Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v4.djvu/575

1800.] "Thirdly, That, as the Constitution has given to the states no power to remove aliens, during the period of the limitation under consideration, in the mean time, on the construction assumed, there would be no authority in the country empowered to send away dangerous aliens; which cannot be admitted."

The reasoning here used would not, in any view, be conclusive; because there are powers exercised by most other governments, which, in the United States, are withheld by the people both from the general government and from the state governments. Of this sort are many of the powers prohibited by the declarations of rights prefixed to the constitutions, or by the clauses, in the constitutions, in the nature of such declarations. Nay, so far is the political system of the United States distinguishable from that of other countries, by the caution with which powers are delegated and defined, that, in one very important case, even of commercial regulation and revenue, the power is absolutely locked up against the hands of both governments. A tax on exports can be laid by no constitutional authority whatever. Under a system thus peculiarly guarded, there could surely be no absurdity in supposing that alien friends—who, if guilty of treasonable machinations, may be punished, or, if suspected on probable grounds, may be secured by pledges or imprisonment, in like manner with permanent citizens—were never meant to be subjected to banishment by an arbitrary and unusual process, either under the one government or the other.

But it is not the inconclusiveness of the general reasoning, in this passage, which chiefly calls the attention to it. It is the principle assumed by it, that the powers held by the states are given to them by the Constitution of the United States; and the inference from this principle, that the powers supposed to be necessary, which are not so given to the state governments, must reside in this government of the United States.

The respect which is felt for every portion of the constituted authorities forbids some of the reflections which this singular paragraph might excite; and they are the more readily suppressed, as it may be presumed, with justice perhaps as well as candor, that inadvertence may have had its share in the error. It would be unjustifiable delicacy, nevertheless, to pass by so portentous a claim, proceeding from so high an authority, without a monitory notice of the fatal tendencies with which it would be pregnant.

Lastly, it is said that a law on the same subject with the alien act, passed by this state originally in 1785, and reënacted in 1792, is a proof that a summary removal of suspected aliens was not heretofore regarded, by the Virginia legislature, as liable to the objections now urged against such a measure.

This charge against Virginia vanishes before the simple remark, that the law of Virginia relates to "suspicious persons, being the subjects of any foreign power or state who shall have made a declaration of war, or actually commenced hostilities, or from whom the President shall apprehend hostile designs; whereas the act of Congress relates to aliens, being the subjects of foreign powers and states, who have neither declared war, nor commenced hostilities, nor from whom hostile dangers are apprehended.

2. It is next affirmed of the Alien Act, that it unites legislative, judicial, and executive powers, in the hands of the President.

However difficult it may be to mark, in every case, with clearness and certainty, the line which divides legislative power from the other