In meeting this question, the Chief Justice, with whom agree Justices Wayne and Grier, admits that the power to make "all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory and other property belonging to the United States," where they have the sovereignty as well as the ownership, includes the power of general legislation; but says that the grant extends only to the territory which belonged to the government at the time the Constitution was adopted. All the power they have to legislate for territories since acquired, is inferred from the power to admit new States. This includes the power to acquire territory for that purpose, and the power to acquire it necessarily includes the power to govern it, and its inhabitants, till they are duly fitted to be made States, and introduced into the Union. Thus a direct grant of adequate power, conferred by plain and apt words, must first be construed away; and then the same power reclaimed, by remote inference from another power, granted for a distinct and specific purpose, and not intended or supposed to contain a power of acquisition at all, nor so construed till certain exigencies were thought to require its extension to that object, which construction is now sustained in deference to the practice of the government, while such practice is good for nothing in settling the meaning of other parts of the Constitution. Why all this is done, it is difficult to imagine, unless it be to show that the Constitution is a mere nose of wax, and may be made to mean anything or nothing, in the hands of power, precisely as the political exigencies of the day may require. But the plenary right to govern the Territories is conceded to Congress. This agrees with the practice of the government from its origin, and the Supreme Court sanctioned it by a direct adjudication, long ago, pronouncing the "possession of it unquestionable," -" and in this," the Chief Justice says, "we entirely concur." Justices Daniel, Campbell, and the case before the court." Mr. Justice Wayne asserts the same principle, when he says: "Nor has any point been discussed and decided, which was not called for by the record, or which was not necessary for the judicial disposition of it." If this assertion is not justified by the fact, it at least shows his opinion as to what the fact ought to have been. Catron, with more or less distinctness, seem to find this power in the direct grant to Congress of power to make "all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory belonging to the United States." Judge Nelson, having decided the whole case on the other point, very properly abstains from giving any opinion on subsequent questions. Their great difficulty is, to find some limitation or qualification of the admitted general legislative power over the Territories, which will exclude Congress from the power of restricting slavery therein. All agree that "no powers can be exercised which are prohibited by the Constitution, or which are contrary to its spirit." But which of these prohibitions protect slavery? The Chief Justice pitches upon the clause from Magna Charta which says: "No person shall be deprived of his property, without due process of law"; and he says the Constitution affirms slaves to be property. Mr. Justice Campbell says that anything is property which any of the States choose to consider such, and the federal government is bound to recognize it. Mr. Justice Catron finds the much desired limitation in the third article of the treaty of cession of Louisiana. And Mr. Justice Daniel finds it in an infringement of the equal "rights of purchase, settlement, occupation," &c., which he says "every citizen would have, if," as he very discreetly adds, "any one could claim it." Indeed this last idea seems to be more or less resorted to by them all. - Mr. Justice Curtis answers each of these positions separately and conclusively. As to Magna Charta, it was a part of the law of England before the settlement of this country, was brought here "by our ancestors, as part of their inherited liberties," was the law of every State in the Union when it was transferred to the Constitution of the United States, and is now probably, in some form, embodied in the constitutions of all the individual States. Under it the slave-trade has been prohibited in England; by all or nearly all the original States of this Union; and by the United States, for fifty years. The violation of these prohibitions involves a forfeiture of the property. If all this does not show that slavery is not protected by Magna Charta, it will be difficult to ascertain when or how the meaning of any law is ever to be known. As to the Louisi ana treaty, the third article, concerning the enjoyment of property, was not adapted or intended to have the effect claimed for it; if it had been, it could not have controlled the action of Congress. And lastly, whatever effect it could have had, the 66 stipulation ceased to operate when Louisiana became a member of the Union." And as to "equal rights," the territory was acquired for the benefit of the people collectively, not individually; and the equality of individuals respecting its settlement, occupation, &c. consists in an equal destitution of all right, except such as may be allowed on the terms and conditions contained and prescribed in duly authorized laws. But though Congress may restrict slavery in the Territories, it by no means follows that they have power to establish it. The general legislative power of Congress over the Territories, though extended to a great variety of subjects