punishable by imprisonment in the penitentiary.

Mr. Cummings of Missouri, a priest of the Roman Catholic Church, was
indicted and convicted in one of the Circuit Courts of that State, of
the crime of teaching and preaching as a priest and minister of
that religious denomination without having first taken the oath thus
prescribed, and was sentenced to pay a fine of five hundred dollars
and to be committed to jail until the same was paid. On appeal to the
Supreme Court of the State the judgment was affirmed, and the case
was brought on a writ of error to our court. It was there argued with
great learning and ability by Mr. Montgomery Blair, of Washington, Mr.
David Dudley Field, of New York, and Mr. Reverdy Johnson, of Maryland,
for Mr. Cummings; and by Mr. G.P. Strong and Mr. John B. Henderson, of
Missouri, the latter then United States Senator for the State.

It was evident, after a brief consideration of the case, that the
power asserted by the State of Missouri to exact this oath for past
conduct from parties, as a condition of their continuing to pursue
certain professions, or to hold certain trusts, might, if sustained,
be often exercised in times of excitement to the oppression, if not
ruin, of the citizen. For, if the State could require the oath for the
acts mentioned, it might require it for any other acts of one's past
life, the number and character of which would depend upon the mere
will of its legislature. It might compel one to affirm, under oath,
that he had never violated the ten commandments, nor exercised his
political rights except in conformity with the views of the existing
majority. Indeed, under this kind of legislation, the most flagrant
wrongs might be committed and whole classes of people deprived, not
only of their political, but of their civil rights.

It is difficult to speak of the whole system of expurgatory oaths for
past conduct without a shudder at the suffering and oppression they
were not only capable of effecting but often did effect. Such oaths
have never been exacted in England, nor on the Continent of Europe;
at least I can recall no instance of the kind. Test-oaths there have
always been limited to an affirmation on matters of present belief, or
as to present disposition towards those in power. It was reserved for
the ingenuity of legislators in our country during the civil war to
make test-oaths reach to past conduct.

The Court held that enactments of this character, operati