cerns us most," wrote Giles, in June, is "the situation
of the Judiciary as now organized. It is constantly
asserted that the revolution is incomplete, as long as
that strong fortress is in possession of the enemy; and
it is surely a most singular circumstance that the public sentiment should have forced itself into the Legislative and Executive Department, and that the Judiciary should not only not acknowledge its influence,
but should pride itself in resisting its will, under the
misapplied idea of 'independence.' . . No remedy
is competent to redress the evil but an absolute repeal
of the whole Judiciary system, terminating the present
offices and creating a new system, defining the common
law doctrine and restraining to the proper constitutional extent the jurisdiction of the Courts."[1]
Before the next Congress met, however, three additional episodes occurred in connection with the Judiciary which strongly reinforced this determination of Jefferson and the Republicans to effect a change in the judicial system and to curb the power of the Courts.
- ↑ Jefferson Papers MSS, letter of Giles, June 1, 1801; William Branch Giles (1914), by Dice Robins Anderson. See Office Seeking during Jefferson's Administration, by Gaillard Hunt, in Amer. Hist. Rev. (1898), II, quoting a letter from an influential man in Charleston, S. C., to Jefferson, July 24, 1801: "As a party the Federalists are not formidable; they are composed of trifling lawyers, men swoln with pride, ignorance and impudence, fellows thirsting for gain . . . and all the tories and their descendants. The Judiciary is also inimical, but I fear the only purifier of this engine is time; as the Judges die off, the Government must be careful to replace honest men in the room of the present set of flexible gentry; until these desirable events take place, they must be watched well." "In our state of society, the 'friends of order' calculate on many other barriers to republicanism viz,, a majority of the Senate, all the Federal Judges and most other officers of the United States on their side." Oration delivered in Wallingford, March 11, 1801, before Republicans of the State of Connecticut at Their General Thanksgiving for the Election of Thomas Jefferson (1801), by Abraham Bishop.
of Thomas Jefferson (H. A. Washington's ed.), letter to Dickinson, Dec. 19, 1801; Some Letters of Elbridge Gerry, 1784-1804 (1896), letter of May 4, 1801, Feb. 18, 1802, "The Adams Judiciary was created for party purposes." Independent Chronicle, Nov. 25, 1801. "Among the causes which have sunk the anglo-federal party into contempt and disrepute is the dislike and abhorrence to independent Judges", Aurora, June 18, 1800. See also Times and Alexandria Advertiser (Va.), Dec. 15, 1798.
