We cannot now form a complete estimate of the extent to which the character of our institutions, in view of that step and of measures of which it might have been the opening wedge, hinged upon the character and disposition of those whom the people had then just raised to power. The respect and reverence with which the minds of a vast majority of our citizens were impressed for their courts of justice, the confidence which had been reposed in their purity as indicated by the tenure of their offices, and the imposing character of those who filled them at the moment combined to deter feeble and irresolute minds from resistance to the authority of the Supreme Court of the United States, however unfavorable their estimation of the course upon which it was entering. No unauthorized exercise of power would, for any considerable period, have passed unchecked by a people like ours, then yet fresh from a national struggle for principles better defined and defended with more steadiness and by purer means than any the world had ever witnessed in revolutionary contests. But the class of men, in any community where deference for the ermine is habitual, who will meet danger at the very threshold, and oppose resistance to judicial usurpation at the instant of its appearance, is not likely to be numerous. Hostile to every assumption of power over the conduct or mind of man not originally authorized by man himself, however plausible the pretences upon which it might be exerted, an opposition deeply seated in his nature, matured and confirmed by study and by all the observation and experience of his eventful career, Jefferson was not the man to submit to encroachments upon institutions he had sworn to protect, and more especially upon that branch of them which a great and free people had confided to his particular care. It was no matter to a man of his knowledge of the world and approved moral courage from what quarter such encroachments proceeded, they were certain to meet with a firm and spirited opposition on his part.