Page:The Supreme Court in United States History vol 1.djvu/248

220 numberless disputes will arise between them and oui* own citizens, they will bring their suits in the Federal Court even when they have but little prosi)ect of success here, with a determination to appeal to the Supreme Court ; the distance is so great, the scarcity of money and indigent circumstances of many of our citizens such that they will not be able to follow the appeal, they must either give up their lands or be forced into an ungenerous and unjust compromise/' No less an eminent lawyer than Thomas Todd, then a Judge of the State Court of Appeals, and five years later destined to be appointed upon the Federal Supreme Court, wrote : ^ "The debates in the Senate on the resolution introduced by you have been highly interesting to us here as well as in other parts of the Union. • • . I really conceive the passage of that bill of immense consequence to this State in particular. The serious mischief which exists in this coimtry is the danger of conflicting decisions on our land claims in the State and Federal Courts. This mischief, I conceive, was greatly increased by the law of Congress you are now attempt- ing to repeal. We had better submit our causes to the decision of one Judge who is a contemporary with the law, has been almost an eye-witness to the circum- stances which gave rise to a great many claims origi- nating imder it, for many years a practicing lawyer at the bar of Courts which were settling principles arising out of it, and whose principles and decisions are more in unison with the State Courts than it is possible those of the additional Judges can be. ... I resist every idea of having suits decided by foreigners." And that the Kentuckians were adverse to all Federal Courts

^ Breekenridge Papers MSS. letter of Thomas Todd to Breckenridge, Feb. 17» 1802. Harry Innes, Judge of the United States District Court for KentudEy* had written in the same strain, Dec. 27» 1801, that there was "no necessity for the Circuit Court system in the Western Country."