for a moment, doubting their fitness and intelligence for such a purpose; indeed, the experience of nearly two hundred years would have falsified any other conclusion. Without examining the consequences of each act of encroachment by the general government, and its peculiar effect upon the rights of the States, it is enough, for the purpose of this investigation, to affirm that no obligation looking to the management of internal affairs can be just, salutary or equal, over so extended a field of diversified interest. And this was foreseen by the States; this hey attempted, though it seems in vain, to guard against, and notwithstanding, they formed their government with the greatest possible circumspection, as evinced in every movement of the work, instructed as they were, by the wisdom of every age, admonished by the principles they had avowed and just secured from the heavings of "Rebellion," and warned by the tyranny they had freshly strangled, yet it seems not to have been proof against the spirit of invasion or the lust of power. We cannot, however, but admire the courage which dares so soon to contemn the vengeance of a Revolution, or learn so little from the fate of that usurpation from which it sprung.

(No. 3.)

"Which ever of the departments in a state is upon the scramble for more power than its own, unless due care be taken, upon every new question that arises, they will be sure to decide in favour of themselves; talk much of inherent right; nourish up a dormant power; reserve privileges in petto to exert upon occasions, to serve ex pedients, and to urge upon necessities: they will make large demands and scanty concessions, ever coming off considerable gainers: thus, at length, the balance is broke, and tyranny let in."-Swift.

WHEN the public liberties of this country shall have been destroyed, there will then be thousands capable of discerning the causes productive of the mischief, and will readily perceive how it might have been prevented, who are at present perfectly unconscious of the secret means that are now certainly, and perhaps rapidly, tending to that event. If we could separate our interest, our passions and our sympathy from any state of facts where we are called on to act or decide, the result would undoubtedly approach nearer the truth and better accord with the sober dictates of discretion and judgment. In order to accomplish this, in reference to passing events, it would be well to throw ou selves ahead of the times, examine how the present affairs will figure upon the page of history, and what will be the verdict of posterity upon their inauspicious result. Let the facts I have already given in relation to the origin of the States, and the foundation of the Federal Government, be borne in recollection; and connected with these, let it be recorded that the first impoverished themselves to support the unsatisfying inclinations of the latter, yielded to it the "purse and the sword," and gave it the means of controling that power that controls the public mind, the PRESS. Let it be always remembered that this last, faithful to the cause of its master, never failed to exalt and eulogise the excellence of the general government,

while it decried and debased the state authorities, especially if they dared to assert their rights. Let the fact appear, that ten thousand officers, hanging on the extended breast of this gigantic government and drawing the rich and unstinted supplies of its bounty, were constantly chanting hosannas to the UNION, while they preached implicit duty and passive obedience from the States. Let it be known that the military, always imposing, either from its real merit, or affected consequence, and among weaker minds, from the very splendor of its apparel, never lost an occasion to trumpet the fame and power of the UNION, while the character of the States were noticed only to be despised. Forget not that pæan of slavish and sickly sentiment, excited on anniversary occasions, in honor of the UNION, and trilled forth by the parasites and menials of Federal power, either in the more studied and inflated dignity of orations, or belched out in drunken orgies at the festive boardwhile "paralized" arms and "palsied" brains and all that were de nounced against those who dared to question any one prerogative of the Union. In fine, let the fact, stubborn as it may appear, be faithfully given, that such was the magic of the word Union, and such the blind veneration required for it by the tyranny of opinion, in the political education of the people, that not a despot in Europe, nay in the world, had his subjects in greater dread, than were the freemen of this country, in uttering their honest sentiments on the character of this absorbing power that the Grand Sultan carried not more terror in his name than did this single term, Union: that the people dared not trust themselves in the liberty of speech concerning its rights and duties, for their artful rulers, on this subject, had successfully inspired a horror of all free investigation, and it will be instantly perceived, that all future ages must consider and so award, that the States were sunk into the most torpid indifference, and that by a folly so evincive of the want of energy and forecast, they were justly chargeable with their own self destruction.