which are not embraced in its jurisdiction over the States, is nevertheless limited by the general principles of our government, and the express prohibitions of the Constitution. It will hardly be pretended that they could establish an hereditary monarchy or aristocracy there. As little can they create privileged orders of any sort. If they can appoint one class or order of men to rule and another to serve, one for masters and another for slaves, this power is not necessarily to be limited or confined to any difference of color or blood; for the Constitution recognizes none. They may as well distinguish between the English and the other European races, as between the European and the African; or between the Carolinian and the New-Yorker, or the Pennsylvanian and the Virginian, as either. If they can make slaves at all, they may as well make white ones as black. If they can deprive one man of his liberty without due process of law, they may so deprive any number, or all, and thereby have an entire colony of slaves. If any part of this can be done, under the principles of our free government, all the prohibitions of our Constitution are not worth a rush. What is the freedom of speech, or of the press, or even a promise of the free exercise of religion, worth, to men who are liable to be deprived of all right to their own bodies, and all care for their own souls? And what is a Constitution NO. 177. VOL. LXXXV. 36 worth, which affects to secure certain particular rights only, and leaves the great aggregate of all rights exposed to depredation? Besides, if Congress can introduce and establish slavery anywhere, under the authority of our Constitution, they can and ought to regulate, protect, and enforce it; and the time is not distant when they, or those acting under them, will be called upon to enact a whole code of slavery laws,* which would be as congruous with the spirit and principles of our Constitution, as a code regulating and enforcing the relative rights and duties of hereditary kings, lords, commons, and villains. Three points were intended to be decided in this case: that a negro cannot be a citizen; that a slave, after residing in a free State, with the consent of his master, and returning to a slave State, continues a slave; and that the Missouri Compromise, or any other restriction of slavery in the Territories, is unconstitutional. By grasping at too much, the court have lost the whole. As a judicial decision, the case can have no legal authority on either point. Not on the first, because the position is sustained by only three judges. Not on the second, because five judges,† a majority of the court, say the suit was abated by the plea to the jurisdiction, and judgment was so ordered, which legally put an end to the cause. Not on the third, for the same reason, and for the additional one that the question did not affect the rights of the parties, and so its decision "was not required by the case." This is the character of the case, considered in a legal point of view, and as a judicial act of the court. But as a political manual or text-book, an authorized registration of the political heresies of the dominant party of the day, it will be all it was intended to be. It will form a rallying-point and ear-mark for political partisans, till some other absurd dogma shall be called for, and created to stand in its place. As to the practical influence of the decision, the case will * Has not this been already attempted in Kanzas, under the authority of the United States ? Mr. Chief Justice Taney, Mr. Justice McLean, Mr. Justice Wayne, Mr. Justice Daniel, and Mr. Justice Curtis. probably disappoint both parties, those who approve and those who disapprove its principles. A Missouri Compromise restriction of slavery, under the authority of Congress, is little likely to be again enacted, or to be asked or desired by any portion of the people; and as little before as since this decision. Slaveholders will not be apt to trust their slaves, voluntarily, in the free States, where no law can restrain their departure for an hour, or reclaim them when they depart, from any expectation they may indulge of holding them again in slavery when they get them back. Such States as may choose to invest their free colored inhabitants with any or all of the rights of citizenship, will not be likely to desist therefrom, on account of any of the considerations presented by the court in this case. Thus, but for its effect on the character of the court, the world will probably move on very much as it did before. The country will feel the consequences of the decision more deeply and more permanently, in the loss of confidence in the sound judicial integrity and strictly legal character of their tribunals, than in anything beside; and this perhaps may well be accounted the greatest political calamity which this country, under our forms of government, could sustain. ART. V.1. Poems by ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. New York: C. S. Francis & Co. 1857. 3 vols. 32mo. (Blue and gold.) pp. 378, 385, 354. 2. Poems by ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. C. S. Francis & Co. 1857. 3 vols. 16mo. 366. New York: pp. 396, 434, MRS. BROWNING is sometimes spoken of as ranking among the first female poets. To many this would not seem great commendation. There is much in the education of women, in the present state of society, that unfits them for the highest success in literature, or in any of the creative arts. It is not impossible that there is something also in their very nature, |