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The constitution declares — article IV, section 2:
1. The citizens of each State, shall be entitled to all the
privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States:
2. A person charged in any State with treason, felony or
other crime, who shall flee from justice, and be found in
another State, shall, on demand of the executive authority
of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be re-
moved to the State having jurisdiction of the crime.
3. No person held to service or labor in one State, under
the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in conse-
quence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged
from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on
claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.
These are important provisions, and confer rights and
obligations that would not have existed without them. In
the first place, the citizens of each State are entitled to all
the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several
States. They are placed on the same footing in each State
with the citizens of that State, entitled to the protection
of its laws, and to all benefits and advantages that they con-
for. This must have been provided for the purpose of
making us more emphatically members of the same politi-
cal family, and drawing us together more closely by a
sense of our common interest in the government, and our
common enjoyment of its privileges. And for the security
of the citizens who thus share their privileges with stran-
gers, it is provided that if they commit treason, felony or
other crime, and flee beyond its jurisdiction, they may be
demanded, surrendered and punished by the State whose
confidence they have abused, whose laws they have trans-
gressed. The words employed embrace every kind of of-
fence. If their object had been expressly stated to be the
extension of this light, because of the interest which all
the States have in the morals and observance of law in the
others, and for this purpose, to provide the means to punish
offenders wherever found, they could not have used terms
more likely to effect that purpose, unless they had prescri-
bed the details of every such proceeding as between the
States. The convention appear to have relieved this
clause from the restrictions that technical terms might im-
pose. As originally reported, this article read treason, fe-
lony or high misdemeanor; but the words "high misdemean-
or" were struck out and the words "other crime" inserted,
in order to comprehend all proper cases: it being doubted
whether high misdemeanor" had not a technical meaning too
limited. " See Madison Papers — Vol. 3. — 1447.
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