There were many, at the time when the Constitution of the United States was before the people for ratification, who feared that the jurisdiction of their courts would be extended by judicial construction beyond the limits of the grant. New York in her vote of ratification incorporated a declaration that she understood it to be impossible that the jurisdiction of any court of the United States could ever be enlarged "by any fiction." In the Maryland Convention, this sentiment took shape in a proposed amendment to the Constitution adopted by a committee appointed for the purpose, but never reported, "that the Federal courts shall not be entitled to jurisdiction by fictions or collusion."[Footnote: Elliot's Debates, 550; Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, XVII, 504-7.] Had such an amendment been proposed and adopted, it would have cut off a large share of the most important cases now brought before the Circuit Courts. In 1787, there were only twenty-seven business corporations in the United States.[Footnote: Report of the American Historical Association for 1902, 267; _American Historical Review_, VIII, 449.] It was not long before they became countless and the large affairs of the country were in their hands. Could they sue and be sued in the courts of the United States? The decision on this point was that, by force of a pure legal fiction, invented for the purpose, they might be. They were, indeed, not citizens of any State;[Footnote: Paul _v._ Virginia, 8 Wallace Reports, 168.] but the persons who composed them probably were. Therefore, it must be assumed that they certainly were, and also that they were all citizens of the same State and that the State from which incorporation was obtained.[Footnote: Louisville, Cincinnati and Charleston R. R. Co. _v._ Letson, 2 Howard's Reports, 497, 555; Ohio and Mississippi R. R. Co. _v._ Wheeler, I Black's Reports, 286.] Sir Henry Maine maintained that legal fictions were the rude device of early stages in government, and to add to them disturbed the symmetry of a legal system and was unworthy the approval of modern courts.[Footnote: Ancient Law, 26.] But while they are among the things that it is hard to justify on principle, it is harder to dispense with them in actual practice, as the instance given conspicuously illustrates. Although the United States are the only depositary of the power of ordering foreign relations, foreign governments are often aggrieved by acts of the courts of a State which the United States have but imperfect means of preventing or rectifying. In 1841, we were brought to the verge of war with Great Britain by an incident of this nature.