The bank-law, the treaty-doctrine, the
sedition-act, alien-act, the undertaking to change the State laws of
evidence in the State courts by certain parts of the stamp-act, &c. &c.
have been solitary, inconsequential, timid things, in comparison with
the audacious, barefaced, and sweeping pretension to a system of law
for the United States, without the adoption of their legislature, and
so infinitely beyond their power to adopt. If this assumption be yielded
to, the State courts may be shut up, as there will then be nothing to
hinder citizens of the same State suing each other in the federal courts
in every case, as on a bond for instance, because the common law obliges
payment of it, and the common law they say is their law. I am happy you
have taken up the subject; and I have carefully perused and considered
the notes you enclosed, and find but a single paragraph which I do not
approve. It is that wherein (page 2) you say, that laws being emanations
from the legislative department, and, when once enacted, continuing
in force from a presumption that their will so continues, that that
presumption fails, and the laws of course fall, on the destruction of
that legislative department. I do not think this is the true bottom on
which laws and the administering them rest.
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