law of England? There is no common law,
that I am aware of, known to jurists as the law of England. There is
no law in the State of Virginia, and, I presume, none in the State of
Kentucky, known as common law. The State of Virginia, when it became
independent as a colony of Great Britain, adopted and made its own
that which before had been the common law of England, and therefore
the common law of the colony. The State of Virginia (and I instance
that only because I am familiar with it), when it became independent,
adopted as its law the common law of England, as that common law stood
at the commencement of the fourth year of James I.; and thereby, by
statute, made that which had been the common law, the law of Virginia.
Now, it is the law of Virginia, not because it is the common law, but
because statutes made it the law of Virginia. But is the common law of
Virginia, if you will call it by that name, the common law of
Kentucky; or is the common law of Kentucky the common law of Missouri;
or is the law of those three States, or any other State, now the
common law of England? I demand to know, therefore, when we make the
common law a part of the Constitution, if this enactment should
prevail, what is meant by the common law? To that vague, grand
residuum of judicial legislation we are to be remitted for our rights
between master and slave, if this is enacted.

Now, sir, suppose it were so: my colleague has well said (and I will
not repeat it after him, for I should only weaken it), that there is
not one judicial interpreter or expounder of the common law, in any
one of the free States, in reference to the relation of master and
slave, that does not deny that the master has any property in his
slave, at this day and this hour. Why, sir, what is the pending
controversy between the State of Ohio, one of the free States, and the
State of Kentucky, one of the slave States--a controversy depending
here recently in the Supreme Court? The Governor of Kentucky demanded,
under the Constitution, the rendition of a fugitive from justice, who
had abducted a slave from Kentucky, and carried him into Ohio. The
Governor of Ohio refused the demand, upon the ground that there could
be no stealing of a man; that there could be no property in man; and
that the slave, being a man, was not a subject of theft, of larceny;
and he refused, and refuses up to this day, under the common law, to
recognize the existence of property in man.

Now, t