This letter by Jefferson had just been made public, and Story, who appears to have read everything from the Greek classics to the current newspaper gossip, at once wrote Marshall. The Chief Justice replied that Jefferson's view "rather grieves than surprizes" him. But he could not "describe the surprize & mortification" he felt when he learned that Madison agreed with Jefferson "with respect to the judicial department. For Mr Jefferson's opinion as respects this department it is not difficult to assign the cause. He is among the most ambitious, & I suspect among the most unforgiving of men. His great power is over the mass of the people, & this power is chiefly acquired by professions of democracy. Every check on the wild impulse of the moment is a check on his own power, & he is unfriendly to the source from which it flows. He looks of course with ill will at an independent judiciary.
"That in a free country with a written constitution any intelligent man should wish a dependent judiciary, or should think that the constitution is not a law for the court as well as for the legislature would astonish me, if I had not learnt from observation that with many men the judgement is completely controuled by the passions."[1010]
To Jefferson, Marshall ascribes Roane's attacks upon the Supreme Court: "There is some reason to believe that the essays written against the Supreme Court were, in a degree at least, stimulated by this gentleman, and that although the coarseness of the language belongs exclusively to the author, its acerbity has been increased by his communications with the great Lama of the mountains. He may therefore feel himself ... required to obtain its republication in some place of distinction."[1011]
John E. Hall was at that time the publisher at Philadelphia of The Journal of American Jurisprudence. Jefferson had asked Hall to reprint Roane's articles, and Hall had told Story, who faithfully reported to Marshall. "I am a little surprized at the request which you say has been made to Mr Hall, although there is no reason for my being so. The settled hostility of the gentleman who has made that request to the judicial department will show itself in that & in every other form which he believes will conduce to its object. For this he has several motives, & it is not among the weakest that the department would never lend itself as a tool to work for his political power....
"What does Mr Hall purpose to do?" asks Marshall. "I do not suppose you would willingly interfere so as to prevent his making the publication, although I really think it is in form & substance totally unfit to be placed in his law journal. I really think a proper reply to the request would be to say that no objection existed to the publication of any law argument against the opinion of the Supreme Court, but that the coarseness of its language, its personal & official abuse & its tedious prolixity constituted objections to the insertion of Algernon Sidney which were insuperable. If, however, Mr Hall determines to comply with this request, I think he ought, unless he means to make himself a party militant, to say that he published that piece by particular request, & ought to subjoin the masterly answer of Mr Wheaton. I shall wish to know what course Mr Hall will pursue."[1012]
Roane's attacks on Marshall did not appear in Hall's law magazine!
Quitting such small, unworthy, and prideful considerations, Marshall rises for a moment to the great issue which he met so nobly in his opinions in M'Culloch vs. Maryland and in Cohens vs. Virginia. "A deep design," he writes Story, "to convert our government into a mere league of states has taken strong hold of a powerful & violent party in Virginia. The attack upon the judiciary is in fact an attack upon the union. The judicial department is well understood to be that through which the government may be attacked most successfully, because it is without patronage, & of course without power. And it is equally well understood that every subtraction from its jurisdiction is a vital wound to the government itself. The attack upon it therefore is a masked battery aimed at the government itself.
"The whole attack, if not originating with Mr Jefferson, is obviously approved & guided by him. It is therefore formidable in other states as well as in this, & it behoves the friends of the union to be more on the alert than they have been. An effort will certainly be made to repeal the 25th sec. of the judicial act."[1013] Marshall's indignation at Roane exhausted his limited vocabulary of resentment. Had he possessed Jefferson's resources of vituperation, the literature of animosity would have been enriched by the language Marshall would have indulged in when the next Republican battery poured its volleys upon him.
No sooner had Roane's artillery ceased to play upon Marshall and the Supreme Court than the roar of Taylor's heavy guns was again heard. In a powerful and brilliant book, called "Tyranny Unmasked," he directed his fire upon the newly proposed protective tariff, "this sport for capitalists and death for the rest of the nation."[1014] The theory of the Chief Justice that there is a "supreme federal power" over the States is proved false by the proceedings of the Constitutional Convention at Philadelphia in 1787. Certain members then proposed to give the National Government a veto over the acts of State Governments.[1015] This proposal was immediately rejected. Yet to-day Marshall proclaims a National power, "infinitely more objectionable," which asserts that the Supreme Court has "a negative or restraining power over the State governments."[1016]
A protective tariff is only another monstrous child of Marshall's accursed Nationalism, that prolific mother of special favors for the few. By what reasoning is a protective tariff made Constitutional? By the casuistry of John Marshall, that "present fashionable mode of construction, which considers the constitution as a lump of fine gold, a small portion of which is so malleable as to cover the whole mass. By this golden rule for manufacturing the constitution, a particular power given to the Federal Government may be made to cover all the rights reserved to the people and the States;[1017] a limited jurisdiction given to the Federal Courts is made to cover all the State Courts;[1018] and a legislative power over ten miles square is malleated over the whole of the United States,[1019] as a single guinea may be beaten out so as to cover a whole house."[1020] Such is the method by which a protective tariff is made Constitutional.