the inhabitants are declared. Sec. 2. Secures habeas corpus and judicial proceedings, according to the course of the common law," &c. It is also declared that the Indians shall not be disturbed "in their property, rights, or liberty, * * * unless in just wars authorized by the representatives of the people." 4. "There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in said Territory, otherwise than for the punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." Statutes of Oregon, 39.

1848. By sec. 14 of the act of Congress establishing the territorial government of Oregon,' the ordinance of 1787 is extended over the Territory, and "the existing laws now in force in the Territory of Oregon, under the authority of the provisional government established by the people thereof," are recognized "so far as not incompatible with the Constitution of the United States and the principles and provisions of this act, subject nevertheless to be altered, modified, or repealed by the Legislative Assembly of the said Territory." By sec. 5, the suffrage is limited to white persons. In providing for appeals to the Supreme Court of the United States, no mention is made of cases involving a title to slaves or the possession of personal liberty, as in the acts establishing the governments of Nebraska, Kansas, New Mexico, and Utah.

1849, Sept. 26. "An act to prevent negroes and mulattoes from coming to or residing in Oregon." Preamble: "Whereas, situated as the people of Oregon are, in the midst of an Indian population, it would be highly dangerous to allow free negroes and mulattoes to reside in the Territory, or to intermix with the Indians, instilling into their minds feelings of hostility to the white race." Sec. 1. "That it shall not be lawful for any negro or mulatto to come into or reside within the limits of this Territory "-not to apply to resident negroes &c., or their offspring. 2. Regulations respecting negroes, &c., arriving in vessels. 6. Powers of judges and justices of the peace.

1IX. St. U. S. 323. By sec. 6 the legislative power is declared to extend to "all rightful subjects of legislation not inconsistent with the Constitution and laws of the United States," and that the acts, if disapproved of by Congress, shall be null and void.

1854, Jan. 30. The above repealed. See Stats. of Or. (1855), p. 551. Ib. p. 130. Negroes, mulattoes, and Indians, or persons of one half or more of Indian blood, in an action or proceeding to which a white person is a party, shall not be competent to testify.'

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1859. Constitution of Oregon. In the name of the people of the State of Oregon. Art. I. sec. 1. Declares "that all men, when they form a social compact, are equal in rights." There is no attribution to all men of any natural, inherent, or inalienable rights. 32. "White foreigners, who are or who may hereafter become residents of this State, shall enjoy the same rights in respect to the possession, enjoyment, and descent of property as native-born citizens, and the Legislative Assembly shall have power to restrain and regulate the immigration to this State of persons not qualified to become citizens of the United States." 35. "There shall be neither slavery nor invol untary servitude in this State, otherwise than as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." 36. "No free negro or mulatto not residing in this State at the time of the adoption of this Constitution shall ever come, reside, or be within this State, or hold any real estate, or make any contract, or maintain any suit therein, and the Legislative Assembly shall provide by penal laws for the removal, by public officers, of all such free negroes and mulattoes, and for their effectual exclusion from the State, and for the punishment of persons who shall bring them into the State, or employ or harbor them therein." Art. II. (containing seventeen sections), sec. 1. "All elections shall be free and equal." 2. Suffrage limited to white male citizens of the United States. 6. "No negro, Chinaman, or mulatto shall have the right of suffrage."

'In the same Code, p. 240, the governor is authorized to surrender fugitives from justice on demand, &c.

* Framed by a convention called by the territorial Legislature, and adopted by a vote of the people, Nov. 9, 1857-7,195 for, and 3,195 against, its adoption. Adopted on separate vote; 2,645 in favor of slavery, and 7,727 against slavery.

Adopted on separate vote; 1,081 in favor of permitting the residence of free negroes, and 8,640 against the same.

$580. LEGISLATION OF WASHINGTON TERRITORY.

This Territory was organized in 1853, in the northern portion of the then-existing Oregon Territory, the laws of which are continued in the new Territory by the organic law.'

1854. In the Code enacted at the first session of the territorial Legislature, no mention is made of negroes, or of slaves or servants.

1855. An act amending the law of marriage declares, "that all marriages heretofore solemnized in this Territory, where one of the parties to such marriage shall be a white person and the other possessed of one fourth or more negro blood, or more than one half Indian blood, are hereby declared void." Ann. Laws, p. 33.*

1 Act of Congress, March 2, 1853. An act to establish the territorial government of Washington. X. St. U. S. 172. Sec. 5. Restricts the elective franchise to whites. 6. Declares the legislative power, as in sec. 6 of the organic law of Oregon Territory. In providing for appeals to the Supreme Court of the United States, no mention is made of cases relating to slavery or freedom.