I come now to consider the next charge in order, and which presents an encroachment, perhaps, less noticed by the people than any other, but infinitely more dangerous to their liberties than all the rest; I mean the secret, steady and unveering progress of the powers of the FEDE RAL COURT. I have said that the general government asserts the right to control the state judiciaries, and this is the arm of her power, which she has thrust into the very bowels of the states, to feed her unnatural cravings. There is a principle with which, from the frequency of its repetition, every one is familiar, that the very end and object of all good government, is the protection of life, liberty, reputation and property; and whenever either of these is assailed, its injury should be redressed with the least possible expense and delay. Where should the people of the States look, with most certainty, for these objects? I answer, that the Federal Constitution has pointed to the state courts, with exeeptions that are few and easily understood. "The Judicial power (of the United States) shall extend to all cases in law and equity, arising under this Constitution, the laws of the U. States, and treaties made or which shall be made under their authority; to all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers, and consuls; to all cases of admiralty and

maritime jurisdiction: to controversies to which the United States shall be a party; to controversies between two or more states; between a state and citizens of another state ; between citizens of different states; between citizens of the same state claiming lands under grants of different states, and between a state, or the citizens thereof, and foreign states, citizens or subjects."-(Federal Constitution 1st. art. 2d. sec.) Every one will perceive in this clause, two distinct classes of cases to which the judicial power is extended; the one affecting the interests of the government in its public character, and necessary to the fit discharge of its general functions; the other relating to controversies, between individuals, (or those who stand in their condition) specially and explicitly mentioned. The first class, it will be readily admitted, would have belonged to the judicial power without being enumerated; for this principle cannot well be denied. that the judicial power of every well constituted government must be co-extensive with the legislative, and must be capable of deciding every judicial question growing out of the constitution and laws," [6 Wheat. 384.] and therefore, on this branch of power, there will seldom, or perhaps never, occur any collision with the sates. The other class does not "grow out of the constitution and laws" of the Union; for if these could reach them, there would be no necessity for the distinction. Whence then can they arise but from the laws of the States ? The object was, not to give Congress the power to legislate on the subjects of controversy, but to give the Federal Courts the right to try them: not to alter the judiciary of the States for the benefit of the party's right, but merely to change the tribunals for the sake of the impartiality of the trial. The laws of the States were good, but their seats of justice were suspected. With that peculiar, and, in this case, over wrought sensitiveness, always connected with judicial matters, the motive of the Constitution was to secure to these particular parties an unbiassed hearing; and considering this concession was made by the States themselves, I grant, it was not much to the credit of their honesty, and was a sqeamish distrust of their own integrity: but for this express exception, however, in their favor, every oue will perceive that the Federal Courts could not have taken jurisdiction of these controversies. As these were cases in which the rights of property were to be determined between individuals and as the very nature of the Federal Government looked to nothing but the geueral interest of the Union, and left to the States every thing that relates to private rights and municipal regulation, congress could not prescribe the rules of property for this class of cases, without sweeping away from the States every particle of judicial power, and as I will shew hereafter, rendering their courts of justice worse than useless.

This was the construction placed upon the Constitution by Congress and the Federal Court itself, before the general government fell into the hands of political pretenders, who have asserted the doctrine of unlimited powers, that the government can control "all the labor of the nation"* and without such a power "it would be a body without a heart." Who believes that it was ever intended that the Union was to take care of the private concerns of all the good people of the U. States ? Mr. Adams.

* Mr. Rush.

that all their multiplied causes of litigation were to be carried to the Federal city for adjustment? "It is the genius and character of the whole government that its action is to be applied to all the external conce ns which affect the states generally: but not to those which are completely within a particular state, which do not affect other states, and with which it is not necessary to interfere for the purpose of execuling some of the general powers of the government."

