Finally, it must be owned that Burr's case offered Marshall a tempting opportunity to try out the devotion of Republicans to that ideal of judicial deportment which had led them so vehemently to criticize Justice Chase and to charge him with being "oppressive," with refusing to give counsel for defense an opportunity to be heard, with transgressing the state law of procedure, with showing too great liking for Common Law ideas of sedition, with setting up the President as a sort of monarch beyond the reach of judicial process. Marshall's conduct of Burr's trial now exactly reversed every one of these grounds of complaint. Whether he intended it or not, it was a neat turning of the tables. But Jefferson, who was at once both the most theoretical and the least logical of men, was of course hardly prepared to see matters in that light. As soon as the news reached him of Burr's acquittal, he ordered Hay to press the indictment for misdemeanor--not for the purpose of convicting Burr, but of getting the evidence down in a form in which it should be available for impeachment proceedings against Marshall. For some weeks longer, therefore, the Chief Justice sat listening to evidence which was to be used against himself. But the impeachment never came, for a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and the weakest link in the combination against the Chief Justice was a very fragile one indeed--the iniquitous Wilkinson. Even the faithful and melancholy Hay finally abandoned him. "The declaration which I made in court in his favor some time ago," he wrote the President, "was precipitate.... My confidence in him is destroyed.... I am sorry for it, on his account, on the public account, and because you have expressed opinions in his favor." It was obviously impossible to impeach the Chief Justice for having prevented the hanging of Aaron Burr on the testimony of such a miscreant.