In common law causes in the District Court, the State remedies by way of attaching the property of a defendant to respond to a judgment, or seizing it on execution, or imposing a lien upon it by a judgment, are adopted and enforced.[Footnote: U. S. Rev. Stat., Sec.Sec. 915, 916, 967, 988.] The field of national legislation being narrow, the offenses against the nation are correspondingly few. Any acts done on lands ceded by a State, which would have been crimes under its law in 1873, may be punished as such in the federal courts in the same manner which that law provided.[Footnote: _Ibid_., Sec. 5391.] In the Circuit Courts, before 1866 it was customary to defer the trial of important causes until the Justice of the Supreme Court assigned to the circuit could be present. If he differed on any material point from the District Judge, this point could be certified up to the full Supreme Court for argument and decision there. During this period the published reports of the decisions of the Circuit Court contain many opinions of the highest value. Several of the best which Story and Bushrod Washington wrote are to be found among them. The Act of 1866, by which a resident Circuit Judge was appointed for each circuit, provided notwithstanding that each member of the Supreme Court should attend at least one term of the Circuit Court in each district as often as once in two years. The press of business at Washington, however, soon became such as to make it practically impossible for the Supreme Court Justices to do any substantial circuit work. When some case of national importance was to be heard in any district, the Justice in whose circuit it was included would make a special effort to go down. In this way Chief Justice Chase heard and sustained the plea with which Jefferson Davis met the indictment against him for treason. But ordinarily the Circuit Judge took the place of the Supreme Court Justice, and the latter, if he appeared at all during the term, remained hardly for a day. The Supreme Court, therefore, during over a hundred years remained the only court of the United States existing mainly for appellate purposes. The work which it had before it at the last term during which it occupied this position (October Term, 1890) will show how much it was then overburdened. Its docket contained 1,177 appeals brought forward by continuance because they could not be disposed of at the preceding term, 623 new cases of the same kind, and 16 cases of original jurisdiction, making a total of 1,816 actions. Of these, although the term lasted nearly eight months, it was only able to dispose of 617, thus leaving 1,199 for continuance to the following term.[Footnote: 140 U. S. Reports, Appendix.] It will be observed that the court was no longer able to cope with its new business, not to mention that left over from previous years.