fectually to execute this and the former articles,
Congress shall have authority to appoint courts, supreme and subordinate,
with power to try all crimes, not relating to state securities, between
any foreign state, or subject of such state, actually residing in a
foreign country, and not being an absentee or person who has alienated
himself from these states on the one part, and any of the United States or
citizens thereof on the other part; also all causes in which foreign
ambassadours or other foreign ministers resident here shall be immediately
concerned, respecting the jurisdiction or immunities only. And the
Congress shall have authority to execute the judgment of such courts by
their own affairs. Piracies and felonies committed on the high seas shall
also belong to the department of Congress for them to define, try, and
punish, in the same manner as the other causes shall be defined, tried,
and determined. All the before-mentioned causes shall be tried by jury and
in some sea-port town. And it is recommended to the general court at their
next meeting to provide and put Congress in possession of funds arising
from foreign imports and ships sufficient to defray our share of the
present annual expenses of the continent."(25)

Such a resolve, explicitly limiting the powers granted, is the farthest we
can proceed with safety. The scheme of accepting the report of the
Convention, and amending it afterwards, is merely delusive. There is no
intention among those who make the proposition to amend it at all.
Besides, if they have influence enough to get it accepted in its present
form, there is no probability that they will consent to an alteration when
possessed of an unlimited revenue. It is an excellence in our present
confederation, that it is extremely difficult to alter it. An unanimous
vote of the states is required. But this newly proposed form is founded in
injustice, as it proposes that a fictitious consent of only nine states
shall be sufficient to establish it. Nobody can suppose that the consent
of a state is any thing more than a fiction, in the view of the
federalists, after the mobbish influence used over the Pennsylvania
convention. The two great leaders of the plan, with a modesty of Scotsmen,
placed a rabble in the gallery to applaud their speeches, and thus
supplied their want of capacity in the argument. Repeatedly were Wilson
and M'Kean worsted in the argument by the plain good sense of Findly and
Smil