The Life of John Marshall, Volume 2: Politician, diplomatist, statesman, 1789-1801

by Albert J. Beveridge

[1288] Adams to Congress, Dec. 3, 1799; as written by Marshall; Adams MSS.

[1289] Gunn to Hamilton, Dec. 13, 1800; Works: Hamilton, vi, 483.

[1290] The Federalist attitude is perfectly expressed in the following toast drunk at a banquet to Wolcott, attended by "the heads of departments" and the Justices of the Supreme Court: "The Judiciary of the United States! Independent of party, independent of power and independent of popularity." (Gazette of the United States, Feb. 7, 1801.)

[1291] Wolcott to Ames, Dec. 29, 1799; Gibbs, ii, 316.

[1292] Annals, 6th Cong., 1st Sess., Dec. 19, 837-38.

[1293] Richmond Examiner, Feb. 6, 1801.

[1294] Jefferson to Madison, Dec. 19, 1800; Works: Ford, ix, 159. The Republicans were chiefly alarmed because, in the extension of the National Judiciary, offices would be provided for Federalists. Even Jefferson then saw nothing but patronage in the Judiciary Act.

The "evident" purpose of the bill, said the Aurora, Feb. 4, 1801, was to "increase the influence of the present Executive and provide a comfortable retreat for some of those good federalists who have found it convenient to resign from their offices or been dismissed from them by the people."

In comparison to this objection little attention was paid to the more solid ground that the National Judiciary would be used to "force the introduction of the common law of England as a part of the law of the United States"; or even to the objection that, if the Judiciary was extended, it would "strengthen the system of terror by the increase of prosecutions under the Sedition law"; or to the increase of the "enormous influence" given the National Courts by the Bankruptcy Law.

The Aurora, March 18, 1801, sounded the alarm on these and other points in a clanging editorial, bidding "the people beware," for "the hell hounds of persecution may be let loose ... and the people be roasted into implicit acquiescence with every measure of the 'powers that be.'" But at this time it was the creation of offices that the Federalists would fill to which the Republicans chiefly objected.