- "You must have heard of the extraordinary charge of Chase to the grand jury at Baltimore. Ought this seditious and official attack on the principles of our Constitution and on the proceedings of a State to go unpunished; and to whom so pointedly as yourself will the public look for the necessary measures? I ask these questions for your consideration; for myself, it is better that I should not interfere."
"Non-intervention," according to Talleyrand, "is a word used in politics and metaphysics, which means very nearly the same thing as intervention." The event proved that non-intervention was wise policy; but Jefferson was somewhat apt to say that it was better he should not interfere in the same breath with which he interfered. The warning that he could not officially interfere seemed to imply that the quarrel was personal; for in the case of Pickering he had interfered with decision. If this was his view, the success of any attack upon Chase would be a gain to him, and he was so ordering as to make failure a loss only to those who undertook it. Nicholson, hot-headed though he was, did not enter readily into this hazardous venture. He reflected upon it all summer, and consulted the friends whose support he depended. Macon wrote to him a letter of unusual length,[1] suggesting grave doubts whether a judge ought to be impeached for expressing to a grand jury political opinions which every man was at liberty to hold and express elsewhere, and closed by announcing
- ↑ Macon to Nicholson, Aug. 6, 1803; Nicholson MSS.
