Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v3.djvu/555

.] into those considerations which the honorable gentleman added. I hope some other gentleman will undertake to answer.

Mr. HENRY. Mr. Chairman, I have already expressed painful sensations at the surrender of our great rights, and I am again driven to the mournful recollection. The purse is gone; the sword is gone; and here is the only thing of any importance that is to remain with us. As I think this is a more fatal defect than any we have yet considered, forgive me if I attempt to refute the observations made by the honorable member in the chair, and last up. It appears to me that the powers in the section before you are either impracticable, or, if reducible to practice, dangerous in the extreme.

The honorable gentleman began in a manner which surprised me. It was observed that our state judges might be contented to be federal judges and state judges also. If we are to be deprived of that class of men, and if they are to combine against us with the general government, we are gone.

I consider the Virginia judiciary as one of the best barriers against strides of power—against that power which, we are told by the honorable gentleman, has threatened the destruction of liberty. Pardon me for expressing my extreme regret that it is in their power to take away that barrier. Gentlemen will not say that any danger can be expected from the state legislatures. So small are the barriers against the encroachments and usurpations of Congress, that, when I see this last barrier—the independency of the judges—impaired, I am persuaded I see the prostration of all our rights. In what a situation will your judges be, when they are sworn to preserve the Constitution of the state and of the general government! If there be a concurrent dispute between them, which will prevail? They cannot serve two masters struggling for the same object. The laws of Congress being paramount to those of the states, and to their constitutions also, whenever they come in competition, the judges must decide in favor of the former. This, instead of relieving or aiding me, deprives me of my only comfort—the independency of the judges. The judiciary are the sole protection against a tyrannical execution of the laws. But if by this system we lose our judiciary, and they cannot help us, we must sit down quietly, and be oppressed.