liable to be seized by any one, and taken before the
next authority to be examined and delivered up to his master--who was
required to pay the charge which had accrued thereby. And a subsequent
section of the same law provides, that if any free negro shall travel
without such pass, and shall be stopped, seized, or taken up, he shall
pay all charges arising thereby. And this law was in full operation when
the Constitution of the United States was adopted, and was not repealed
till 1797. So that up to that time free negroes and mulattoes were
associated with servants and slaves in the police regulations
established by the laws of the State.

And again, in 1833, Connecticut passed another law, which made it penal
to set up or establish any school in that State for the instruction of
persons of the African race not inhabitants of the State, or to instruct
or teach in any such school or institution, or board or harbor for that
purpose, any such person, without the previous consent in writing of the
civil authority of the town in which such school or institution might
be.

And it appears by the case of Crandall _v._ the State, reported in 10
Conn. Rep., 340, that upon an information filed against Prudence
Crandall for a violation of this law, one of the points raised in the
defense was, that the law was a violation of the Constitution of the
United States; and that the persons instructed, although of the African
race, were citizens of other States, and therefore entitled to the
rights and privileges of citizens in the State of Connecticut. But Chief
Justice Dagget, before whom the case was tried, held, that persons of
that description were not citizens of a State, within the meaning of the
word citizen in the Constitution of the United States, and were not
therefore entitled to the privileges and immunities of citizens in other
States.

The case was carried up to the Supreme Court of Errors of the State, and
the question fully argued there. But the case went off upon another
point, and no opinion was expressed on this question.

We have made this particular examination into the legislative and
judicial action of Connecticut, because, from the early hostility it
displayed to the slave trade on the coast of Africa, we may expect to
find the laws of that State as lenient and favorable to the subject race
as those of any other State in the Union; and if we find that at the
time the Constitution was adopted, they were not eve