A bill of exchange drawn in Maine on one Tyson, a merchant in New York, and bearing his acceptance, was indorsed over to one Swift, who took it in good faith before it fell due, in payment of a pre-existing debt. He sued Tyson upon it in the Circuit Court of the United States in Maine. If his rights were as good as if he had paid value for it at the time he received it, he was entitled to recover. If not, his action failed; for the acceptance had been obtained by fraud. It was made in New York. The judicial decisions of that State, contrary to the prevailing opinion as to what was the general common law rule, seemed to favor the view that a pre-existing debt did not stand on as good a footing as a present payment, in support of a claim upon negotiable paper. Samuel Fessenden of Portland, a lawyer of great ability, was his counsel. The cause was submitted on briefs, without oral argument. Mr. Fessenden, admitting that the law of the place where acceptance was made must govern the obligations of Tyson, insisted that the New York decisions were wrong in principle and ought not to be regarded. "If," said his brief, "there is any question of law, not local, but widely general in its nature and effects, it is the present question. It is one in which foreigners, the citizens of different States in their contests with each other, nay, every nation of the civilized commercial world, are deeply interested. By all without the United States this Court is looked to as the judiciary of the whole nation, known as the United States, whose commerce and transactions are as widely diffused as is the use of bills of exchange.... How can this Court preserve its control over the reason and affections of the people of the United States; that control in which its usefulness consists, and which its own untrammeled learning and judgment would enable it naturally to maintain; if its records show that it has decided-as it may be compelled to decide if the construction referred to, advocated on the part of the defendant, is established-the same identical question, arising on a bill of exchange, first one way, and then the other, with vacillating inconsistency?" Mr. Dana, for Tyson, maintained the opposite view with equal ability. "In coming together," he said, "from the respective States, the framers of the Constitution, and our representatives in Congress after them, must be regarded as having had in view the language, laws, and institutions of the States which they represented."