men naturally benevolent, like Jefferson, could rarely resist the conviction that the objects of political opponents were criminal, but Giles exceeded every prominent partisan on either side by the severity of his imputations. As late as June, 1801, he wrote from Richmond to President Jefferson:[62] “The ejected party is now almost universally considered as having been employed, in conjunction with Great Britain, in a scheme for the total destruction of the liberties of the people.” No man in the Union was more cordially detested by the Federalists; and even between parties that held each other in little or no respect, few men of so much eminence were so little respected as Giles. The dislike and distrust were mutual. Giles’s nature was capable of no pleasure greater than that of exasperating his Federalist opponents; and he rarely enjoyed a better opportunity for irritation than on Feb. 18, 1802, when, with a great majority behind him, and with the consciousness of triumph attained, he broke into the dull debate on the Judiciary Bill. Both sides were weary of the narrow question whether Congress had the power to remove Judges by legislation. Whether such a power existed or not, every one knew that the Republican majority meant to use it, and the Federalists were chiefly anxious to profit by the odium they could attach to its abuse. The Federalists, in a character new to them, posed as the defenders of the Constitution against sacrilegious attacks; while the Republicans, for the first time in their history as a party, made light of constitutional objections, and closed their ears to warnings in which they had themselves hitherto found their chief rhetorical success. With Giles’s appearance on the floor the tedious debate started into virulence. He began by insinuating motives, as though he were still discussing the Alien and Sedition Laws in the Virginia legislature of 1798: “A great portion of the human mind,” he began, “has been at all times directed toward monarchy as the best form of government to enforce obedience and insure the general happiness; whereas another portion of the human mind has given a preference to the republican form as best calculated to produce the same end.” On this difference of opinion the two parties had been founded, the one wishing “to place in executive hands all the patronage it was possible to create for the purpose of protecting the President against the full force of his constitutional responsibility to the people;” the other contending “that the doctrine of patronage was repugnant to the opinions and feelings of the people; that it was unnecessary, expensive, and oppressive; and that the highest energy the government could possess would flow from the confidence of the mass of the people, founded upon their own sense of their common interest.” Thus patronage, or in other words the creation of partial interests for the protection and support of government, had become the guiding principle of the Federalists.