Page:A legal review of the case of Dred Scott, as decided by the Supreme Court of the United States.djvu/44

 by taking his slave into a country where slavery is prohibited, voluntarily consents to the effect of those laws, and so himself manumits the slave. As Lord Coke says: "There be two kinds of manumissions, one express, and the other implied. Express, when the villein by deed in express words is manumised and made free. The other implied, by doing some act that maketh in judgment of law the villein free, albeit there be no express words of manumission or enfranchisement. Leges Angliæ semel manumissum semper liberum judicant." Co. Lit. 137 b. The same principles are recognized in the code of slavery in this country; as proofs of which one or two cases in the supreme court of the United States will suffice. In the words of Mr. Justice Wayne, in delivering its opinion in Fenwick v. Chapman, "What is manumission? It is the giving of liberty to one who has been in just servitude, with the power of acting, except as restrained by law." 9 Peters, 472. Any act of the master towards the slave, inconsistent with an intention to retain full control over the slave or his acquisitions, is a manumission. Thus a devise or bequest of property, by a master to his slave, entitles the slave to freedom by necessary implication. Le Grand v. Darnell, 2 Peters, 670.

The slave, then, being absolutely free while in the free State, if his return changes his condition and remands him to slavery again, it must be either by reason of his own implied consent, or of the effect of the laws of the State into which he returns. But neither the old English law of villenage, nor the American law of slavery, will allow a man to become a slave by his own consent merely. This is so well stated in the old books that we cannot but recur to them once more, and we know the attention of our readers is not so often called to those free principles of the common law which were the seed of our liberties, as to make an allusion to them entirely unprofitable. Littleton tells us: "Every villein is either a villein by title or prescription, to wit, that he and his ancestors have been villeins time out of mind of man: or he is a villein by his own confession in a court of record." § 175. This is very clearly explained by Lord Hobart: "The body of a freeman cannot be made subject to distress or imprisonment by contract, but only by judgment." Hob. 61. And again: "By law of nature all men are free, and cannot be brought under the dominion of any, but according to jus gentium, viz. the case of captivity, from which our villenage came. And the confession in the court of record is not so much a