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 only without warrant, but in derogation of the common peace and dignity; and, under the name of "squatter sovereignty," to reprobate and ridicule the notion that such vermin, either by natural inheritance, or as elements of a republican commonwealth, could constitute the tenants of liberties other than such as Congress, in its clemency, permitted them to enjoy. In the inflated party literature of the period, they appeared as aliens—interlopers, having no right beyond that of naked existence, nor freedom of action except by the sufferance of federal authority.

The enactment of such statutes and the rendition of such judgments as those under consideration, indicate but too palpably the effect of this species of literature upon the minds of legislators and magistrates, as well as of the people. While copiously, in generalities, by congressional orations and judicial opinions, the stated phrases significant of the natural prerogatives of man are rehearsed, and the doctrine that the federal government is one of enumerated powers reiterated, the ideas which properly correspond with these generous maxims and sentiments seem to have passed out of the legislative and judicial memory; their places being practically occupied by the conceit that human rights are things of donation; that free-agency is a commodity of which Congress is the creator, or, at least the custodian, to confer or to reserve according to its own supreme and irresponsible will and pleasure. This is not the law of the land. It is not the liberty to obtain which the revolution was prosecuted. It is not the popular freedom which the Constitution was ordained to institutionize and conserve.

It does not appear, from the opinion of the court, whether or not the question of the constitutionality of the statute upon which the indictment was predicated, was raised by the counsel for the plaintiff in error. Its summary disposal, by the court, in the following sentences, would seem to indicate otherwise:

It is of no importance whether or not the question of constitutionality was raised by the counsel for the plaintiff in error. In a tribunal of last resort, in cases wherein action is predicated upon a statute, the constitutional question is never absent. Officially,