Volume IV Part 41 (1/2)

”There are other minor gentry who seek to curry favor & get into office by adding their mite of abuse, but I think for coa.r.s.eness & malignity of invention Algernon Sidney surpa.s.ses all party writers who have ever made pretensions to any decency of character. There is on this subject no such thing as a free press in Virginia, and of consequence the calumnies and misrepresentations of this gentleman will remain uncontradicted & will by many be believed to be true. He will be supposed to be the champion of state rights, instead of being what he really is, the champion of dismemberment.”[1006]

When Roane's articles were finished, Marshall wrote Story: ”I send you the papers containing the essays of Algernon Sidney. Their coa.r.s.eness & malignity would designate the author if he was not avowed. The argument, if it may be called one, is, I think, as weak as its language is violent & prolix. Two other gentlemen[1007] have appeared in the papers on this subject, one of them is deeply concerned in pillaging the purchasers of the Fairfax estate in which goodly work he fears no other obstruction than what arises from the appellate power of the Supreme Court, & the other is a hunter after office who hopes by his violent hostility to the Union, which in Virginia a.s.sumes the name of regard for state rights, & by his devotion to Algernon Sidney, to obtain one. In support of the sound principles of the const.i.tution & of the Union of the States, not a pen is drawn. In Virginia the tendency of things verges rapidly to the destruction of the government & the re-establishment of a league of sovereign states. I look elsewhere for safety.”[1008]

Another of the ”minor gentry” of whom Marshall complained was William C.

Jarvis, who in 1820 had written a book ent.i.tled ”The Republicans,” in which he joined in the hue and cry against Marshall because of his opinion in M'Culloch _vs._ Maryland. Jarvis sent a copy of his book to Jefferson who, in acknowledging the receipt of it, once more spoke his mind upon the National Judiciary. To Jarvis's statement that the courts are ”the ultimate arbiters of all const.i.tutional questions,” Jefferson objected.

It was ”a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy,” wrote the ”Sage of Monticello.”

”The const.i.tution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots.... If the legislature fails to pa.s.s”

necessary laws--such as those for taking of the census, or the payment of judges; or even if ”they fail to meet in congress, the judges cannot issue their mandamus to them.”

So, concludes Jefferson, if the President does not appoint officers to fill vacancies, ”the judges cannot force him.” In fact, the judges ”can issue their mandamus ... to no executive or legislative officer to enforce the fulfilment of their official duties, any more than the president or legislature may issue orders to the judges.... When the legislature or executive functionaries act unconst.i.tutionally, they are responsible to the people in their elective capacity. The exemption of the judges from that is quite dangerous enough.”[1009]

This letter by Jefferson had just been made public, and Story, who appears to have read everything from the Greek cla.s.sics 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 M^r Jefferson's opinion as respects this department it is not difficult to a.s.sign the cause. He is among the most ambitious, & I suspect among the most unforgiving of men. His great power is over the ma.s.s 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 const.i.tution any intelligent man should wish a dependent judiciary, or should think that the const.i.tution 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 pa.s.sions.”[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 coa.r.s.eness 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 M^r 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 M^r 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 coa.r.s.eness of its language, its personal & official abuse & its tedious prolixity const.i.tuted objections to the insertion of Algernon Sidney which were insuperable. If, however, M^r 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 M^r Wheaton. I shall wish to know what course M^r 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 n.o.bly 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 M^r 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 25^{th} 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 Const.i.tutional 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 a.s.serts 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 Const.i.tutional? By the casuistry of John Marshall, that ”present fas.h.i.+onable mode of construction, which considers the const.i.tution as a lump of fine gold, a small portion of which is so malleable as to cover the whole ma.s.s. By this golden rule for manufacturing the const.i.tution, 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 Const.i.tutional.

For one hundred and twenty-one scintillant and learned pages Taylor attacks this latest creation of National ”tyranny.” The whole Nationalist system is ”tyranny,” which it is his privilege to ”unmask,”

and the duty of all true Americans to destroy.[1021] Marshall's Const.i.tutional doctrine ”amounts to the insertion of the following article in the const.i.tution: 'Congress shall have power, with the a.s.sent of the Supreme Court, to exercise or usurp, and to prohibit the States from exercising, any or all of the powers reserved to the States, whenever they [Congress] shall deem it convenient, or for the general welfare.'”[1022] Such doctrines invite ”civil war.”[1023]

By Marshall's philosophy ”the people are made the prey of exclusive privileges.” In short, under him the Supreme Court has become the agent of special interests.[1024] ”Cannot the Union subsist unless Congress and the Supreme Court shall make banks and lotteries?”[1025]

Jefferson eagerly read Roane's essays and Taylor's book and wrote concerning them: ”The judiciary branch is the instrument which, working like gravity, without intermission, is to press us at last into one consolidated ma.s.s. Against this I know no one who, equally with Judge Roane himself, possesses the power and the courage to make resistance; and to him I look, and have long looked, as our strongest bulwark.”

At this point Jefferson declares for armed resistance to the Nation in even stronger terms than those used by Roane or Taylor: ”If Congress fails to s.h.i.+eld the States from dangers so palpable and so imminent, the States must s.h.i.+eld themselves, and meet the invader foot to foot....

This is already half done by Colonel Taylor's book” which ”is the most effectual retraction of our government to its original principles which has ever yet been sent by heaven to our aid. Every State in the Union should give a copy to every member they elect, as a standing instruction, and ours should set the example.”[1026]

Until his death the aged politician raged continuously, except in one instance,[1027] at Marshall and the Supreme Court because of such opinions and decisions as those in the Bank and Lottery cases. He writes Justice Johnson that he ”considered ... maturely” Roane's attacks on the doctrines of Cohens _vs._ Virginia and they appeared to him ”to pulverize every word which had been delivered by Judge Marshall, of the extra-judicial part of his opinion.” If Roane ”can be answered, I surrender human reason as a vain and useless faculty, given to bewilder, and not to guide us.... This practice of Judge Marshall, of travelling out of his case to prescribe what the law would be in a moot case not before the court, is very irregular and censurable.”[1028]

Again Jefferson writes that, above all other officials, those who most need restraint from usurping legislative powers are ”the judges of what is commonly called our General Government, but what I call our Foreign department.... A few such doctrinal decisions, as barefaced as that of the Cohens,” may so arouse certain powerful States as to check the march of Nationalism. The Supreme Court ”has proved that the power of declaring what the law is, _ad libitum_, by sapping and mining, slily and without alarm, the foundations of the Const.i.tution, can do what open force would not dare to attempt.”[1029]

So it came to pa.s.s that John Marshall and the Supreme Court became a center about which swirled the forces of a fast-gathering storm that raged with increasing fury until its thunders were the roar of cannon, its lightning the flashes of battle. Broadly speaking, slavery and free trade, State banking and debtors' relief laws were arraigned on the side of Localism; while slavery restriction, national banking, a protective tariff, and security of contract were marshaled beneath the banner of Nationalism. It was an a.s.semblage of forces as incongruous as human nature itself.