CH. XXXVIII.]
JUDICIARY—COMPENSATION.
569
security of the public tranquility. A distinction may perhaps be imagined between cases arising upon treaties and the laws of nations, and those, which may stand merely on the footing of the municipal law. The former kind may be supposed proper for the federal jurisdiction; the latter for that of the states. But it is at least problematical, whether an unjust sentence against a foreigner, where the subject of controversy was wholly relative to the lex loci, would not, if unredressed, be an aggression upon his sovereign as well as one, which violated the stipulations of a treaty, or the general law of nations. And a still greater objection to the distinction would result from the immense difficulty, if not impossibility, of a practical discrimination between the cases of one complexion, and those of the other. So great a proportion of the controversies, in which foreigners are parties, involve national questions, that it is by far the most safe, and most expedient, to refer all those, in which they are concerned, to the national tribunals.
- ↑ 3 Elliot's Debates, 142, 143, 144, 282, 283.—It is notorious, that this jurisdiction has been very satisfactory to foreign nations and their subjects. Nor have the dangers of state prejudice, and state attachment to local interests, to the injury of foreigners, been wholly imaginary. It has been already stated in another place, that the debts due to British subjects before the revolution, were never recovered, until after the adop-
vol. iii.72
