Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v3.djvu/582

566 laws more favorable to foreigners than to the citizens. If they be equally so, it is surely sufficient. Our own state merchants would be ruined by it, because they cannot recover debts so soon in the state courts as foreign merchants can recover of them in the federal courts. The consequence would be inevitable ruin to commerce. It will induce foreigners to decline becoming citizens. There is no reciprocity in it.

How will this apply to British creditors? I have ever been an advocate for paying the British creditors, both in Congress and elsewhere. But here we do injury to our own citizens. It is a maxim in law, that debts should be on the same original foundation they were on when contracted. I presume, when the contracts were made, the creditors had an idea of the state judiciaries only. The procrastination and delays of our courts were probably in contemplation by both parties. They could have no idea of the establishment of new tribunals to affect them. Trial by jury must have been in the contemplation of both parties, and the venue was in favor of the defendant. From these premises it is clearly discernible that it would be wrong to change the nature of the contracts. Whether they will make a law other than the state laws, I cannot determine.

But we are told that it is wise, politic, and preventive of controversies with foreign nations. The treaty of peace with Great Britain does not require that creditors should be put in a better situation than they were, but that there should be no hinderance to the collection of debts. It is therefore unwise and impolitic to give those creditors such an advantage over the debtors. But the citizens of different states are to sue each other in these courts. No reliance is to be put on the state judiciaries. The fear of unjust regulations and decisions in the states is urged as the reason of this jurisdiction. Paper money in Rhode Island has been instanced by gentlemen. There is one clause in the Constitution which prevents the issuing of paper money. If this clause should pass, (and it is unanimously wished by every one that it should not be objected to,) I apprehend an execution in Rhode Island would be as good and effective as in any state in the Union.

A state may sue a foreign state, or a foreign state may sue one of our states. This may form a new, American law of nations. Whence the idea could have originated, I cannot