ter pointing to the original jurisdiction
which flows immediately from the Constitution, Justice Johnson asserted:
"All other Courts created by the general Government possess no
jurisdiction but what is given them by the power that creates them, and
can be vested with none but what the power ceded to the general
Government will authorize them to confer."[612] To the same affect is
Rhode Island _v._ Massachusetts[613] where Justice Baldwin declared that
"the distribution and appropriate exercise of the judicial power must
therefore be made by laws passed by Congress and cannot be assumed by
any other department * * *"

A more sweeping assertion of Congressional power over jurisdiction was
made by the Supreme Court in Cary _v._ Curtis,[614] which bears more
directly upon the issue than some of the earlier cases. Here counsel had
argued that a statute which made final the decisions of the Secretary of
the Treasury in tax disputes was unconstitutional in that it deprived
the federal courts of the judicial power vested in them by the
Constitution. In reply to this argument the Court speaking through
Justice Daniel declared: "The judicial power of the United States * * *
is (except in enumerated instances, applicable exclusively to this
court) dependent for its distribution and organization, and for the
modes of its exercise, entirely upon the action of Congress, who possess
the sole power of creating the tribunals (inferior to the Supreme Court)
* * * and of investing them with jurisdiction, either limited,
concurrent, or exclusive, and of withholding jurisdiction from them in
the exact degrees and character which to Congress may seem proper for
the public good." Continuing, Justice Daniel said: "It follows then
that courts created by statute, must look to the statute as the warrant
for their authority; certainly they cannot go beyond the statute, and
assert an authority with which they may not be invested by it, or which
may clearly be denied to them."[615]

The principles of Cary _v._ Curtis were reiterated five years later in
Sheldon _v._ Sill[616] where the validity of Sec. 11 of the Judiciary Act
of 1789 was directly questioned. The assignee of a negotiable instrument
filed a suit in a circuit court even though no diversity of citizenship
existed as between the original parties to the mortgage. The circuit
court entertained jurisdiction in spite of the prohibition against such
suits in Sec. 11 and ordered a sale of the