The task of restoring the Union to the form the fathers had meant for it and revoking the prerogatives unconstitutionally given to it was uppermost in Jefferson's mind. The bank had been chartered for twenty years and was beyond reach at present. The Sedition law and the Alien Friends act had expired by limitation before Jefferson came in. The Alien Enemies act was harmless because it rested entirely with the President for execution and was valid only during a foreign war; since it might be useful later it was allowed to remain on the statute book. But the odious excise, the stamp taxes, and carriage licenses could be repealed, the probationary period for naturalisation could be reduced to the former limit, work on the great war-ships could be stopped, the provisional army allowed to disband, and Hamilton and other generals cut off from the public treasury. The vast appropriations for the army and navy and the coast defences could be reduced, and the expense of the ornamental consular service cut down. As rapidly as possible, Congress carried out these reform suggestions of the new President. The Federalists deplored his penny-wise economy, especially when fifteen ships, which had cost the Government nearly a million dollars, were sold for one-fourth that amount. The work of reform did not stop here. Two branches of the National Government had been brought back to democratic principles by the will of the people. But the third branch, the Judiciary, remained in the control of the "monarchists." Jefferson first did justice, as he conceived it, to Lyon, the only prisoner remaining convicted under the Sedition law. No doubt some of the Federal judges had been overzealous in securing the conviction of offenders under this law. Holding life tenure under the Constitution, they could be reached only by impeachment. This remedy was attempted in order to punish Judge Chase, an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, who had shown partiality, it was claimed, in the trial of Fries and Callender five years before. The requisite two-thirds of the Senate did not vote him guilty, and this method of curbing the Judiciary failed. "Impeachment is not even a scarecrow," admitted the disappointed President. The enemy had retired into the stronghold of the Judiciary, as he said, to be fed from the treasury, and from thence to beat down Republicanism. "By a fraudulent use of the Constitution," he explained, "which has made judges irremovable, they have multiplied useless judges merely to strengthen their phalanx."