may, by a
proceeding springing from the will or act of his master alone, be
mixed up with the institutions of the Federal Government, to which he
is not a party, and in opposition to the laws of that Government
which, in authorizing the extension by naturalization of the rights
and immunities of citizens of the United States to those not
originally parties to the Federal compact, have restricted that boon
to _free white aliens alone_. If the rights and immunities connected
with or practiced under the institutions of the United States can by
any indirection be claimed or deduced from sources or modes other than
the Constitution and laws of the United States, it follows that the
power of naturalization vested in Congress is not exclusive--that it
has _in effect_ no existence, but is repealed or abrogated.

But it has been strangely contended that the jurisdiction of the
Circuit Court might be maintained upon the ground that the plaintiff
was a _resident_ of Missouri, and that, for the purpose of vesting the
court with jurisdiction over the parties, _residence_ within the State
was sufficient.

The first, and to my mind a conclusive reply to this singular argument
is presented in the fact, that the language of the Constitution
restricts the jurisdiction of the courts to cases in which the parties
shall be _citizens_, and is entirely silent with respect to residence.
A second answer to this strange and latitudinous notion is, that it so
far stultifies the sages by whom the Constitution was framed, as to
impute to them ignorance of the material distinction existing between
_citizenship_ and mere _residence_ or _domicil_, and of the well-known
facts, that a person confessedly an _alien_ may be permitted to reside
in a country in which he can possess no civil or political rights, or
of which he is neither a citizen nor subject; and that for certain
purposes a man may have a _domicil_ in different countries, in no one
of which he is an actual personal resident.

The correct conclusions upon the question here considered would seem
to be these:

That in the establishment of the several communities now the States of
this Union, and in the formation of the Federal Government, the
African was not deemed politically a person. He was regarded and owned
in every State in the Union as _property_ merely, and as such was not
and could not be a party or an actor, much less a _peer_ in any
compact or form of government established by t