Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol I).djvu/505

 CH. VI.] government is to favour its own citizens; and unjust preferences, not only in the administration of justice, but in the very structure of the laws, may reasonably be expected to arise. Popular prejudices, or passions, supposed or real injuries, the predominance of home pursuits and feelings over the comprehensive views of a liberal jurisprudence, will readily achieve the most mischievous projects for this purpose. And these, again, by a natural reaction, will introduce correspondent regulations, and retaliatory measures in other states.

§ 483. Now, exactly what this course of reasoning has led us to presume as probable, has been demonstrated by experience to be true in respect to our own confederacy during the short period of its existence, and under circumstances well calculated to induce each state to sacrifice many of its own objects for the general good. Nay, even when we were colonies, dependent upon the authority of the mother country, these inequalities were observable in the local legislation of several of the states, and produced heart-burnings and discontents, which were not easily appeased.

§ 484. First, in respect to foreign nations. After the confederacy was formed, and we had assumed the general rights of war as a sovereign belligerent nation, authority to make captures, and to bring in ships and cargoes for adjudication naturally flowed from the proper exercise of these rights by the law of nations. The states respectively retained the power of appointing prize tribunals, to take cognizance of these matters in the first instance; and thus thirteen distinct jurisdictions were established, which acted entirely independent of each other. It is true, that the articles of confederation had delegated to the general