I have proceeded thus far in my endeavor to search out the origin, trace the progress, and define the principles of political parties in the United States. To accomplish these objects the measures they have from time to time advocated have been brought into view; opinions they have advanced partially discussed, and the means that have been employed to make them effectual considered. The general subject, considering the interest and the importance attached to it in several aspects, has been but little canvassed, and is at best but imperfectly understood. The most important points put in issue, so far as they have arisen out of principles advanced or pretenses set up by either party prior to the election of 1800, have, it is believed, been fully, and, it is hoped, fairly presented. Here, on account of the unforeseen extent to which the subject has grown upon my hands, it would be my wish to dismiss it and to resume the thread of my Memoirs at the point at which I left it for the consideration of what I then regarded as incidental matter. To do so has been my intention through the last two hundred pages of my manuscript. But, at the stage to which I had looked as the termination of this branch of my labors, I am met by the reflection that in all I have said in respect to the doctrines, theories, and acts of parties, I have not even touched upon a great principle subsequently advanced for the action of the Federal Government, which, for reasons that will be seen and appreciated as we proceed, is of equal interest, and which, from considerations of recent application, is perhaps of more urgent importance than those upon which my attention has been bestowed. I allude to the effort which has been made to secure to one of the three great departments of the Government--the judicial--a superior and controlling power over its departmental associates, the executive and the legislative, all of which were designed by the Constitution to be coördinate, and, in respect to their relative powers, independent of each other. This pretension, though successfully discouraged at its origin, instead of sharing the fate of other constitutional heresies which sprang from the same source, has been revived with increased earnestness at critical periods, and at this time seems to threaten to exert a dangerous influence upon our political system. I have not noticed it before, because it was not set up until after the great struggle of 1800, and was thus separated from the questions which originated under the previous administration, most of which have been agitated to the present day, and because the period of its most imposing if not its first introduction into the political arena, unconnected with judicial proceedings,--that of President Jackson's veto against the passage of the Bank Bill,--occurred at a later period than that to which my account of political movements has been brought in my Memoirs.