The Express.
London, England, 1859-04-12 00:00:00

THE UNITED STATES.

NEW YORE, Idiacx 30.

The United States Supreme Court has just ren-
dered a decision which is of considerable importance,
not only as regards the slavery question, bat as
regards the relations of the federal government with
the individual States. For some time past the courts
of several of the free States, sometimes in obedience
to positive enactments of the legislature, such as the
Personal Liberty Act of Massachusetts, and at others
in compliance with their own views of public policy
and of sound law, have treated the Fugitive Slave
Act ea a nullity, declared it unconstitutional, ani
have liberated persons held under it or arrested for
contraventions of it by habeas (torpor. This has at
length brought about • direct collision between the
Supreme Court of the State of Michigan and the
Supreme Court of the United Stater. The former
declared a return to a writ of habeas corpus
made by a United States marshal, that a
prisoner was in custody for assisting. a
fugitive slave to escape, to be insufficient,
pronounced the act under which he was arrested to
be unconstitutional, and ordered his discharge. Upon
the matter being carried into the United States
courts on a writ of error, the latter has decided that
a return by a United titans ;marshal that he holds
a prisoner for a violation of United States laws is
sufficient and final as regards a writ of habeas corpus
issued out of • State court, and bars all farther
action on its part, andthat the marshal may lawfully
resist, and moreover it is his duty to resist, any
attempts on the part of state officers to enforce any
farther order that may be subsequently made by the
State courts in the premises. This is expected to give
rise to serious complications. That the United States
courts have got the law and the constitution on their
side there is little doubt ; but the State courts have
to obey the acts of their own legislatures, and must
give way to the overwhelming force of public opi-
nion. The affair is one more omen added to the
many by which the horizon is already darkened.
These " personal liberty bills," as they are called.
are now being pasted by nearly all the Northern
states. No attempt has been made to enforce the
fugitive slave law in any of them, except those on
the border, for several years, and to all intents and
purposes it remains a dead letter. But the pro-
slavery party do not, on these accounts, in the least
relax in the boldness of their pretensions ; and the
last demand promulgated by the extreme section is,
as I have already mentioned to you, that Congress
shall not only legislate for the return of such slaves
as run away from them, but for the secu-
rity of such slaves as they choose to carry
with them into the free states—or, in other words.
that the same protection shall be accorded to slave
property which is accorded to every other species of
property, all over the Union. As a reply to this
menace the Northern states are nearly all passing.
acts formally forbidding their officers to amid
enforcing the fugitive slave law, forbidding the
sheriff to allow the jails to be used fur the confine-
ment of captured fugitives, and declaring every per-
, son who erosion their boundaries, no matter what his
antecedents, to be ipso facto free and eutitled to the
protection of their court,. There is not much pro-
bability that, at this distance from the border, any
of these acts will ever need to be enforced, but they
serve the same purpose that zealous professors of reh-
gion sometimes attain by praying against those who
differ from them. They are notes of defiance.

CANADA.
-•-•

(FROM MA OWN

TORONTO, ?Lacm 28.

The new tariff has poured through both houses,
and received on Saturday the assent of the Governor-
General. It extends further the principle of protec-
tion, increasing the duties on cotton goods, metals,
books, &c. The ad ra/orem principle is adopted, to
the exclusion of specifics, except in the case of
whisky. This is expected to give an advantage
to direct importation by the St. Lawrence of tea
and sugar, and is much complained against by Upper
Canadian merchants, who are in the habit of par.
chasing in New York.
There have been rumours in circulation that Sir
Edmund Head is to be withdrawn, and that he is to
be rewarded with a peerage on going home. In
Canada we shall not care much what reward he
receive, so that he is removed, but I must say it is
not the way to secure proper conduct on the part of
Governors to promote them when they have earned
the condemnation of the people over whom they

have ruled. Not a single member of the parliamei.
Lary opposition is either house has called on the
Governor, and when he came down to sanction bills
on Saturday, the members designedly stayed away•
They desire to take every opportunity consistent
with their position to mark their sense of Su
Edmund's bad fidth last year.

I