Page:The Supreme Court in United States History vol 1.djvu/193

Rh "with having transgressed the bounds of judicial duty and become the apostles of a political sect, traveling about the country for little other purpose than to preach the Federal doctrines to the people*', nevertheless, all that they had done was to unfold and explain the principles of the Constitution, to explain the laws, "and when some of the laws have been denounced by the enemies of the Administration as unconstitutional the Judges have felt themselves called upon to express their judgments upon that point and the reasons of their opinion." In retort to this defense, it was very properly said that it was not the business of the Judges to be concerned with the views, either of "friends" or of "enemies of the Administration."

The appointments by Presidents Washington and Adams of Jay and Ellsworth as Ambassadors had fur- ther served to convince the Anti-Federalists that the Judicial Bench was being made simply an annex to the FederaUst party, "It (the Executive) has been able to draw into this vortex the Judiciary branch of the Gov- ernment, and by their expectancy of sharing the other offices in the Executive gift to make them auxiliary to the Executive in all its views, instead of forming a bal- ance between that and the Legislature, as it was origi- nally intended," wrote Jeflferson.^ Madison vigorously opposed the practice. "It is an unwise and degrading situation for a National Judiciary," said Charles Pinckney in the Senate, in 1800 ; and to establish the independence of the Judges and free them from the control or interference of the Executive, he proposed

1 ;;Jefferson'', VIII, 205» notes on Prof. Ebeling's letter of July dO, 1795. Writing to Madijon, Dec. 28, 1794, ibid,^ 156, Jefferson had said, reUtive to the new "infernal" excise law : "We shall see what the Court lawyers and Courtly Judges and would-be Ambassadors will make out of it." The notorious James T. Callender in The Pro9j>ect Before Us (1800), 83, wrote : "Think of the gross and audacious prostitution of the federal bench by the successive selection of foreign ambassadors from that body." MadUon^ VI, letter to Jeffersont March 15, 1800.