The promises of the mild sway of reason and justice, installed and enforced by that great statesman, with no other limitation than the removal from office of factious incumbents whose violence was calculated to obstruct the successful action of the principles he was elected to sustain, and the revocation of judicial trusts created in the last moments of a power already condemned by the people, and which were designed to counteract their will--a sway which bore upon its wings the repeal of odious taxes, the reduction of superfluous expense, the payment of the public debt, and the avoidance of all unnecessary public burdens, with a zealous concern for the rights of the States as well as for those of individuals,--made impressions upon the public mind in favor of the principles upon which it was founded, which now, after the lapse of more than half a century, are as fixed and as powerful as they were then; but at the time were scouted by Federal leaders and presses as false pretences designed to deceive the people and to clear the way for destructive changes. Under such impressions the first object of solicitude on the part of the Federalists was to strengthen the existing organization of the judiciary by increasing the number of its tribunals and those employed in its administration, and thus to place it before the country in a more imposing attitude; and the second to enlarge its powers beyond the bounds intended to be assigned to them by the Constitution. To accomplish the first object they resorted to a stretch of power which now, when the feelings it excited have long since died away and the actors concerned in it have without exception descended to their tombs, will not, I feel confident, find a justification in the breast of a single upright man, whatever disposition he may entertain to excuse it on account of the violence of public feeling prevalent at the time. After the fiat of the people had pronounced the absolute expulsion from office of the Federal executive within a brief and fixed period, and virtually that of the Federal party from power, they availed themselves of the remnant of authority unavoidably left to them by the forms of the Constitution to establish new courts, embracing within the jurisdiction assigned to them all the States of the Confederacy, and the district which had been set apart for the seat of the Federal Government; appointed three judges for each court, to hold their offices nominally during good behavior, virtually for life, with liberal salaries,--making in all twenty-one judges, besides clerks, etc.,--all designed to be placed beyond the power of the government that had been selected by the people to succeed them. Thus, much was done toward the accomplishment of their first object. The enlargement of the judicial power of the department was to be effected by a different process.