made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the Unit ed States, shall be a part of the supreme law of the land.' But the provisions of the laws in question, wherever they are applicable to the crews of foreign vessels, are in direct conflict with most, if not with all of the commercial treaties which have been made by the United States with foreign nations. Certainly, no treaty of commerce between the United States and any other nation is known to the committee, which contains any restrictions as to the color of the crews by which that commerce is to be carried on.

"It seems to be understood that the application of these laws to foreign vessels has of late years been suspended. This consideration, however, if true, can not make the laws themselves less obnoxious to constitutional objections, still less can it render them more acceptable to our own citizens. The idea that foreign seamen are treated with greater clemency in our own ports than native American seamen, can only serve, on the contrary, to increase the impatience and aggravate the odium with which such laws are justly regarded."

Considering these laws in the light of police regulations, the committee "deny that provisions like these can be brought within the legitimate purview of the police power. That American or foreign seamen, charged with no crime, and infected with no contagion, should be searched for on board the vessels to which they belong; should be seized while in the discharge of their duties, or, it may be, while asleep in their berths; should be dragged on shore and incarcerated, without any other examination than an examination of their skins; and should be rendered liable, in certain contingencies over which they may have no possible control, to be subjected to the ignominy and agony of the lash, and even to the infinitely more ignominious and agonizing fate of being sold into slavery for life, and all for purposes of police, is an idea too monstrous to be entertained for a moment. It would seem almost a mockery to allude to the subject of police regulations in connection with such acts of violence."

The report finally recommended the adoption of the following resolutions:

"Resolved, That the seizure and imprisonment in any port of this Union of free colored seamen, citizens of any of the

states, and against whom there is no charge but that of entering said port in the prosecution of their rightful business, is a violation of the privileges of citizenship guaranteed by the second section of the fourth article of the Constitution of the United States.

"Resolved, That the seizure and imprisonment in any port of this Union of free colored seamen, on board of foreign vessels, against whom there is no charge but that of entering said port in the course of their lawful business, is a breach of the comity of nations, is incompatible with the rights of all nations in amity with the United States, and, in relation to nations with whom the United States have formed commercial conventions, is a violation of the sixth article of the Federal Constitution, which declares that treaties are a part of the supreme law of the land.

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Resolved, That any state laws by which certain classes of seamen are prohibited from entering certain ports of this Union, in the prosecution of their rightful business, are in contravention of the paramount and exclusive power of the general gov ernment to regulate commerce.

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Resolved, That the police power of the states can justify no enactments or regulations which are in direct, positive, and permanent conflict with express provisions or fundamental principles of the national compact."

The report was called up by Mr. Winthrop on the first opportunity, but at too late a period in the session, which was a short one, to admit of discussion. He merely, therefore, asked for a vote on the resolutions. A motion was made by Cave Johnson, the present Post-master General, that the subject be laid on the table, and the House in that manner disposed of it.

It is well known that the existence of a law of this kind in the State of South Carolina gave occasion, upward of twenty years ago, to a formal remonstrance to the government of the United States on the part of the government of Great Britain, as being in direct conflict with the treaty-rights stipulated to British commerce. The constitutionality of the law was denied by William Wirt, when Attorney General of the United States. The question was submitted to him by the then Secretary of State, John Q. Adains, "whether it was compatible with the rights of nations in amity with the United States, or

with the national Constitution?" To this interrogatory, Mr. Wirt, after briefly assigning his reasons, replied, "I am of opinion that the third section of the law under consideration is void, as being against the Constitution, treaties, and laws of the United States, and incompatible with the rights of all nations in amity with the United States." At a subsequent period, in 1831, John Macpherson Berrien, then Attorney General of the United States, gave a different opinion. "I think," he said, "that such an act of legislation is, under the circumstances which I have supposed, a justifiable exercise of the reserved powers of that state, and ought to have effect; that Congress is under a constitutional obligation to respect it in the formation of treaties and in the enactment of laws; and that those who are called to interpret their acts are equally bound so to construe them as to restrain the generality of their expressions within the limits of this obligation." We should add, that out of the difficulty arising under this law with Great Britain grew that celebrated opinion of Judge William Johnson, of the United States Court, delivered in Charleston in the year 1823, which has for some years past been so often referred to and commented upon during the debates on certain topics in the House of Representatives. [See title, ISAAC E. HOLMES.]

