The keel of the Supreme Court was laid in 1789; and the vessel, launched, well officered, and manned, provided with new spars, anchors, and compass, was despatched from port to ride the turbulent seas of maritime strife and constitutional conflict, and to override laws and treaties which drift athwart the path of the Constitution. By and in it States could originally be pursued; but after submitting for about fifty years to the chase of individual plaintiffs, the States, headed by Georgia, roused to a sovereign indignation and ruffled pride by being compelled to answer for grievances inflicted by themselves on Indians, negroes, white persons, and such trash, procured the passage of a jealous amendment, relieving them from such embarrassments. Beautiful is the theory that States can do no wrong to their own citizens. Millennarian is the assumption that they are so ready to spring to their loads of duty, that no judicial whip, with a snapper of judgment and execution, is necessary to quicken their slackening consciences. As a beautiful corollary from these delightful premises, is the most comfortable practice of governments not to pay interest on claims against themselves, however hoar with age; for the government assumes to itself the virtue of being always ready, as the _fons et origo justitæ_, to pay, and is presumably always pressing its offers to pay upon its creditors. At certain points we now touch the millennium. At the next session of Congress, in 1790, Hamilton presented a report on that subject which, like the poor, is always with us,—the public debt. Of course every one thought that it was right to pay the creditors who were fortunate enough to live in Europe, who had, at whatever discount, taken our promises; but a great many people with caoutchouc principles doubted whether men silly enough to be born on this side the Atlantic had as good a right to be paid; just as some discriminate between their autographs affixed to notes held by their friends,—leaving such to the mercy of blood,—and those held by strangers, which they despatch from unpleasant remembrances by payment. Hamilton recognized no such thin, veneering logic over parts of the public chest; and he was honestly supported by Congress and their makers.