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Show 282 DESPOTISM reclamation of fuaitives occasioned by the growing frequency. of such "claims, and of kidnapping• alle~ed to be perpetrated under their cover, and to wh.IC:-h the contemr>oraneous controversy as to the extension of slavery into Missouri added no little fervor. But if such was their expectatiOn, they found t.hemselves mistaken. Their harsh and unwarrantable mterpreta~ tion of the act of 1793 at once overwhelmed that . act with universal odium. Hence arose the agitation against it of which Mr. Webster so bitterly complains ; an agitation in which the legislatures of the Middle States took the lead, by enactments of which the object was to put some restriction upon the despotic energy which 'l'ilghma1; and his collea_gues had construed into that act; restnchons for wluch a recent decision of the Supreme Court of the United States seemed to open the way. That court, in the celebrated and much contested case of Hunter v. Martin's Lessee, (1 Wheaton, 330,) decided in 1816, in maintaining their right under the constitution to i;;sue to the Supreme Courts of the states writs of error, in cases involving the interpretation of the constitution and laws of the United States, had called attention to a provi;ion of the Federal constitution, which, under the impulse of economizing Federal officers and salarieti, seems, on more occa· sions than one, to have escaped the attention of the members of the earlier Congresses, though so many of them had sat in the Federal convention. That pro· vision required that" the judicial power of the United States shall be vested in one Supreme Court, ~nd Ill such inferior courts as the Congress may from t1mc to time orde1· and establisiL;" which clause was held, in the 1 case above cited, to prohibit Congress "to vest any portion of the judicial power of the United States, ex· cept in courts ordained and established by it;elf." Upon the strength of this doctrine, and vt~ry soon after 1t w~s declared, occasion was found, in the case of cert~m parties bound over to trial for violation of the neutrality acts in fitting out privateers to sail under the flags of the IN AMERICA. 283 new South. American republics, to call in question the. nuthonty conf<·rred by the 33d section of the JUdiCiary act of 1789, upon justices of the peace concurrently with the judge; of the United State~ D1stnct Cou~ts, to arrest and commit for trial, or to release t?n ba1l, persons charged with offences against the Umtcd States. This objection was sustained by some of the district judges, and Congress, in consequence, passed an act, (March 1, 1817,) con· ferr.1ng. these sam.e concurrent powers of arrest, exarnlll. ation, co?n~11tment, and release on bail, upon c~rtatn commiSSioners, whom, by a previous act of l<ebruary 20, 1812, the Circuit Courls had been au· thorized to appoint for the purpose of taking affidavits and aekno\vledgrnents of bail in civil cases. Such w~s .the origin of judicial powers exercised by commiSSIOners of the Circuit Courts. But though these n;w ofiicer~ were "ordained and established" by ~01~gress, still they were obnoxious, in common with J?Sbccs of tl~e peac.c, to other objections already mentwned- havmg neither the tenure of otT-icc nor the stated salary required by the very same section of the ~oustitution, ~nd being neither appointed by the president nor s~bJCCt to. c~:mfirmation by the senate; guarantees agalll~;t parhallty and corruption quite as necessary in committing officers, and especially in such offict'rs as I hesc com missioners have come to be, under the act of 1845 and the fugitive act of 1850, as in those w?o~t· deci.sions as to matters of fact require the coOperation of a JUry, and whose whole procedure is checked by the solemnity and notoriety of a formal trial. Avadmg tht'mselves of the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, in 1-Imzler v. Martin's Lessee, that Congress had no authority to command the services of the state tribunals, the assembly of Pennsylvania, justly shocked at the new interpretation put upon the act of 1793 by their Snpreme Court, ~asst•d a law, (March 22, 1820,) by which the execu· t10n of the act of 1793 was restrictt"d, so far as the state officers of Pennsylvania were concerned, to the |