The
foundation of this assertion is, that the national judiciary will have
no cognizance of them, and of course they will remain determinable as
heretofore by the State courts only, and in the manner which the State
constitutions and laws prescribe. All land causes, except where claims
under the grants of different States come into question, and all other
controversies between the citizens of the same State, unless where they
depend upon positive violations of the articles of union, by acts of the
State legislatures, will belong exclusively to the jurisdiction of the
State tribunals. Add to this, that admiralty causes, and almost all
those which are of equity jurisdiction, are determinable under our own
government without the intervention of a jury, and the inference from
the whole will be, that this institution, as it exists with us at
present, cannot possibly be affected to any great extent by the proposed
alteration in our system of government.
The friends and adversaries of the plan of the convention, if they agree
in nothing else, concur at least in the value they set upon the trial by
jury; or if there is any difference between them it consists in this:
the former regard it as a valuable safeguard to liberty; the latter
represent it as the very palladium of free government.
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