Page:The Supreme Court in United States History vol 1.djvu/243

Rh this untoward spirit, bent on the gratification of its sinister purposes, should put to hazard our dearest interests, by exciting passions no less subversive of Union than destruc- tive of the great charter of our rights, we cannot feel too grateful in the assurance that the American people, whose interests are the same, will continue in every vicissitude to cling to the Union of the States as the rock of their happiness. Subsequent history proved that the Federalist fears of the prostration of the Judiciary and the consolida- tion of the Government were futile. But while the Federalist attacks upon the Act and upon the intentions of its sponsors proved of little consequence, there were attacks made by some of the Republicans, during the progress of the debate, which were destined to aflFect very seriously the future history of the Court. For it was in this debate that for the first time since the initiation of the new Government under the Con- stitution there occurred a serious challenge of the power of the Judiciary to pass upon the constitu- tionality of Acts of Congress.^ Hitherto, as has been pointed out, it had been the Anti-Federalists (or Republicans) who had sustained this power as a desirable curb on Congressional aggression and en- croachment on the rights of the States, and they had been loud in their complaints at the failure of the Court to hold the Alien and Sedition Laws unconsti- tutional. Now, however, in 1802, in order to counter- act the Federalist argument that the Repeal Bill was unconstitutional and would be so held by the Court, Republican Senators and Representatives from Vir- ginia, Kentucky, Georgia, and North Carolina (and from these States alone) advanced the proposition that the Court did not possess the power.* "To make the.

' See speeches of Stevens Thomson Mason, John Breckenridge and James Jack* aoii,mUieSe Date» Jan. 8, ld, Feb. S^ 1803; John Bandaipb d Virgmia and Tbooias