existing differences in our judiciary and the encroachments of the federal tribunals." Two branches of the Bank of the United States have been established in the State without due consideration of the interests of the people, who "justly alarmed for the fights of the State and the purity of their republican institutions" want these banks removed or taxed. "But the Judges of the federal Court, assuming to themselves the prerogative of restricting the taxing power of this State" forbade this tax, and the State judiciary, although they thought the Bank of the United States unconstitutional and the tax constitutional, have yielded to the Supreme Court of the United States. "Since this surrender of the acknowledged rights of the State by those who were made their special guardians, the branches of the United States Bank, exempt from the burdens imposed on the wealth of our own citizens, have proceeded to purchase up the real property of the country and fill it with tenantry." [It was never ascertained what facts he meant to refer to by this statement.] "These institutions for a series of years have carried on a systematic attack upon the legislative power of the State for the double purpose of curtailing the sphere of its exercise and rendering themselves wholly independent of its authority." He refers to the relief laws as "statutes whose principles have been sanctioned by all authorities, State and federal, from the date of the Constitution down to the establishment of these institutions" [the branches of the Bank of the United States]. They and their friends have attacked these laws. The State Court of Appeals has declared them unconstitutional, and the federal Supreme Court has decided that if they were constitutional, they were not binding on the federal court. "And the federal Judges for the Kentucky district have actually made their code, and put it into operation, by which our citizens are imprisoned in direct violation of our laws, and their property seized and sold in modes not provided in their statute book." This is "nothing short of despotism." The federal courts have made the Bank of the United States independent of State laws and tribunals. "The wrongs suffered by this State from the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States declaring our occupants' law to be unconstitutional have not been redressed." "It is my firm belief that in the insecurity now felt by numberless cultivators of our soil may be found the chief cause of that extensive emigration which is now thinning the population of some of the finest sections of our State." "The doctrine of our late Court of Appeals that an opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States on subjects involving the rights of the State is binding and conclusive upon the State authorities is believed to be not only erroneous but fatal to the sovereignty of the States." The Supreme Court is a part of the general government whose encroachments are complained of. The States can get no more justice, therefore, than an individual could, if judged by his oppressors. The new court of the State has banished "the doctrine of ready submission to the unconstitutional decrees of the Supreme Court." What Kentucky wants is another reformation of the federal judiciary, such as occurred at Jefferson's accession. The relief laws
