The Federalists, left to an issue involving mere details of taxation, wasted their strength on a subordinate point. Perhaps their exertions were not wholly wasted, for their outcries may have had some effect in persuading the majority that the new reforms were extreme; but in reality the opposition resisted feebly the vital financial scheme, and exerted all its energies against the second and less serious Administration measure,--the repeal of the Judiciary Act of 1801. The previous history of the Judiciary Act belonged to the administration of Jefferson’s predecessor and to the records of the Federalist party. Before 1801 the Supreme Court consisted of six justices, who held two terms a year at Washington, and twice a year rode their circuits, each justice then sitting in association with a district judge. The system pleased no one. The justices, men of age and dignity, complained that they were forced twice a year, in the most trying seasons and through the roughest country, to ride hundreds of miles on horseback “with the agility of post-boys;” the lawyers found fault because the errors of the inferior court were corrected by the judges who had made them; the suitors were annoyed by the delays and accidents inevitable to such journeys and such judges. In the last year of Federalist power a new arrangement was made, and the Judiciary Act of 1801 reduced the Supreme Court to five judges, who were fixed at Washington, while their circuit duties were transferred to a new class of circuit judges, eighteen in number. Twenty-three districts were divided into six circuits, and the circuit judges sat independently of the district judges, as well as of the Supreme Bench. This separation of the machinery of the District, Circuit, and Supreme Courts caused a multiplication of judicial offices and an increased annual expense of some thirty thousand dollars. No sooner did this Bill become law, Feb. 13, 1801, than the Federalists used their last moments of power to establish themselves in the posts it created. In Jefferson’s words, they retreated into the Judiciary as a stronghold. They filled the new courts as well as the vacancies on the old bench with safe men, at whose head, as Chief-Justice of the Supreme Court, was placed the Secretary of State, John Marshall. That Jefferson should have been angry at this manœuvre was natural; but, apart from greed for patronage, the Federalists felt bound to exclude Republicans from the bench, to prevent the overthrow of those legal principles in which, as they believed, national safety dwelt. Jefferson understood the challenge, and was obliged to accept or decline it.