James Madison, in conjunction with Hamilton and Jay, in the numbers of the "Federalist," avows doctrines at war with this assumption of power in the Supreme Court. Thomas Jefferson, whose anxious patriotism was always alive to such subjects, and the political thoughts and studies of whose life were exclusively directed toward the protection of human rights through the instrumentality of free governments, opposed the doctrine vehemently, from first to last, and long after his retirement from public life, its passions and excitements, expressed himself in regard to it, on different occasions, in terms which follow. In 1815, in answer to the direct question put to him by a citizen of Georgia, he says:--"The second question, whether the judges are invested with exclusive authority to decide on the constitutionality of a law, has been heretofore a subject of consideration with me in the exercise of official duties. Certainly there is not a word in the Constitution which has given that power to them more than to the executive or legislative branches. Questions of property, of character, and of crime, being ascribed to the judges, through a definite course of legal proceeding,--laws, involving such questions, belong, of course, to them, and as they decide on them ultimately and without appeal, they, of course, decide _for themselves_. The constitutional validity of the law, or laws, again prescribing executive action, and to be administered by that branch ultimately and without appeal, the executive must decide for _themselves_, also, whether, under the Constitution, they are valid or not. So, also, as to laws governing the proceedings of the legislature; that body must judge _for itself_ the constitutionality of the law, and, equally, without appeal or control from its coördinate branches. And, in general, that branch which is to act ultimately, and without appeal, on any law, is the rightful expositor of the validity of the law, uncontrolled by the opinions of the other coördinate authorities." Again, so late as 1819, in a very interesting letter to Judge Spencer Roane, he says:--"My construction of the Constitution is very different from that you quote. It is that each department is truly independent of the others, and has an equal right to decide for itself what is the meaning of the Constitution in the cases submitted to its action; and especially, where it is to act ultimately and without appeal.... But you intimate a wish that my opinion should be known on this subject. No, dear Sir, I withdraw from all contests of opinion and resign every thing cheerfully to the generation now in place. They are wiser than we were, and their successors will be wiser than they, from the progressive advance of science. Tranquillity is the _summum bonum_ of age. I wish, therefore, to offend no man's opinion, nor to draw disquieting animadversions on my own. While duty required it, I met opposition with a firm and fearless step.