and his first services were on the circuit, where with Rutledge he rode the Southern Circuit, then composed of South Carolina and Georgia, North Carolina not having adopted the Constitution when the Judiciary Act of 1789 was passed. He first took his seat on the Supreme Hench at the August Term, 1790, when, after the reading of his commission and the admission of a few coun sel, the court adjourned from the lack of business. Let us pause here for a brief moment and think upon the work which was carved out for the members of that Court. The ques tions that were to arise before them were in the highest degree grave and important. An entirely new field of jurisprudence was opened out in which they were to find no precedents. The unique questions of the amenability of the States to the process of the Court, their relations to the Federal Government, the limitations and definitions of the powers of the Federal Courts, the in terpretation of the Constitution, the inde pendence of the Federal judiciary as a co ordinate branch of government, the obligations of the Treaty of Peace, the extent of the power of Congress to levy taxes and duties, questions of prize, the Confiscation Acts, patent rights, violations of the embarco, land laws, ownership of slaves, citizenship, and many others, of like importance and first im pression, were to be raised, argued, and de cided. And when we reflect upon the magnitude of their task and of their success ful elucidation of the intricate judicial prob lems brought before them, we cannot with hold our wonder, our admiration and our reverent respect for the first judges of the Federal Supreme Court. Speaking of its first meeting, Mr. Carson has eloquently said : " Not one of the spectators of that hour, though gifted with the eagle eye of prophecy, could have foreseen that out of that modest assembly of gentlemen, unheard of and unthought of among the tribunals of the earth, a court without a docket, without
a record, without a writ, of unknown and untried powers, and of undetermined juris diction, there would be developed in the space of a single century a court of which the ancient world could present no model and the modern boast no parallel; a court whose decrees woven like threads of gold into the priceless and imperishable fabric of our constitutional jurisprudence would bind in the bonds of love, liberty, and law, the members of our great Republic." At the February Term, 1793, the cele brated case of Chisholm v. Georgia, an ac tion of assumpsit, came up before the court. This case was instituted at the August Term, 1 792, of the Supreme Court, which, under the Judiciary Act, had original jurisdiction in such cases, in virtue of Article 3, section 2 of the Federal Constitution. At that term the Attorney General moved that notice issue to the State of Georgia to enter an appearance, or show cause why judgment should not be entered and a writ of inquiry awarded. The court, " in order to give the State time for deliberation " and, I appre hend, themselves opportunity for study and careful thought, postponed the consideration of the motion to the next term, when it was argued by Randolph, the Attorney General, alone, counsel for Georgia filing a written protest against the jurisdiction and declining to argue the question. The point in the case was, whether a State was amenable to the jurisdiction of the court at the suit of a citizen of another State. The first case, I believe, in which one of the States was sued in the courts of another State by a citizen, was instituted at the Sep tember Term, 1781, of the Court of Common Pleas at Philadelphia by one Nathan against the State of Virginia, and in it an attachment was issued and levied on a lot of clothing belonging to the State. The Virginia dele gates in Congress, indignant at this affront, and protesting it to be a violation of the law of Nations, appealed to the Supreme Execu tive Council of Pennsylvania, which arbi