* An act of 1854, relating to practice in criminal prosecutions, sec. 6, authorizes the governor to surrender fugitives from justice. Code of 1854, p. 102.

The question may occur to the reader, whether the argument from international principles, already stated, would not support slavery in the British possessions north of the territory of the United States. It would seem that it should, in the absence of positive prohibition, unless the operation of those principles be restrained in this instance by the fact that those who first colonized the country were already, in another place, under the sovereign from whose will all law prevailing in the Territory colonized must derive its authority, and will therefore carry with them as a personal law the law of their former domicil, so far as applicable to their new situation. This law will be the common law of England, which may thereby acquire a territorial extent in these places, as it formerly acquired territorial extent in the colonies on the Atlantic coast at their first settlement. (Ante, Vol. I. pp. 118, 197.) This law, as now containing a universal attribution of personal liberty, would probably be held to prevent the recognition of involuntary servitude. (Ante, Vol. I. p. 377.)

At the time of printing these pages, bills for the organization of Colorado Territory, west of Kansas; Dacotah Territory, in the district lying north and west of Minnesota; and Nevada Territory, in the western part of Utah Territory, including the Washoe River mining region,-are reported to have been signed by the President, March 2, 1861. It is said that nothing in relation to slavery is con

tained in any of these bills.

In connection with the legislation of Texas given in preceding pages, it is to be noted that a "Secession Ordinance" is reported to have been ratified on a popular vote.

CHAPTER XX.

OF THE CONDITIONS UNDER WHICH PRIVATE INTERNATIONAL LAW MAY EXIST IN THE UNITED STATES.

§ 581. It was before shown that private international law is founded upon the doctrine, that while every person resident or present within the territorial limits of any political State is necessarily subject to its municipal (national) law, yet the relations of persons antecedently subject to some other jurisdiction, either as native, domiciled, or temporary subjects, will, within the jurisdiction of any one State, be regarded by its judicial tribunals as being, in some degree, exempt from the control of its own municipal (internal) law. It has been seen that the extent of this exemption, and of a corresponding allowance of some rule of foreign origin to determine the rights and duties in which those relations may consist, is judicially ascertained by maxims which the State itself may have sanctioned from its own views of international obligation and a sense of the duties of independent States towards each other and towards private persons; and the judicial application of these maxims may accord with the juridical practice of all civilized nations. But it is still to be remembered that these maxims have, within the jurisdiction of that State, juridical authority and judicial recognition solely because they are there made imperative by the same sovereign power which is the source of that municipal (internal) law whose extent they are said to modify. These maxims or principles may properly be distinguished from the municipal (internal) law, and be called international law, because they determine, in a sense, the relative operation of the municipal laws of different nations. But they are not

law, in the strict sense of the word, independently of the authority of the municipal (national) law of the State in which they are applied. They could not be judicially used to determine rights and duties of private persons, irrespectively of the will of that political power which the tribunal recognizes as the source of the municipal (internal) law. This is a necessary consequence of the doctrine, that the authority of each political State or nation is independent of any exterior rule.1

§ 582. Since the relation of persons to things, and of persons to other persons in respect to things, is necessarily contemplated in every department of positive law, the distinction between persons and things necessarily enters into international law. But, since personal freedom and the possession of individual rights are here principally considered, the distinction will be noticed as a topic of this division of the law only in determining the international extent of a discrimination of natural persons, as being either legal persons or objects of property.

§ 583. The territorial and personal extent of all private law, or all law which may affect the condition or rights of any natural person, within the geographical limits of the United States, depends upon the public and political law of their existence; that is, upon the actual distribution of sovereign power between the several States and the national government. As a consequence of such distribution, there is in each of the States a separate and distinct part of the municipal law resting on the share of sovereign power separately and locally held by the people of that State, and a co-existent part resting on the authority of the United States held by the national government, and having national extent. Therefore, while

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See the second chapter of this work.

According to Mr. Calhoun's theory, both laws, in any one State, rest ultimately upon one and the same political authority, i. e., the people of the State; they are severally administered by different governments, each equally the agent of that people. 1 Calhoun's Works, 167, 168. Incidental to this theory is the doctrine that the State may, at its discretion, revoke the powers granted to the national government as its agent or attorney, thereby absolving all private persons within its limits from any allegiance which they could before have been said to owe to that government, and, of consequence, making treason against it impossible within such State; while any who may therein assume to act under the authority