neither been made under Federal authority nor by judges in any sense amenable to it for the discharge of their official duties, was an idea never broached in the Federal Convention, or in the slightest degree alluded to in the Constitution it adopted. Disputes in respect to the boundaries of power between the Federal and State governments were foreseen, and the means for acquisition and defense sought after by the special friends of each. Both looked to their respective legislatures as the theatres of encroachment, and a very serious effort was made to obtain authority for the Federal Government to confer important State appointments, and to interpose a negative upon State laws. These concessions were sternly refused by the friends of the State authorities, and if they had been granted the new Constitution would never have been ratified. No efforts have been made by Congress through direct legislation to restrain the State legislatures from encroaching on the power of the Federal Government, and it would not be an easy matter--the Constitution being silent on the subject--to establish a right on the part of the judicial power to interfere in that direction which would not also devolve on the Federal legislature, the power more particularly interested in the matter. The clause referred to in the Federal Judiciary Act looks in an especial manner to the legislative acts of each government, and seeks to establish the supremacy in the Federal system. It is possible that the framers of the Constitution intended to give Congress a right to confer such a power on the Supreme Court, but it is certainly most extraordinary if that was so that the subject should have remained unnoticed in the Convention, and have been so entirely excluded from the face of the Constitution. Be that as it may, it is well known that the authority given to the court by the statute for a long time lay in its hands a dormant power. Those who conferred it had too much their own way in the administration of the Federal Government, during the first twelve years of its existence, to require extraneous aid to push its power to the extremes they desired. It was when they had been expelled from its executive and legislative departments by the uprising of the people that their attention was more earnestly turned to that of the judiciary as one which--as well from the peculiarity of its constitution as from the views of those who were in possession of it--was best qualified for the protection of rights which they, no doubt honestly, believed in danger. Hence the movement in the case of Marbury _v._ Madison.