The result of such a scrutiny could not have failed to satisfy sensible men that the President elect, the new Senate, and the new House of Representatives,--who in their respective positions had frustrated the effort of the late President to subject his successor to a dependence during his entire official term, for the performance of a highly important part of his official duties in the Federal District, upon a magistracy not of his own selection, and had thus far also defeated an attempt, springing from the same spirit and upon an enlarged scale, to saddle the country with an uncalled-for and enormous addition to the existing judicial corps, clothed with extensive authority, and to all substantial purposes irresponsible to the people,--were also invested by the Constitution with ample power not only to defeat a new effort to carry into effect before the appropriate tribunal the hostile views indicated by the proceedings in the case of Marbury _v._ Madison, but to reduce the power and dignity of the Supreme Court itself to a standard far inferior to those it then possessed. The Federal Constitution declares, that "all the appellate jurisdiction conferred on the Supreme Court shall in all cases be subject to such exceptions and under such regulations as Congress shall make." Thus by the words of the Constitution the whole subject is placed under the revision of Congress and is made subject to its action. If any attempt had been made to set up anew the importance that had been constructively attached, in the case of Marbury _v._ Madison, to the words "or persons holding office" in the Judiciary Act, that body would instantly have relieved that act and its authors from the preposterous aspersions which had been cast upon them. But there was matter in the background of far greater moment. The _original_ jurisdiction of the Supreme Court was limited to cases affecting ambassadors and those in which a State was a party. This branch of its jurisdiction has, it is well known, occupied but little of the time of the court, and has been withal very unimportant either in its character or consequences. Deprived of the influence and _éclat_ it has derived from the exercise of its appellate jurisdiction, the court would have stood as a pageant in the federal system of but little account for good or evil. With the addition of that obtained from appeals and writs of error from the inferior tribunals of the United States, its position before the country would still have been one of little consideration.