546
CONSTITUTION OF THE U. STATES.
[BOOK III.
besides interfering claims of boundary, from which bickerings and animosities may spring up among the members of the Union. To some of these we have been witnesses in the course of our past experience. It will be readily conjectured, that I allude to the fraudulent laws, which have been passed in too many of the states. And though the proposed constitution establishes particular guards against the repetition of those instances, which have hitherto made their appearance; yet it is warrantable to apprehend, that the spirit, which produced them, will assume new shapes, that could not be foreseen, nor specifically provided against. Whatever practices may have a tendency to distract the harmony of the states are proper objects of federal superintendence and control. It may be esteemed the basis of the Union, that "the citizens of each state shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens of the several states." And if it be a just principle, that every government ought to possess the means of executing its own provisions by its own authority, it will follow, that, in order to the inviolable maintenance of that equality of privileges and immunities, to which the citizens of the Union will be entitled, the national judiciary ought to preside in all cases, in which one state, or its citizens, are opposed to another state, or its citizens. To secure the full effect of so fundamental a provision against all evasion and subterfuge, it is necessary, that its construction should be committed to that tribunal, which, having no local attachments, will be likely to be impartial between the different states and their citizens, and which, owing its official existence to the Union,
- ↑ The Federalist, No. 80.
