affairs of such magnitude, the same regard can be had to minutiæ as in transactions between individuals.

This report is on a subject no less new and singular than important. Your Secretary is not conscious of any errors in it, and yet there may be some. He hopes the facts are not mistaken or misstated. He believes his reasoning on them to be just; and he flatters himself whatever mistakes relative to either may be discovered, that they will be treated with candor, and ascribed neither to want of attention nor of care, but to that fallibility from which few, if any even of the wisest and most able, are wholly exempt.

All which is submitted to the wisdom of Congress.

JOHN JAY.

Extract from the Secret Journal, March 21, 1787.

On the report of the Secretary of the United States for the Department of Foreign Affairs, to whom was referred a letter of the 4th March, 1786, from Mr. J. Adams, Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States of America at the Court of London, together with the memorial of the said Minister, dated the 30th November, 1785, and presented by him on the 8th December following to his Britannic Majesty's Secretary of State, and the answer received by Mr. Adams to the said memorial, and contained in a letter from said Secretary of State, dated at St. James's, February 28th, 1786, and other papers accompanying the same—

Congress unanimously agreed to the following resolutions:

Resolved, That the Legislatures of the several States cannot, of right, pass any act or acts for interpreting, explaining, or construing a national treaty, or any part or clause of it; nor for restraining, limiting, nor in any manner impeding, retarding, or counteracting the operation and execution of the same; for that, on being constitutionally made, ratified, and published, they become, in virtue of the Confederation, part of the law of the land, and are not only independent of the will and power of such Legislatures, but also binding and obligatory on them.

Resolved, That all such acts, or parts of acts, as may be now existing in any of the States repugnant to the treaty of peace, ought to be forthwith repealed, as well to prevent their continuing to be

regarded as violations of that treaty as to avoid the disagreeable necessity there might otherwise be of raising and discussing questions touching their validity and obligation.

Resolved, That it be recommended to the several States to make such repeal rather by describing than reciting the said acts; and for that purpose to pass an act declaring, in general terms, that all such acts, and parts of acts, repugnant to the treaty of peace between the United States and his Britannic Majesty, or any article thereof, shall be, and thereby are, repealed; and that the courts of law and equity, in all causes and questions cognizable by them respectively, and arising from or touching the said treaty, shall decide and adjudge according to the true intent and meaning of the same, anything in the said acts or parts of acts to the contrary thereof in anywise notwithstanding.

DRAUGHT OF CIRCULAR LETTER TO THE GOVERNORS OF STATES.

Office for Foreign Affairs, April 6, 1787.

The Secretary of the United States for the Department of Foreign Affairs, in pursuance of the order of Congress directing him to report the draught of a letter to the States, to accompany the resolutions in his report of 13th October last, on a letter of 4th March, 1786, from the Honorable John Adams, Esq., reports the following, viz:

To his Excellency the Governor of

Sir,

Our Secretary for Foreign Affairs has transmitted to you copies of a letter to him from our Minister at the Court of London, of the 4th day of March, 1786, and of the papers mentioned to have been enclosed with it.

We have deliberately and dispassionately examined and considered the several facts and matters urged by Britain as infractions of the treaty of peace on the part of America; and we regret that in some of the States too little attention appears to have been paid to the public faith pledged by that treaty.

Not only the obvious dictates of religion, morality, and national honor, but also the first principles of good policy, demand a candid

and punctual compliance with engagements constitutionally and fairly made.

Our national Constitution having committed to us the management of the national concerns with foreign States and Powers, it is our duty to take care that all the rights which they ought to enjoy within our jurisdiction, by the laws of nations and the faith of treaties, remain inviolate; and it is also our duty to provide that the essential interests and peace of the whole Confederacy be not impaired or endangered by deviations from the line of public faith, into which any of its members may, from whatever cause, be unadvisedly drawn.

Let it be remembered that the thirteen independent sovereign States have, by express delegation of power, formed and vested in us a general though limited sovereignty, for the general and national purposes specified in the Confederation. In this sovereignty they cannot severally participate, (except by their delegates,) nor with it have concurrent jurisdiction; for the ninth article of the Confederation most expressly conveys to us the sole and exclusive right and power of determining on war and peace, and of entering into treaties and alliances, &c.

