not unworthy of notice that Col. Taylor regarded the controul of the Fedl. Judiciary over the State laws as more objectionable than a Legislative negative on them. See New Views &c. p. 18. contra see Mr. Jefferson-vol. 2. p. 163)
M—s asks “If the States possessed no sovereignty, how could J.M. “demonstrate that the States retained a residuary sovereignty”, and calls for a solution of the problem. He will himself solve it, by answering the question, which is most to be believed, that J M. should have been guilty of such an absurdity, or that Mr. Yates should have erred in ascribing it to him.
Mr. Y. himself says “that J.M. expressed as much attachment to the rights of the States as to the trial by Jury.”
By associating J.M. with Mr. Hamilton who entertained peculiar opinions, M—s would fain infer that J.M. concurred with those opinions. The inference would have been as good, if he had made Mr. H. concur in all the opinions of J.M. That they agreed to a certain extent, as the body of the Convention manifestly did, in the expediency of an energetic Govt. adequate to the exigencies of the Union, is true. But when M—s adds “that Mr. H. & Mr. M. advocated a system, not only independent of the States, but which would have reduced them to the meanest municipalities”, he failed to consult the recorded differences of opinion between the two individuals
CCCXCII. James Madison to John Tyler.[1]
This letter it appears was not sent to Mr. Tyler—tho’ it seems a fair vindication of the parties assailed.
In your speech of February 6th. 1833 you say “He (Edmund Randolph) proposed (in the Federal Convention of 1787) a Supreme National Government, with a Supreme Executive, a Supreme Legislature, and a Supreme Judiciary, and a power in Congress to veto State laws. Mr. Madison I believe, Sir, was also an advocate of this plan of govt. If I run into error on this point, I can easily be put right. The design of this plan, it is obvious, was to render the States nothing more than the provinces of a great government to rear upon the ruins of the old Confederacy a consolidated Government, one and indivisible.”
I readily do you the justice to believe that it was far from your intention to do injustice to the Virginia Deputies to the Convention of 1787. But it is not the less certain that it has been done to all of them, and particularly to Mr Edmond Randolph.
- ↑ Documentary History of the Constitution, V, 379–390.
