Page:John P. Branch Historical Papers - Volume 2.djvu/301

154 that she was induced to this measure from any fear of debts being recovered against her. The court has not shown that any such existed. Again, as only three suits had been brought against the states, some other motive than the number of those suits, or the greatness of the danger arising therefrom, must have produced the amendment in question. If “the alarm was general,” it was not from the fears aforesaid, but from a fear of consolidation, resulting from the judgment of the supreme court and the total change of the government On the third of December, 1793 the legislature of Virginia had resolved, “that a state cannot, under the constitution of the United States, be made a defendant at the suit of any individual, and that the decision of the supreme federal court, that a state may be placed in that situation, is inconsistent with, and dangerous to, the sovereignty and independence of the individual states, as the same tends to a general consolidation of these confederate republics.” It was, at the same time, resolved, that our senators and representatives in Congress be instructed to obtain such amendments to the constitution “as will remove or explain any clause or article of the said constitution, which can be construed to imply or justify a decision that a state is compellable to, in any suit, by an individual or individuals, in any court of the United States.” It was because the states claimed to be sovereign and independent states, although they had entered into a federal compact and because one sovereign state has no right to set itself up as the judge of another that this alarm took place; and not on the sordid ground of an unwillingness in the states to pay debts which are not shown to have had an existence.

The court infers that the motive of this amendment on