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148 Rh    for, the decree became final and conclusive. More than a year had elapsed before the ﬁling of the bill of review in this case. I will not moot the point, whether a bill of review would lie at all: it is rendered more than superﬂuous from the obvious fact, that no revision of the decree, of any kind, was sought for within the year. But it is said that the congressional legislation of May, 1830, puts this question at rest, cures all defects, gives jurisdiction,—gives it, too, to defeat rights and destroy vested interests growing out of, and based on, a former act of congress. Such, it is true, is the import of the language of the law; but is it so? Can it be that the federal legislature has the constitutional competency so to do? We could expect to find such a doctrine prevailing only in the worst days of the most tyrannical governments. It is a language that Sejanus may have whispered to Tiberius. It is a language that may hold at this day in the meridian of Constantinople and St. Petersburg, where the mandate of the sultan, or the ukase of the emperor, supersedes reason, subverts right, and abrogates law. It is a language repudiated even in constitutional monarchies; and it is a language which, if received here as orthodox, goes convincingly to prove that the liberty, of which we have so proudly boasted, has an existence rather in name than in essence.

Yet, highly objectionable as I deem this law, I couple with that objection no ascription of motives. It was probably a work of much haste,—the principles it involves not pushed to their conclusions, and not seen in their practical results. I think I heard in argument that the principles of this act might be inoperative when sought to be brought to bear on the property and rights of the citizens of the States, but that congress had unlimited and illimitable power over the territories. This proposition scarcely requires the show of refutation; it is incompatible with the genius of our government, and is, as it regards this territory, palpably in violation of treaty stipulations.

I cannot resist the conclusion that we have not cognizance of this case, and that the bill of review should be dismissed for want of jurisdiction.

From the decree in the foregoing case, the defendants