travagances (I hope I shall not offend by this expression) which may excite our admiration, but cannot call for a very rigorous refu I have dealt with it accordingly, and have now done with it. We are next invited to study that clause of the constitution which relates to the migration or importation, before the year 1808, of such persons as any of the states then existing should think proper to admit. It runs thus: "The migration or importation of such persons as any of the states now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the congress prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight; but a tax or duty may be imposed on such importation, not exceeding ten dol lars for each person." It is said that this clause empowers congress, after the year 1808, to prohibit the passage of slaves from state to state, and the word "migration" is relied upon for that purpose. I will not say that the proof of the existence of a power by a clause which, as far as it goes, denies it is always inadmissible; but I will say that it is always feeble. On this occasion, it is singu larly so. The power, in an affirmative shape, cannot be found in the constitution; or if it can, it is equivocal and unsatisfactory. How do the gentlemen supply this deficiency? by the aid of a negative provision in an article of the constitution in which many restrictions are inserted ex abundanti cautela, from which it is plainly impossible to infer that the power to which they apply would otherwise have existed. Thus-"No bill of attainder or ex post facto law shall be passed." Take away the restrictioncould congress pass a bill of attainder, the trial by jury in criminal cases being expressly secured by the constitution? The inference, therefore, from the prohibition in question, whatever may be its meaning, to the power which it is supposed to restrain, but which you cannot lay your finger upon with any pretensions to certainty, must be a very doubtful one. But the import of the prohibition is also doubtful, as the gentlemen themselves admit. So that a doubtful power is to be made certain by a yet more doubtful negative upon power; or, rather, a doubtful negative, where there is no evidence of the corresponding affirmative, is to make out the affirmative, and to justify us in acting upon it, in a matter of suc 1 high moment, that questionable power should not dare to approac it. If the negative were perfectly clear in its import, the conciu sion which has been drawn from it would be rash, because it might have proceeded, as some of the negatives in whose company it is found evidently did proceed, from great anxiety to prevent such assumptions of authority as are now attempted. But when it is conceded, that the supposed import of this negative (as to the term migration) is ambiguous, and that it may have been used in a very different sense from that which is imputed to it, the conclusion acquires a character of boldness, which, however some may admire, the wise and reflecting will not fail to condemn. In the construction of this clause, the first remark that occurs is, that the word MIGRATION is associated with the word IMPORTATION. I do not insist that noscitur a sociis is as good a rule in matters of interpretation as in common life; but it is, nevertheless, of considerable weight when the associated words are not qualified by any phrases that disturb the effect of their fellowship; and unless it announces (as in this case it does not) by specific phrases combined with the associated term, a different intention. Moreover, the ordinary unrestricted import of the word migration is what I have here supposed. A removal from district to district, within the same jurisdiction, is never denominated a migration of persons. I will concede to the honorable gentlemen, if they will accept the concession, that ants may be said to migrate when they go from one ant-hill to another at no great distance from it. But even then they could not be said to migrate, if each ant-hill was their home in virtue of some federal compact with insects like themselves. But, however this may be, it should seem to be certain that human beings do not migrate, in the sense of a constitution, simply because they transplant themselves from one place, to which that constitution extends, to another which it equally covers. If this word migration applied to freemen, and not to slaves, it would be clear that removal from state to state would not be comprehended within it. Why, then, if you choose to apply it to slaves, does it take another meaning as to the place from whence they are to come? Sir, if we once depart from the usual acceptation of this term, fortified as it is by its union with another in which there is nothing in this respect equivocal, will gentlemen please to intimate the point at which we are to stop? Migration means, as they contend, a removal from state to state, within the pale of the common government. Why not a removal also from county to county, within a particular state-from plantation to plantation-from farm to farm-from hovel to hovel? Why not any exertion of the power of locomotion? I protest I do not see, if this arbitrary limitation of the natural sense of the term migration be warrantable, that a person to whom it applies may not be compelled to remain immovable all the days of his life (which could not well be many) in the very spot, literally speaking, in which it was his good or his bad fortune to be born. Whatever may be the latitude in which the word "persons" is capable of being received, it is not denied that the word "importation" indicates a bringing in from a jurisdiction foreign to the United States. The two termini of the importation, here spoken of, are a foreign country and the American Union; the first the terminus a quo, the second the terminus ad quem. The word migration stands in simple connection with it, and of course is left to the full influence of that connection. The natural conclusion is, that the same termini belong to each, or, in other words, that if the importation must be abroad, so also must be the migration; no other termini being assigned to the one which are not manifestly characteristic of the other. This conclusion is so obvious, that to