hat law of slavery does either take with him to the
Territory? If it be said to be those laws respecting slavery which
existed in the particular State from which each slave last came, what
an anomaly is this? Where else can we find, under the law of any
civilized country, the power to introduce and permanently continue
diverse systems of foreign municipal law, for holding persons in
slavery? I say, not merely to introduce, but permanently to continue,
these anomalies. For the offspring of the female must be governed by
the foreign municipal laws to which the mother was subject; and when
any slave is sold or passes by succession on the death of the owner,
there must pass with him, by a species of subrogation, and as a kind
of unknown _jus in re_, the foreign municipal laws which constituted,
regulated, and preserved, the _status_ of the slave before his
exportation. Whatever theoretical importance may be now supposed to
belong to the maintenance of such a right, I feel a perfect conviction
that it would, if ever tried, prove to be as impracticable in fact, as
it is, in my judgment, monstrous in theory.

I consider the assumption which lies at the basis of this theory to be
unsound; not in its just sense, and when properly understood, but in
the sense which has been attached to it. That assumption is, that the
territory ceded by France was acquired for the equal benefit of all
the citizens of the United States. I agree to the position. But it was
acquired for their benefit in their collective, not their individual,
capacities. It was acquired for their benefit, as an organized
political society, subsisting as "the people of the United States,"
under the Constitution of the United States; to be administered justly
and impartially, and as nearly as possible for the equal benefit of
every individual citizen, according to the best judgment and
discretion of the Congress; to whose power, as the Legislature of the
nation which acquired it, the people of the United States have
committed its administration. Whatever individual claims may be
founded on local circumstances, or sectional differences of condition,
cannot, in my opinion, be recognised in this court, without arrogating
to the judicial branch of the Government powers not committed to it;
and which, with all the unaffected respect I feel for it, when acting
in its proper sphere, I do not think it fitted to wield.

Nor, in my judgment, will the position, that a prohibiti