By holding that the
mandamus must issue from the District and not the Supreme Court, the
case might have been dismissed briefly. The Republicans thought the
long disquisition on the powers of the court and its relation to the
executive branch a kind of defiance and entirely unwarranted. It was
the beginning of a long list of similar offences by Marshall.
Meanwhile the new Administration had continued its reform activities,
"to restore the government to its principles, amend its defects, reform
abuses, and introduce order and economy in the administration," as
Monroe outlined it to President Jefferson. The latter summed up the
reform work of the Republicans at the end of the first session:
"They have reduced the army and navy to what is barely necessary. They
are disarming executive patronage and preponderances by putting down
one-half the offices of the United States which are no longer necessary.
These economies have enabled them to suppress all the internal taxes and
still to make such provision for the payment of their public debt as to
discharge that in eighteen years. They are opening the doors of
hospitality to fugitives from the oppressions of other countries; and we
have suppressed all those public forms and ceremonies which tended to
familiarize the public eye to the harbingers of another form of
government.
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