ritain, where law
and politics are sundered. Nor has the dissatisfaction engendered by
these causes been concealed. On the contrary, it has found expression
through a series of famous popular leaders from Thomas Jefferson to
Theodore Roosevelt.

The Constitution could hardly have been adopted or the government
organized but for the personal influence of Washington, whose power lay
in his genius for dealing with men. He lost no time or strength in
speculation, but, taking the Constitution as the best implement at hand,
he went to the work of administration by including the representatives
of the antagonistic extremes in his Cabinet. He might as well have
expected fire and water to mingle as Jefferson and Hamilton to
harmonize. Probably he had no delusions on that head when he chose them
for his ministers, and he accomplished his object. He paralyzed
opposition until the new mechanism began to operate pretty regularly,
but he had not an hour to spare. Soon the French Revolution heated
passions so hot that long before Washington's successor was elected the
United States was rent by faction.

The question which underlay all other questions, down to the Civil War,
was the determination of the seat of sovereignty. Hamilton and the
Federalists held it to be axiomatic that, if the federal government were
to be more than a shadow, it must interpret the meaning of the
instrument which created it, and, if so, that it must signify its
decisions through the courts. Only in this way, they argued, could
written limitations on legislative power be made effective. Only in this
way could statutes which contravened the Constitution be set aside.[7]

Jefferson was abroad when Hamilton wrote _The Federalist_, but his views
have since been so universally accepted as embodying the opposition to
Hamilton, that they may be conveniently taken as if they had been
published while the Constitution was under discussion. Substantially
the same arguments were advanced by others during the actual debate, if
not quite so lucidly or connectedly then, as afterward by him.

Very well, said Jefferson, in answer to Hamilton, admitting, for the
moment, that the central government shall define its own powers, and
that the courts shall be the organ through which the exposition shall be
made, both of which propositions I vehemently deny, you have this
result: The judges who will be called upon to pass upon the validity of
national and state legislation will