If this word migration applied to freemen, and not to slaves, it would be clear that removal from State to State would not be comprehended within it. Why, then, if you choose to apply it to slaves, does it take another meaning as to the place from whence they are to come?

Sir, if we once depart from the usual acceptation of this term, fortified as it is by its union with another in which there is nothing in this respect equivocal, will gentlemen please to intimate the point at which we are to stop? Migration means, as they contend, a removal from State to State, within the pale of the common government. Why not a removal also from county to county within a particular State - from plantation to plantation—from farm to farm—from hovel to hovel? Why not any exertion of the power of locomotion? I protest I do not see, if this arbitrary limitation of the natural sense of the term migration be warrantable, that a person to whom it applies may not be compelled to remain all the days of his life — which could not well be many— in the very spot, literally speaking, in which it was his good or his bad fortune to be born.

Whatever may be the latitude in which the word persons is capable of being received, it is not denied that the word importation indicates a bringing in from a jurisdiction foreign to the United States. The two termini of the importation here

VOL. IX.-9.

spoken of are a foreign country and the American Union the first the terminus a quo, the second the terminus ad quem. The word migration stands in simple connection with it, and of course is left to the full influence of that connection. The natural conclusion is that the same termini belong to each, or, in other words, that if the importation must be from abroad, so must also be the migration -no other termini being assigned to the one which are not manifestly characteristic of the other. This conclusion is so obvious that, to repel it, the word migration requires as an appendage explanatory phraseology, giving to it a different beginning from that of importation. To justify the conclusion that it was intended to mean a removal from State to State, each within the sphere of the Constitution in which it is used, the addition of the words "from one to another State in this Union " were indispensable. By the omission of these words, the word migration is compelled to take every sense of which it is fairly susceptible from its immediate neighbor, importation. In this view it means a coming, as importation means a bringing, from a foreign jurisdiction into the United States. That it is susceptible of this meaning, nobody doubts. I go further. It can have no other meaning in the place in which it is found. It is found in the Constitution of this Union, which, when it speaks of migration as of a general

concern, must be supposed to have in view a migration into the domain which itselt embraces as a general government.

Migration, then, even if it comprehends slaves, does not mean the removal of them from State to State, but means the coming of slaves from places beyond their limits and their power. And if this be so, the gentlemen gain nothing for their argument by showing that slaves were the objects of this term.

An honorable gentleman from Rhode Island, whose speech was distinguished for its ability and for an admirable force of reasoning as well as by the moderation and mildness of its spirit, informed us, with less discretion than in general he exhibited, that the word migration was introduced into this clause at the instance of some of the Southern States, who wished by its instrumentality to guard against a prohibition by Congress of the passage into those States of slaves from other States. He has given us no authority for this supposition, and it is, therefore, a gratuitous one. How improbable it is, a moment's reflection will convince him. The African slave-trade being open during the whole of the time to which the entire clause in question referred, such a purpose could scarcely be entertained; but if it had been entertained, and there was believed to be a necessity for securing it by a restriction upon the power of Congress to interfere with it, is it possible that

they who deemed it important would have contented themselves with a vague restraint, which was calculated to operate in almost any other manner than that which they desired? If fear and jealousy, such as the honorable gentleman has described, had dictated this provision, a better term than that of migration, simple and unqualified, and joined too with the word importation, would have been found to tranquillize those fears and satisfy that jealousy. Fear and jealousy are watchful, and are rarely seen to accept a security short of their object, and less rarely to shape that security, of their own accord, in such a way as to make it no security at all. They always seek an explicit guaranty; and that this is not such a guaranty this debate has proved, if it has proved nothing else.

Sir, I shall not be understood by what I have said to admit that the word migration refers to slaves. I have contended only that if it does refer to slaves, it is in this clause synonymous with importation; and that it cannot mean the mere passage of slaves, with or without their masters, from one State in the Union to another.

But I now deny that it refers to slaves at all. I am not for any man's opinion or his histories upon this subject. I am not accustomed jurare in verba magistri. I shall take the clause as I find it, and do my best to interpret it.

JOHN RANDOLPH

John Randolph was born in Virginia, June 2, 1773. He was educated at Princeton and Columbia colleges, and studied law in the office of Edmund Randolph, his second cousin. In 1795 he returned to Virginia, and in 1799, in consequence of a powerful speech made by him in reply to Patrick Henry, Randolph was elected to Congress. His first speech in that body was ominous of his future eccentricities, and made him many enemies. Nevertheless, by sheer force of genius, Randolph soon became the leader of the Republican party in the House, and for many years he was the most prominent of American statesmen. He was defeated for Congress in 1812, in consequence of his struggle to prevent the war with England, but was returned in 1815. In 1824 he was elected to the Senate to fill a vacancy, serving until 1827, when he was defeated for reëlection. In 1829 he was a member of the Virginia Constitutional Convention, and by his eloquence at times enthralled that body, though he was rapidly failing in health. He died at Philadelphia in 1833.

Randolph was a very unequal speaker, but at his best was rarely surpassed in fluent and effective eloquence. He was peculiarly incisive in his manner, and was strongest in aggressive debate. At times he was dignified and noble in his diction, but this was not of custom.

The best biography is the Life of John Randolph, by Hugh A. Garland (2 vols., New York, 1850). John Randolph, by Henry Adams (Boston, 1882) is also interesting.