There is nothing to indicate that the people generally appreciated the significance of this feature of the Constitution at the time of its ratification. Outside of the Constitutional Convention the judicial negative appears to have been seldom mentioned. Hamilton, the most courageous and outspoken opponent of popular government, claimed, it is true, that it would be the duty of the Federal courts "to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void."[73] In a few of the state conventions held to ratify the Constitution the power was referred to. Oliver Ellsworth in the Connecticut convention,[74] James Wilson in the Pennsylvania convention,[75] and John Marshall in the Virginia convention,[76] expressed the opinion that the Constitution gave the Supreme Court the power to declare acts of Congress null and void. There is no reason for believing, however, that this was the generally accepted notion at that time. For even Marshall himself a few years later, as attorney in the case of Ware v. Hylton, which involved the validity of an act of the legislature of Virginia, appears to have defended the opposite view before the United States Supreme Court. In that case he said: "The legislative authority of any country can only be restrained by its own municipal constitution: this is a principle that springs from the very nature of society; and the judicial authority can have no right to question the validity of a law, unless such a jurisdiction is expressly given by the Constitution."[77] The mere fact that he presented this argument shows that the view which he afterwards held as Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court was not then generally accepted. His contention on this occasion that the judiciary can not annul an act of the legislature unless the power be expressly conferred may have been at variance with the opinion which he really held, but it certainly was not opposed to what he regarded as the generally accepted view; otherwise, his argument would have been based on an admittedly false theory of judicial powers. The conclusion is irresistible that at this time the right of the judiciary to declare a legislative act null and void was not generally recognized. The framers of the Constitution clearly understood that this power was not implied in the sense that it was then a recognized function of the judiciary, or one necessarily contained in the Constitution as they interpreted it to the people to secure its adoption. It was by controlling the Executive and the Senate, and through these the appointment of Supreme judges, that they expected to incorporate this power in the Constitution and make it a permanent feature of our political system.[78]