His "Construction Construed", published in 1820, was
introduced by a preface in which the editor said: "The period is
indeed by no means an agreeable one. It borrows new gloom from the
apathy which seems to run over so many of our sister states. The
very sound of State Rights is scarcely ever heard among them; and by
many of their eminent politicians is only heard to be mocked at."
Taylor himself was led to write the book by the agitation over the
Missouri question and the case of McCulloch vs. Maryland. One of its
purposes was to insist that sovereignty was not divided between the
separate spheres of the state and federal government, but rested
rather in the people of the several states. Two years later, in his
"Tyranny Unmasked", Taylor developed the idea that the division of
the power of the people between the federal and state governments
would be nugatory if either Congress or the supreme court could
exclusively determine the boundaries of power between the states and
the general government.
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