On one ground alone could the President and his party fully meet the issue thus offered. They had sought and won popularity on the principle of State-rights. The Judiciary Act of 1789, even more than its supplement of 1801, was notoriously intended to work against the object they had most at heart. The effect of both these Acts was, in their belief, to weaken the State judiciaries and to elevate the national judiciary at their expense, until the national courts should draw to themselves all litigation of importance, leaving the State courts without character or credit. From their point of view, the whole judiciary system should be remodelled, with the purpose of reversing this centralizing movement; and that such a reform must begin with the Supreme Court was too evident for discussion. The true question for Congress to consider was not so much the repeal of the Judiciary Act of 1801, as the revision of that which had set in motion the whole centripetal machine in 1789. Jefferson’s Message, as has been shown, offered to Congress an issue quite different, at least in appearance. “The judiciary system of the United States,”--so his words ran,--“and especially that portion of it recently erected, will of course present itself to the contemplation of Congress; and that they may be able to judge of the proportion which the institution bears to the business it has to perform, I have caused to be procured from the several States, and now lay before Congress, an exact statement of all the causes decided since the first establishment of the courts, and of those which were depending when additional courts and judges were brought in to their aid.” From the true Virginia standpoint, the fewer the causes the less danger. What the Virginians feared most was the flow of business to the national courts; and Jefferson’s statistics tended only to show that as yet the new courts had done no harm, inasmuch as they had little to do. Their abolition on the ground of economy would still leave the Judiciary establishment of 1789 untouched, merely in order to lop off an excrescence which might be restored whenever increase of business should require it,--and which Jefferson’s argument in a manner pledged him in such an event to re-establish.