Burr,  that  the  dying  agonies  of  the  Constitution  will  be  wit-
nessed on  the  floor  of  the  Senate,  were  uttered  with  a  pointed
allusion  to  what  had  just  passed,  and  they  lead  to  an  anxious
consideration  of  the  temper  of  metal  to  be  found  in  the  body  as
now  composed.  The  essential  characters  which  ought  to  belong
to  the  Senate  are  coolness  and  firmness.  I  hope  that  when  the
occasion  shall  call  they  will  be  found  to  possess  them;  and  it


222  MEMOIRS    OF  JOHN  QUINCY  ADAMS.  [March,

would  be  doing  injustice  to  the  body  and  its  members  not  to
acknowledge  that  in  this  memorable  instance  these  qualities
have  been  eminently  displayed.1  It  has,  however,  furnished
several  instances  of  weak  compliance  as  well  as  of  honorable
resistance,  and  I  have  some  reason  to  believe  that  more  than
one  member  voted  for  the  conviction  of  the  Judge  who  at  the
same  time  disapproved  altogether  of  the  prosecution.  On  the
subject  of  the  bill  for  paying  the  witnesses,  Mr.  Anderson  this
day  told  me  that  it  would  have  given  him  pain  more  than  he
could  express,  if  a  single  member  of  the  Senate  had  been  found
who  would  have  yielded  upon  the  point  in  dispute ;  for  if  the
principle  were  once  established  that  an  officer  acquitted  on  im-
peachment should  be  burdened  with  the  payment  of  the
witnesses  essential  to  his  justification,  while  the  nation  was  to
pay  all  the  witnesses  produced  against  him,  not  an  officer  in
the  Union  would  be  safe,  and  there  would  be  no  bounds  to
the  prosecutions  of  the  other  House.  I  observed  to  him  in  a
jocular  manner,  alluding  to  the  two  resolutions  for  altering  the
Constitution  introduced  by  two  of  the  late  managers,  that  Mr.
