done, the surviving parties return to the state which they had expressly left in order to commit a breach of the laws, and deride all notion of punishment. In the lapse of little more than one year, the late General Hamilton and his eldest son both crossed over the Hudson, to be killed on the New-Jersey shore, and their surviving antagonists have never been called to any legal account for destroying two of the brightest ornaments and surest bulwarks of the nation. "Thus Abner died as a fool dieth;" and the peerless Hamilton has added his name to swell the long and bloody muster-roll of those who have fallen victims at the shrine of the worst remnant of gothic barbarity and feudal homicide. The Christian requires no arguments to be urged against the prevailing practice of fashionable murder; for the Christian knows that man has no right, either to seek his fellow's life, or to throw away his own (except at his country's call), but that he is accountable alike for his own and his brother's blood to the God of the spirits of all flesh.

But to that portion of the community, which is not sufficiently under the control of religious feeling, this is a subject of deepest import. In the United States, in proportion to their population, more duels are annually fought than in any other nominally Christian country; and of these duels a greater number is fatal, owing to the superior practice and skill, and the more deliberate deadly coolness with which the Americans aim at each other's life. How many families are, at this moment, sorrowing, in hopeless misery, over the loss of a father, or a husband, or a brother, or a son, who either has been, or who might have become, not only the prop and support of his kindred house, but the defence and glory of his admiring country; who might have led her armies to victory, or shaken her senate with the thunders of his eloquence, or have built her up into a high and palmy state of national honour and strength, by the wisdom of his counsel! If the laws are ineffectual, and the guardians of those laws slumber on their post of duty, it is high time for the moral force of the country to be put

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in requisition; for the men of talents, character, property, and influence in the community to unite their efforts, to stand in the gap between the dead and the living, to stay the plague, and bid the destroying angel depart from our reformed land for ever.

It is all-important for the permanent security, repose, and prosperous condition of the United States, that the administration of justice, both civil and criminal, should be uniform and certain throughout the whole Union. Doubtless, the multiplication of our state reporters will, in process of time, exercise a very salutary influence in producing this desirable uniformity in the law decisions of the different state courts. But a scrupulous conformity to that clause of the constitution, which declares," that full faith and credit shall be given to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of each state in any other state," would more certainly and more speedily produce this great effect; since the habit of receiving the judicial proceedings of each state in every other state, as equally binding with those of its own, would soon induce the different state courts to assimilate their law opinions, principles, and decisions with each other, as the legitimate effect of such constant and friendly intercourse. Whereas, by treating the judgments of sister states merely as foreign judgments, they necessarily tend to recede as far from any amicable assimilation with them as with the decisions of foreign courts. But nothing would so directly conduce to consolidate the strength, and prolong the duration of the American Union, as a uniformity in the legal provisions of the constitutions, statutes, and common law judgments of the several states composing that Union. Such a course of proceeding would, in the lapse of time, enable America to exhibit a more complete digest of municipal jurisprudence than the world has yet seen; because she has an opportunity of borrowing from the two great systems of legal civilization, the civil and the common law, whatever is best calculated to promote and protect the spirit of her own popular institutions, and to combine with

what she thus borrows, the lights of her own various and progressive experience in the different departments of human society, political, commercial, and scientific. This is the more important to strive after, because the science of legislation is yet, of necessity, crude and imperfect in this young and growing republic, owing to the want of long-continued political experience, and the extreme facility and latitude of empirical experiments upon the body politic, which the supreme sovereignty of so many separate independent republican states af fords and encourages.

And it is full time that the people of this country should learn the necessity of ballasting the speculative projects of the sanguine, the credulous, the precipitate political innovator, with the cautious deliberation, the practical wisdom of the experienced, forecasting statesman, of the profound and enlightened judge. Then, indeed, might the whole federal Union be melted down into one living body of national peace, security, permanent prosperity, and power, by the gradual diffusion of a uniform system of municipal law over all the different confederated state sovereignties. It would not then be easy, even for the hydra-headed monster faction herself, to disentangle the warp and the woof which might be interwoven, thread upon thread, throughout all the texture of society.

The federal constitution provides, that no person held to labour or service in one state, under its laws, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation of that other state, be discharged from such service or labour, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labour may be due. This provision enables the master of a runaway slave to claim him, even in a state, the municipal law of which has abolished or prohibited slavery, because the constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the land, to which all state laws must yield. Otherwise such fugitive slaves would be protected, because in all penal or criminal matters, municipal law permits no interference on the part of local law,

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and the lex loci not operating, even in civil cases, as on personal contracts, whenever its operation would clash with or contradict the provisions of municipal law. Ohio, who has prohibited the existence of slavery by her constitution, borders on all sides upon slave-holding states, from which runaway slaves often escape into her dominion; and her reluctance, not to say absolute refusal, to give up such fugitives to their owners, has recently occasioned considerable heat and animosity between her and her neighbour Kentucky, who possesses a large body of slaves within her territory, and shows no inclination to diminish their number.

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The constitution also provides, that new states may be admitted by Congress into the Union; but no new state formed within the jurisdiction of any other state, nor any state formed by the junction of two or more states, without the consent of the legislatures of the states concerned as well as of Congress. Congress has power to dispose of, and make all needful rules and lations respecting the territory, or other property belonging to the United States; and nothing in the constitution shall be so construed as to produce any claims of the United States, or of any particular state. United States shall guarantee to every state in the Union a republican form of government, and protect each of them against invasion; and on application of the legislature, or of the executive when the legislature cannot be convened, against domestic violence. Congress, whenever two-thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to the constitution; or on the application of the legislatures of two-thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments; which in either case shall be valid, as part of the constitution, when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several states, or by conventions in three-fourths of the states as one, or other mode of ratification may be proposed by Congress; provided, that no amendment made prior to the year 1818 shall affect the provisions respecting the migration, or importation of persons into, or from the

several states, and the imposition of capitation, or other direct taxes; and provided, that no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the

senate.

All debts contracted, and engagements entered into before the adoption of the constitution, shall be valid against the United States, under the constitution, as under the confederation. The constitution, and the laws of the United States, made in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land, and the judges in every state bound thereby, any thing in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding. The senators and representatives in Congress, and the members of the several states legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United and the several states, shall be bound by oath, or affirmation, to support the constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office, or public trust, under the United States.

The amendments already made to the constitution are, that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion; or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and petition government for a redress of grievances. A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. No soldier shall in time of peace be quartered in any house without the consent of the owner; nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law. The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated; and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath, or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. No one shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment, or indictment of a grand jury; ex