THE FIRST COURT AND THE CIRCUITS
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reversed or altered in a single iota. A book of reports by Counsellor Dallas is now in the press here and will be abroad in about two months, from which some judgment may be formed in the other States of our decisions. I will only add that I am by habit and by inclination the man of business. Your Excellency will be pleased to excuse this particular self-detail when it shall be considered that, if you think fit to advance me to this station, my reputation will become in a degree your interest, and my pretensions should be known. … For this freedom, I must trust to your great goodness. It is (tho I am not three years younger than Your Excellency) my first essay of the kind. If you shall approve of this overture, I promise you to execute the trust with assiduity and fidelity and according to the best of my abilities, the only return that I can make, and that, I know, you wish for. There is but one thing more I have to say and that is, if you make a single enemy or loose a single friend by gratifying my desire, I most sincerely beg you never spend a thought on the subject.
It was fortunate for the successful working of the new Federal Government that McKean's wishes were not gratified; for he soon became a radical State-Rights advocate and proclaimed from the State Bench that the Constitution was "a league or treaty made by the individual States as one party and all the States as another"; and that in case of a difference of opinion as to the construction of the Constitution "there was no provision in the Constitution that the Judges of the Supreme Court of the United States shall control and be conclusive." This was the doctrine upheld by Calhoun in later years, but far removed from the constitutional views of Jay and Marshall. It is probable that Washington, however, decided against McKean more by reason of his defects of temper than of opinion.[1]
- ↑ See opinion of McKean, C. J., in Respublica v. Cobbett (1798), 3 Dallas, 467. Owen Wister in The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, Green Bag (1891), III, graphically portrayed McKean "with perpetually assailed and never tarnished honor;
