Both branches of the jurisdiction in these respects taken collectively, their results would not have been any thing like the power and influence and dignity which the Supreme Court of the United States derived from a single clause in the Judiciary Act of 1789, extending its appellate jurisdiction to the decisions of the State courts. The assemblage of cases for its application arrayed in that pregnant section, aided by the power derived from the construction given to the provision in the Federal Constitution prohibiting the passage of State laws violating the obligation of contracts--a provision always understood to have been introduced to prevent State obstructions to the collection of British debts, but now made to override the insolvent systems of the States, etc.,--gave the Supreme Court the supervision and control of the most valuable and hitherto the most cherished portion of the legislation and jurisprudence of the State governments. To secure this control was an object always near to Hamilton's heart. He attempted it openly in the Convention by his proposition for a negative upon State laws, etc. But in the hands of the court the control of the Federal Government over State legislation was equally effective, less likely to become obnoxious, and infinitely more secure; for if it had been placed, as he proposed, in the hands of the President, or of the President and Senate, or of Congress, it would still have been deposited in places accessible to the people, and at short and stated periods liable to be overruled by their will. But here it was in the only sanctuary in a republican government he deemed safe against popular inroads, and it was this provision _in the Judiciary Act_ which, more than all other things combined, made that department--which Montesquieu described as next to nothing in point of power, and upon the weakness of which Hamilton, before the passage of that act, descanted so freely--the most formidable and overshadowing branch of the government. The section bears the impress of his mind, and if not the work of his pen was beyond all doubt the result of his suggestions. Hamilton was not a member then, but we have seen that he made speeches in Congress through another, and I have not a doubt that, if the truth could now be known, it would appear that but few things were said or done on one side, in either branch of that body, of which he did not make a part in some form. Is it not passing strange that not a word is to be found in the Constitution to authorize Congress to confer such a jurisdiction upon the Supreme Court? Can it be for a moment supposed that such a power,--one so nearly akin to the proposition to place a veto in the hands of the Federal Government upon State legislation, one so eminently calculated to alarm the State-rights party,--would have been allowed, if it had been by anybody believed to be in the Constitution, to pass the State Conventions _sub silentio_?