award has passed "an act to give effect to the award rendered
by the tribunal of arbitration."[Footnote: The La Ninfa, 75
Federal Reporter, 513, 517.]

The degree of confiscation was therefore reviewed. It will be
noticed that this result was reached in a suit by the United
States in one of their own courts, in which the claim of the
government was one of territorial boundary, and yet that the
court overruled the claim and threw out the suit on the strength
of an award made in pursuance of the law of the land. The treaty
was the law. This law provided for the award and made it,
whichever view should be adopted, final. It was therefore for
the court to accept it as final, even against the resistance of
the political department of the government, and do justice
accordingly.

The courts before the Revolution, and in some States for half a
century after it, served as a kind of political mouthpiece. The
institution of the grand jury[Footnote: See Chap. XVII.] afforded
the means. Those composing it are personally selected by the
sheriff from the principal men in the county. It is the duty of
the court to instruct them at the opening of the term which they
are summoned to attend as to the law and practice governing the
exercise of their functions. Frequently this charge was prefaced
by an harangue from the judge on the social, moral, religious or
political questions of the day.[Footnote: "Life and Works of John
Adams," II, 169.] To this the grand jury were not backward in
responding with compliments and perhaps presentments.

In Massachusetts they went even further in 1774. The House of