of the Constitution, the judicial power of the United States extends to it.  It reaches the case, the question; it attaches the power of the national judicature to the case itself, in whatever court it may arise or exist; and in this case the Supreme Court has appellate jurisdiction over all courts whatever.  No language could provide with more effect and precision than is here done, for subjecting constitutional questions to the ultimate decision of the Supreme Court.  And, Sir, this is exactly what the Convention found it necessary to provide for, and intended to provide for.  It is, too, exactly what the people were universally told was done when they adopted the Constitution.  One of the first resolutions adopted by the Convention was in these words, viz.:  “That the jurisdiction of the national judiciary shall extend to cases which respect the collection of the national revenue, and questions which involve the national peace and harmony.”  Now, Sir, this either had no sensible meaning at all, or else it meant that the jurisdiction of the national judiciary should extend to these questions, with a paramount authority.  It is not to be supposed that the Convention intended that the power of the national judiciary should extend to these questions, and that the power of the judicatures of the States should also extend to them, with equal power of final decision.  This would be to defeat the whole object of the provision.  There were thirteen judicatures already in existence.  The evil complained of, or the danger to be guarded against, was contradiction and repugnance in the decisions of these judicatures.  If the framers of the Constitution meant to create a fourteenth, and yet not to give it power to revise and control the decisions of the existing thirteen, then they only intended to augment the existing evil and the apprehended danger by increasing still further the chances of discordant judgments.  Why, Sir, has it become a settled axiom in politics that every government must have a judicial power coextensive with its legislative power?  Certainly, there is only this reason, namely, that the laws may receive a uniform interpretation and a uniform execution.  This object cannot be otherwise attained.  A statute is what it is judicially interpreted to be; and if it be construed one way in New Hampshire, and another way in Georgia, there is no uniform law.  One supreme court, with appellate and final jurisdiction, is the natural and only adequate means, in any government, to secure this uniformity.  The Convention saw all this clearly; and the resolution which I have quoted, never afterwards rescinded, passed through various modifications, till it finally received the form which the article now bears in the Constitution.