Page:The Supreme Court in United States History vol 1.djvu/118

92 equity was instituted by a land company against the State of Virginia.^ These suits aroused great alarm, particidarly among those who had opposed the adoption of the Constitution and who still feared lest the inde- j)endence of the State Governments should be lost in the increasing growth and consolidation of the powers of the Federal Government in all its branches. A Committee r A of the Legislature of Virginia, in Jime, 1792, protested ( <^r-cT ^ against the illegaUty of the suit against that State, saying that "the jurisdiction of the Court does not and cannot extend to this case . . . and that the State cannot be made a defendant in the said Court at the suit of any individual or individuals*', and it resolved "that the Executive be requested to pursue such measures as may seem most conducive to the interest, honor and dignity of the Commonwealth/'* How extravagant were the apprehensions of the result of the maintenance of such suits, a letter from Philadelphia appearing in many newspapers of the day well illustrates : " The writ was served upon the Governor (of Maryland), the Supreme Executive of the State and upon the Attorney General. Two months were given for the State to plead. Should this action be maintained, one great National question will be settled — that is, that the

^The case was Indiana Company y, Vifffiniot not reported in DaUas Reports but commented on in Patrick Henry (1900)» by William Wirt Henry, II, 468, 5S8 ; George Mason, Life, Correspondence and Speeches (1912), by Kate Mason Rowland* n, 842-845. See also letter from William R. Davie of North Carolina to Judge Iredell, June 12, 1793 : "In your letter of 14th of Fdbruary, you mention a bill in equity being filed by the Indiana Company to recover damages, etc. This is surely of the first impression and has excited my curiosity very much. Pray what rules are you guided by in the Supreme Court; for this is* not the first novelty your practice there has produced."

See Observations upon the Government cf the United States cf America (1791), by James Sullivan, Attorney-General of the State of Massachusetts and a reply thereto. An Enquiry into the Constitutional Authority of the Supreme Federal Court over the Several States in Their Political Character (1792), by a Citisen of South Carolina (David Ramsay); Dunlap's American Daily Advertiser, Feb. 8, 1792; Gazette of the United States, Feb. 20, 1790, Feb. 4, 1792; Connecticut Courant, March 7, 1791 ; New York Journal, March 24, 1791 ; Federal OazetU, Feb. 25, 1790.