During the first decade of the nineteenth century, a most important formative period of American history, James A. Bayard was the recognized leader of the Federalists in the Senate.  They had lost the presidential election of 1800, and their party had been so completely disorganized by the defeat that they never recovered from it, nor won, as a party, another victory.  Defeat, however, did not prevent them from making a stubborn fight for principle—­from filing, as it were, an appeal from the first to the third quarter of the century.  In this James A. Bayard was their special advocate and representative.  The pleas he made in his celebrated speech on the Judiciary, delivered in the House of Representatives, and in similar speeches in the Senate, defined as they had not been defined before, the views of that body of Conservatives whose refusal to accept the defeat of 1800 as anything more than an ephemeral incident, led to the far-reaching results achieved by other parties which their ideas brought into existence.  It was said of Bayard, as their representative and leader, that “he was distinguished for the depth of his knowledge, the solidity of his reasoning, and the perspicuity of his illustration.”  He was called “the Goliath of Federalism,” and “the high priest of the constitution,” by the opponents of “Jacobinism.” as Federalists often termed Jeffersonian democracy.  Mr. Bayard was born in Philadelphia, July 28th, 1767.  His father, Dr. James A. Bayard, claimed his descent from the celebrated “Chevalier” Bayard,—­a fact which greatly influenced the son as it has others of the family who have succeeded him in public life.  Thus when offered the French mission James A. Bayard declined it, fearing that it might involve the suspicion of a bargain.  “My ambitions,” he wrote in a letter to a relative, “shall never be gratified at the expense of a suspicion.  I shall never lose sight of the motto of the great original of our name.”

After preparing for the bar.  Bayard settled in Delaware and in 1796 that State elected him to the lower house of Congress, promoting him in 1804 to the Senate and re-electing him at the expiration of his first term.  In 1813, President Madison appointed him one of the Commissioners to conclude the treaty of peace with England.

After the success of that mission, he was appointed minister to Russia, but declined saying that he had “no wish to serve the administration except when his services were necessary for the public good.”  He died in August 1815.

His speeches show a strong and comprehensive grasp of facts, a power to present them in logical sequence, and an apprehension of principle which is not often seen in public speeches.  They were addressed, however, only to the few who will take the pains to do severe and connected thinking and they are never likely to become extensively popular.

THE FEDERAL JUDICIARY