The speech of Mr. Winthrop on the standing order of the House, commonly known, during its existence, as the twentyfirst rule, is among the ablest arguments, both in a constitutional and parliamentary view, to be found on the Northern side of the question. In the notice which we shall hereafter present of Mr. Adams, it will become our duty to place in an intelligible form before the public the whole policy of the House in relation to petitions touching the abolition of slavery. We merely refer to it now, that, as we pass along, we may place on record the general views which have governed the votes of Mr. Winthrop. He says:

"The idea that the right of petition does not imply the right of having a petition received; the doctrine that the right of the people to apply to the government for redress of grievances does not involve any obligation on the part of the government to heed, or even hear, that application; the position which has been seriously maintained here, that all that was ever intended by the right of petition was the right of individuals or of assem

blies to prepare and sign a paper, setting forth the grievances under which they are suffering, and the redress which they seek; and that it was no part of that intention to secure to that paper any consideration or entertainment whatever from those to whom it is addressed-these doctrines seem to me about as reasonable as it would be to contend that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus implies no obligation on the part of the officer to whom it is directed to regard or obey the writ, and no duty on the part of the government to execute or enforce it, but is only designed to secure to an imprisoned citizen the satisfac tion of having the writ itself duly signed and attested, to amuse himself with in his solitary confinement, to meditate upon by day, or to put under his pillow to dream upon by night. They seem to me about as reasonable as it would be to maintain that the freedom of the press extends only to the freedom of the mechanical enginery of the press; that it was only intended to secure the rights of individual printers to compose, set up, and strike off such matter as might be agreeable to them, but that it does not reach to the privilege of publishing or circulating that matter after it is stricken off! In a word, Mr. Speaker, if the right of petition is really nothing more than it has been represented to be by some of the honorable members who have preceded me in this debate, it is, in my judgment, as poor a pretense, as miserable a mockery, as empty, and unmeaning, and worthless an abstraction, as was ever dignified by a swelling name or a high-sounding title; and the sooner it is expunged from the roll of civil liberty, the sooner it ceases to hold out to the ear a promise only to be broken to the hope, the sooner will the people understand what rights they really do possess."

And again:

"Mr. Speaker, we ask for these petitions only that you will treat them as you treat other petitions. We set up for them no absurd or extravagant pretensions; we claim for them no exclusive or engrossing attention. We desire only that you will adopt no proscriptive and passionate course in regard to them. We demand only that you will allow them to go through the same orderly round of reception, reference, and report with all other petitions. When they have gone through that round, they will be just as much under your own control as they were be fore they entered on it.

"I heartily hope, sir, this course is now about to be adopted. I hope it as an advocate of the right of petition; I hope it as a Northern man with Northern principles, if you please to term me so; but I hope it not less as an American citizen with American principles; as a friend to the Constitution and the Union; as one who is as little disposed to interfere with any rights of other states, as to surrender any rights of his own state; as one who, though he may see provisions of the Constitution which are odious in principle and unjust in practice-provisions which he would gladly have had omitted at the outset, and gladly see altered now, if such an alteration were practicable-is yet willing to stand by our Constitution as it is, our Union as it is, our territory as it is. I do honestly believe that the course of this House in relation to these petitions has done more than all other causes combined to bring the Constitution into disregard and the Union into danger. Other causes have, indeed, co-operated with this cause. Your arbitrary and oppressive state laws for imprisoning our free colored seamen in the Southern ports; your abhorrent proposals to annex Texas to the Union, in violation of the compromises of the Constitution-yes, sir, of those very compromises on which Adams and Hancock met Jefferson and Madison (to use language which was employed in casting reproach upon the resolutions of Massachusetts which were recently presented here)-these laws and these proposals have unquestionably co-operated of late with the denial of the right of petition in exciting in some quarters a spirit of discontent with our existing system. But this rule of the House has been the original spring of the whole feeling; and to what advantage on the part of those by whom it was devised? Have Southern institutions been any safer since its establishment? Have the enemies to those institutions been rendered any less ardent or less active by it? Has agitation on the subject of slavery in this hall been repressed or allayed by it? Have these petitions and resolutions been diminished in number under its operation and influence? No, sir; the very reverse, the precise opposite of all this has been the result. The attempt of this House to suppress and silence all utterance on the subject of slavery in this hall, has terminated as did the attempt of one of the kings of ancient Judah to suppress the warnings of the prophet of God. The prophet, we are told, took another roll,