Page:The Supreme Court in United States History vol 1.djvu/91

Rh and State jurisdictions ; the disposition which both may possess to encroach; and above all, the rancorous jealousy that began with the infancy of the Govern- ment and grows with its growth, arising from an opposition, or supposed opposition of interests — produce in my mind serious doubts whether the machine will not soon have some of its wheels so disordered as to be incapable of regular progress,"^ Such pessimism was soon seen to be unwarranted; and the new Federal Judiciary soon obtained the confidence of the people. Nothing shows this clearer »than the singular fact (hitherto unnoted by legal historians) that within two years from the beginning of the new Government, the United States Circuit Courts exercised, without any apparent contemporary criticism, that power of holding State statutes invalid, which later so frequently aroused State hostility. The first instance of this assertion of the supremacy of the Federal Government occurred as early as May, 1791. It presented, as the newspapers stated, "the great and much litigated question whether obligations in favor of real British subjects or those who had joined the armies of Great Britain during the war, should draw

I Hamilton Pap&rs M88, letter of William Heth of Richmond, June 28, 1792 ; Memcirt of TheopkUtu Parsons (1859), by Theophilus Parsons, letter of Jan. 16, 1792. Hflmiilton wrote to John Adams, Aug. 16, 1792: "Your confirmation of the good disposition of New England is a source of satisfaction. I have a letter from a wdl informed friend in Virginia who says, all the persons I converse with admowledge that the people are prosperous and happy, and yet more of them, including even the friends of the Government, appear to be alarmed at a supposed ^stem of policy tending to subvert the Republican government of this country — were ever men more ingenious to torment themselves with phantoms?"

The pessimism was not entirely due to politic^ causes. Financial troubles were rife. John Brown, a Kentucky Representative, wrote from Philadelphia, Aprfl 20, 1792 : "FaUures are daily taking place in this city and New York — the latter place in a state of distress aiid confumon beyond description; confidence between man and man is totally lost, business suspected, and mobs and insurrec- tions hourly apprehended. . . . Tis impossible to say when the calamity will stop or what the effects of it will be. Certain it is that nothing like it was ever before in this country ." Harry Innes Papers MSS.