will of the legislature declared in its statutes, stands in opposition to that of the people declared in the constitution, the judges ought to be governed by the latter, rather than the former. They ought to regulate their decisions by the fundamental laws, rather than by those which are not fundamental.” Jefferson apprehended encroachments by the Supreme Court, and declared that it had the power “to lay all things at its feet.” This alarm proved to be unfounded, and Mr. Jefferson himself, when the court in his judgment passed beyond the undoubted limits of its authority, did not hesitate to disregard the opinion of Chief-Justice Marshall, that it was the duty of his secretary to deliver a judicial commission which had been signed by his predecessor.[40] To many the Supreme Court in its inception seemed the weakest of the three departments; and it is doubtful if either Madison or Hamilton, both of whom expected the court to exercise the power of declaring laws unconstitutional, appreciated the mighty force passing into the hands of the hitherto subordinate power. The judiciary act of 1789 provided for a review in the Supreme Court of cases where the validity of a State statute or of any exercise of State authority should be drawn in question on the ground of repugnancy to the constitution, treaties, or laws of the United States, and the decision should be in favor of the validity.[41] Though in the line of natural development, and previous to the convention of 1787, asserted in New Jersey, Virginia, Massachusetts, New York, and North Carolina, the exercise of the full measure of this power in constitutional law presents an interesting study in the history of the national and State governments. A resolution was introduced in Congress in 1824 (Letcher, of Kentucky), so to amend the judiciary act as to require more than a majority of the judges to declare a State law void; and in 1830 an attempt was made to repeal that section of the act, but it failed by a vote of one hundred and thirty-seven to fifty-one. The doctrine of a co-ordinate judiciary met with violent opposition in some of the States, notably in Ohio in 1805, and in Kentucky in 1824 (“old court and new court” struggle), and in the State of Pennsylvania as late as 1843. This power to disregard the acts of the legislature and declare them null and void because contrary to the supreme law of the constitution has been a source of endless wonder to foreign students of the American system. In speaking of it, Sir Henry Maine says, “There is no exact precedent for it, either in the ancient or in the modern world.”[42] It is a new and original idea in political science, introduced and applied exclusively in the courts of the United States. The elevation of the judiciary to equal rank with the executive and the legislature was the outgrowth of a natural process of political evolution through a written constitution and a federal system of government. Kent, in referring to the case of Marbury vs.