used embrace, and seem intended to embrace, the whole power, is apparent from the face of the Constitution, and was, besides, demonstrated by Hamilton in the first number of his "Pacificus." Madison said in the Virginia Convention, that it would be in the power of Congress to vest the inferior Federal jurisdiction in the State courts; and Pendleton and Mason intimated an expectation that this would be done; whilst Grayson said that State judges formed the principal defense of the rights of the States, and that Congress should not take from them their "only defensive armor ;" and Patrick Henry, who in the days of his political orthodoxy could snuff danger to State rights in almost every breeze, apprehended that "by construction the Supreme Court would completely annihilate the State courts. Had Congress invested the inferior Federal jurisdiction in the State courts, and had they accepted the extension, the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court to those courts in the cases enumerated would have been in all respects proper. But the Congress, a majority of whose members were Hamiltonian Federalists, were not, for reasons it is now unnecessary to consider, willing to admit the State courts to a participation in the administration of the judicial power reserved to the Federal Government, and proceeded at once to ordain and establish inferior courts of their own. These consisting of district courts, circuit courts and the one Supreme Court named in the Constitution, completed the organization of the Federal judiciary. Their respective jurisdictions were wisely separated and accurately defined. A small portion of that which was original was, for well-understood reasons, vested in the Supreme Court. The residue was separated and distributed among the inferior tribunals, subject to an appellate jurisdiction and supervisory power in the Supreme Court over all their proceedings. The system

thus arranged was not only complete but harmonious in all its parts. The courts were clothed with the entire judicial power of the Government; were only authorized to act upon one class of subjects - those which appertained to the judicial power of the United States. The judges received their appointments from the same source, and were responsible for their conduct to one head. Looking only to judicial objects this might well be regarded as the judicial system designed by the framers of the Constitution.

If ours had been a consolidated government these provisions would have embraced the whole subject, and satisfied the wants of the whole country. But in the actual state of things in that regard they were inadequate to the accomplishment of that end. Instead of one consolidated government ours was a confederacy of sovereign States, presided over by a Federal Government which they had themselves created and clothed with such powers as they deemed necessary to its efficiency and usefulness, and as would be most likely to conduce to the freedom, prosperity, and happiness of all.

With no other bond of union during the first years of the Revolutionary contest than common danger, and obliged to struggle with a defective Federal organization, these States succeeded in constructing for themselves republican constitutions, and in several instances, before the establishment of our Independence, sustained the brunt of that struggle and came out of it with institutions fully adequate to all the purposes of good government, including systems of jurisprudence and competent tribunals for their administration. The administrators of these institutions, driven to desperation by great public and private distress, the direct results of the oppression of the mother country,may in a few cases, and for a short period, have forgotten that interests liable to sequestration in war were inviolable in peace,

and failed to interpose with sufficient alacrity a judicial barrier against the attempts of some of the State legislatures to throw obstructions in the way of the collection of British debts. But those were limited and temporary aberrations, which would soon have yielded to proper treatment on the part of the Federal Government. At the period of the passage of the Judiciary Act the judges who presided in most of the State courts might be compared without discredit to those who filled the benches of the Federal courts, and this relative equality has ever since been well maintained. Such has certainly been the case in the State of New York. The name of Chancellor Livingston, who was then at the head of our equity system, would lose nothing from a comparison with Chief Justice Jay, when the latter was placed at the head of the Federal courts. Our equity and common-law courts have since been graced by Chancellor Lausing, Chief Justices Lewis and Kent, and Judges Brockholst Livingston, Smith Thompson, Ambrose Spencer, Wm. W. Van Ness, and others, all men of great talents and acquirements. Nor have the courts of our sister States been wanting in this regard. The names of Theophilus Parsons of Massachusetts, Tappan Reeves of Connecticut, and Pendleton, Wythe and Roane of Virginia, with numerous others, might be added to the list. It would not be an easy matter to match these by selections from the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States, highly distinguished as its incumbents have been.

The State courts had, for nearly fifteen years before the passage of the Judiciary Act of 1789, performed, as well in peace as in war, most of the duties which the new Constitution devolved upon the Federal judiciary. The Federal Government was authorized, by the articles of Confederation, to establish inferior courts for the trial of

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piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and courts for the trial of Admiralty cases, yet these powers had been carried into effect through the State judiciaries. But all at once the State courts were deemed unworthy of trust. Whence this change? Had the State courts degenerated? No such thing; they were constantly improving, the supineness of a few in respect to the interests of the mother country, blamable as it certainly was, to the contrary notwithstanding. No, the State courts had not become worse, but the implacable opponents of those whose judicial power they represented had become stronger! The old Anti-Federal party, the inflexible and powerful champion for the rights of the States, had been overthrownforever demolished, at least in that array. The State ernments were for a season helpless. Those who were always hostile to their power who, in the language of Hamilton after the Convention, and in the act of foreshadowing the effects of such an administration as actually succeeded, were desirous of a "triumph altogether over the State governments, and to reduce them to an entire subordination " -were all powerful in Congress. Nor was their power confined to Congress or to any particular branch of the Government. The result of the question of ratification in the different State Conventions, and the idea present to every mind that material prosperity, public and private, would be much promoted by that result, produced a great change in public sentiment adverse to the authority and influence of the State governments. It was made fashionable to deride them. The organization of the Federal judiciary was the very first opportunity that was afforded after the adoption of the Constitution to make the States feel the power which their inveterate opponents had acquired by that event, and most unsparingly was that power exercised.

The few members of that Congress who had not been entirely carried away by this current, and had the boldness to stand by the States and their tribunals among whom that firm and incorruptible republican, James Jackson of Georgia, was by far the most effective-were willing that a right to supervise and reverse the decisions of the State tribunals in all matters of Federal jurisdiction, should be conferred on the Supreme Court of the United States, provided only that the State courts were intrusted, as they had hitherto been, with the administration of the inferior Federal jurisdiction in lieu of the inferior Federal courts which the Bill proposed to establish. This they contended would make the system an harmonious and consistent one, and preserve the respect and consideration which was due to the State tribunals.

The proposition was literally scouted in debate and rejected by a vote of two to one in the House, and in the Senate by a still larger majority. The Bill was so constructed as to clothe the Supreme Court and the inferior courts it established with all the judicial power allowed to the Federal Government by the Constitution, with unimportant reservations which did not diminish their authority and do not require to be noticed. Ample means were thus provided for its practical extension to every party entitled to its protection, and if those who regulated the action of Congress had not been influenced by any views other than such as related to the administration of justice, its legisla tion would have terminated there. But that body went further. A clause was added to the Judiciary Bill professing to give to the Supreme Court appellate jurisdiction over the final judgments and decrees of the highest courts of law and equity of a State, whoever might be the parties to the suit, or whatever might have been the objects for which it had been brought, provided only that the relative