"There is no provision in the Constitution of the United States ... which clothes the judiciary with the power to declare an act of the legislature generally null and void on account of its conceived repugnance to the Constitution or on any other account."[69] It has been claimed that in this respect our general government is even less democratic than the framers of the Constitution intended. This view, however, is not borne out by the facts. The assertion of this far-reaching power by our national judiciary, though not expressly authorized by the Constitution, was nevertheless in harmony with the general spirit and intention of its framers. That the members of the Constitutional Convention declined to confer this power in unequivocal language does not justify the inference that they did not wish and intend that it should be exercised by the courts. Gouverneur Morris, who claims to have written the Constitution with his own hand, tells us that in framing that part of it relating to the judiciary, "it became necessary to select phrases," which, expressing his own views, "would not alarm others."[70] There was, it is true, some objection in the Convention to the doctrine that the Supreme Court should have authority to decide upon the constitutionality of Congressional legislation. Mercer and Dickinson believed that this power should not be exercised by the judiciary.[71] But it was contended on the other hand by Wilson, Luther Martin, Gerry, Mason, and Madison that this power could be exercised without any provision expressly conferring it.[72] In view of the fact that it was maintained by leading members of the Convention that this power could and should be exercised by the Federal judiciary, it is but reasonable to suppose that a majority of that body wished to confer it; for had this not been the case, the Constitution as submitted would have contained a provision expressly withholding it. But however much the Convention may have desired to give to the judiciary the power to veto legislation, it could not have been done by an express provision of the Constitution. Any such attempt would have disclosed altogether too clearly the undemocratic reactionary character of the proposed government and thus have prevented its adoption. This end was attained indirectly through the general system of checks which the Constitution imposed upon the other branches of the government and upon the people, since it made it possible for the judiciary to assume and exercise this power.