Court Opinion

ID: 3618039
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2016-07-06 00:00:40.389254+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:07:35.097490
License: Public Domain

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The petition upon which the writ of habeas corpus was issued, states that the colored persons sought to be discharged from imprisonment were, on the preceding night, taken from the steamer City of Richmond, in the harbor of New York, and at the time of presenting the petition, were confined in a certain house in Carlisle street in that city. The writ is directed to the appellant by the name of "Lemmings," as the person having in charge "eight colored persons lately taken from the steamer City of Richmond, and to the man in whose house in Carlisle street they were confined." The return is made by Lemmon, the appellant, and it speaks of the colored persons who are therein alleged to be slaves, and the property of Juliet Lemmon, as "the eight slaves or persons named in the said writ of habeas corpus." It alleges that they were taken out of the possession of Mrs. Lemmon, while in transitu between Norfolk, in Virginia, and the State of Texas, and that both Virginia and Texas are slaveholding States; that *Page 600 
she had no intention of bringing the slaves into this State to remain therein, or in any manner except on their transit as aforesaid through the port of New York; that she was compelled by necessity to touch or land, but did not intend to remain longer than necessary, and that such landing was for the purpose of passage and transit and not otherwise, and that she did not intend to sell the slaves. It is also stated that she was compelled by "necessity or accident" to take passage from Norfolk in the above mentioned steamship, and that Texas was her ultimate place of destination.
I understand the effect of these statements to be that Mrs. Lemmon, being the owner of these slaves, desired to take them from her residence in Norfolk to the State of Texas; and, as a means of effecting that purpose, she embarked, in the steamship mentioned, for New York, with a view to secure a passage from thence to her place of destination. As nothing is said of any stress of weather, and no marine casualty is mentioned, the necessity of landing, which is spoken of, refers, no doubt, to the exigency of that mode of prosecuting her journey. If the ship in which she arrived was not bound for the Gulf of Mexico, she would be under the necessity of landing at New York to reëmbark in some other vessel sailing for that part of the United States; and this, I suppose, is what it was intended to state. The necessity or accident which is mentioned as having compelled her to embark at Norfolk in the City of Richmond, is understood to refer to some circumstance which prevented her making a direct voyage from Virginia to Texas. The question to be decided is whether the bringing the slaves into this State under these circumstances entitled them to their freedom.
The intention, and the effect, of the statutes of this State bearing upon the point are very plain and unequivocal. By an act passed in 1817, it was declared that no person held as a slave should be imported, introduced or brought into this State on any pretence whatever, except in the cases afterwards mentioned in the act, and any slave brought here contrary to the act was declared to be free. Among the excepted cases *Page 601 
was that of a person, not an inhabitant of the State, passing through it, who was allowed to bring his slaves with him; but they were not to remain in the State longer than nine months. (Laws of 1817, ch. 137, §§ 9, 15.) The portions of this act which concern the present question were reënacted at the revision of the laws in 1830. The first and last sections of the title are in the following language:
"§ 1. No person held as a slave shall be imported, introduced or brought into this State on any pretence whatsoever, except in the cases hereinafter specified. Every such person shall be free. Every person held as a slave who hath been introduced or brought in this State contrary to the laws in force at the time, shall be free."
"§ 16. Every person born in this State, whether white or colored, is free. Every person who shall hereafter be born within this State shall be free; and every person brought into this State as a slave, except as authorized by this title, shall be free." (R.S., part 1, ch 20, tit. 7.)
The intermediate sections, three to seven inclusive, contain the exceptions. Section 6 is as follows: "Any person, not being an inhabitant of this State, who shall be traveling to or from, or passing through this State, may bring with him any person lawfully held in slavery, and may take such person with him from this State; but the person so held in slavery shall not reside or continue in this State more than nine months; if such residence be continued beyond that time such person shall be free." In the year 1841, the Legislature repealed this section, together with the four containing other exceptions to the general provisions above mentioned. (Ch. 247.) The effect of this repeal was to render the 1st and 16th sections absolute and unqualified. If any doubt of this could be entertained upon the perusal of the part of the title left unrepealed, the rules of construction would oblige us to look at the repealed portions in order to ascertain the sense of the residue. (Bussey v. Story, 4 Barn. Adolph., 98.) Thus examined, the meaning of the statute is as plain as though the Legislature had declared in terms that if any person should introduce a slave into this State, in *Page 602 
the course of a journey to or from it, or in passing through it, the slave shall be free.
