ruling authority of this court. I must not be understood, sir, as complaining of the exercise of this jurisdiction by the Supreme Court, or to pass upon the correctness of their decisions. The authority has been given to them, and this is not the place to question its exercise. But this I will say—that, if the question of conferring it was now presented for the first time, I should unhesitatingly say, that the people of the states might with safety be left to their own legislatures, and the protection of their own courts.
Add to the immense powers of which I have spoken those of expounding treaties, so far, at least, as they bear upon individuals, citizens or aliens,—of deciding controversies between the states of the confederacy themselves, and between the citizens of the different states; and the justice of the remark will not be questioned, that there is no known judicial power so transcendently omnipotent as that of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Let us now consider the influence which this ought to have upon our legislation. It would not be in accordance with the common course of nature, to expect that such mighty powers can long continue to be exercised, without accumulating a weight of prejudice that may, one day, become dangerous to an institution which all admit to be of inestimable value. It is true, as has elsewhere been said, with apparent triumph, that the states whose legislative acts have successively fallen under the interdiction of the court have excited little or no sympathy on the part of their sister states, and, after struggling with the giant strength of the court, have submitted to their fate. But, sir, it is feared that this will not always be the case. Those who are most ardent in their devotion to this branch of the government, knowing the feelings produced by these decisions in those states affected by them,—sensible that those feelings are rather smothered, than abandoned upon conviction of their injustice,—fear that, by adding another and another state to the ranks of those who think they have reason to complain, an accumulation of prejudice may be produced that will threaten, if not endanger, the safety of the institution.
April 11, 1826.
Mr. WOODBURY. The proposed bill not only alters the system for local purposes, by requiring the attendance of an additional judge at the Circuit Court in regions of country not so populous as those where the judges of the Supreme Court now attend, but it alters the system for general purposes, by enlarging the Supreme Court itself one half its whole original number; by leaving its quorum so that contradictory decisions may constantly be made without any change in the court itself; and by increasing it to as great an extent as a majority of its present quorum,—so that new results may possibly be produced in all its grand supervising powers over each state, and over the whole confederation.
It is thus that a principle lurks in the last effect of this great alteration, which, in the opinion of many, should carry anxiety and dismay into every heart; because, among other objections, it places at the mercy of legislative breath, in any moment of overheated excitement, all that is valuable in any constitutional judgment on its records. We have only, as in this case, to add a number to any court sufficient to balance a majority of its quorum, and, by a union of feeling with the appointing power, secure judges of certain desirable opinions; and any political or constitutional decision can, in the next case which arises, be overturned. Every security
