Chapter V: Section 1: , of article III. provides, That the judicial power of the United

States shall be vested in one supreme court, and in such inferiour courts as Congress may from time to time appoint.—It has been asserted, that a federal court would be an engine of partiality in the government, a source of oppression and injustice to the poorer part of the community; but how far consistency influenced the conduct of the authors of such assertions, the publick must determine. The anti-federalists have said, that if a cause should come before one of state judicial courts, and judgment be given against the person who possessed most interest, that he would immediately appeal to the federal court, whose residence would be at the seat of government, and consequently at so great a distance that an inhabitant of the state of Georgia or New-Hampshire, if he was in low circumstances, would not be able to carry his cause before the federal court, and would, therefore, be obliged to give it up to his wealthier antagonist. The glaring improbability with which such insinuations abound, must be obvious to every one.

Can it be supposed, that any person would be so inconsistent, after a cause was given against him, in a court where judges presided whose characters, as honest and just men, were unrivalled, as to attempt to have the cause re-heard before the federal court?

Indeed if such a thing was to take place, the man in low circumstances would have nothing to fear, as the payment of all charges would fall upon the person who lost the cause, and there is not the shadow of a doubt, with respect to the person’s losing the cause, who had lost it before in a court of justice in either of the states.

In regard to the equal administration of justice in all the states, a rattle brained anti-federalist, in the last Mass. Gazette, under the signature of Agrippa,(14) has asserted, that the inequality of the administration of justice throughout the states, was a favourite argument in support of the new constitution—an assertion founded on as impudent and barefaced a falsehood as ever was uttered, for the very reverse is the case. The equality of the administration of justice in the different states, has ever been dwelt upon as recommendatory of the new plan of government. I am induced to think that Agrippa is non compos, and this might proceed from his close application to study, while the library of a celebrated university was under his care(15)—he seems to be one of those whom Pope describes when he says,

“Some are bewilder’d in the maze of schools,” &c.

I hope my readers will forgive this digression, when they consider that such scandalous lies, absurdities, and misrepresentations as the productions of Agrippa, that political Quixote, abound with, may have a tendency to prejudice the minds of the misinformed against the new constitution, unless they are properly noticed.