If, therefore, the Legislature had the constitutional power to enact this statute, the law of the State precisely meets the case of the persons who were brought before the judge on the writ ofhabeas corpus, and his order discharging them from constraint was unquestionably correct. Every sovereign State has a right to determine by its laws the condition of all persons who may at any time be within its jurisdiction; to exclude therefrom those whose introduction would contravene its policy, or to declare the conditions upon which they may be received, and what subordination or restraint may lawfully be allowed by one class or description of persons over another. Each State has, moreover, the right to enact such rules as it may see fit respecting the title to property, and to declare what subjects shall, within the State, possess the attributes of property, and what shall be incapable of a proprietary right. These powers may of course be variously limited or modified by its own constitutional or fundamental laws; but independently of such restraints (and none are alleged to exist affecting this case) the legislative authority of the State over these subjects is without limit or control, except so far as the State has voluntarily abridged her jurisdiction by arrangements with other States. There are, it is true, many cases where the conditions impressed upon persons and property by the laws of other friendly States may and ought to be recognized within our own jurisdiction. These are defined, in the absence of express legislation, by the general assent and by the practice and usage of civilized countries, and being considered as incorporated into the municipal law, are freely administered by the courts. They are not, however, thus allowed on account of any supposed power residing in another State to enact laws which should be binding on our tribunals, but from the presumed assent of the law-making power to abide by the usages of other civilized States. Hence it follows that where the Legislature of the State, in which a right or privilege is claimed on the ground of comity, has by its laws spoken upon the subject of the alleged right, the tribunals *Page 603 
are not at liberty to search for the rule of decision among the doctrines of international comity, but are bound to adopt the directions laid down by the political government of their own State. We have not, therefore, considered it necessary to inquire whether by the law of nations, a country where negro slavery is established has generally a right to claim of a neighboring State, in which it is not allowed, the right to have that species of property recognized and protected in the course of a lawful journey taken by the owner through the last mentioned country, as would undoubtedly be the case with a subject recognized as property everywhere; and it is proper to say that the counsel for the appellant has not urged that principle in support of the claim of Mrs. Lemmon.
What has been said as to the right of a sovereign State to determine the status of persons within its jurisdiction applies to the States of this Union, except as it has been modified or restrained by the Constitution of the United States (Groves v.Slaughter, 15 Pet., 419; Moore v. The People of Illinois,
14 How., 13; City of New York v. Miln, 11 Pet., 131, 139.) There are undoubtedly reasons, independently of the provisions of the Federal Constitution, for conciliatory legislation on the part of the several States, towards the polity, institutions and interests of each other, of a much more persuasive character than those which prevail even between the most friendly States unconnected by any political union; but these are addressed exclusively to the political power of the respective States; so that whatever opinion we might entertain as to the reasonableness, or policy, or even of the moral obligation of the non-slaveholding States to establish provisions similar to those which have been stricken out of the Revised Statutes, it is not in our power, while administering the laws of this State in one of its tribunals of justice, to act at all upon those sentiments, when we see, as we cannot fail to do, that the Legislature has deliberately repudiated them.
The power which has been mentioned as residing in the States is assumed by the Constitution itself to extend to persons held as slaves by such of the States as allow the condition *Page 604 
of slavery, and to apply also to a slave in the territory of another State, which did not allow slavery, even unaccompanied with an intention on the part of the owner to hold him in a state of slavery in such other State. The provision respecting the return of fugitives from service contains a very strong implication to that effect. It declares that no person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, c. There was at least one State which at the adoption of the Constitution did not tolerate slavery; and in several of the other States the number of slaves was so small and the prevailing sentiment in favor of emancipation so strong, that it was morally certain that slavery would be speedily abolished. It was assumed by the authors of the Constitution, that the fact of a Federative Union would not of itself create a duty on the part of the States which should abolish slavery to respect the rights of the owners of slaves escaping thence from the States where it continued to exist. The apprehension was not that any of the States would establish rules or regulations looking primarily to the emancipation of fugitives from labor, but that the abolition of slavery in any State would draw after it the principle that a person held in slavery would immediately become free on arriving, in