Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol III).djvu/576

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568
CONSTITUTION OF THE U. STATES.
[BOOK III.

And where this has not been done, it would be natural, that the judges, as men, should feel a strong predilection for the claims of their own government.[1] And, at all events, the providing of a tribunal, having no possible interest on the one side, more than the other, would have a most salutary tendency in quieting the jealousies, and disarming the resentments of the state, whose grant should be held invalid. This jurisdiction attaches not only to grants made by different states, which were never united; but also to grants made by different states, which were originally united under one jurisdiction, if made since the separation, although the origin of the tide may be traced back to an antecedent period.[2]

§ 1691. Next. "Controversies between a state, or the citizens thereof, and foreign states, citizens, or subjects." The Federalist[3] has vindicated this provision in the following brief, but powerful manner:
The peace of the whole ought not to be left at the disposal of a part. The Union will undoubtedly be answerable to foreign powers for the conduct of its members. And the responsibility for an injury ought ever to be accompanied with the faculty of preventing it. As the denial or perversion of justice by the sentences of courts is with reason classed among the just causes of war, it will follow, that the federal judiciary ought to. have cognizance of all causes, in which the citizens of other countries are concerned. This is not less essential to the preservation of the public faith, than to the

  1. The Federalist, No. 80. See also Mr. Chief Justice Jay's Remarks, 4 Dall. 476, and ante, vol. 3, § 1632.
  2. Town of Pawlet v. Clarke, 9 Cranch, 292; Colson v. Lewis, 2 Wheat. R. 377.
  3. The Federalist, No. 80. See also 3 Elliot's Debates, 283; 2 Elliot's Debates, 391.