Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v3.djvu/536

520 the evidence was either improperly admitted or rejected, they set aside the judgment, and send back the cause to be tried again by a jury in the same court. These are the only cases, in appeals from inferior courts of common law, where the superior court can even consider facts incidentally. I feel the danger, as much as any gentleman in this committee, of carrying a party to the federal court, to have a trial there But it appears to me that it will not be the case, if that be the practice which I have now stated; and that it is the practice must be admitted. The appeals may be limited to a certain sum. I make no doubt it will be so. You cannot prevent appeals without great inconveniences; but Congress can prevent that dreadful oppression which would enable many men to have a trial in the federal court, which is ruinous. There is a power which may be considered as a great security. The power of making what regulations and exceptions in appeals they may think proper may be so contrived as to render appeals, as to law and fact, proper, and perfectly inoffensive. How will this power be exercised? If I thought there was a possibility of danger, I should be alarmed.

But when I consider who this Congress are,—that they are the representatives of thirteen states, (which may become fourteen or fifteen, or a much greater number of states,) who cannot be interested, in the most remote degree, to subject their citizens to oppressions of that dangerous kind, but will feel the same inclination to guard their citizens from them,—I am not alarmed. I consider them as secured from it by the arrangement of these courts by Congress. To carry the citizens a great distance from their respective states can be of no advantage, but a great hardship to every state, except that wherein the seat of government may be. I conceive it probable that they will, as far as they may consistently with the national good, confine these cases. But when I cast my eyes to the Southern and Eastern States, every one of which is at a greater distance than we are, I cannot entertain a doubt but what this point will be perfectly secure. Every state being concerned almost equally, we have sufficient security that, when they come to organize the Supreme Court, they will regulate it so as to exclude this danger.

The fourth branch secures two important points in criminal cases—1st, that the trial shall be by jury; 2d, that it