We are to understand then, and i wish it to be always recollected, that whenever the subject matter of dispute between individuals is not connected with the external concerns of the nation," nor with those "internal concerns which affect the states generally, and are completely within a particular state," and which do not affect other states, it is entirely without the sphere of the legislative power of the Union. Let us now apply these principles to some of the late proceedings of the Federal Court. I pass over the celebrated Bank case of Maryland, the Lottery case of Virginia, the Seamen case of South Carolina, all essentially outraging the above doctrine, but falling without the scope of this investigation, I propose to call the public attention to some late decisions in the Supreme Court, brought up from the State of Kentucky; premising that Kentucky is an old Republican offender, and under the hope and expectation, by the old Federalists who are now in power, that all former political distinctions are done away and forgotten; she is now sorely suffering for her transgressions in the year 598, for her celebrated resolutions against the measures of the father of the present apostate Adams. It will be recollected that Kentucky's case is the case of every State. In the year '92, the first year after Kentucky became an independent state, she passed an act, precisely similar to one which existed in Virginia, her parent State, and to the principle of one long enforced in Massachusetts, of which the following is an extract, viz: "If the estate [of a debtor] cannot be sold for three fourths of the value thereof, in the opinion of [sworn] commissioners appointed to value property, it shall and may be lawful for the debtor to enter into bond and sufficient securities, to be approved by the valuers aforesaid, to pay the execution and costs, with lawful interest, within, three months. During the Embargo times, in 1808, the period of indulgence was extended to twelve months, These were called replevin laws, and, in principle, are like our own execution stay laws. Whatever may be their character, as related to pre-existing contracts, they were supposed to be perfectly unobjectionable on all contracts arising after the laws; and so the states, above mentioned, have considered for forty years, They believed, and it is a principle that will not be controverted, that the legislature of any country can declare, not only what species of property shall or shall not be liable to execution, such as exemp tions made in favour of militia, tradesmen, the poor, &c., but, that no future contract, after the passage of the law, shall be enforced at all in their Courts of Justice. (A specimen of this power is afforded in the cases of infancy, usury, gaming, and such like.)-Now, if this power is clear and uudisputed, what hinders a state from saying that the landed property of the country (the best and surest support of the poor,) shall not be taken in execution; and surely if they can withdraw it altogether from the lien

of a judgment, they can specify the terms upon which it may be sold in satisfaction of judgment. This, then, is one law, which quietly governed the good people of Kentucky for upwards of thirty years. But this is not all, in that spirit of good feeling and enlarged and liberal views of government, which seems to have been reserved for the free institutions of America to entertain, this same state has abolished imprisonment for debt; thus by these laws attempting to secure the best species of property which an individual can possess, together with his person, not on y from his own imprudence, but from the unfeeling grasp of avarice.Whether right or wrong, no one can question but the good people who have consented to live under such regulations. On the 13th of March, 993, the first of these laws was recognized as constitutional by Congress itself, in an act declaring that," where it is now required by the laws of any state, that goods taken in execution, shall be appraised previous to sale, the appraisers appointed under the authority of the state, shall appraise goods taken in execution, issued from the Federal Court." This was perfectly in consoance with the early construction made by Congress on that part of the Constitution which defined the powers of the Federal Court so far as related to parties in controversy who were pursuing private right, independent of any interest which the Union had in the contest. For, by the act of Congress, passed September 24th, '89, organizing the Federal Courts, the thirty-fourth section provides that "the LAWS of the several states, except where the Constitution, treaties, or statutes of the United States shall otherwise require or provide, shall be regarded as rules of decision in trials at common law, in the Courts of the United States, in cases where they apply." This clause clearly keeps up the distinction between the two classes of cases which I have previously noticed. Those matters that referred to the Constitution, treaties, and laws of the Union, or, in other words, that were connected with the "external concerns of the nation,' or those "internal concerns which affect the states generally," the "action of the whole government was to apply;" but in all the other cases mentioned in the Constitution, viz: those that related to "controversies" between individuals, the "laws" of the states were to form the "rules of decision." The seventeenth section of the same law bad empowered the Courts to "make and establish all necessary rules for orderly conducting business in said Court;" and by the Process Act, passed on the 29th of the same month, it was declared that "the modes of proceeding in the Circuit and District Courts, in suits at common law, shall be the same in each state respectively, as are used or allowed in the Supreme Court of the same." Every one will readily perceive that there are in these acts three distinct objects contemplated: the "rule of decision," which was to be the law of property, and of course, left to the states as being clearly a matter of internal private regulation: the "orderly conducting of business" essential to the due respect of the Court, the exercise of its judicial functions, and the despatch of its business, and therefore, left to the Court itself: the" mode of proceeding" relating to the commencement of the action, its progress and termination, and differing in different states, was left to each state respectively, to be pursued in the manner used or allowed in the Supreme Court of the same.-Great