the United States, how is it to be construed? How is it to be enforced? What are its obligations? Take an Act of Congress — How is it to be interpreted? Are the rules of the common law to furnish the proper guide, or is every court and department to give it any interpretation it may please, according to its own arbitrary will? — My design is not here to discuss the subject, (for that would require a volume,) but rather to suggest some of the difficulties attendant upon the subject. Those readers, who are desirous of more ample information, are referred to Duponceau on the Jurisdiction of the Courts of the United States; to 1 Tucker's Black. Comm. App. Note E, p. 372; to 1 Kent's Comm. Lect. 16, p. 311 to 322; to the report of the Virginia legislature of 1799—1800; to Rawle on the Constitution, ch. 30, p. 258; to the North American Review, July, 1825; and to Mr. Bayard's speech in the Debates on the Judiciary, in 1802, p. 372, &c. Some other remarks illustrative of it will necessarily arise in discussing the subject of Impeachments.
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HISTORY OF THE COLONIES.
[BOOK I.
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