Peter Vivian Daniel

“ By the argument for the plaintiff in error, a power equally despotic is vested in every member of the association, and the most obscure or unworthy individual it comprises may arbitrarily invade and derange its most deliberate and solemn ordinances. At assumptions anomalous as these, so fraught with mischief and ruin, the mind at once is revolted, and goes directly to the conclusions that to change or to abolish a fundamental principle of the society must be the act of the society itself — of the sovereignty, and that none other can admit to a participation of that high attribute. ”

“ But it has been insisted in argument that the emancipation of a slave, effected either by the direct act and assent of the master or by causes operating in contravention of his will, produces a change in the status or capacities of the slave such as will transform him from a mere subject of property into a being possessing a social, civil, and political equality with a citizen. ”

“ Scarcely anything more illogical or extravagant can be imagined than the attempt to deduce from this provision in the Constitution a power to destroy or in any wise to impair the civil and political rights of the citizens of the United States, and much more so the power to establish inequalities amongst those citizens by creating privileges in one class of those citizens, and by the disfranchisement of other portions or classes by degrading them from the position they previously occupied. ”

“ From the views here expressed, and they seem to be unexceptionable, it must follow that, with the slave, with one devoid of rights or capacities, civil or political, there could be no pact that one thus situated could be no party to or actor in, the association of those possessing free will, power, discretion. He could form no part of the design, no constituent ingredient or portion of a society based upon common, that is, upon equal interests and powers. He could not at the same time be the sovereign and the slave. ”

“ A second answer to this strange and latitudinous notion is that it so far stultifies the sages by whom the Constitution was framed as to impute to them ignorance of the material distinction existing between citizenship and mere residence or domicil, and of the well known facts that a person confessedly an alien may be permitted to reside in a country in which he can possess no civil or political rights, or of which he is neither a citizen nor subject, and that, for certain purposes, a man may have a domicil in different countries, in no one of which he is an actual personal resident. ”

“ He may emancipate his negro slave, by which process he first transforms that slave into a citizen of his own State; he may next, under color of article fourth, section second, of the Constitution of the United States, obtrude him, and on terms of civil and political equality, upon any and every State in this Union, in defiance of all regulations of necessity or policy, ordained by those States for their internal happiness or safety. ”

“ Our piety leading us to reduce all things into a better state, we have amended our laws, and reestablished the ancient usage, for anciently liberty was simple and undivided — that is, was conferred upon the slave as his manumittor possessed it, admitting this single difference that the person manumitted became only a freed man, although his manumittor was a free man. ”

“ There is no such tribunal of the United States as a court of general jurisdiction, in the sense in which that phrase is applied to the superior courts under the common law, and even with respect to the courts existing under that system, it is a well settled principle that consent can never give jurisdiction. ”

“ In all cases, therefore, in which a nation has the right of judging what her duty requires, no other nation can compel her to act in such or such a particular manner, for any attempt at such compulsion would be an infringement on the liberty of nations. ”

“ In this attempt, there is asserted a power in Congress, whether from incentives of interest, ignorance, faction, partiality, or prejudice, to bestow upon a portion of the citizens of this nation that which is the common property and privilege of all — the power, in fine, of confiscation, in retribution for no offence, or, if for an offence, for that of accidental locality only. ”

“ He was regarded and owned in every State in the Union as property merely, and as such was not and could not be a party or an actor, much less a peer in any compact or form of government established by the States or the United States. That if, since the adoption of the State Governments, he has been or could have been elevated to the possession of political rights or powers, this result could have been effected by no authority less potent than that of the sovereignty — the State — exerted [p482] to that end, either in the form of legislation or in some other mode of operation. ”

“ Hence it follows necessarily that a slave, the peculium or property of a master, and possessing within himself no civil nor political rights or capacities, cannot be a CITIZEN. For who, it may be asked, is a citizen? What do the character and status of citizen import? Without fear of contradiction, it does not import the condition of being private property, the subject of individual power and ownership. ”

“ Since nations are free, independent, and equal, and since each possesses the right of judging, according to the dictates of her conscience, what conduct she is to pursue in order to fulfill her duties, the effect of the whole is to produce, at least externally, in the eyes of mankind, a perfect equality of rights between nations in the administration of their affairs and in the pursuit of their pretensions, without regard to the intrinsic justice of their conduct, of which others have no right to form a definitive judgment. ”

“ Sovereignty, independence, and a perfect right of self-government, can signify nothing less than a superiority to and an exemption from all claims by any extraneous power, however expressly they may be asserted, and render all attempts to enforce such claims merely attempts at usurpation. ”

“ If the rights and immunities connected with or practiced under the institutions of the United States can by any indirection be claimed or deduced from sources or modes other than the Constitution and laws of the United States, it follows that the power of naturalization vested in Congress is not exclusive — that it has in effect no existence, but is repealed or abrogated. ”

“ Nations or States are bodies politic, societies of men united together for the purpose of promoting their mutual safety and advantage by the joint efforts of their mutual strength. Such a society has her affairs and her interests, she deliberates and takes resolutions in common, thus becoming a moral person who possesses an understanding and a will peculiar to herself. ”