any manner, within the limits of such State. That principle had then recently been acted upon in England in a case of great notoriety, which could not fail to be well known to the cultivated and intelligent men who were the principal actors in framing the Federal Constitution. A Virginia gentleman of the name of Stewart had occasion to make a voyage from his home in that Colony to England, on his own affairs, with the intention of returning as soon as they were transacted; and he took with him as his personal servant his negro slave, Somerset, whom he had purchased in Virginia and was entitled to hold in a state of slavery by the laws prevailing there. While they were in London, the negro absconded from the service of his master, but was re-taken and put on board a vessel lying in the Thames bound to Jamaica, where slavery also prevailed, for *Page 605 
the purpose of being there sold as a slave. On application to Lord MANSFIELD, Chief Justice of the King's Bench, a writ ofhabeas corpus was issued to Knowles as master of the vessel, whose return to the writ disclosed the foregoing facts. Lord MANSFIELD referred the case to the decision of the Court of King's Bench, where it was held, by the unanimous opinion of the judges, that the restraint was illegal, and the negro was discharged. (The Negro Case, 11 Harg. S.T., 340; Somerset
v. Stewart, Lofft, 1.) It was the opinion of the court that a state of slavery could not exist except by force of positive law, and it being considered that there was no law to uphold it in England, the principles of the law respecting the writ of habeascorpus immediately applied themselves to the case, and it became impossible to continue the imprisonment of the negro. The case was decided in 1772, and from that time it became a maxim that slaves could not exist in England. The idea was reiterated in the popular literature of the language, and fixed in the public mind by a striking metaphor which attributed to the atmosphere of the British Islands a quality which caused the shackles of the slave to fall off. The laws of England respecting personal rights were in general the laws of the Colonies, and they continued the same system after the Revolution by provisions in their Constitutions, adopting the common law subject to alterations by their own statutes. The literature of the Colonies was that of the mother country.
The aspect in which the case of fugitive slaves was presented to the authors of the Constitution therefore was this: A number of the States had very little interest in continuing the institution of slavery, and were likely soon to abolish it within their limits. When they should do so, the principle of the laws of England as to personal rights and the remedies for illegal imprisonment, would immediately prevail in such States. The judgment in Somerset's case and the principles announced by Lord MANSFIELD, were standing admonitions that even a temporary restraint of personal liberty by virtue of a title derived under the laws of slavery, could not be sustained where that institution did not exist by positive law, and where *Page 606 
the remedy by habeas corpus, which was a cherished institution of this county as well as in England, was established. Reading the provision for the rendition of fugitive slaves, in the light which these considerations afford, it is impossible not to perceive that the Convention assumed the general principle to be that the escape of a slave from a State in which he was lawfully held to service into one which had abolished slavery would ipsofacto transform him into a free man. This was recognized as the legal consequence of a slave going into a State where slavery did not exist, even though it were without the consent and against the will of the owner. A fortiori he would be free if the master voluntarily brought him into a free State for any purpose of his own. But the provision in the Constitution extended no further than the case of fugitives. As to such cases, the admitted general consequence of the presence of a slave in a free State was not to prevail, but he was by an express provision in the federal compact to be returned to the party to whom the service was due. Other cases were left to be governed by the general laws applicable to them. This was not unreasonable, as the owner was free to determine whether he would voluntarily permit his slave to go within a jurisdiction which did not allow him to be held in bondage. That was within his own power, but he could not always prevent his slaves from escaping out of the State in which their servile condition was recognized. The provision was precisely suited to the exigency of the case, and it went no further.
In examining other arrangements of the Constitution, apparently inserted for purposes having no reference to slavery, we ought to bear in mind that when passing the fugitive slave provision the Convention was contemplating the future existence of States which should have abolished slavery, in a political union with other States where the institution would still remain in force. It would naturally be supposed that if there were other cases in which the rights of slave owners ought to be protected in the States which should abolish slavery, they would be adjusted in connection with the provision *Page 607 
looking specially to that case, instead of being left to be deduced by construction from clauses intended primarily for cases to which slavery had no necessary relation. It has been decided that the fugitive clause does not extend beyond the case of the actual escape of a slave from one State to another. (Ex parteSimmons, 4 Wash. C.C.R., 396.) But the provision is plainly so limited by its own language.
