Marshall, who had won a slow, certain victory over States-rights, and had thrust powers on the national government which, if Jefferson were right, must end in corrupting and destroying it. Whose was the fault? Was it true that the Constitution deprived the people of their control over the Judiciary? Even if it were so, did not Jefferson for years control with autocratic power the strength necessary for altering the Constitution? When at last, four years before his death, the impending certainty of defeat forced itself on Jefferson's mind, he made what amounted to a confession of his oversight, and withdrew the apology which threw blame on the Constitution: "Before the canker is become inveterate,—before its venom has reached so much of the body politic as to get beyond control,—remedy should be applied. Let the future appointments of judges be for four or six years, and renewable by the President and Senate."[1] If this could be done, as his words implied, in 1822 under the Presidency of James Monroe, when J. Q. Adams, Calhoun, Clay, and Andrew Jackson were each in his own way laboring to consolidate a nation still hot with the enthusiasm of foreign war, why was it not attempted in 1801, when a word from Jefferson would have decided the action of his party?
If this were all, some explanation of the President's silence might be offered; for in 1801-1802 his majority in the Senate was small, and only a political leader as bold as Andrew Jackson would have dared
- ↑ Jefferson to W. T. Barry, July 2, 1822; Works, vii. 256.