repel it, the word migration requires, as an appendage, explanatory phraseology, giving to it a different beginning from that of importation. To justify the conclusion that it was intended to mean a removal from state to state, each within the sphere of the constitution in which it is used, the addition of the words from one to another state in this Union, were indispensable. By the omis sion of these words, the word "migration" is compelled to take every sense of which it is fairly susceptible from its immediate neighbor "importation." In this view it means a coming, as "importation" means a bringing, from a foreign jurisdiction into the United States. That it is susceptible of this meaning, nobody doubts. I go further. It can have no other meaning in the place in which it is found. It is found in the constitution of this Union; which, when it speaks of migration as of a general concern, must be supposed to have in view a migration into the domain which itself embraces as a general government. Migration, then, even if it comprehends slaves, does not mean the removal of them from state to state, but means the coming of slaves from places beyond their limits and their power. And if this be so, the gentlemen gain nothing for their argument by sbowing that slaves were the objects of this term. An honorable gentleman from Rhode Island, whose speech was distinguished for its ability, and for an admirable force of rea soning, as well as by the moderation and mildness of its spirit, informed us, with less discretion than in general he exhibited, that the word "migration" was introduced into this clause at the instance of some of the southern states, who wished by its instrumentality to guard against a prohibition by congress of the passage into those states of slaves from other states. He has given us no authority for this supposition, and it is, therefore, a gratuitous one. How improbable it is, a moment's reflection will convince him. The African slave-trade being open during the whole of the time to which the entire clause in question referred, such a purse could scarcely be entertained; but if it had been entertained, and there was believed to be a necessity for securing it, by a restriction * Mr. Burrill. upon the power of congress to interfere with it, is it possible that they who deemed it important would have contented themselves with a vague restraint, which was calculated to operate in almost any other manner than that which they desired? If fear and jealousy, such as the honorable gentleman has described, had dictated this provision, a better term than that of "migration," simple and unqualified, and joined too with the word "importation," would have been found to tranquillize those fears and satisfy that jealousy. Fear and jealousy are watchful, and are rarely seen to accept a security short of their object, and less rarely to shape that security of their own accord, in such a way as to make it no security at all. They always seek an explicit guaranty; and that this is not such a guaranty this debate has proved, if it has proved nothing else. Sir, I shall not be understood by what I have said to admit that the word migration refers to slaves. I have contended only that if it does refer to slaves, it is in this clause synonymous with importation; and that it cannot mean the mere passage of slaves, with or without their masters, from one state in the Union to another. But I now deny that it refers to slaves at all. I am not for any man's opinions or his histories upon this subject. I am not accustomed jurare in verba magistri. I shall take the clause as I find it, and do my best to interpret it. [After going through with that part of his argument relating to this clause of the constitution, Mr. Pinkney concluded his speech by expressing a hope that (what he deemed) the perilous principles urged by those in favor of the restriction upon the new state would be disavowed or explained, or that at all events the application of them to the subject under discussion would not be pressed, but that it might be disposed of in a manner satisfactory to all by a prospective prohibition of slavery in the territory to the north and west of Missouri.] 352 SPEECH OF JOHN RANDOLPH ON THE TARIFF BILL, DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE I AM, Mr. Speaker, practising no deception upon myself, much less upon the house, when I say, that if I had consulted my own feelings and inclinations, I should not have troubled the house, exhausted as it is, and as I am, with any further remarks upon this subject. I come to the discharge of this task, not merely with reluctance, but with disgust; jaded, worn down, abraded, I may say, as I am by long attendance upon this body, and continued stretch of the attention upon this subject. I come to it, however, at the suggestion, and in pursuance of the wishes of those, whose wishes are to me, in all matters touching my public duty, paramount law; I speak with those reservations, of course, which every moral agent must be supposed to make to himself. It was not more to my surprise, than to my disappointment, that on my return to the house, after a necessary absence of a few days, on indispensable business, I found it engaged in discussing the general principle of the bill, when its details were under consideration. If I had expected such a turn in the debate, I would, at any private sacrifice, however great, have remained a spectator and auditor of that discussion. With the exception of the speech, already published, of my worthy colleague on my right (Mr. P. P. Barbour), I have been nearly deprived of the benefit of the discussion which has taken place. Many weeks have been occupied with this bill (I hope the house will pardon me for saying so) before I took the slightest part in the deliberations of the details; and I now sincerely regret that I had not firmness enough to adhere to the resolution which I had laid down to myself, in the early stage of the debate, not to take any part in the discussion of the details of the measure. But, as I trust, what I now have to say upon this subject, although more and better things have been said by others, may not be the same that they have said, or may not be said in |