e been his well-known
partiality for British institutions that caused the House to mistrust
the phrase which made it the duty of the Secretary "to digest and report
plans for the improvement and management of the revenue, and the support
of the public credit." "If we authorize him to prepare and report
plans," argued Tucker, of Virginia, voicing that fear of executive
authority which was then instinctive, "it will create an interference of
the executive with the legislative powers; it will abridge the
particular privilege of this House.... How can business originate in
this House, if we have it reported to us by the Minister of Finance?"
The House was not minded to make Alexander Hamilton a Chancellor of the
Exchequer. The bill was amended to read, "digest and prepare."
Subsequently the House showed unmistakably its determination to assume
direction of the national revenues and expenditures.

One of the first concerns of Congress was to give substance to the
colorless statement of the Constitution that there should be one supreme
court and such inferior courts as Congress should ordain and establish.
On the day following its organization, while the House was grappling
with the question of revenue, the Senate appointed a committee to bring
in a bill to establish the federal courts. The chairman of this
committee was Oliver Ellsworth, of Connecticut, who had sat on the bench
of the Court of Appeals under the Confederation and who had been an
influential member of the Federal Convention. The bill reported by the
committee was substantially his work. It provided for a supreme court
bench of six judges--a chief justice and five associates; for thirteen
district courts, each with a single judge; and for three circuit courts,
each of which was to consist of two justices of the Supreme Court and a
district judge. Lengthy provisions in the act carefully delimited the
jurisdiction of these courts, and laid down the modes of procedure and
practice in them. Of great importance was the twenty-fifth section,
which provided for taking cases on appeal to the Supreme Court from the
lower federal and state courts. The words of the act, by a fair
implication, would seem to confer upon the Supreme Court the power to
review the decision of a state court holding an act of the United States
unconstitutional. It would seem to follow logically that the Supreme
Court might do also directly what it might do indirectly--declare an act
of Congress