firm expectation that an extraordinary rise in land
value was about to take place. That craze for speculation in land which
had possessed those with any idle capital afflicted every landowner in
or near the new city.

When Mrs. Adams finally reached the city, after a difficult journey
through the forest between Baltimore and Washington, she met with
anything but a cheering welcome. The President's house was not yet
finished: the plaster was not even dry on the walls. It was built on a
grand and superb scale, but the thrifty New England spirit of the
President's wife was appalled at the prospect of having to employ thirty
servants to keep the apartments in order and to tend the fires which had
everywhere to be kept up to drive away the ague. The ordinary
conveniences were wanting. For lack of a yard, Mrs. Adams made a
drying-room out of the great unfinished audience room. And the only
society which she might enjoy was in Georgetown, two miles away. "We
have, indeed," she wrote, "come into _a new country_." But with true
pioneer spirit, she added, "It is a beautiful spot, capable of every
improvement, and, the more I view it, the more I am delighted with it."

The gloom which enveloped the Federalists after the elections of the
year deepened as they straggled into the new capital in November. They
approached their labors as men who would save what they could of a
falling world. For some time there had been an urgent demand for the
reorganization of the federal judiciary. The justices of the Supreme
Court objected to circuit duty and urged the erection of a circuit court
with a permanent bench of judges. Such a reform was inevitable, it was
said; therefore let the Federalists find what consolation they might
from the possession of these new judgeships. Patriotism, too, suggested
the wisdom of filling the judiciary with men who would uphold the
established order. "In the future administration of our country,"
President Adams wrote to Jay, "the firmest security we can have against
the effects of visionary schemes or fluctuating theories will be in a
solid judiciary."

The Judiciary Act of February 13, 1801, which embodied these aims, added
five new districts to those which had been established in 1789, and
grouped the twenty-two districts into six circuits. The amount of
patronage which thus fell into the President's hands was very
considerable, though it was grossly exaggerated by Republicans. The
partisan press picture