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Show 28i DF.SPOTISM judges of the County Courts, who we~e rc9uircd, wllf'ncvcr they granted a cer~ificatc, to ftlc With. t},'c clerk of the county a record of the :vholc proc.eednlbs, containincr the names of the parties and WJtnc~scs, and a stafcment of the evidence upon whi?h t_h<> ccr tificate had been grunted. Aldermen a~d JUStices of the pence were forbidden to grant certificates at all; and..it was made a felony to carry any nrgro or mulatto out of the state, without process, with intent to hold him as a slave. Afterwards, by an act of 1826, pa~scd at the earnest request of the auihor_itics of l\loryland, the law of 1820 was sp far rnoddied as, under certain restrictions, to res-tore JLH!::;dlctJOn to just ices of the peace and aldermen ; but t~e other provisions of the act . of ll:l20, and especmll~ the pcnalliPs for removal w1thout process, were contmucd in full force. Nor was Pennsylvania the only state to legislate on this subject. Her act was subsequently (1836-7) incorporated, with some trifling modifications, into the statute book of New Jersey. At a still earlier day the legislature of New Y ~rk, ~n preparing a revised code for that state, (1827-30,) 1m posed several similar restrictions upon the action of her magistrates and judges under the act of 1793. She not only prohibited, as Pennsylvania had, t.he carrymg away of any alleged fugitive slave without proccs~, but all claimants who failed to make out thcu cla11nS were subjrcted to heavy costs and damages. 'I'he same act, in defiance of Tilghman's decision, sp.ecially n~served 1o all alleged fugitives for whom certificate~ m1ght be gruntcU, a right to. review t.hat proce.edmg, upon llabca~ corpus or wnt de hom1ne replcgJando, ~pro~ cess which involved, a~ we have already mcntJOI.JCd, a trial by jury; which trial by jury was also authon:ed by a subsequent act in cases in which the rehcanng took place under a writ of habeas corpus. 'l'hc bench of the Supreme Court of the state of New York has often been occupied by vr~y ~ble jurists. At that time, under a recent reorgamzatwn, IN Al\JERICA, 285 it con~istcd of thr~e judges, none of them of any extraordwary reputation, and whatever might be their political professions, all of them as thoroughly Federal, at least in slave cases, as 1Tilghrnan himself. This Supreme Court, in 1834, in the case of Jack v. Martin, (12 Wendall, 311,) set a>idc these provisions of the state legislature by holding, 1st. That Congre<s had the right to legislate to give effect to the clause in the Federal constitution rPspecting fugitives from labor; 2dly. '!'hat the act of1793 overrode and ousted all state legislation on the subject; and 3d. That the object of the constitutional provision evidf'ntly being the return of fugitive slaves, the act of 1793 "should receive a construction such as, con!:listcntly with its tE-rms, would operate most entctually to secure the end "-in other words, that. any protection of the citizens of New York against false or unfounded claims ought not to be thought of or provided for, when such provision might be liable to interfere with the most summary proceedings in favor of southern slave claimants! • 'l'his opinion, a mere wire-drawing in pages of what Tilghman had expressed in paragraphs, was pronounced by Judge Nelson; and according to a very remarkable coincidence, (if, in fact, it was entirely accidental,) upon the first vacancy he was raised to a seat upon the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States, succf'ssor to Thompson, and by the side of Baldwin, both of whom, it is worthy of note, had, previously to their appointments, taken strong slave-holding ground on the question of extending slavery into Mis~ouri. And we may add, what makes these coincidences the more remarkable, that since the date of the Missouri compromise, not a single northern • This case afterwards went up to the New York Court of Errors. butwo.s decided there (14 Wendnll,507) in ftlvorof the cll\imnnt, on the ground that the piRintiir, by his ph:!l\!1, Jm(l confessed himself the clrtimant's slal'e. Any expression of opinion by the court on the constitutionality of the act of 1793, or upon the New York stntute pro\'isions, was carefully 1\\'0id('d, although, Clumccllor \Vnlworth, sitting ns one of the judges, took thnt O(!Cnsion to pronounce n formal opinion, already referred to, against tho constitutionnlity of the net of 1793. |