Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 16.pdf/399

 352'

age, whether statutory or customary, must be established and exist as a condition pre cedent to the possibility of such an offence. However, in due time we shall hear from the appellate courts; and it is probable that rhe Supreme Court of the United States may be asked by certificate of certiorari to pass on the interesting questions involved in the various cases. SINCE Mr. Howe's article, quoted above, was written, the indictment in one of the Georgia Peonage Cases (United States v. Crawley, et o/.) has been upheld by Judge Emory Speer, of the Southern District of Georgia, in an opinion rendered at Savannah on March 15. Judge Speer holds "that the Act oí March 2, 1867, denouncing peonage and involuntary servitude in any form, is a valid exercise of a power granted to Con gress by the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States," and is of the opinion that "the illegal holding of any person to involuntary servitude to work out a debt or contract claimed to be due by the person so held to the person so holding," is "a condition of peonage comprehended by that Act." Referring to the contention of the defend ant that a "condition of peonage'' imports a system of peonage, the Court says: This, however, does not follow. A gen eral condition of peonage might be synony mous with a general system of peonage, but a citizen held and worked by lawless methods against his will for the purpose of compelling him in this manner to discharge a real or alleged obligation, is in contemplation of law held in a condition of peonage. The words, "a condition of peonage," as used in this sense, should be broadly construed in favor of the liberty of the citizen. "Тнв Hawaiian Case" furnishes Judge Emlin McClain of Iowa material for an able article in the Harvard Lan1 Rei-iciv for April. He says: The Hawaiian Case [Territory of Hawaii v. Mankichi, 23 Sup. Ct. Rep. 787, decided in June, 1903] involved, to state it succintly,

the question whether the provisions of the Fifth and Sixth Amendments to the Federal Constitution, so far as they guarantee to a person accused of an infamous crime the right to be tried only on an indictment by a grand jury and the verdict of a common-law jury, rendering a unanimous verdict, were applicable to a criminal proceeding under the laws of the Territory of Hawaii as they ex isted between the time of the annexation of the islands to the United States in 1898. and the time when by act of Congress of April 30, 1900, the Constitution of the United States was formally extended to those islands and provision was made for the indictment and trial of those accused of crime in accord ance with the ordinary common-law meth ods. . . . The decision of the United States District Court, on application for writ of habeas corpus, was that defendant was unlawfully held in custody, and this de cision was reversed by the Supreme Court of the United States. . . . After stating the majority and minority views of the court in the Downes, DeLima and Hawaiian Cases, Judge McClain contin ues: If it be permitted to suggest a line of decision which would not have involved the complicated distinctions made or attempted in the cases under discussion, and to consider the results which the court following such line of decision would have reached in these cases, it is briefly submitted that without serious difficulty or disastrous consequences it might have been held that all territory over which the sovereignty of the United States is extended becomes incorporated into and a part of the territory of the United States; that the power of Congress to legis late with reference to such territory is given by the constitution and subject to the limi tations of the constitution; and that these limitations are divisible into two classes, those of the one class being applicable to legislation relating to territory within State limits, the other to legislation of any charac ter regardless of territorial limits. . . . It would seem perfectly justifiable to hold that the requirement of uniformity is limited