LETTER XLVIII.--TO CHARLES HELLSTEDT, February 14,1791

TO CHARLES HELLSTEDT, Swedish Consul.

Philadelphia, February 14,1791.

Sir, I now return you the papers you were pleased to put into my
hands, when you expressed to me your dissatisfaction that our court of
admiralty had taken cognizance of a complaint of some Swedish
sailors against their captain for cruelty. If there was error in this
proceeding, the law allows an appeal from that to the Supreme Court;
but the appeal must be made in the forms of the law, which have nothing
difficult in them. You were certainly free to conduct the appeal
yourself, without employing an advocate, but then you must do it in the
usual form. Courts of justice, all over the world, are held by the laws
to proceed according to certain forms, which the good of the suitors
themselves requires they should not be permitted to depart from.

I have further to observe to you, Sir, that this question lies
altogether with the courts of justice; that the constitution of the
United States having divided the powers of government into three
branches, legislative, executive, and judiciary, and deposited each with
a separate body of magistracy, forbidding either to interfere in the
department of the other, the executive are not at liberty to intermeddle
in the present question. It must be ultimately decided by the Supreme
Court. If you think proper to carry it into that, you may be secure of
the strictest justice from them. Partialities they are not at liberty to
show. But for whatever may come before the executive, relative to