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Show -31- New York blandly undertook to reward Robert Fulton for his invention of the steamboat by granting him an exclusive monopoly of steam navigation upon all the inland and territorial waters of the State; whioh brought from the United States Supreme Court one of the classic decisions of history to demonstrate the self-evident conclusion that the New York grant to Fulton was made in violation of the commerce olause of the federal constitution.72 During the first few years after the formation of the Union there were many other acts of Congress and of the legislatures of the several States, and numerous decisions of the courts, indicating a wide divergence of opinion con** cerning the limits of federal and state sovereignty as distributed by the federal constitution. In respect to the territorial and communicating waters of the States, these early acts and decisions defined chiefly the mere details of navi- gation rights and of admiralty jurisdiction under the new regime. Such minutiae of sovereign rights and relations are not within the scope of this study, limit- ed as it is to a review of important events in a search for general principles of law and sovereign policy. It will suffice to say, in passing, that the early criticism of the federal government and the Supreme Court by the States was noii justified. There was no unconstitutional invasion of state sovereignty. Con- gress and the Supreme Court went no farther at that time than to assume or to . declare that the States cannot interfere with, regulate or burden the property and governmental agencies of the United States nor the subject-matter and in- strumentalities of interstate and foreign navigation without congressional as- sent; nor exercise admiralty or maritime jurisdiction upon the navigable waters of the United States whether within, or above, the ebb and flow of the tide; nor fail to abide by their sovereign compacts. The lengthy and classic opinions of the Supreme Court, new in history and with much learning not much needed, may- have clothed the short and plainly worded federal constitution with more com~ plexity than necessary; but the state governments were never in danger from that sourcec Of much greater significance in this era, when the sovereignty of European nations still extended over so much of North America, was the Congress of" Vienna in the year 1815« This was the greatest council of the nations that Had. convened since the Congress of Westphalia in I6I4.8, and was perhaps the most im- portant of all time in the formation of the international law of navigable rivers. The "Final Act of the Congress of Vienna" provided, in Articles 108 and 109, that "The Powers whose territories are separated or traversed by the same navi.-* gable river, engage to regulate, by common consent, everything regarding its 514., 1 L. Ed. 507 (1795), supra, at footnote )j6Q; while the legislatures of Virginia and Kentucky denounced, in language far from diplomatic, the alien etnd sedition laws, and declared that each State in its independent sovereignty is the sole judge of its own obligations under the federal constitution* Wisconsin revived this contention just before the outbreak of the War of the Rebellion* Ames, State Documents, passim. 72 Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat (U.S.) 1, 6 L« Ed. 23 (I82I4) . |