And to these laws, which, made by the representatives of the people,
embody their sovereign authority, there is given the further sanction of
judicial supervision. In the Confederation there was no general and
permanent standard by which decisions could be made and preserved.
Everything was made to depend on the irresponsible and often conflicting
action of the States, or on the unauthoritative determination of the
congressional commission. To remedy this defect, and make more complete
the national character of our present Government, a judicial power of
the United States was vested in the Supreme Court, and in such inferior
courts as Congress may establish. This Supreme Court, with original
jurisdiction in all cases affecting foreign nations, and in all cases in
which a State shall be a party, and with appellate jurisdiction in other
cases, is at once a final tribunal for inter-State disagreement, and a
representative to the world of an united nation, having an individual
existence, and capable of performing all the functions of an individual
nation.
We have thus traced the main lines of difference between the Articles of
Confederation and the Constitution, and have seen that the latter was
meant to be, and is the organic law of a developed and completed
nationality. Under it, every one of us becomes an American citizen,
exercising, as is right, certain local privileges, and dependent for
their immediate protection on the State authorities, but possessing
other wider and nobler rights, which inhere in him as a citizen of the
United States, and which are asserted and supported by the power and
dignity of the entire nation.
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