And another thing. The Supreme Court had consisted heretofore of six judges. This same act provided that after the next vacancy there should be five judges only. Such arrangements as these, made by a party just going out of power, were not ill calculated to create, in the mind of the party coming in, the impression of an intention to keep control of the judiciary as long as possible. There were, to be sure, other reasons for some of this action. Several judges of the Supreme Court, as we have seen, had signified to Washington, in 1790, the opinion that the judiciary act of the previous year was unconstitutional in making the judges of that court judges also of the circuit court. The new statute corrected this fault. Yet, in regard to the time chosen for this very proper action, it was observable that ten years and more had been allowed to pass before the mischief so promptly pointed out by the early judges was corrected. Again, in approaching the case of Marbury _v._ Madison, it is to be observed that another matter relating to the Supreme Court had been dealt with. This act of February 13, 1801, provided that the two terms of the court, instead of being held, as hitherto, in February and August, should thereafter be held in June and December. Accordingly, the court sat in December, 1801. It adjourned, as it imagined, to June, 1802. But, on March 8 of that year, Congress, under the new administration, repealed the law of 1801, unseated all the new judges, and reinstated the old system, with its August and February terms. And then, a little later in the year, the August term of the court was abolished, leaving only one term a year, to begin on the first Monday in February. Thus, since the June term was abolished, and February had then passed, and there was no longer an August or a December term, the court found itself in effect adjourned by Congress from December, 1801, to February, 1803; and so it had no session during the whole of the year 1802. If the legislation of 1801 was calculated to show the importance attached by an outgoing political party to control over the judiciary, that of 1802 might indicate how entirely the incoming party agreed with them, and how well inclined they were to profit by their own opportunities.