Page:The Supreme Court in United States History vol 1.djvu/347

Rh phere of hostility on the part of the Administration's followers, there can be little doubt that the Court did not welcome the fact that one of the first and most important cases which it was called upon to decide presented a question, the decision of which seemed likely to place it in conflict with one of the leading political contentions of the Administration. For sev- eral years, the impressment of American seamen and especially of naturalized Americans by the British had been one of the chief causes of friction in the in- ternational relations of this country. England main- tained with vigor that, as under its common law no British citizen could volimtarily expatriate himself, it had a right to take oflP of American ships any former British citizen, even though he were naturalized in the United States. Less than a year before, in June, 1807, the outrageous attack of the British frigate Leopard on the Chesapeake had raised the issue in its most serious concrete form. The President and the State Department had for many years stoutly denied the British contention, both as matter of law and matter of right. Yet as early as 1799, Chief Justice Ellsworth, in the case of Isaac Williams in the Circuit Court, had upheld the English law as to expatriation. The question had arisen in several cases in the Supreme Court, but a decision on the point had never been squarely made. In Mcllvaine v. Coxe^s Lessee^ 2 Cranch, 280, 4 Cranch, 209, it was now presented in a case involving the right of a native of New Jersey, who had become a loyalist refugee after 1776, to in- herit land in that State. The case had been first argued in 1805, by William Tilghman and Jared In- gersoU for the right of expatriation against William Rawle and Richard Stockton. "The doctrines ad- vanced upon the present occasion," said IngersoU,