Page:The Supreme Court in United States History vol 1.djvu/224

196 and unsolicited diffusion of heterodox policies the doc- trines of passive obedience and non-resistance/' He pointed out that, though the people had in the late elec- tion shown their disapproval of Federal policies, the Federal Judges had shown their hostility to any change ; and he pictured the condition which Jefferson found on coming into ofBce, "the bias of preconceived and per- haps inunutable ideas possessed by the Judges, ideas which, not confined exclusively to a devotion to cer- tain political tenets, involved in their wide range strong personal regards and antipathies. . . . He found the asylum of justice impure ; there where reason and truth, unagitated and unimpaired even by suspicion, ought to preserve a perpetual reign, he contemplated the dominance of i>olitical and personal prejudice, habit- ually employed in preparing or executing party ven- geance/' In demanding prosecution for such senti- ments. Judge James M. Marshall from the bench stated that "he was a friend to the freedom, but an enemy to the licentiousness of the press; that the printers in this country, on both sides of the politics which agitated the public mind, had taken the most unwarranted liberties, and descended to the most shameful scurrility and abuse; it was diflBcult to say on which side of the question they had been the most abusive; and that so long as he remained upon the Bench, it should be his particular care to restrain these abuses on the one side or the other." ^ To the demand of the Judges, the Grand Jury responded by returning a presentment of the editor. Finally, after a dec-

^See ConnecHeut CourarU, Aug. 17, 1801, quoting letter in CharleiUm OazetU addressed by '*Americanus" to Jefferson: **The serious charges of corruption exhibited against our National Judges by that publication are in a proper train of investigation. It is devoutly to be wished that the publisher may be punished and the author detected. If the latter should be found to be amon^ your civil advisers, it will be a tribute of respect to the Judiciary to discard him from your privy coundL'*