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signed to prevent him from being punished unjustly. The
denial of trial and punishment, except at the place of the
crime, — apart from the express recognition of the right of
demand, — appears to sanction that right, and to impose on
the State on whom it is made the obligation to surrender.
The good of all the States depends, in some measure, on
the observance of law and order in each other. If an of-
fender may escape punishment for any act by removing to
a State where that act is not criminal, those penal laws of
any State may be violated with impunity, which are pre-
dicated on its peculiar condition, or on the character of
its institutions and local policy, as distinguished from the
other States. This condition of things all would deplore;
and we should not encourage such a construction of our
mutual relations, as may lead to so calamitous a result.
The States would find themselves as New York now is,
in the attitude of shielding their own citizens from punish-
ment for the flagrant violations of necessary and salutary
laws in other States. We would present the anomoly, in
government, of independent States, without any power to
keep our citizens at home, or to prevent the commission
of crimes by them when abroad; and yet clothed with
State sovereignty amply sufficient to sustain and protect
them after the acts were committed.
Your committee will not discuss the question whether
slaves can be the subject of property. It is familiar to
every one that, before the organization of this Govern-
ment, and ever since, the laws of the States, to say no-
thing of the constitution, recognized them as the subject
of property, and, at this very moment, when the flame of
abolition continues to burn in some of the States, their Le-
gislatures have not repealed the laws by which the reco-
very of fugitive slaves is provided for. But even New-
York herself, now denying that a slave can be stolen, has
recently transmitted to this General Assembly a copy of a
law, by which the right of the owner may be asserted in
that State. Your committee are at a loss to imagine how
that State can deny that a theft can be committed of a ne-
gro slave, when her laws recognize them as liable to be re-
covered by their claimants as property, and where larceny
is defined to be the "felonious taking and carrying away
of the property of another. " But it is contended that the
act complained of must be a crime according to the laws
of New York. Neither the law of nations nor the con-
stitution allows such a construction. The demand is not
made for the benefit of New York. It concerns Virginia
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