Page:The Supreme Court in United States History vol 1.djvu/34

8 Judiciary powers; they seem to be left as a bound- less ocean that has broken over the chart of the Supreme Lawgiver." Edmimd Randolph had objected to the lack of limitation or definition of the judicial power. George Mason had said that "the Judiciary of the United States is so constructed and extended as to absorb and destroy the Judiciaries of the several States." Richard Henry Lee had inveighed at length against the powers of the Federal Judiciary. Luther Martin and Patrick Henry had expressed grave fears of the system. On the other hand, the provisions of the Constitution respecting the judicial system had been eloquently supported by Edmimd Pendleton, John Marshall, John Jay, James Wilson, James Iredell, James Madison and by Alexander Hamilton, both in speeches at the State Conventions and in pamphlets written in defense of the proposed new Government.

It was with full comprehension of the diflSculty of its task and of the opposition which it must overcome, that the First Congress imdertook as one of its earliest tasks the completion of the judicial system ; and on April 7, 1789, in the Senate, Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut, William Paterson of New Jersey, William Maday of Pennsylvania, Caleb Strong of Massachusetts, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, William Few of Georgia and James Wingate of New Hampshire were appointed a committee to bring in a bill for organizing the Judiciary of the United States. The draft of the proposed bill was made by Ellsworth, who had been a prominent member of the Federal Convention.^ The Chairman of the Committee, Lee, who as an Anti-Federalist


 * T. Lowther wrote to James Iredell: "Enclosed is a bill (or the establishment of the Judicial system, it was prindpally drawn up by a Mr. Ellsworth of Connecticut, but it is supposed considerable alterations will be made before it passes both Houses. There are not many lawyers in the Senate, but they compose three-fourths of the Representatives." IredeU, II, 260, letter of July 1, 1780.