1793.
jurisdictions, and agreeable to the principles and usages of law.” These words refer as well to the Supreme Court as to the other Courts of the United States. Whatever writs we issue, that are necessary for the exercise of our jurisdiction, must be agreeable to the principles and usages of law. This is a direction, I apprehend, we cannot supercede, because it may appear to us not sufficiently extensive. If it be not, we must wait till other remedies are provided by the same authority. From this it is plain that the Legislature did not chuse to leave to our own discretion the path to justice, but has prescribed one of its own. In doing so, it has, I think, wisely, referred us to principles and usages of law already well known, and by their precision calculated to guard against that innovating spirit of Courts of Justice, which the Attorney-General in another case reprobated with so much warmth, and with whose sentiments in that particular, I most cordially join. The principles of law to which reference is to be had, either upon the general ground I first alluded to, or upon the special words I have above cited, from the judicial act, I apprehend, can be, either, 1st. Those of the particular laws of the State, against which the suit is brought.Or, 2d. Principles of law common to all the States. I omit any consideration arising from the word “usages,” tho’ a still stronger expression. In regard to the principles of the particular laws of the State of Georgia, if they in any manner differed, so as to effect this question, from the principles of law, common to all the States, it might be material to enquire, whether, there would be any propriety or congruity in laying down a rule of decision which would induce this consequence, that an action would lie in the Supreme Court against some States, whose laws admitted of a compulsory remedy against their own Governments, but not against others, wherein no such remedy was admitted, or which would require, perhaps, if the principle was received, fifteen different methods of proceeding against States, all standing in the same political relation to the general Government, and none having any pretence to a distinction in its favor, or justly liable to any distinction to its prejudice. If any such difference existed in the laws of the different States, there would seem to be a propriety, in order to induce uniformity, (if a Constitutional power for that purpose exists), that Congress should prescribe a rule, fitted to this new case, to which no equal, uniform, and impartial mode of proceeding could otherwise be applied.
But this point, I conceive, it is unnecessary to determine, because I believe there is no doubt that neither in the State now in question, nor in any other in the Union, any particular Legislative mode, authorising a compulsory suit for the recovery of money against a State, was in being either when the Constitu-