-sided debate, which was little more than the angry protest of the representatives of the people against the proposed overthrow of this last defense of liberty.

The shameful attempt to prevent John Marshall from deciding whether Bollmann and Swartwout were entitled to the benefit of the most sacred writ known to the law was thereby defeated and the Chief Justice was left free to grant or reject…

And the Judges had dared to set free the accused men--had refused to consign them to prison, despite public opinion and the desire of the Administration.

Burr suddenly threw himself from his horse and cried: "I am Aaron Burr, under military arrest, and claim the protection of the civil authorities.

On the whole, said Marshall, probable cause to suspect Burr guilty of an attempt to attack the Spanish possessions appeared from Wilkinson's affidavit; but the charge of treason was quite another matter.

But the Constitution itself carefully and plainly describes treason and prescribes just how it must be proved.

No impatience, no hasty or autocratic action, no rudeness of manner, no harshness of speech on his part should give politicians a weapon with which once more to strike at judges and courts.

It must exist in the view of the world, or it cannot exist at all....

Why is it not proved?" It is, said Marshall, the duty of the Executive Department to prosecute crimes.

If I were possessed of the same means, I could not only foil the prosecutors, but render them ridiculous and infamous.

Nothing is left undone or unsaid which can tend to prejudice the public mind, and produce a conviction without evidence.

The nation will judge both the offender & judges for themselves ... the people ... will see ... & amend the error in our Constitution, which makes any branch independent of the nation....

It becomes our duty to lay the evidence before the public.

He praised Burr as a brave man and a patriot who would have led Americans against the hated Spanish; he denounced Jefferson as a persecutor who sought the ruin of one he hated.

His speech is a model of that simple, perspicuous, and condensed statement of which he was so perfectly the master.

However, he must do justice no matter what befell--he must, at all hazards, pronounce the law truly and enforce it bravely, but with elastic method.

He must be not only a just, but also an understanding, judge.