Page:Works of John C. Calhoun, v1.djvu/276

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262
ON THE CONSTITUTION AND GOVERNMENT

zens thereof, and foreign states, citizens or subjects." It would be much more easy to make out something like a plausible argument in support of the position, that a State might be made defendant and amenable to the process of the courts of the United States, under this clause, than under that in question. In the former, the States are not even named. They can be brought in only by implication, and then, by another implication, divested of a high sovereign right: and this, too, without any assignable reason for either. Here they are not only named, but the other parties to the controversies are also named; without stating which shall be plaintiff, or which defendant. This was left undefined; and, of course, the question, whether the several States might not be made defendants as well as plaintiffs, in controversies between the parties, left open to construction;—and in favor of the implication, a very plausible reason may be assigned. The clause puts a State and its citizens on the same ground. In the controversies, to which it extends the judicial power, the State and its citizens stand on one side, and foreign states, citizens and subjects, on the other. Now as foreign states, citizens, or subjects may, under its provisions, make the citizens of a State defendants, in a controversy between them, it would not be an unnatural inference, that the State might also be included. Under this construction, an action was, in fact, commenced in the courts of the United States, against one of the States. The States took the alarm; and, in the high sovereign character, in which they ordained and