But precedents are called for by the gentlemen opposed to the resolution, and several of them contend that such special facts should be stated as would be unexceptionable ground of impeachment, before the inquiry is gone into. A gentleman from Vermont, (Mr. ELLIOT,) who argued yesterday in favor of postponement for further information on the subject, in the same argument said that he never would agree to the appointment of a committee of inquiry, until the charges were first stated and proved to his satisfaction. Mr. F. said he was astonished at this inconsistency. If the facts were first stated and established, appointing a committee of inquiry would be an absurdity. What would they inquire after but what they already knew? That gentleman and others, in order to defeat the resolution, gave the object of it an odious designation: they called it an inquisition, and spoke of it in such terms as if it was the well-known Spanish law of that name. The character of that court was too well known to the members of this House to require definition; it was sufficient to say that in it witnesses were examined without the knowledge of the party accused; that it compelled the accused to give testimony against themselves, and had authority to pass sentence of the most dreadful kind, without appeal. The gentlemen knew that no such thing was intended by the resolution. The character of the judges had been impeached in public opinion by numerous citizens of all descriptions. Congress on that account gave a decisive testimony of want of confidence in one of them. The object of the resolution was to inquire whether there was a real foundation for this want of confidence and ill fame. If Congress did not make inquiry in such cases, who was to do it? It did not by the constitution belong to any other authority; every other method of proceeding would be as ingeniously objected to as the one proposed, by those who wished to prevent further proceedings in the case; denying the means of bringing forward impeachment, had the same effect as if the power of impeachment was renounced.