«9i2.] OF THE UNITED STATES. 329 



tution was written by Federalists who well knew what they wished 

 to achieve. There were the three activities of the new nation, the 

 legislative, the executive, the judicial; and into its hands were placed, 

 as Patrick Henry complained, the purse and the sword :^*'^ it was 

 given the power to tax, it could command an army to do its will. 

 To guard these powers a new judiciary — the Federal — was created, 

 to whom was committed the interpretation of this Constitution — a 

 power never before in the world's history vested in any court. Not 

 adventitiously nor by the caprice of smiling fate, did those words, 

 constituting treaties and acts of Congress the supreme law of the 

 land, come into the Constitution. Against persistent, bitter, and all 

 but successful opposition, the Federalists wrote them into the Con- 

 stitution; and once there, by the mouth of that great Federalist 

 John Marshall, they were interpreted to mean precisely what they 

 said. 



Under the Articles of Confederation any effective government 

 was demonstrated to be impossible to the United States. Among 

 the existing difificulties stood out prominently two : lack of means to 

 secure money for the general government ; neglect of the several 

 States to recognize the provisions of treaties negotiated by the 

 United States. 



Congress had unanimously ratified the treaty of peace with Great 

 Britain in 1783. By its provisions, " The great and principal ob- 

 jects," to use the language of the Supreme Court in afterwards 

 construing it, 



"were three on the part of Great Britain, to wit, ist: a recovery by British 

 Merchants, of the value in sterHng money of debts contracted, by the citizens 

 of America, before the treaty. 2nd : Restitution of the confiscated property 

 of real British subjects, and of persons residents in districts in possession of 

 the British forces, and who had not borne arms against the United States; 

 and a conditional restoration of the confiscated property of all other persons : 

 and 3rdly : A prohibition of all future confiscations, and prosecutions."^**' 



The Court continues : 



" The following facts were of the most public notoriety, at the time 

 when the treaty was made, and therefore must have been very well known to 



"'^ Elliott's Debates, Vol. II., p. 539, Ed. of 1854. 

 '" Ware vs. Hylton, 3 Dallas, p. 238. 



