Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER CXLIX.—­TO JUDGE ROANE, September 6,1819

TO JUDGE ROANE.

Poplar Forest, September 6,1819.

Dear Sir,

I had read in the Enquirer, and with great approbation, the pieces signed Hampden, and have read them again with redoubled approbation in the copies you have been so kind as to send me.  I subscribe to every tittle of them.  They contain the true principles of the revolution of 1800, for that was as real a revolution in the principles of our government as that of 1776 was in its form; not effected indeed by the sword, as that, but by the rational and peaceable instrument of reform, the suffrage of the people.  The nation declared its will by dismissing functionaries of one principle, and electing those of another, in the two branches, executive and legislative, submitted to their election.  Over the judiciary department, the constitution had deprived them of their control.  That, therefore, has continued the reprobated system:  and although new matter has been occasionally incorporated into the old, yet the leaven of the old mass seems to assimilate to itself the new; and after twenty years’ confirmation of the federated system by the voice of the nation, declared through the medium of elections, we find the judiciary, on every occasion, still driving us into consolidation.

In denying the right they usurp of exclusively explaining the constitution, I go further than you do, if I understand rightly your quotation from the Federalist, of an opinion that ’the judiciary is the last resort in relation to the other departments of the government, but not in relation to the rights of the parties to the compact under which the judiciary is derived.’  If this opinion be sound, then indeed is our constitution a complete felo de se.  For intending to establish three departments, co-ordinate and independent, that they might check and balance one another, it has given, according to this opinion, to one of them alone, the right to prescribe rules for the government of the others, and to that one too, which is unelected by, and independent of the nation.  For experience has already shown that the impeachment it has provided is not even a scare-crow; that such opinions as the one you combat, sent cautiously out, as you observe also, by detachment, not belonging to the case often, but sought for out of it, as if to rally the public opinion beforehand to their views, and to indicate the line they are to walk in, have been so quietly passed over as never to have excited animadversion, even in a speech of any one of the body entrusted with impeachment.  The constitution, on this hypothesis, is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please.  It should be remembered, as an axiom of eternal truth in politics, that whatever power in any government is independent, is absolute also; in theory