Page:John P. Branch Historical Papers - Volume 2.djvu/313

 bound by the tenth, as the eleventh amendment to the constitution—which declares, “that the powers not delegated to the United States, by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states, respectively, or to the people.”

As to a jurisdiction between a state and its own citizens, there never was any pretence to say that it ought to be granted to the courts of the general government in any form, or quoad and subjects. In addition to the general objection to it before stated, there was no necessity for it. The most feverish and unwarrantable jealousy of the state tribunals never apprehended any want of impartiality in them toward their own citizens. In relation to the citizens of other states, some imputations of partiality were indulged, and by the original constitution a jurisdiction as to them was conferred. Even that idea was spurned by the states, and hence resulted the eleventh amendment. In repudiating the jurisdiction of the federal courts in relation to the citizens of other states that amendment more than abandoned the claim as it related to citizens of the same state. It was abandoned on the principle that it had never been given; and on the further principle that the greater includes the lesser. No man had ever said or believed or thought, that it ought to have been given, or was given. The proposition would have been indignantly spurned, if made at the time of adopting the constitution. The idea is but newly started.—I had almost said trumped up. It has been drawn out from one of those hidden reservoirs, from which the supreme court is in the habit of drawing supplies of principles that are to demolish and destroy our happy confederation.

The supreme court in asserting its appellate power over