aid offences, forfeit and
pay the sum of five hundred dollars. Which penalty may be recovered by
and for the benefit of such claimant, by action of debt, in any court
proper to try the same; saving, moreover, to the person claiming such
labor or service, his right of action for or on account of the said
injuries, or either of them.

THE FUGITIVE SLAVE BILL OF 1850.

SIGNED SEPTEMBER 18, 1850.

_An Act to amend, and supplementary to the Act entitled "An Act
respecting Fugitives from Justice, and Persons escaping from the
Service of their Masters," approved February twelfth, one thousand
seven hundred and ninety-three._

_Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United
States of America in Congress assembled_, That the persons who have
been, or may hereafter be, appointed commissioners, in virtue of any
act of Congress, by the Circuit Courts of the United States, and who, in
consequence of such appointment, are authorized to exercise the powers
that any justice of the peace, or other magistrate of any of the United
States, may exercise in respect to offenders for any crime or offence
against the United States, by arresting, imprisoning, or bailing the
same under and by virtue of the thirty-third section of the act of the
twenty-fourth of September, seventeen hundred and eighty-nine, entitled
"An Act to establish the judicial courts of the United States," shall
be, and are hereby, authorized and required to exercise and discharge
all the powers and duties conferred by this act.

_And be it further enacted_, That the Superior Court of each organized
Territory of the United States shall have the same power to appoint
commissioners to take acknowledgments of bail and affidavits, and to
take depositions of witnesses in civil causes, which is now possessed by
the Circuit Court of the United States; and all commissioners who shall
hereafter be appointed for such purposes by the Supreme Court of any
organized Territory of the United States, shall possess all the powers,
and exercise all the duties, conferred by law upon the commissioners
appointed by the Circuit Courts of the United States for similar
purposes, and shall moreover exercise and discharge all the powers and
duties conferred by this act.

_And be it further enacted_, That the Circuit Courts of the United
States, and the Superior Courts of each organized Territory of the
United States, shall from time to time e