I should consider every thing calculated to give, in practice, an unrestrained course to appeals, as a source of public and private inconvenience.
I am not sure, but that it will be found highly expedient and useful, to divide the United States into four, or five, or half a dozen districts; and to institute a Fœderal Court in each district, in lieu of one in every State. The Judges of these Courts, with the aid of the State Judges, may hold circuits for the trial of causes in the several parts of the respective districts. Justice through them may be administered with ease and despatch; and appeals may be safely circumscribed within a narrow compass. This plan appears to me at present the most eligible of any that could be adopted; and in order to it, it is necessary that the power of constituting inferior Courts should exist in the full extent in which it is to be found in the proposed Constitution.
These reasons seem sufficient to satisfy a candid mind, that the want of such a power would have been a great defect in the plan. Let us now examine, in what manner the Judicial authority is to be distributed between the Supreme and the inferior Courts of the Union.
The Supreme Court is to be invested with original jurisdiction, only "in cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers, and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be a party." Public Ministers of every class are the immediate representatives of their Sovereigns. All questions in which they are concerned are so directly connected with the public peace, that, as well for the preservation of this, as out of respect to the sovereignties they represent, it is both expedient and proper, that such questions should be submitted in the first instance to the highest judicatory of the Nation. Though Consuls have not in strictness a diplomatic character, yet as they are