The Constitution declares that the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States. (Art. 4, § 2.) No provision in that instrument has so strongly tended to constitute the citizens of the United States one people as this. Its influence in that direction cannot be fully estimated without a consideration of what would have been the condition of the people if it or some similar provision had not been inserted. Prior to the adoption of the Articles of Confederation, the British colonies on this continent had no political connection, except that they were severally dependencies of the British crown. Their relation to each other was the same which they respectively bore to the other English colonies, whether on this continent or in Europe or Asia. When, in consequence of the Revolution, they severally became independent and sovereign States, the citizens of each State would have been under all the disabilities of alienage in every other, but for a provision in the compacts into which they entered whereby that consequence was avoided. The articles adopted during the Revolution formed essentially a league for mutual protection against external force; but in passing them it was felt to be necessary to secure a community of intercourse which would not necessarily obtain even among closely allied States. This was effected by the fourth article of that instrument, which declared that the free inhabitants of each of the States (paupers, vagabonds, and fugitives from justice excepted) should be entitled to all privileges and immunities of free citizens in the several States, and that the people of each State should have free ingress and egress to and from any other State, and should enjoy therein all the privileges of trade and commerce, subject to the same duties, impositions and restrictions as the inhabitants thereof, *Page 608 
respectively. The Constitution organized a still more intimate Union, constituting the States, for all external purposes and for certain enumerated domestic objects, a single nation; but still the principle of State sovereignty was retained as to all subjects, except such as were embraced in the delegations of power to the General Government or prohibited to the States. The social status of the people, and their personal and relative rights as respects each other, the definition and arrangements of property, were among the reserved powers of the States. The provision conferring rights of citizenship upon the citizens of every State in every other State, was inserted substantially as it stood in the Articles of Confederation. The question now to be considered is, how far the State jurisdiction over the subjects just mentioned is restricted by the provision we are considering; or, to come at once to the precise point in controversy, whether it obliges the State governments to recognize, in any way, within their own jurisdiction, the property in slaves which the citizens of States in which slavery prevails may lawfully claim within their own States — beyond the case of fugitive slaves. The language is that they shall have the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States. In my opinion the meaning is, that in a given State, every citizen of every other State shall have the same privileges and immunities — that is, the same rights — which the citizens of that State possess. In the first place, they are not to be subjected to any of the disabilities of alienage. They can hold property by the same titles by which every other citizen may hold it, and by no other. Again, any discriminating legislation which should place them in a worse situation than a proper citizen of the particular State would be unlawful. But the clause has nothing to do with the distinctions founded on domicil. A citizen of Virginia, having his home in that State, and never having been within the State of New York, has the same rights under our laws which a native born citizen, domiciled elsewhere, would have, and no other rights. Either can be the proprietor of property here, but neither can claim any rights which under our laws belong only to residents of the State. But where the laws *Page 609 
of the several States differ, a citizen of one State asserting rights in another, must claim them according to the laws of the last mentioned State, not according to those which obtain in his own.
The position that a citizen carries with him, into every State into which he may go, the legal institutions of the one in which he was born, cannot be supported. A very little reflection will show the fallacy of the idea. Our laws declare contracts depending upon games of chance or skill, lotteries, wagering policies of insurance, bargains for more than 7 per cent per annum of interest, and many others, void. In other States such contracts, or some of them, may be lawful. But no one would contend that if made within this State by a citizen of another State where they would have been lawful, they would be enforced in our courts. Certain of them, if made in another State and in conformity with the laws there, would be executed by our tribunals upon the principles of comity; and the case would be the same if they were made in Europe or in any other foreign country. The clause has nothing to do with the doctrine of international comity. That doctrine, as has been remarked, depends upon the usage of civilized nations and the presumed assent of the legislative authority of the particular State in which the right is claimed; and an express denial of the right by that authority is decisive against the claim. How then, is the case of the appellant aided by the provision under consideration?
