foreign to the other states of the Union, as well as to other na tions. It was competent for the people of the states, although thus foreign to each other and independent, to create by common consent, a General Government, and to invest it with all the powers which they might deem proper and necessary, to extend or restrain these powers according to their own good pleasure, and to give them a permanent and supreme authority.(a)

25. For mutual aid, these states, in 1777, formed a league or articles of perpetual union of feeble character, known as the Articles of Confederation, creating a sort of general government; and finally, in 1789, to form a more perfect union, and especially to establish justice, the present General Government was formed by the Constitution of the United States, and to it was granted by that instrument a portion only of the powers previously existing in the states, and the people thereof. It was a government made by taking from the states, and the people thereof, and transferring to the United States, and the people thereof, certain portions of sovereignty; so that while under most other constitutional governments, including those of the States of this Union, the legis lature or supreme power may lawfully do any thing which is not forbidden in their constitutions, the government of the United States, having no powers except such as are granted to it directly or indirectly in its constitution, can do nothing except those things for which it can show a constitutional authority.(b)

§ 26. Some of these grants convey elemental powers of gov ernment in all their fulness and force, while others are convey. ed in a modified and restricted form. They were grants by governments already organized, and possessing and actually exercising, with few restrictions, unlimited sovereignty. They were made by the "People of the United States," but not by the people as a primary and unorganized mass solely, but by the people already formed into regular communities, and acting through or under their established constitutions; they were thus, direct grants by the people, of these primitive powers, which, on the

(a) 1 Wheat. 324, 325. 8 Pet. 658. (b) 12 Pet. Rep. 720. 7 Cranch, 33.

theory of our governments, are supposed to emanate from the People, and they were also grants, by established popular governments, of powers constituting a part of their own acknowledged functions; and while they were the act of the constituted authorities, in the name of the People, they were also ratified by the People as the ultimate source of political power. They are therefore, all of them, to their proper extent, and for the accomplishment of their proper purpose, of the most uncontrollable and irresistible character, and they are without any limit, except such as is prescribed by the constitution itself. Thus the power of peace and war, of international negotiation, of coinage, the judicial power over all cases affecting ambassadors, and over all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction, and others are transferred to the general government, free from all restriction and limitation.(a)

27. All the powers in the constitution were conferred upon the general government for purposes expressed in the constitution, in view of which purposes they are respectively to be construed. The constitution was made "to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty," to all the people of all the states. Its grand purpose was to unify the whole in the relations of internationality, and all its minor purposes were subordinate and ancillary to this. Its grants therefore consist of great classes of powers. Those which should especially regulate our intercourse with foreign nations and their subjects, and with the sister states and their citizens, and those in the exercise of which we were ourselves to be emphatically one people, and to be clothed with equal rights, although in other respects we were to remain members of different communities, were granted to the General Government, that our intercourse with foreign powers, might be so regulated as to make us one of the great family of nations, acknowledging the laws and respecting and adopting the usages which constitute the rule of international intercourse, and that

(a) 4 Wondr 472. 4 Wheat. 316. Const. Art. 1, § 8, 10. lbid. Art. 3, § 2.

the separate States might not by jarring, inconstant and antagonizing laws, destroy the harmony which could alone make us, and keep us the United States. (a)

§ 28. This is especially evident in the constitutional grants of judicial power. They are not grants to this or that court of the United States. The Constitution does nothing but draw the line between the cases which belong to the United States Government and those which belong to the State Governments. It transfers from the States and the people of the states to the General Government, the judicial sovereignty in great national classes of cases to be exercised, not necessarily by courts constituted like the British Admiralty, or the British courts of common law or equity, but by such courts, and in such manner as the congress of the newly created Government should provide. When the Constitution was made, there were no courts of the United States of any sort, nor was it certain that there would be here, (as there never has been,) a purely Admiralty Court, but it was certain that in the multifarious transactions on the ocean, seas, lakes and rivers, which were to be the highways of our intercourse and commerce, between the several states and the various nations of the world, a thousand questions might continually arise, when the law of nations and the law of maritime commerce-the maritime law of the world—ought to take the place of the numerous conflicting and changing rules which could not fail to result from the various legislation and adjudication of the states, and in no manner could a uniform admin. istration of that great branch of the law of nations, known as the general maritime law, be secured, except by the transfer of all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction, to the cognizance of the National Judiciary.(b)

29. A fruitful source of error in relation to the Government of the United States, is its supposed relation to the British Government. The United States is sometimes said to be, and in

(a) Const. Preamble. Art. 1, § 8, 9, 10. Ibid. Art. 3, § 2, Art. 4. Wheat. 234, 335, 347, 348.