“ A motion to dismiss a cause pending in the courts of the United States is not analogous to a plea to the jurisdiction of a court of common law or equity in England; there, the superior courts have a general jurisdiction over all persons within the realm and all causes of action between them. ”

“ In the constructing of pleadings either in abatement or in bar, every fact or position constituting a portion of the public law, or of known or general history, is necessarily implied. Such fact or position need not be specially averred and set forth; it is what the world at large and every individual are presumed to know — nay, are bound to know and to be governed by. ”

“ If the principle of this decision be applicable as between different portions of one and the same empire, with how much more force does it apply as between nations or Governments entirely separate, and absolutely independent of each other? For in this precise attitude the States of this Union stand with reference to this subject, and with reference to the tenure of every description of property vested under their laws and held within their territorial jurisdiction. ”

“ There are other classes of cases where the objection to the jurisdiction is of a different nature, as on a bill in chancery that the subject matter is cognizable only by the King in Council, or that the parties defendant cannot be brought before any municipal court on account of their sovereign character or the nature of the controversy, or to the very common cases which present the question, whether the cause belong to a court of law or equity. To such cases, a plea in abatement would not be applicable, because the plaintiff could not sue in an inferior court. ”

“ The States, in the exercise of their political power, might, with reference to their peculiar Government and jurisdiction, guaranty the rights of person and property, and the enjoyment of civil and political privileges, to those whom they should be disposed to make the objects of their bounty, but they could not reclaim or exert the powers which they had vested exclusively in the Government of the United States. ”

“ Where an inferior court can have no jurisdiction of a case of law or equity, the ground of objection is not taken by plea in abatement, as an exception of the given case from the otherwise general jurisdiction of the court; appearance does not cure the defect of judicial power, and it may be relied on by plea, answer, demurrer, or at the trial or hearing. ”

“ Again, in section 18th of the same chapter,
nations composed of men, and considered as so many free persons living together in a state of nature, are naturally equal, and inherit from nature the same obligations and rights. Power or weakness does not produce any difference. A small republic is no less a sovereign state than the most powerful kingdom. ”

“ The proud title of Roman citizen, with the immunities and rights incident thereto, and as contradistinguished alike from the condition of conquered subjects or of the lower grades of native domestic residents, was maintained throughout the duration of the republic, and until a late period of the eastern empire, and at last was in effect destroyed less by an elevation of the inferior classes than by the degradation of the free, and the previous possessors of rights and immunities civil and political, to the indiscriminate abasement incident to absolute and simple despotism. ”

“ As a denial of jurisdiction over the subject matter of a suit between parties within the realm, over which and whom the court has power to act, cannot be successful in an English court of general jurisdiction, a motion like the present could not be sustained consistently with the principles of its constitution. ”

“ The citizens are the members of the civil society, bound to this society by certain duties, and subject to its authority; they equally participate in its advantages. The natives or natural-born citizens are those born in the country of parents who are citizens. As society [p477] cannot perpetuate itself otherwise than by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their parents, and succeed to all their rights. ”

“ But beyond this, there is not, it is believed, to be found in the theories of writers on Government or in any actual experiment heretofore tried, an exposition of the term citizen which has not been understood as conferring the actual possession and enjoyment, or the perfect right of acquisition and enjoyment, of an entire equality of privileges, civil and political. ”

“ If, then, with the attendant formalities of assent or compact, the restrictive power claimed was void as to the immediate subject of the ordinance, how much more unfounded must be the pretension to such a power as derived from that source (viz., the Ordinance of 1787) with respect to territory acquired by purchase or conquest under the supreme authority of the Constitution — territory not the subject of mere donation, but obtained in the name of all, by the combined efforts and resources of all, and with no condition annexed or pretended. ”

“ A motion to dismiss therefore cannot be entertained, as it does not disclose a case of exception, and, if a plea in abatement is put in, it must not only make out the exception, but point to the particular court to which the case belongs. ”

“ Congress was made simply the agent or trustee for the United States, and could not, without a breach of trust and a fraud, appropriate the subject of the trust to any other beneficiary or cestui que trust than the United States, or to the people of the United States, upon equal grounds, legal or equitable. ”

“ I say, to be of the country, it is necessary to be born of a person who is a citizen, for if he be born there of a foreigner, it will be only the place of his birth, and not his country. The inhabitants, as distinguished from citizens, are foreigners who are permitted to settle and stay in the country. ”

“ The power of Congress to impose the prohibition in the eighth section of the act of 1820 has been advocated upon an attempted construction of the second clause of the third section [p489] of the fourth article of the Constitution, which declares that
Congress shall have power to dispose of and to make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory and other property belonging to the United States. ”

“ Now the following are truths which a knowledge of the history of the world, and particularly of that of our own country, compels us to know — that the African negro race never have been acknowledged as belonging to the family of nations ”

“ With respect to the power of the convention to impose this inhibition, it seems to be pertinent in this place to recur to the opinion of one contemporary with the establishment of the Government, and whose distinguished services in the formation and adoption of our national charter point him out as the artifex maximus of our Federal system. ”

“ We have made all freed men in general become citizens of Rome, regarding neither the age of the manumitted, nor the manumittor, nor the ancient forms of manumission. We have also introduced many new methods by which slaves may become Roman citizens. ”