The following quotation is from North Carolina's James Iredell.
"The only real security of liberty, in any country, is the jealousy and circumspection of the people themselves. Let them be watchful over their rulers. Should they find a combination against their liberties, and all other methods appear insufficient to preserve them, they have, thank God, an ultimate remedy. That power which created the government can destroy it. Should the government, on trial, be found to want amendments, those amendments can be made in a regular method, in a mode prescribed by the Constitution itself [...]. We have [this] watchfulness of the people, which I hope will never be found wanting." - Elliot, 4:130
His is an interesting story. From the www.northcarolinahistory.org web site, I found this information about him:
"When the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 proposed the federal Constitution, Iredell was its foremost advocate in North Carolina. He inaugurated the first public movement in the state in favor of the document and wrote extensively in hopes of creating a new government. In particular, he responded to Virginia’s George Mason’s eleven objections to the Constitution and gained national attention in doing so. A Norfolk printer, for example, shelved other political tracts in 1788 to publish Iredell’s “Answers.” The essay preceded 49 of the 85 essays that constitute the Federalist Papers and appears to have been widely distributed.
"At the first North Carolina ratification convention, Iredell was the floor leader for the Federalist forces. After the 1788 convention refused to ratify the federal Constitution, he then wielded his influential and skillful pen to fell Anti-federalist arguments and champion the Federalist cause and the benefits of the Constitution. When North Carolina finally ratified the document at its second convention (1789), Iredell was widely considered the intellectual general of the Federalists’ victory.
"For Iredell’s ratification efforts, President George Washington rewarded the North Carolinian with an appointment to the original U.S. Supreme Court, where he served for almost a decade. (Even before ratification, his acquaintances had speculated that his future included a federal judgeship.) During his tenure on the Supreme Court, Iredell closely dealt with Presidents Washington and John Adams and offered vigorous and partisan support for their administrations. He also chronicled important events and personalities.
"In his near decade on the Court, Iredell wrote opinions in only a few reported cases. In Hylton v. United States (1796), the Court, with Iredell’s concurrence, upheld the constitutionality of a federal tax on carriages, thereby implicitly proclaiming the Supreme Court’s equivalent authority to pronounce congressional acts unconstitutional. In Chisholm v. Georgia (1793), Iredell as the lone dissenter supported the result that ultimately prevailed by means of the adoption of the Eleventh Amendment, which precludes suits by citizens of one state against another state. The case still receives both juristic and scholarly attention. In Alden v. Maine (1999), a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court, for instance, frequently cited Iredell’s Chisholm dissent and considered it to be according with the original understanding of the Constitution, thus, as the dissenting opinion observed, rendering the Eleventh Amendment superfluous.
"Like other justices of his era, Iredell spent most of his time traveling the federal circuits and doing the work of the circuit courts. This work, with the related travel and other hardships, took its toll on an already fragile physical constitution. Worn down by his occupation’s demands, Iredell died on October 20, 1799, at the age of forty-eight. He is buried in the Johnston family cemetery in Edenton, North Carolina."
Sources:
Donna Kelly and Lang Baradell, The Papers of James Iredell, Vol. III, 1784-1789 (Raleigh, 2003); Don Higginbothom, ed., The Papers of James Iredell 2 Vols. (Raleigh, 1976); Griffith J. McRee, ed., Life and Correspondence of James Iredell, 2 Vols. (New York, 1857-58); Willis P. Whichard, Justice James Iredell (Durham, 2000).
By Willis P. Whichard, Former Associate Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court (1986-1998) and former Dean of Campbell University School of Law (1999-2006)
Mason started out a strong supporter of the developing Constitution, but gradually changed his mind and ended up an even larger opponent.
In your Hylton v. United States, where judicial review is exercised, I also found evidence of the power in a few of the day's debates at the Convention. Thus, I don't think Marbury v. Madison was all that big a deal.
Have you thought of posting and commenting on Mason's Eleven Objections? It sounds as if it was a foil to Madison's “Vices of the Political System of the United States” in early 1787.