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to keep clearly within its prescribed limits, leaving a reserve of power for more pressing necessities and greater emergencies.
I am wellaware of the grand principle declared by the Supreme Court, (1 Cranch, 299,) that any usage under the Constitution which arose at the time, and has been continued ever since, as an interpretation of the Constitution, will fix upon it a meaning that ought not ever to be departed from. But the statutes, just referred to, cannot be regarded in the light of an exposition or interpretation of the Constitution, although they were passed, in part, at least, by men who had participated in the formation of that instrument. They are an expression of their sense of its meaning, so far as those acts imply a belief on their part that they had a right to pass such acts, that is, acts limiting the punishment of treason to the death of the offender without forfeiture of his property, and naturalization to white persons of European descent. But those acts, neither by their phraseology, nor by the act of passing them, imply any doubt on the part of the men who composed those Congresses, that they had a right to go further and alienate property, real as well as personal, by forfeiture to the government and its use forever.
I have discussed this question simply as a matter of interpretation of the meaning of the Constitution. I have said nothing, and I do not intend to say anything of the expediency of applying, what I conceive to be clearly written, the power of Congress to those who are now in open resistance against the General Government. I should certainly be disposed to deal as tenderly as any one with the masses of the people who have been drawn into this most unnecessary rebellion. But of this I did not design to speak. Let us suppress this rebellion, as I have no doubt we shall, and we may congratulate ourselves and the world upon the ultimate and final triumph of the principles of political freedom and self-government―a Government which is "of God and not of men," and under which, in the language of the Declaration of Independence, "all men are" in fact as well as in theory, "created equal and ordained by their Creator with the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
And in conclusion, my dear Judge, permit me to say, that I should hardly have undertaken the discussion of subjects which properly belong to your profession, but for the consideration, that
