cient law. In 1783,
Congress directed General Washington to continue his remonstrances to
the commander of the British forces respecting the permitting negroes
belonging to the citizens of these States to leave New York, and to
insist upon the discontinuance of that measure. In 1788, the resident
minister of the United States at Madrid was instructed to obtain from
the Spanish Crown orders to its Governors in Louisiana and Florida,
"to permit and facilitate the apprehension of fugitive slaves from the
States, promising that the States would observe the like conduct
respecting fugitives from Spanish subjects." The committee that made
the report of this resolution consisted of Hamilton, Madison, and
Sedgwick, (2 Hamilton's Works, 473;) and the clause in the Federal
Constitution providing for the restoration of fugitive slaves is a
recognition of this ancient right, and of the principle that a change
of place does not effect a change of condition. The diminution of the
power of a master to reclaim his escaping bondsman in Europe commenced
in the enactment of laws of prescription in favor of privileged
communes. Bremen, Spire, Worms, Vienna, and Ratisbon, in Germany;
Carcassonne, Beziers, Toulouse, and Paris, in France, acquired
privileges on this subject at an early period. The ordinance of
William the Conqueror, that a residence of any of the servile
population of England, for a year and a day, without being claimed, in
any city, burgh, walled town, or castle of the King, should entitle
them to perpetual liberty, is a specimen of these laws.

The earliest publicist who has discussed this subject is Bodin, a
jurist of the sixteenth century, whose work was quoted in the early
discussions of the courts in France and England on this subject. He
says: "In France, although there be some remembrance of old servitude,
yet it is not lawful here to make a slave or to buy any one of others,
insomuch as the slaves of strangers, so soon as they set their foot
within France, become frank and free, as was determined by an old
decree of the court of Paris against an ambassador of Spain, who had
brought a slave with him into France." He states another case, which
arose in the city of Toulouse, of a Genoese merchant, who had carried
a slave into that city on his voyage from Spain; and when the matter
was brought before the magistrates, the "procureur of the city, out of
the records, showed certain ancient privileges given unto them of
Tho