n requires, therefore, not only
definite rules fixing the powers of the courts in cases of jurisdiction
over the same persons and things in actual litigation, but also a spirit
of reciprocal comity and mutual assistance to promote due and orderly
procedure."[700]

EARLY USE OF STATE COURTS IN ENFORCEMENT OF FEDERAL LAW

The final phase of the relation of State courts has to do with their
administration of federal law. Although it is the general rule that
Congress cannot vest the judicial power of the United States in courts
other than those created in pursuance of article III,[701] it has from
the beginning of the National Government left to the State courts wide
areas of jurisdiction which it might have vested exclusively in the
federal courts, section 25 of the Judiciary Act of 1789 offering the
supreme illustration. But going far beyond that, in the latter years of
the eighteenth century and the early part of the nineteenth, Congress
provided that suits by the National Government itself for fines,
forfeitures, and penalties imposed by the revenue laws might be brought
in State courts of competent jurisdiction as well as in the federal
courts.[702] The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793,[703] the Naturalization Act
of 1795,[704] and the Alien Enemies Act of 1798,[705] all imposed
positive duties on State courts to enforce federal law. In 1799 the
State courts were vested with jurisdiction to try criminal offenses
against federal laws.[706] Extensive reliance was placed on State courts
for the enforcement of the Embargo Acts;[707] and the act of March 3,
1815,[708] vested in State or county courts within or directly adjoining
a federal tax-collection district cognizant "of all complaints, suits
and prosecutions for taxes, duties, fines, penalties, and forfeitures."

Retreat From This Practice

The indifference, however, of the State courts in New England to the
Embargo Acts, the later hostility of courts in the northern States to
the Fugitive Slave Act, and the refusal of courts in other States to
administer federal law on the general principle that the courts of no
nation are bound to enforce the penal laws of another,[709] all combined
to produce strong sentiments against the use of State courts to
administer federal law. These sentiments came in time to be incorporated
in dissenting opinions,[710] and in 1842 in Prigg _v._ Pennsylvania[711]
the Court definitely ruled that the States could not be compelled to
enforce