m.

_The judiciary of the United States is so constructed and extended as to
absorb and destroy the judiciaries of the several states; thereby
rendering law as tedious, intricate and expensive, and justice as
unattainable by a great part of the community, as in England; and enable
the rich to oppress and ruin the poor._ It extends only to objects and
cases specified, and wherein the national peace or rights, or the harmony
of the states is concerned, and not to controversies between citizens of
the same state (except where they claim under grants of different states);
and nothing hinders but the supreme federal court may be held in different
districts, or in all the states, and that all the cases, except the few in
which it has original and not appellate jurisdiction, may in the first
instance be had in the state courts and those trials be final except in
cases of great magnitude; and the trials be by jury also in most or all
the causes which were wont to be tried by them, as congress shall provide,
whose appointment is security enough for their attention to the wishes and
convenience of the people. In chancery courts juries are never used, nor
are they proper in admiralty courts, which proceed not by municipal laws,
which they may be supposed to understand, but by the civil law and law of
nations.

Mr. Mason deems the president and senate's power to make treaties
dangerous, because they become laws of the land. If the president and his
proposed council had this power, or the president alone, as in England and
other nations is the case, could the danger be less?--or is the
representative branch suited to the making of treaties, which are often
intricate, and require much negotiation and secrecy? The senate is
objected to as having too much power, and bold unfounded assertions that
they will destroy any balance in the government, and accomplish what
usurpation they please upon the rights and liberties of the people; to
which it may be answered, they are elective and rotative, to the mass of
the people; the populace can as well balance the senatorial branch there
as in the states, and much better than in England, where the lords are
hereditary, and yet the commons preserve their weight; but the state
governments on which the constitution is built will forever be security
enough to the people against aristocratic usurpations:--The danger of the
constitution is not aristocracy or monarchy, but anarchy.

I intreat you, my