Page:The Supreme Court in United States History vol 1.djvu/531

 three weeks after the decision in the Dartmouth College Case in 1819, and within five days after that in the Sturges Case, arguments were begun in the third great case of the Term, McCulloch v. Maryland. Only two weeks later, the opinion was rendered which was destined to become a fundament of American constitutional law, but which at the time of its delivery made the Court a storm center of criticism.

From the beginning of the framing of the Constitution, the line of cleavage of the political parties had been based on their divergence of view as to the limits of Federal as compared with State powers. At the out- set of the Federal Convention, Edmund Randolph had submitted a resolution, which was agreed to by the Conmiittee of the Whole, "that the National Legislature ought to be empowered to enjoy the Legislative rights vested in Congress by the Confederation, and moreover to legislate in all cases to which the separate States are incomi>etent, or in which the harmony of the United States may be interrupted by the exercise of individual legislation.'' Pinckney's draft advocated specific powers for Congress, and a general clause, " to make all laws for carrying the foregoing powers into execution."^

1 Documentary History of the Constition (1900), I, 262, 816. Alexander Hamilton'a plan had been for a Legislature "with power to pass all laws which they shall judge necessary to the common defence and general welfare of the Union." Ibid., h S27. n, 788. Pelatiah Webster, in his Disseration in 1788, had previously suggested that the powers of Congress "shall be restricted to such matters only