pleading.

The defendant's counsel complain, that if the court take jurisdiction
on the ground that the plaintiff is free, the assumption is against
the right of the master. This argument is easily answered. In the
first place, the plea does not show him to be a slave; it does not
follow that a man is not free whose ancestors were slaves. The reports
of the Supreme Court of Missouri show that this assumption has many
exceptions; and there is no averment in the plea that the plaintiff is
not within them.

By all the rules of pleading, this is a fatal defect in the plea. If
there be doubt, what rule of construction has been established in the
slave States? In Jacob _v._ Sharp, (Meigs's Rep., Tennessee, 114,) the
court held, when there was doubt as to the construction of a will
which emancipated a slave, "it must be construed to be subordinate to
the higher and more important right of freedom."

No injustice can result to the master, from an exercise of
jurisdiction in this cause. Such a decision does not in any degree
affect the merits of the case; it only enables the plaintiff to assert
his claims to freedom before this tribunal. If the jurisdiction be
ruled against him, on the ground that he is a slave, it is decisive of
his fate.

It has been argued that, if a colored person be made a citizen of a
State, he cannot sue in the Federal court. The Constitution declares
that Federal jurisdiction "may be exercised between citizens of
different States," and the same is provided in the act of 1789. The
above argument is properly met by saying that the Constitution was
intended to be a practical instrument; and where its language is too
plain to be misunderstood, the argument ends.

In Chirae _v._ Chirae, (2 Wheat., 261; 4 Curtis, 99,) this court says:
"That the power of naturalization is exclusively in Congress does not
seem to be, and certainly ought not to be, controverted." No person
can legally be made a citizen of a State, and consequently a citizen
of the United States, of foreign birth, unless he be naturalized under
the acts of Congress. Congress has power "to establish a uniform rule
of naturalization."

It is a power which belongs exclusively to Congress, as intimately
connected with our Federal relations. A State may authorize foreigners
to hold real estate within its jurisdiction, but it has no power to
naturalize foreigners, and give them the rights of citizens. Such a
right is opposed to the acts of Cong