uses which show the absence
of that character or capacity are set forth by averment. The verity of
those causes, according to the settled rules of pleading, being
admitted by the demurrer, it only remained for the Circuit Court to
decide upon their legal sufficiency to abate the plaintiff's action.
And it now becomes the province of this court to determine whether the
plaintiff below, (and in error here,) admitted to be a _negro_ of
African descent, whose ancestors were of pure African blood, and were
brought into this country and sold as negro slaves--such being his
_status_, and such the circumstances surrounding his position--whether
he can, by correct legal induction from that _status_ and those
circumstances, be clothed with the character and capacities of a
citizen of the State of Missouri?

It may be assumed as a postulate, that to a slave, as such, there
appertains and can appertain no relation, civil or political, with the
State or the Government. He is himself strictly _property_, to be used
in subserviency to the interests, the convenience, or the will, of
his owner; and to suppose, with respect to the former, the existence
of any privilege or discretion, or of any obligation to others
incompatible with the magisterial rights just defined, would be by
implication, if not directly, to deny the relation of master and
slave, since none can possess and enjoy, as his own, that which
another has a paramount right and power to withhold. Hence it follows,
necessarily, that a slave, the _peculium_ or property of a master, and
possessing within himself no civil nor political rights or capacities,
cannot be a CITIZEN. For who, it may be asked, is a citizen? What do
the character and _status_ of citizen import? Without fear of
contradiction, it does not import the condition of being private
property, the subject of individual power and ownership. Upon a
principle of etymology alone, the term _citizen_, as derived from
_civitas_, conveys the ideas of connection or identification with the
State or Government, and a participation of its functions. But beyond
this, there is not, it is believed, to be found, in the theories of
writers on Government, or in any actual experiment heretofore tried,
an exposition of the term citizen, which has not been understood as
conferring the actual possession and enjoyment, or the perfect right
of acquisition and enjoyment, of an entire equality of privileges,
civil and political.

Thus V