"I consider all the encroachments made on that (Consti-
tution) heretofore as nothing, as mere retail stuflf
compared with the wholesale doctrine, that there is a
common law in force in the United States of which and
of all the cases within its provisions, tlieir Courts have
cognizance. It is complete consolidation. Ellsworth
and Iredell have openly recognized it. Washington
has squinted at it, and I have no doubt it has been de-
cided to cram it down our throats.*' Writing to Ed-
mund Randolph also, Jeflferson said that: **0f all the
doctrines which have ever been broached by the Federal
Government, the novel one, of the conmion law being
in force and cognizable as an existing law in their Courts,
is to me the most formidable. All their other assump-
tions of un-given powers have been in the detail. The
Bank Law, the Treaty Doctrine, the Sedition Act, the
Alien Act, the undertaking to change the State laws
of evidence by certain parts of the Stamp Act, etc.,
have been solitary, unconsequential, timid things, in
comparison with the audacious, barefaced and sweeping
pretension to a system of law for the United States,
without the adoption of their Legislature, and so infi-
nitely beyond their power to adopt. If this assumption
be yielded to, the State Courts may be shut up.*' *
While the alarm of the Anti-Federalists over this
wide jurisdiction claimed by the United States Courts
was grave, their indignation was even deeper over the
administration of the detested Sedition Law by the
^To Gideon Granger* Jefferson wrote, Aug. 18, 1800: "And I do verily believe that if the principle were to prevail of a common law being in force in the United States (which principle possesses the general government at once of all the powers of the State Governments and reduces us to a single consolidated government) it would become the most corrupt government on the earth." Jefferson, IX. See also letters of Aug. 18, 19, 1799, Oct. 29, 1799, June 12, 1817. James Monroe, writing to Breckenridge, expressed the hope that any opposition by the Judges to the sovereignty of the people such as "the application of the principles of the English common law to our Constitution", would be good cause for impeachment. Breokmridge Papers MSS, letter to Breckenridge, Jan. 18, 1802, infra, 229.