(b) Const. Art. 3, § 2. 5 Howard, 451 to 457.

a limited historical sense, is an offset from Great Britain, and most of the people of the colonies at the time of the Revolution, were the descendants of British subjects. And many of the states are really shoots from the Government of Great Britain, and as such were subject to the common law. It was therefore quite natural, that in matters relating to the foundation and powers of our Government, many would first look to the nation from which we had just been severed by a revolution, and whose language and literature were our own. Still, it is not to be forgotten, that our people were not homogeneous, but consisted of persons from all civilized nations, and the English, Scotch, Irish, Welsh, Dutch, Swedes and French, some by conquest, and some by emigration, were mixed and united to make the American Nation, and had all brought with them to some extent, a knowledge of and an attachment to, the institutions of their parent countries, and the creation or incorporation of other states from other conquered or revolted colonies, with other laws and usages, was also contemplated.(a)

And in all these nations having ships and commerce as well as in England, causes of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction, had always arisen and such cases had been decided in different nations by courts of different names. In some nations courts were expressly devoted to such cases under the name of Consular Courts, Tribunals of Commerce, Maritime Courts and Courts of Admiralty. In other nations, as in England, cases of maritime jurisdiction were in one form or another, entertained by all the courts of law and equity in the kingdom, and decided according to that system of maritime law, which derives its force from the universal consent of commercial nations.

§ 30. These circumstances may not have been without their influence to induce the framers of our Constitution to make as they did, a new and original government. They did not in any manner address themselves to national prejudices or predilections, nor adopt or even allude to any previously existing government, as a pattern or standard, nor re-enact any known code of laws, in whole or in part, but they passed by in silence,

(a) Holmes Aunals, passim. Art. of Conf. Art. 11. Const. Art. 4, § 3.

the institutions of the whole world, and invented a constitution and laws which had neither pattern nor prototype, in the actual and present state, or past history of the human race. When, therefore, they created or granted a power, it was a grant of that power, not as it existed in one government or another, but a grant of the power in the abstract. It was a creation of the mere governmental function, to be exercised by the new Government in its own prescribed manner, without any regard to the manner in which it had been exercised before or elsewhere.(a)

31. The Government and Laws of the United States as established by and under the Constitution, cannot in any proper sense be called an offset from those of Great Britain, nor have they any relation or similarity to them. Our Constitution was a new creation made after the Revolution-after twelve years of actual independence under the Confederation, and made, not from any parent state, but from ourselves, and nothing else. The existence of such a state as Great Britain, (to say nothing of her peculiar laws, courts or institutions,) is not even remotely hinted at in the Constitution or in the Articles of Confederation, and her institutions cannot, justly, be considered, as in any manner, the exponents of our own. Indeed, in the convention that formed the Constitution, the institutions and example of Great Britain were, with singular consistency, referred to only that they might be avoided; and in the Constitution itself every thing is studiously omitted which might even recall to mind those institutions. The common law of England has never been by adoption, by inheritance, or by re-enactment, the law of the United States, although it has been of some of the states.(b)

32. Our Constitution and laws are written in the English language, and of course to that language we must look for the proper meaning and force of their terms, and this is the only link that connects the laws and institutions of the General Government with those of any other nation. When, therefore,

(a) Mad. Pap passim. 1 Wheat. 331, 2. 12 Pet. 729, 730.

(b) 1 Pain. Rep. 117. Mad. Pap passim. Supra, § 36. 8 Pet. 591. 7 Cranch, 32.