RESTORATION OF FUGITIVE SLAVES. (Const. Art. 4, sec. 2.)

On the 12th day of February, 1793 (Stat. 1793, chap. 7), there was approved "An Act respecting fugitives from justice, and persons escaping from the service of their masters." This is the law which, for over half a century, has prescribed the modes in which a runaway slave may be retaken. It is what is now called "the infamous law of '93." Thousands of runaway slaves have owed their return to their happy condition to the beneficent operation of this law, obviously framed, as it is, with an eye to this constitutional provision.

"When a person held to labor in any of the United States, or in either of the territories on the north-west or south of the river Ohio, under the laws thereof, shall escape into any other of the said States or territory, the person to whom such labor or service may be due, his agent or attorney, is hereby empowered to seize or arrest such fugitive from labor, and to take him or her before any judge of the circuit or district courts of the United States, residing or being within the State, or before any magistrate of a county, city, or town corporate, wherein such seizure or arrest shall be made; and, upon proof to the satisfaction of such judge or magistrate, either by oral testimony or affidavit, taken before and certified by a magistrate of any such State or territory, that the person so seized or arrested doth, under the laws of the State or territory from which he or she fled, owe service or labor to the person claiming him or her, it shall be the duty of such judge or magistrate to give a certificate thereof to such claimant, his agent or attorney, which shall be sufficient warrant for removing the said fugitive from labor to the State or territory from which he or she fled."

SUPPRESSION OF SLAVE INSURRECTIONS. (Const. Art. 1, sec. 8; Art. 4, sec. 4.)

"An Act to provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections, and repel invasions," was approved May 2, 1792 (Act Const. 1792, chap. 28). Section first provides that, "In case of an

insurrection in any State against the government thereof, it shall be lawful for the President of the United States, on application of the legislature of such State, or of the executive (when the legislature cannot be convened), to call forth such number of the militia of any other State or States as may be applied for, or as he may judge sufficient to suppress such insurrection." Precisely the same language is made use of in Stat. 1795, c. 101. By Act approved March 3, 1807 (Stat. 1807, c. 94), the President is authorized "in all cases of insurrection," "when it is lawful for him to call forth the militia for the purpose of suppressing the same," "to employ for the same purpose such part of the land or naval force of the United States as shall be judged necessary."

That these laws have been held to include an insurrection of slaves is indisputable. On receipt of the intelligence of Nat. Turner's insurrection in Southampton, Va., Col. House, then commanding at Fortress Monroe, set out with three companies of United States troops, for the purpose of suppressing the revolt. He was reinforced by a detachment from the United States ships Warren and Natchez, amounting in all to about three hundred men. With our troops and our officers we have actually aided the slaveholder in holding his fellow-man in slavery! We have actually done what our fathers engaged in the Constitution that we should do, namely, aid with the national strength in keeping the slaves in subjection!

CHAPTER XV.

THE CONSTITUTION ACCORDING TO THE EXPOSITION OF ITS FINAL INTERPRETER.

"The judicial department of the United States is, in the last resort, the final expositor of the Constitution as to all questions of a judicial nature. Were there no power to interpret, pronounce, and execute the law, the government would either perish through its own imbecility, as was the case with the articles of confederation, or other powers must be assumed by the legislative body, to the destruction of liberty."- Chancellor Kent.

THE people of the United States, in adopting the Constitution, made one standard, one fundamental law, and only one. They gave to the government of the United States certain powers. They restricted it as to others. They placed certain prohibitions on the States. The Constitution was to be the one fundamental law of the land, to which all, as well States as people, should submit. Art. 6, sec. 2, provides that the "Constitution and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any thing in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding."

Who now is to tell us what this one standard is, to which all must submit, and which is thus to override all State Constitutions and all State laws? Is it the province of each individual to do it? Then we may have at this moment seventeen million different interpretations, and hence as many different Constitutions, each of which, however, is the supreme law of the land! Are the executive or judicial departments of the States the proper expounders? Then,

at this moment, we may have only thirty different interpretations, twenty-nine of which must be wrong, because the supreme law can be but one.

In order, therefore, that the end of the Constitution may be accomplished, that it may really be the supreme law of the land, it must have provided a way in which its only true meaning may be ascertained and definitively settled. Unless it has provided a final interpreter of its meaning, it is the merest folly to style it the supreme law of the land, or to call on us to obey its requirement. Is the Constitution thus deficient? Does it demand uniformity, and at the same time deny the use of those means which are absolutely necessary to produce such uniformity? Does it present a variable, ever-changing standard of duty, and yet demand complete uniformity in practice?

There are three departments in the Government, namely, the Executive, the Legislative, and the Judicial. The first two of these are each, to some extent, supreme in its own sphere; and its acts are incapable of revision elsewhere. "Thus, in measures exclusively of a political, legislative, or executive character, it is plain, that, as the supreme authority as to these questions belongs to the legislative and executive departments, they cannot be re-examined elsewhere. Thus, Congress having the power to declare war, to levy taxes, to appropriate money, to regulate intercourse and commerce with foreign nations, their mode of executing these powers can never become the subject of re-examination in any other tribunal. So, the power to make treaties being confided to the President and Senate, when a treaty is properly ratified, it becomes the law of the land, and no other tribunal can gainsay its stipulations. Yet cases may readily be imagined, in which a tax may be laid, or a treaty made, upon motions and grounds wholly beside the intention of the Constitution. The remedy, however, in such cases is solely by an appeal to the people at the elections, or by the salutary power of amendment provided by the Constitution itself.

"But, where the question is of a different nature, and capable of judicial inquiry and decision, there it admits of a

very different consideration. The decision then made, whether in favor or against the constitutionality of the Act, by the State or by national authority, by the legislature or by the executive, being capable in its own nature of being brought to the test of the Constitution, is subject to judicial revision. It is in such cases, as we conceive, that there is a final and common arbiter provided by the Constitution itself, to whose decisions all others are subordinate; and that arbiter is the supreme judicial authority of the courts of the Union" (Story, Comm. Const. sec. 374, 375); for the Constitution declares, Art. 3, sec. 2, that "the judicial power shall extend to all cases in law and equity arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made, or which shall be made, under their authority," &c. And Art. 3, sec. 1: "The judicial power of the United States shall be vested in one supreme court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish."

These constitutional provisions are clear. The Constitution and laws and treaties of the United States are declared to be the supreme law of the land. To expound what the law is, is a judicial act. The judicial power extends to all cases arising under the Constitution, laws, and treaties of the United States. It therefore extends to the exposition of the Constitution, laws, and treaties, when the case before the court properly calls for such exposition. This judicial power, and consequently this power of exposition, it is declared, shall be vested in one supreme court, &c. Most obviously, the exposition given by this one supreme court cannot be overruled by any other constitutional power; else the court is not supreme, else the Constitution is nullified. The decision of the supreme court is the decision of the only constitutionally authorized expounder of the meaning of the Constitution; and such exposition, to be supreme, must be final.

What, then, has this final interpreter declared the meaning of these clauses of the Constitution to be?

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