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." [_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 power, when unrestricted by constitutional provisions,
and that the legislation of Congress over the District is thus
unrestricted, its power to abolish slavery there is