rgument a complete _felo
de se_.

Sovereignty, independence, and a perfect right of self-government, can
signify nothing less than a superiority to and an exemption from all
claims by any extraneous power, however expressly they may be
asserted, and render all attempts to enforce such claims merely
attempts at usurpation. Again, could such claims from extraneous
sources be regarded as legitimate, the effort to resist or evade them,
by protest or denial, would be as irregular and unmeaning as it would
be futile. It could in no wise affect the question of superior right.
For the position here combatted, no respectable authority has been,
and none it is thought can be adduced. It is certainly irreconcilable
with the doctrines already cited from the writers upon public law.

Neither the case of Lewis Somersett, (Howell's State Trials, vol. 20,)
so often vaunted as the proud evidence of devotion to freedom under a
Government which has done as much perhaps to extend the reign of
slavery as all the world besides; nor does any decision founded upon
the authority of Somersett's case, when correctly expounded, assail or
impair the principle of national equality enunciated by each and all
of the publicists already referred to. In the case of Somersett,
although the applicant for the _habeas corpus_ and the individual
claiming property in that applicant were both subjects and residents
within the British empire, yet the decision cannot be correctly
understood as ruling absolutely and under all circumstances against
the right of property in the claimant. That decision goes no farther
than to determine, that _within the realm of England_ there was no
authority to justify the detention of an individual in private
bondage. If the decision in Somersett's case had gone beyond this
point, it would have presented the anomaly of a repeal by laws enacted
for and limited in their operation to the realm alone, of other laws
and institutions established for places and subjects without the
limits of the realm of England; laws and institutions at that very
time, and long subsequently, sanctioned and maintained under the
authority of the British Government, and which the full and combined
action of the King and Parliament was required to abrogate.

But could the decision in Somersett's case be correctly interpreted as
ruling the doctrine which it has been attempted to deduce from it,
still that doctrine must be considered as having been overrul