Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 1.djvu/303

290 departments of the government, over legislation, execution, and decision, and irresponsible to the people." He believed that these principles were "in direct hostility with the great principle of representative government."  Undoubtedly these principles, if they existed anywhere, were strongest, not in the circuit, but in the Supreme Court; and if any judge was to be set aside because his appointment might be considered as a reward for zeal displayed in supporting "principles which the people had denounced," Chief-Justice Marshall, the person most likely to exercise "ultimate censorial and controlling power over all the departments of government," was peculiarly subject to suspicion and removal.  To no man had the last President been more indebted, and to no one had he been more grateful.

Only incidentally, at the close of his speech, Giles advanced a final, and in his mind fatal, objection to the new courts, "because of their tendency to produce a gradual demolition of State Courts." Of all arguments this seemed to be the most legitimate, for it depended least on the imputation of evil motives to the Congress which passed the Act. No one need be supposed criminal for wishing, as was often admitted, to bring justice to every man's door; and as little need any one be blamed for wishing to maintain or to elevate the character of his State Judiciary. Parties might honestly and wisely differ, and local interests might widely diverge in a matter so much depending on circumstances; but no