Again Jefferson denounced the consolidating
tendencies of the judiciary, "which, working like gravity without
any intermission, is to press us at last into one consolidated
mass." Virginia entered her solemn protest against the decision, and
her House of Delegates reaffirmed the argument of Virginia's
counsel, and asserted that neither the government of the state nor
of the United States could press the other from its sphere. In
effect, Virginia's position would have given the state a veto on the
will of the federal government, by the protection which her courts
could have extended to the individual subject to her jurisdiction
under the interpretation placed by the state upon the Constitution.
[Footnote: Randolph-Macon College, John P. Branch Hist. Papers, II.,
28; Jefferson, Writings (Ford's ed.), IX., 184; cf. ibid., X.
passim; Madison, Writings, III., 217-224; Ames, State Docs. on
Federal Relations, No. 3. p. 15; Niles' Register, XX., 118; 6
Wheaton 385.] The leading expositor of Virginia reaction in this
period was John Taylor of Caroline, the mover of the resolutions of
1798.
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