Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 12.djvu/317

CONSTITUTIONAL ASPECTS OF ANNEXATION. 29/ siimably, however, the " United States " is, in the language of Chief Justice Marshall, " the name given to our great republic, which is composed of States and Territories. The District of Columbia or the territory west of the Missouri is not less within the United States than Maryland or Pennsylvania," and, he added, " it is not less necessary, on the principles of our Constitution, that uni- formity in the imposition of imposts, duties, and excises should be observed in the one, than in the other." ^ The general and unqualified prohibitions imposed upon Congress are absolute denials of power without regard to place. Said Chief Justice Taney in Scott v. Sandford: ^ — "No one, we presume, will contend that Congress can make any law in a Territory respecting the establishment of religion, or the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, or the right of the people of the Territory peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for the redress of grievances. " Nor can Congress deny to the people the right to keep and bear arms, nor the right to trial by jury, nor compel any one to be a witness against himself in a criminal proceeding. " These powers, and others, in relation to rights of person, which it is not necessary here to enumerate, are, in express and positive terms, denied to the General Government; and the rights of private property have been guarded with equal care. Thus the rights of property are united with the rights of person, and placed on the same ground by the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, which provides that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, and property, without due process of law. And an Act of Congress which deprives a citizen of the United States of his liberty or property, merely because he came himself or brought his property into a particular Territory of the United States, and who had committed no offence against the laws, could hardly be dignified with the name of due process of law. " So, too, it will hardly be contended that Congress could by law quarter a soldier in a house in a Territory without the consent of the owner, in time of peace ; nor in time of war, but in a manner prescribed by law. Nor could they by law forfeit the property of a citizen in a Territory who was convicted of treason, for a longer period than the life of the person convicted ; nor take private property for public use without just compen- sation." A quotation from the Dred Scott Case is apt to be discredited in many quarters because of resentment against the decision, but on 1 Loughborough v. Blake, 5 Wbeaton, 317. 2 19 Howard, 393, 45a