This reliance has been in the
main justified; but there is nothing which more vitally imports the
American people than to guard with the most watchful solicitude
against everything which has the remotest tendency to produce
deterioration in the quality of this great national institution. The
confidence on which depends the stability of federal institutions
was for the first time impaired by the judgment declaring slavery to
be of common right, and consequently lawful in the Territories while
not yet constituted as States, even against the will of a majority
of their inhabitants. This memorable decision has probably done more
than anything else to bring the sectional division to the crisis which
has issued in civil war. The main pillar of the American
Constitution is scarcely strong enough to bear many more such shocks.
The tribunals which act as umpires between the Federal and the State
Governments naturally also decide all disputes between two States,
or between a citizen of one State and the government of another. The
usual remedies between nations, war and diplomacy, being precluded
by the federal union, it is necessary that a judicial remedy should
supply their place. The Supreme Court of the Federation dispenses
international law, and is the first great example of what is now one
of the most prominent wants of civilised society, a real International
Tribunal.
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