The Legislature has declared, in effect, that no person shall bring a slave into this State, even in the course of a journey between two slaveholding States, and that if he does, the slave shall be free. Our own citizens are of course bound by this regulation. If the owner of these slaves is not in like manner bound it is because, in her quality of citizen of another State, she has rights superior to those of any citizen of New York, and because, in coming here, or sending her slaves here for a temporary purpose, she has brought with her, or sent with them, the laws of Virginia, and is entitled to have those laws enforced in the courts, notwithstanding the mandate of our own laws to the contrary. But the position of the appellant proves too much. *Page 610 
The privileges and immunities secured to the citizens of each State by the Constitution are not limited by time, or by the purpose for which, in a particular case, they may be desired, but are permanent and absolute in their character. Hence, if the appellant can claim exemption from the operation of the statute on which the respondent relies, on the ground that she is a citizen of a State where slavery is allowed, and that our courts are obliged to respect the title which those laws confer, she may retain slaves here during her pleasure; and, as one of the chief attributes of property is the power to use it, and to sell or dispose of it, I do not see how she could be debarred of these rights within our jurisdiction as long as she may choose to exercise them. She could not, perhaps, sell them to a citizen of New York, who would at all events be bound by our laws, but any other citizen of a slave State — who would equally bring with him the immunities and privileges of his own State — might lawfully traffic in the slave property. But my opinion is that she has no more right to the protection of this property than one of the citizens of this State would have upon bringing them here under the same circumstances, and that the clause of the Constitution referred to has no application to the case. I concede that this clause gives to citizens of each State entire freedom of intercourse with every other State, and that any law which should attempt to deny them free ingress or egress would be void. But it is citizens only who possess these rights, and slaves certainly are not citizens. Even free negroes, as is well known, have been alleged not to possess that quality. In Moore v. The State ofIllinois, already referred to, the Supreme Court of the United States, in its published opinion, declared that the States retained the power to forbid the introduction into their territory of paupers, criminals or fugitive slaves. The case was a conviction under a statute of Illinois, making it penal to harbor or secrete any negro, mulatto or person of color being a slave or servant owing service or labor to any other person. The indictment was for secreting a fugitive slave who had fled from his owner in Missouri. The owner had not intervened to reclaim him so as to bring the fugitive law into *Page 611 
operation, and the case was placed by the court on the ground that it was within the legitimate power of State legislation, in the promotion of its policy, to exclude an unacceptable population. I do not at all doubt the right to exclude a slave as I do not consider him embraced under the provision securing a common citizenship; but it does not seem to me clear that one who is truly a citizen of another State can be thus excluded, though he may be a pauper or a criminal, unless he be a fugitive from justice. The fourth article of confederation contained an exception to the provision for a common citizenship, excluding from its benefits paupers and vagabonds as well as fugitives from justice; but this exception was omitted in the corresponding provision of the Constitution. If a slave attempting to come into a State of his own accord can be excluded on the ground mentioned, namely, because as a slave he is an unacceptable inhabitant, as it is very clear he may be, it would seem to follow that he might be expelled if accompanied by his master. It might, it is true, be less mischievous to permit the residence of such a person when under the restraint of his owner; but of this the Legislature must judge. But it is not the right of the slave but of the master which is supposed to be protected under the clause respecting citizenship. The answer to the claim in that aspect has been already given. It is that the owner cannot lawfully do anything which our laws do not permit to be done by one of our own citizens; and as a citizen of this State cannot bring a slave within its limits except under the condition that he shall immediately become free, the owner of these slaves could not do it without involving herself in the same consequences.
It remains to consider the effect upon this case of the provision by which power is given to Congress to regulate commerce among the several States. (Art. 1, § 8, ¶ 3.) If the slaves had been passing through the navigable waters of this State in a vessel having a coasting license granted under the act of Congress regulating the coasting trade, in the course of a voyage between two slave States, and in that situation had been interrupted by the operation of the writ of habeas corpus, *Page 612 
I am not prepared to say that they could have been discharged under the provision of the statute. So if in the course of such a voyage they had been landed on the territory of the State in consequence of a marine accident or by stress of weather. In either case they would, in strictness of language, have been introduced and brought into the State. In the latter case, their being here being involuntary, as regards the owner, they would not have been "brought here" within the meaning of the statute. (Case of the brig Enterprize, in the decisions of the Commissionof Claims, under the Convention of 1853, p. 187.) But the case does not present either of these features. Its actual circumstances are these: Mrs. Lemmon being the owner of these slaves, at her residence in Norfolk, chose to take them to the State of Texas for a purpose not disclosed, further than that it was not in order to sell them. Geographically, New York is not on the route of such a voyage, but we can readily see that it would be convenient to bring them to that city from which vessels sail to most of the ports in the Union, to be embarked from thence in a ship bound to a port in the extreme southern part of the Union. This was what was actually done. She came with the negroes to New York by sea, in order to embark from thence to Texas; and when the writ of habeas corpus was served they were staying at a house in the city, ready to set out when a vessel should sail, and not intending to remain longer than should be necessary.