When, therefore, a treaty is constitutionally made, ratified, and published by us, it immediately becomes binding on the whole nation, and superadded to the laws of the land, without the intervention or fiat of State Legislatures. Treaties derive their obligation from being compacts between the sovereign of this and the sovereign of another nation, whereas laws or statutes derive their force from being acts of a Legislature competent to the passing of them. Hence it is clear that treaties must be implicitly received and observed by every member of the nation; for as State Legislatures are not competent to the making of such compacts or treaties, so neither are they competent, in that capacity, authoritatively to decide on or ascertain the construction and sense of them. When doubts arise respecting the construction of State law, it is not unusual nor improper for the State Legislatures, by explanatory or declaratory acts, to remove those doubts. But the case between laws and compacts or treaties is in this widely different; for when doubts arise respecting the sense and meaning of a treaty, they are so far from being cognizable by a State Legislature, that the United States, in Congress assembled, have no authority to settle and determine

them; for as the Legislature only, which constitutionally passes a. law, has power to revise and amend it, so the sovereigns only, who are parties to the treaty, have power, by mutual consent and posterior articles, to correct or explain it.

In cases between individuals, all doubts respecting the meaning of a treaty, like all doubts respecting the meaning of the law, are, in the first instance, mere judicial questions, and are to be heard and decided in the courts of justice having cognizance of the causes in which they arise, and whose duty it is to determine them according to the rules and maxims established by the laws of nations for the interpretation of treaties. From these principles it follows, of necessary consequence, that no individual State has a right, by legislative acts, to decide and point out the sense in which their particular citizens and courts shall understand this or that article of a treaty.

It is evident that a contrary doctrine would not only militate against the common and established maxims and ideas relative to this subject, but would prove no less ludicrous in practice than it is irrational in theory; for, in that case, the same article of the same treaty might by law be made to mean one thing in New Hampshire, another thing in New York, and neither the one nor the other in Georgia.

How far such legislative acts would be valid and obligatory, even within the limits of the State passing them, is a question which we hope never to have occasion to discuss. Certain, however, it is, that such acts cannot bind either of the contracting sovereigns, and, consequently, cannot be obligatory on their respective nations.

But if treaties and every article in them be (as they are and ought to be) binding on the whole nation; if individual States have no right to accept some articles, and reject others; and if the impropriety of State acts to interpret and decide the sense and construction of them be apparent, still more manifest must be the impropriety of State acts to control, delay, or modify the operation and execution of their national compacts.

When it is considered that the several States, assembled by their delegates in Congress, have express power to form treaties, surely the treaties so formed are not afterwards to be subject to such alterations as this or that State Legislature may think expedient to make, and that, too, without the consent of either of the parties to it; that is, in the present case, without the consent of all the United States,

who, collectively, are parties to this treaty on the one side, and his Britannic Majesty on the other. Were the Legislatures to possess and to exercise such power, we should soon be involved, as a nation, in anarchy and confusion at home, and in disputes which would probably terminate in hostilities and war with the nations with whom we may have formed treaties. Instances would then be frequent of treaties fully executed in one State, and partly executed in another; and of the same article being executed in one manner in one State, and in a different manner, or not at all, in another State. History furnishes no precedent of such liberties taken with treaties, under form of law, in any nation.

Contracts between nations, like contracts between individuals, should be faithfully executed, even though the sword, in the one case, and the law in the other, did not compel it. Honest nations, like honest men, require no constraint to do justice; and though impunity and the necessity of affairs may sometimes afford temptations to pare down contracts to the measure of convenience, yet it is never done but at the expense of that esteem, and confidence, and credit, which are of infinitely more worth than all the momentary advantages which such expedients can extort.

But although contracting nations cannot, like individuals, avail themselves of courts of justice to compel performances of contracts, yet an appeal to Heaven and to arms is always in their power, and often in their inclination. But it is their duty to take care that they never lead their people to make and support such appeals, unless the sincerity and propriety of their conduct affords them good reason to rely with confidence on the justice and protection of Heaven.

Thus much we think it useful to observe, in order to explain the principles on which we have unanimously come to the following resolution, viz:

"Resolved, That the Legislatures of the several States cannot, of right, pass any act or acts for interpreting, explaining, or 'construing a national treaty, or any part or clause of it; nor for 'restraining, limiting, or in any manner impeding, retarding, or coun'teracting the operation and execution of the same; for that, on 'being constitutionally made, ratified, and published, they become, in 'virtue of the Confederation, part of the law of the land, and are not 'only independent of the will and power of such Legislatures, but also binding and obligatory on them."