require a thorough knowledge of the laws and
usages of nations; and they will sometimes be under the influence of
impressions which will not suffer them to pay sufficient regard to those
considerations of public policy which ought to guide their inquiries.
There would of course be always danger that the rights of other nations
might be infringed by their decisions, so as to afford occasions of
reprisal and war. Though the proper province of juries be to determine
matters of fact, yet in most cases legal consequences are complicated
with fact in such a manner as to render a separation impracticable.

It will add great weight to this remark, in relation to prize causes, to
mention that the method of determining them has been thought worthy of
particular regulation in various treaties between different powers of
Europe, and that, pursuant to such treaties, they are determinable in
Great Britain, in the last resort, before the king himself, in his privy
council, where the fact, as well as the law, undergoes a re-examination.
This alone demonstrates the impolicy of inserting a fundamental
provision in the Constitution which would make the State systems a
standard for the national government in the article under consideration,
and the danger of encumbering the government with any constitutional
provisions the propriety of which is not indisputable.

My convictions are equally strong that great advantages result from the
separation of the equity from the law jurisdiction, and that the causes
which belong to the former would be improperly committed to juries.
The great and primary use of a court of equity is to give relief in
extraordinary cases, which are exceptions(2) to general rules. To unite
the jurisdiction of such cases with the ordinary jurisdiction, must have
a tendency to unsettle the general rules, and to subject every case that
arises to a special determination; while a separation of the one from
the other has the contrary effect of rendering one a sentinel over the
other, and of keeping each within the expedient limits. Besides this,
the circumstances that constitute cases proper for courts of equity are
in many instances so nice and intricate, that they are incompatible with
the genius of trials by jury. They require often such long, deliberate,
and critical investigation as would be impracticable to men called from
their occupations, and obliged to decide before they were permitted
to return to them. The simplici