Page:Sketches of the life and character of Patrick Henry.djvu/388

 364 SKETCHES OF THE

necessary to cany it into effect — open to tliem the whole region of natural and national law, which furnish the only rule of expounding those national compacts, called treaties, and your government is unmutilated, its mea- sure of power is full up to the exigencies of the nation, and you treat on equal terms: but upon the opposite construction, much better would it be that America should have no treaties at all, than that hav- ing them, she should want those means of enforcement and redress, w hich all other nations possess.

Having thus established that debts are subject to con- fiscation in common wars, and much more so in the war of the revolution — that Virginia w^as an independ- ent nation, and, as such, competent to the exercise of this right of eminent domain — of taking to herself the debts of her enemies — that she had in fact exercised this right, and that this debt, had under one of her laws of that character, been legally discharged — that the treaty had no effect in reviving the claim, because the treatj^had been annulled by the infractions of it on the part of Great Britain — and because if it had not, this was not a subsisting debt, within the purview of the treaty — and, finally, that the court's jurisdiction extended to every question touching the continuance or annul- ment of treaties. He said, he had now finished his own view of the subject, and should have taken his seat, but for the necessity of giving a particular an- swer to the various objections to these principles, which had been so ably urged by the counsel for the plaintiff. In this part of his subject he shows the most masterly acuteness, address, and vigour. A gentleman w ho was present,* has described some of the circum-


 * The late Mr. Hardin Biiriiley.

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