l the last few
months, ever heard of making the judge a criminal because he decided
against the constitutionality of a law of the United States? One would
think we were being transported back to the dark ages of the world
when a man is to be accused and perhaps convicted of a crime who has
done nothing more than honestly and conscientiously discharged his
duty. I know that the persons of embassadors are sacred, and I know
that it is a very high offense against the law of nations, which no
civil judge of any court could justify, to invade this sacred right of
the embassador, but every body knows that that is an exceptional case.
Every body knows that in all times and at all ages the judge was
punishable who did not respect the person of an embassador. But that
is not this case. That analogy will not help the third section of this
bill. It is openly avowed upon the floor of the Senate of the United
States, in the year of our Lord 1866, in the full blaze and light of
the nineteenth century, that the indictment is to be a substitute for
the writ of error, and it is justified because a judge ought to be
indicted who violates the sacred person of an embassador! What potency
there must be in the recent amendment of the Constitution which has
foisted the negro and set him upon the same platform as the envoy
extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary of Great Britain or of all
the Russias to the United States of America, and made him as sacred as
an embassador, and the judge who decides against him is to be punished
as a criminal!"

Mr. Stewart showed that States might easily avoid all the annoying
operations of this bill which were feared by its opponents: "When I
reflect how very easy it is for the States to avoid the operation of
this bill, how very little they have to do to avoid the operation of
the bill entirely, I think that it is robbed of its coercive features,
and I think no one has any reason to complain because Congress has
exercised a power, which it must be conceded it has, when it has
exercised it in a manner which leaves it so easy for the States to
avoid the operation of this bill. If passed to-day, it has no
operation in the State of Georgia; it is impossible to commit a crime
under this bill in the State of Georgia; and the other States can
place themselves in the same position so easily that I do not believe
they ought to complain."

He then read the second section of an act passed in Georgia, precisely
si