The act under consideration is not in any just sense a regulation of commerce. It does not suggest to me the idea that it has any connection with that subject. It would have an extensive operation altogether independent of commerce. It is not therefore within the scope of the decision of the Supreme Court in the passenger cases. (7 How., 283.) In those cases the States of New York and Massachusetts had imposed taxes upon passengers arriving by sea at the ports of those States. The court considering the carrying of passengers coming here from foreign countries or being transported by sea between ports in different States, to be an operation of foreign and inter-state commerce, and holding moreover that the power to regulate *Page 613 
commerce was exclusively vested in Congress, declared those acts to be a violation of the Constitution of the United States. It may be considered as settled by those judgments that an act of State legislation acting directly upon the subject of foreign or inter-state commerce, and being in substance a regulation of that subject, would be unwarranted, whether its provisions were hostile to any particular act of Congress or not. But there is a class of cases which may incidentally affect the subject of commerce, but in respect to which the States are free to act until the ground has been covered by an act of Congress. State legislation upon these subjects is not hostile to the power residing in Congress to regulate commerce; but if Congress in execution of that power shall have enacted special regulations touching the particular subject, such regulations then become exclusive of all interference on the part of the States. This is shown by the case of Wilson v. The Black Bird Creek SwampCompany (2 Pet., 250). The State of Delaware had authorized a corporation to erect a dam across a creek below tide-water, in order to drain a marsh. The validity of the act was drawn in question, on the ground that it was in conflict with the power of Congress to regulate commerce. The object of the work authorized by the State law was to improve the health of the neighborhood. In giving the opinion of the court, Chief Justice MARSHALL observed that "means to produce these objects (that is, health and the like), provided they do not come in collision with the powers of the General Government, are undoubtedly within those which are reserved to the States. But the measure authorized by this act stops a navigable creek, and must be supposed to abridge the rights of those who have been accustomed to use it. But this abridgment, unless it comes in conflict with the Constitution or a law of the United States, is an affair between the government of Delaware and its citizens, of which this court can take no cognizance." "If Congress had passed any act which bore upon the case — any act in execution of the powers to regulate commerce, the object of which was to control State legislation over these small navigable creeks into which the tide flows — we should feel not much difficulty *Page 614 
in saying that a State law being in conflict with such act would be void. But Congress has passed no such act. The repugnancy of the law of Delaware with the Constitution is placed entirely on its repugnancy with the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several States — a power which has not been exercised so as to affect the question." The same principle has been affirmed in Sturges v. Crowinshield (4 Wheat., 193), and in Moore v. Houston (5 Wheat., 1); and since the Passenger cases, it has been reiterated in the Pilot case (Cooley v. The Board of Wardens of Philadelphia, 12 How.,
299). The application of the rule to the present case is plain. We will concede, for the purpose of the argument, that the transportation of slaves from one slaveholding State to another is an act of inter-state commerce, which may be legally protected and regulated by federal legislation. Acts have been passed to regulate the coasting trade, so that if these slaves had been intransitu between Virginia and Texas, in a coasting vessel, at the time the habeas corpus was served, they could not have been interfered with while passing through the navigable waters of a free State by the authority of a law of such State. But they were not thus in transit at that time. Congress has not passed any act to regulate commerce between the States when carried on by land, or otherwise than in coasting vessels. But conceding that, in order to facilitate commerce among the States, Congress has power to provide for precisely such a case as the present — the case of persons, whose transportation is the subject of commercial intercourse, being carried by a coasting vessel to a convenient port in another State, with a view of being there landed, for the purpose of being again embarked on a fresh coasting voyage to a third port, which was to be their final destination — the unexercised power to enact such a law, to regulate such a transit, would not affect the power of the States to deal with the status of all persons within their territory in the meantime, and before the existence of such a law. It would be a law to regulate commerce carried on partly by land and partly by water — a subject upon which Congress has not thought proper to act at all. Should it do so *Page 615 
hereafter, it might limit and curtail the authority of the States to execute such an act as the present in a case in which it should interfere with such paramount legislation of Congress. I repeat the remark, that the law of the State under consideration has no aspect which refers directly to commerce among the States. It would have a large and important operation upon cases falling within its provisions, and having no connection with any commercial enterprise. It is then, so far as the commercial clause is concerned, generally valid; but in the case of supposable federal legislation, under the power conferred upon Congress to regulate commerce, circumstances might arise where its execution, by freeing a slave cargo landed on our shores, in the course of an inter-state voyage, would interfere with the provisions of an act of Congress. The present state of federal legislation however, does not, in my opinion, raise any conflict between it and the laws of this State under consideration. Upon the whole case, I have come to the conclusion that there is nothing in the National Constitution or the laws of Congress to preclude the State judicial authorities from declaring these slaves thus introduced into the territory of this State, free, and setting them at liberty, according to the direction of the statute referred to. For the foregoing reasons, I am in favor of affirming the judgment of the Supreme Court.