The few members of that Congress who had not been entirely carried away by this current, and had the boldness to stand by the States and their tribunals--among whom that firm and incorruptible republican, James Jackson of Georgia, was by far the most effective--were willing that a right to supervise and reverse the decisions of the State tribunals in all matters of Federal jurisdiction, should be conferred on the Supreme Court of the United States, provided only that the State courts were intrusted, as they had hitherto been, with the administration of the inferior Federal jurisdiction in lieu of the inferior Federal courts which the Bill proposed to establish. This they contended would make the system an harmonious and consistent one, and preserve the respect and consideration which was due to the State tribunals. The proposition was literally scouted in debate and rejected by a vote of two to one in the House, and in the Senate by a still larger majority. The Bill was so constructed as to clothe the Supreme Court and the inferior courts it established with all the judicial power allowed to the Federal Government by the Constitution, with unimportant reservations which did not diminish their authority and do not require to be noticed. Ample means were thus provided for its practical extension to every party entitled to its protection, and if those who regulated the action of Congress had not been influenced by any views other than such as related to the administration of justice, its legislation would have terminated there. But that body went further. A clause was added to the Judiciary Bill professing to give to the Supreme Court appellate jurisdiction over the final judgments and decrees of the highest courts of law and equity of a State, whoever might be the parties to the suit, or whatever might have been the objects for which it had been brought, provided only that the relative powers of the Federal and State governments under the Federal Constitution in respect to several enumerated subjects had in the course of prosecution of such suit been "drawn in question," and decided against the Federal power. No matter to what extent the rights of the parties were concluded by that question, or in what form or how incidentally it had been introduced, it was sufficient that it had been raised and decided against the Federal, or in favor of the State authority, to subject the judgment or decree given by the State court to be reëxamined or reversed in the Supreme Court of the United States. To confer upon that tribunal, the anomalous authority of issuing writs of error to the highest courts of other States confessedly sovereign, and which in all such matters might well be regarded as foreign States,--courts which were not established by the Federal Government, and between which and it there existed no judicial relations,--commanding those courts to send to it for reëxamination, reversal, or affirmance, the record of judgments and decrees which had