they then thought proper to constitute, established a system of laws, which they divided into three denominations of, 1. common law; 2. statute law; 3. chancery:  or if you please, into two only, of 1. common law; 2. chancery.  When by the Declaration of Independence, they chose to abolish their former organs of declaring their will, the acts of will already formally and constitutionally declared, remained untouched.  For the nation was not dissolved, was not annihilated; its will, therefore, remained in full vigor:  and on the establishing the new organs, first of a convention, and afterwards a more complicated legislature, the old acts of national will continued in force, until the nation should, by its new organs, declare its will changed.  The common law, therefore, which was not in force when we landed here, nor till we had formed ourselves into a nation, and had manifested by the organs we constituted that the common law was to be our law, continued to be our law; because the nation continued in being, and because, though it changed the organs for the future declarations of its will, yet it did not change its former declarations that the common law was its law.  Apply these principles to the present case.  Before the revolution there existed no such nation as the United States:  they then first associated as a nation, but for special purposes only.  They had all their laws to make, as Virginia had on her first establishment as a nation.  But they did not, as Virginia had done, proceed to adopt a whole system of laws ready made to their hand.  As their association as a nation was only for special purposes, to wit, for the management of their concerns with one another and with foreign nations, and the States composing the association chose to give it powers for those purposes and no others, they could not adopt any general system, because it would have embraced objects on which this association had no right to form or declare a will.  It was not the organ for declaring a national will in these cases.  In the cases confided to them, they were free to declare the will of the nation, the law, but till it was declared there could be no law.  So that the common law did not become, ipso facto, law on the new association; it could only become so by a positive adoption, and so far only as they were authorized to adopt.

I think it will be of great importance, when you come to the proper part, to portray at full length the consequences of this new doctrine, that the common law is the law of the United States and that their courts have, of course, jurisdiction co-extensive with that law, that is to say, general over all cases and persons.  But great heavens!  Who could have conceived in 1789, that within ten years we should have to combat such windmills.  Adieu.  Yours affectionately.

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER CCLIV.—­TO WILSON C. NICHOLAS, September 5, 1799

TO WILSON C. NICHOLAS.