To inquire into the conduct of the judges when confidence is evidently wanting, is the only true way to secure the respectability of the Judiciary. If that necessary confidence is withdrawn without cause, an official inquiry will restore confidence and the usefulness of the judges. This observation is supported by precedent and parliamentary usage. In that country from which precedents are so frequently sought, one precedent offers itself to recollection. In the year 1730, a committee of the British House of Commons was appointed to examine the jails. In the course of examination, the committee discovered that Sir Robert Eyres, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, a judge of very respectable character, was suspected, not of tyranny on the bench, or of putting any man’s life in jeopardy, but of having held an improper correspondence with a person confined for crime or misdemeanor, and this suspicion chiefly supported by anonymous letters. A committee of the House of Commons were appointed to make inquiry, and it was found, to the satisfaction of the committee and of the people, that the allegations on which the suspicion was founded were false, and the judge’s character was vindicated and restored.
Mr. F. said this precedent applied well to the present case. If the judges mentioned in the resolution had done their duty, their characters would be vindicated by the inquiry, and the public confidence in their integrity restored; if they were guilty, and not entitled to confidence, they ought to be removed from office, and neither the one nor the other could be done unless the inquiry proposed was authorized.
He said that the inquiry was necessary to secure the purity, honor, and usefulness of the Judiciary Department. If that House refused or neglected to exert the powers vested therein for securing public confidence in the Judiciary, unprincipled men would find means of recommending themselves to appointments, and would vitiate the streams where justice is expected to flow, and the citizens would be oppressed without the means or hopes of redress, and would feel the effects of tyrannical power in the administration of a government which, in its other departments, was the greatest and best of any in the world. Let proper inquiries be made where they are necessary; let the character of judges unjustly charged be vindicated, and the vicious and unworthy be removed, and improper characters will cease to intrude themselves; their friends will not dare to recommend, and Congress will have confidence that the laws which they pass will be applied agreeably to their genuine principles, to the protection and ease of the citizens; if we do not provide for this, we had better cease to make laws.