y pillars carved to represent bundles of cornstalks with
ears half opened at the top, Marshall held court for more than a third
of a century and elaborated his great principles of constitutional law.
This room, untouched by British vandalism in the invasion of 1814,
was christened by the witty malignity of John Randolph, "the cave of
Trophonius." *

* It should, however, be noted in the interest of accuracy, that
the Court does not seem to have occupied its basement chamber during the
years 1814 to 1818, while the Capitol was under repair.

It was in the Senate Chamber in this same north wing that Marshall
administered the oath of office to Jefferson just one month after he
himself had taken office. There have been in American history few more
dramatic moments, few more significant, than this occasion when
these two men confronted each other. They detested each other with a
detestation rooted in the most essential differences of character and
outlook. As good fortune arranged it, however, each came to occupy
precisely that political station in which he could do his best work
and from which he could best correct the bias of the other. Marshall's
nationalism rescued American democracy from the vaguer horizons to which
Jefferson's cosmopolitanism beckoned, and gave to it a secure abode
with plenty of elbowroom. Jefferson's emphasis on the right of the
contemporary majority to shape its own institutions prevented Marshall's
constitutionalism from developing a privileged aristocracy. Marshall
was finely loyal to principles accepted from others; Jefferson was
speculative, experimental; the personalities of these two men did much
to conserve essential values in the American Republic.

As Jefferson turned from his oath-taking to deliver his inaugural,
Marshall must have listened with attentive ears for some hint of the
attitude which the new Administration proposed to take with regard
to the Federal Judiciary and especially with regard to the recent act
increasing its numbers; but if so, he got nothing for his pains. The new
President seemed particularly bent upon dispelling any idea that there
was to be a political proscription. Let us, said he, "unite with one
heart and one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony
and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary
things.... Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle.
We have called by different names brethren of th