Unfortunately, instead of proceeding as courts usually do, the opinion began by passing upon all the points which the denial of its own jurisdiction took from it the right to treat. It was elaborately laid down, in about twenty pages, out of the total twenty-seven which comprise the opinion, that Madison had no right to detain the commissions; and that mandamus would be the proper remedy in any court which had jurisdiction to grant it. And thus, as the court, by its decision in this case, was sharply reminding the legislature of its limitations, so by its _dicta_, and in this irregular method, it intimated to the President, also, that his department was not exempt from judicial control. In this way two birds were neatly reached with the same stone. Marshall made a very noticeable remark in his opinion, seeming to point to the chief executive himself, and not merely to his secretary, when he said, “It is not the office of the person to whom the writ is directed, but the nature of the thing to be done, by which the propriety or impropriety of issuing the mandamus is to be determined;”--a hint that, on an appropriate occasion, the judiciary might issue orders personally to him. This remark got illustration a few years later, in 1807, when the Chief Justice, at the trial of Aaron Burr in Richmond, ordered a subpœna to the same President, Thomas Jefferson, directing him to bring thither certain documents. It was a strange conception of the relations of the different departments of the government to each other, to imagine that a subpœna, that is to say an order accompanied with a threat of punishment, was a legitimate judicial mode of communicating with the chief executive. On Jefferson’s part, this order was received with the utmost discontent; and justly. He had a serious apprehension of a purpose to arrest him by force, and was prepared to protect himself.[33] Meantime he sent to the United States Attorney at Richmond the papers called for, but explained, with dignity, that while the executive was willing to testify in Washington, it could not allow itself to be “withdrawn from its station by any coördinate authority.”