If this statement is not in all respects true, then I do injustice to the Chief Justice and his associates, and the inferences I draw from it are to be turned not only from them but against myself. But if the matter, as described by the Chief Justice himself, stood in every respect as I have here narrated, then I insist--and I cannot, I am very sure, deceive myself in believing that every ingenuous mind, whatever may be its political bias, will concur with me in the position--that the course pursued by the Chief Justice and sanctioned by his associates was exceptionable in the highest degree. With the Constitution before them, it was entirely clear at the first introduction of the matter that they had no original jurisdiction of the subject, and could not, under any state of facts, comply with the application of the relator. The course should therefore have been, and doubtless under ordinary circumstances would have been, to direct the relator's counsel to confine their argument to that preliminary point and at its close, with the want of jurisdiction as apparent to the court as it proved to be, to have discharged the rule. But if the court had for any reason thought it desirable to hear the whole case, the same course should have been pursued when it came to their decision, and the merits of the case should have been left unacted upon. No end could be answered by an unauthorized decision on the merits, other than to show to the inferior tribunals what the Supreme Court would do if the case was brought before it on appeal; and that was the design attributed to the Chief Justice by Mr. Jefferson and severely reprobated. Such is not the way in which it is admissible for superior tribunals to treat such subjects; but if it could in any case be deemed excusable, it could never be so on an _ex parte_ hearing. For myself I cannot, with equal and great respect for the principal actors, help regarding the proceedings, from the granting of the rule to show cause to the final decision, as exhibiting a culpable want of courtesy on the part of one of the three great departments of the Federal Government toward a coördinate member, at least equal in dignity and power, greatly aggravated by the political relations in which the President and the Chief Justice stood toward each other, and by the temper of the times in which they occurred.