Two of the Federalist senators refused to vote, on the ground that the proceedings were irregular; Senator Bradley of Vermont, Senator Armstrong of New York, and Senator Stone of North Carolina tacitly protested by absenting themselves. In a Senate of thirty-four members only twenty-six voted, and only nineteen voted for conviction. So confused, contradictory, and irregular were these proceedings that Pickering’s trial was never considered a sound precedent. That an insane man could be guilty of crime, and could be punished on _ex parte_ evidence, without a hearing, with not even an attorney to act in his behalf, seemed such a perversion of justice that the precedent fell dead on the spot. Perhaps, from the constitutional point of view, a more fatal objection was that in doing what the world was sure to consider an arbitrary and illegal act, the Virginians failed to put on record the reasons which led them to think it sound in principle. In the Louisiana purchase they had acted in a way equally arbitrary, but they had given their reasons for thinking themselves in the right. In Pickering’s case not a word was publicly spoken on either side; a plainly extra-constitutional act was done without recording the doctrine on which it rested. The Republicans showed no hesitation. John Randolph’s orders were obeyed without open protest. Senator Bradley of Vermont talked strongly in private against them; Senator Armstrong of New York would not support them; barely half the Senate voted in their favor; but Randolph forced his party forward without stopping to see how well his steps were taken, or how far he was likely to go. As though to intimidate the Senate, March 6, the day after the managers were defeated on the vote to hear Harper, Randolph reported to the House a resolution ordering the impeachment of Justice Chase. March 12, the day when the Senate voted Pickering guilty, the House took up Randolph’s report, and the majority, without debate, voted by seventy-three to thirty-two that Chase should be impeached. Not a Republican ventured to record a vote in the negative. The next morning Randolph again appeared at the bar of the Senate, and announced that the House of Representatives would in due time exhibit articles of impeachment against Samuel Chase. CHAPTER VIII.