As to the second point, it is impossible, by any argument or comment, to make it clearer than it is in itself. If there are such things as political axioms, the propriety of the Judicial power of a Government being coextensive with its Legislative, may be ranked among the number. The mere necessity of uniformity in the interpretation of the National laws, decides the question. Thirteen independent Courts of final jurisdiction over the same causes, arising upon the same laws, is a hydra in Government, from which nothing but contradiction and confusion can proceed.
Still less need be said in regard to the third point. Controversies between the Nation and its members or citizens, can only be properly referred to the National tribunals. Any other plan would be contrary to reason, to precedent, and to decorum.
The fourth point rests on this plain proposition, that the peace of the whole ought not to be left at the disposal of a part. The Union will undoubtedly be answerable to foreign powers for the conduct of its members. And the responsibility for an injury ought ever to be accompanied with the faculty of preventing it. As the denial or perversion of justice by the sentences of Courts, as well as in any other manner, is with reason classed among the just causes of war, it will follow, that the Fœderal Judiciary ought to have cognizance of all causes in which the citizens of other countries are concerned. This is not less essential to the preservation of the public faith, than to the security of the public tranquillity. A distinction may perhaps be imagined between cases arising upon treaties and the laws of nations and those which may stand merely on the footing of the municipal law. The former kind may be supposed proper for the Fœderal jurisdiction, the latter for that of the States. But it is at least problematical, whether an unjust sentence against a foreigner, where the subject of
