r security; you shall have a remedy for any
violation of that right in the Federal courts, and you shall have that
remedy, not according to the course of the civil law, in which the
judge is to decide, who might be against you, but in which a jury
shall be called to decide the fact according to the course of the
common law. That is the whole of it.

Mr. MASON:--Mr. President--

Mr. POLK:--If the Senator will allow me, before the Senator from
Kentucky sits down, I will ask him if the Mexican law establishes
slavery, or if it does any thing more than to protect the right of the
master to his slave? If that is the only establishment of it, then it
is established by implication merely.

Mr. CRITTENDEN:--I really do not know whether the gentleman would
consider it as establishing or merely protecting. I do not know that
there is a law in any State of the Union that _eo nomine_ establishes
slavery; I do not know.

Mr. POLK:--The object of the inquiry was this: it has been contended
heretofore that, by the law of Mexico, there could be no slavery
there; and then there is another law of New Mexico professing to
protect the right of property. I have never seen that New Mexican law.

Mr. CRITTENDEN:--I believe I have answered the gentleman as far as my
information extends. I have examined that law. It is as strong in
favor of the master as the laws of Kentucky or Missouri. I believe it
is the law of Mississippi transcribed literally, _verbatim_. That is
my understanding. The law is as complete on the subject as the law of
any State that I know of.

Mr. MASON:--Mr. President, if the Senator from Kentucky is right, and,
in the interpretation of this section, the courts are necessarily to
consider the expression, "according to the course of the common law,"
to which slaveholders are referred for the enforcing of the relation
of master and slave, as referring only to common law remedies, then I
am at no loss to conceive, after our experience of judicial
interpretation against slavery, by what sort of artificial and
sophistic reasoning those judges of the Federal courts may feel
themselves bound to withhold the remedy. Why, sir, are we to shut our
ears and our eyes against experience passing before us every day? What
is the present Constitution? The second section of the fourth article
is in these words:

"A person charged in any State with treason, felony, or
other crime, who shall flee from justice, and be found i