ntinental Congress at its first session in '74, there was the
following resolution: "Resolved, That the respective colonies are
entitled to the common law of England, and especially to the great and
inestimable privilege of being tried by their peers of the vicinage
according to the course of that law." Soon after the organization of the
general government, Chief Justice Ellsworth, in one of his decisions on
the bench of the United States Supreme Court, said: "The common law of
this country remains the same as it was before the revolution." Chief
Justice Marshall, in his decision in the case of Livingston _vs._
Jefferson, said: "When our ancestors migrated to America, they brought
with them the common law of their native country, so far as it was
applicable to their new situation and I do not conceive that the
revolution in any degree changed the relations of man to man, or the law
which regulates them. In breaking our political connection with the
parent state, we did not break our connection with each other."
[_See__Hall's Law Journal, new series._] Mr. Duponceau, in his
"Dissertation on the Jurisdiction of Courts in the United States," says,
"I consider the common law of England the _jus commune_ of the United
States. I think I can lay it down as a correct principle, that the
common law of England, as it was at the time of the declaration of
Independence, still continues to be the national law of this country, so
far as it is applicable to our present state, and subject to the
modifications it has received here in the course of nearly half a
century." Chief Justice Taylor of North Carolina, in his decision in the
case of the State _vs._ Reed, in 1823, Hawkes' N.C. Reps. 454, says, "a
law of _paramount obligation to the statute_ was violated by the
offence--COMMON LAW, founded upon the law of nature, and confirmed by
revelation." The legislation of the United States abounds in
recognitions of the principles of the common law, asserting their
paramount binding power. Sparing details, of which our national state
papers are full, we illustrate by a single instance. It was made a
condition of the admission of Louisiana into the Union, that the right
of trial by jury should be secured to all her citizens,--the United
States government thus employing its power to enlarge the jurisdiction
of the common law in this its great representative.

Having shown that the abolition of slavery is within the competency of
the law-making