Here, within two years after the adoption of the Constitution,
was a State Legislature protesting against the usurpation of power
under it. It was the first of many futile protests.
Hamilton, sending a copy of the Virginia resolutions to Jay, saw "the
first symptom of a spirit which must either be killed or will kill the
Constitution of the United States." He thought the collective weight
of the different parts of the Government ought to be employed in
exploding the principles they contained. Theoretically, the Legislature
of Virginia may have been correct in its attitude; but no theoretical
protest could avail against the worthy sentiment that the entire
national credit must be restored, backed by the practical demands of
the creditors, and by the desires of those who saw an opportunity of
investment or speculation.
Those people, both officials and citizens, who took the stand in these
formative days of political parties that the Federal Government should
be restricted in its workings to the powers expressly given to it in
the Constitution, a "strict construction" of that document, as they
called it, were generally country bred, of the borrowing rather than
the lending class, depending upon individual initiative rather than
mass action, strangers to the paternal aspects and fostering hand of
government, and inexperienced in the intricacies of finance.
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