Wheeling daily intelligencer. [volume] (Wheeling, Va. [W. Va.]) 1852-1859, 1856-04-25

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tuition and laws of Virginia in the identical man
ner protect property in the slave. he takes his
chattels and yirginius takes his personal CT
fects into Kansas, and the same protection of
rights, or the same want of protection, applies
indiscriminately TO each. If he has any pro
lection to his chattel, then yirginiys has the
identical protection to his, whatever may be the
kind of either. If that protection is from the
constitutional security sfFordcd to the citizen
wherever he may be inits territory. in the law
lfulpursuit of his business or if it be the re-
suit of prescription, both of which arc funda-
mentally identical, the political and the judicial
consequences are the same. 1t cannot be shown
in reason. that there is any sound or legal dis
tinction, or that there Gamble any discrimination
between his property and that of Virginius, the
one taken from Pennsylvania and the other from
Virginia, into Kansas Let him and his sort
show how rights which began in prescription
are changed, altered or destroyed, by being
brought within the sphere and action of pre-
scription again. Here is the point: let them
meet it.
| A definition of historical right or prescription
lis of service to a proper view of the subject
A buys farm of B /; Bof @ {; each prior, of an
antcccdent owner, until the title at last is found
to originate in some one who took possessionin
a state of nature. So of all rights the first
horse was caught in the wills: the descendants
through n thousand generations have been the
property of unnumbercd persons, whose origi-
nal right and title rest on this prescription
Constitutions and laws have modified the mode
of passing the title by contract descent and con-
stantly recurring cases of prescription, in the
statutes of limitations The right of prcscrip-
ton is founded in the very nature of things and
the constitution of man. The title by discoye-
Try and occupation is but title by prescription.
The title of the government of the territories in
dispute, whether derived from Indian prescrip-
ton, by purchase, or by the superiority Of civ
Iilization taking possession of these lands, is
only, and can only be the prcscriptivc.
Then outside of the limits of the States is
there no law but the law ofthe strongest, where
might makes right9 Do the constitution and
laws of the Union which recognize the citizen
and protect his person and property on the high
seas, forfeit his security and his rights when in
the territory? Are there no murders, treasons,
felonies in the territory are there no rights,
no wrongs no injuries, no remedies; are there
no contracts: if contracts made there, and to
be performed there, is there no remedy on that
contract? No sane man will, and no fool can,
carry such radicaism to such consequences of
logical scoundrelism. If contract is made
there and violated there there is remedy wher-
ever the party can be brought within the juris-
diction of the remedy and there be n careless
] hot
great prescriptivc element upon which the foun-
dations of society yet remains, trust stable
and secure, gives remedy, and wherever the
rights of persons and of things are still
regarded in the legal integrity, that remedy will
be enforced. Why enforced? because the
right belongs to the citizen in its historical de-
duction, under constitutions and laws, OF be-
cause it is prescriptive in him, and hasthe same
origin asauy other right, only in the kansian, it
lisa little nearer to the patent of omnipotence,
WHO made man for society and foundelh his rights
in prescription. The citizen of Pennsylvania
takes his herds and his locks to Kansas and his
property is unchanged because the law of ma
turc works in dcfcasance of his right: 2rcscrip-
ton interposcS where positive law ceases, as it
made title before positive law commenced; the
law of nature simply leaves the title undisturbcd
where it finds it, but there is no statute of man
to prescribe the mode of transfer, as whether it
shall be by word or writing. a Virginius takes
his property; secured by constitution and laws,
evidences of the long line of descent of the
contract, fulfilled by years of labor by which
he purchased the prescriptive rights of others,
and the law Of nature, thelaw of sovereign pre-
scription recognizes his rights, fully rs those
the Pennsylvania.
y foreign staten pass a law excluding from
Its territory peculiar articles of property, rum,
negroes or Yankee clocks, andmay!confiscatcs such
property when introduced against law. But
there must be positive law to produce such re-
suit and it has been in virtue of such local laws
or remedies that such results have been produc-
cd 1t is therefore an absurdity to say, because
citizen goes into place sehere there is 40 Latc
that the robber, the thief, or the cheat may cx-
ercise, what, in the language of Black Republic
canism and in the argument of Mr.. Montgomery,
may be aptly termed their natural rights, or
more correctly in the Language of Law and rea-
son. their tcIonio,s rocgicit les on his neighbours
WATCH his horse, his slave, his child his wife.
If Mr.. N. will study the elements of law and
the legal foundations of property he will be a
better democrat, as the term is now understood
among the constitutional politicians, and he
will be esteemed worthy politician among pa
triotfc statesmen. But this speech would not
now have been noticed did it not come from
that State which presents highly meritorious
candidate for the Presidency, and speaks a Ian
guage which, it is to be feared, is too general a.
mong his supporters-men who, in the contin-
gency ofhis election mustopposc his admins
tration on these vital questions, for their solu-
ton is not yet. In the questions which must
arise on this delicate subject, the example of
Milmot may be EolIowed-1nust be adopted, if