On motion of Mr. HOPKINSON,

The Convention adjourned.

[Mr. INGERSOLL's remarks of this day will be found connected with the residue, in the proceedings of the next day.]

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 1838.

Mr. CHANDLER, of Philadelphia, presented a memorial from citizens of Philadelphia, praying that a jury trial may be granted in all cases where liberty is at stake; which was laid on the table.

Mr. COCHRAN, of Lancaster, from the committee appointed to prepare, engross and report the amendments made to the constitution on second reading, for a third reading, made report as follows, viz:

That in consequence of the several amendments introduced at different times, and on motions of different delegates, into the first section of the third article of the constitution, the composition of the section has assumed a somewhat awkward shape, and requirss for its improvement, in this particular, some transposition of phraseology.

The committee therefore recommend that the section be made to read as follows:

ARTICLE III.

SECTION 1. In elections by the citizens, every white freemen of the age of twenty-one years, having resided in this state one year, and in the election district where he offers to vote, ten days immediately preceding such election, and within two years paid a state or county tax, which shall have been assessed at least ten days next before the election, shall enjoy the rights of an elector. But a citizen of the United States, who had previously been a qualified voter of this state, and removed therefrom and returned, and who shall have resided in the election district and paid taxes as aforesaid, shall be entitled to vote after residing in the state for six months. Provided, That white freemen, citizens of the United States, between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-two years, and having resided in the state one year, and in the election district ten days as aforesaid, shall be entitled to vote, although they shall not have paid taxes.

The remaining sections of the third article not having been altered by the convention, are not referred to the committee-which was laid on the table and orderod to be printed.

The convention resumed the second reading and consideration of the resolution read on the 1st inst., in the words as follow, viz:

Resolved, That the committee appointed to superintend the printing of the Debates of this convention, be instructed to make such arrangements as will hereafter prevent the insertion of reports and documents not intimately connected with the debates of this body or amendments proposed to the constitution.

Mr. KERR, of Washington, said he had no other wish, in bringing forward this resolution as to reports and documents, than to save useless expenditure. It was said that the printing of the report of the auditor general on the banks, would cost one hundred and fifty dollars, and including the German, three hundred dollars. 'The second volume of the debates, including the debates up to the 21st of June, was all he had yet received. The document respecting the taxable inhabitants was already printed. On looking over the journals, he found a large number of documents since that time, many of which are tabular statements, and occupied a great deal of space on the journal. As they are printed in that form he thought that was sufficient. The resolution refers to the committee on debates. There was no such committee. Two members had been added to the committee on printing, but they had no power over the debates. He did not know what documents were embraced in the third volume. He would modify the resolution to read as follows:

Resolved, That the Auditor General's report containing a statement of the affairs of the several banks in Pennsylvania, and other similar documents not already printed in the debates of this convention, be omitted in the volumes yet to be printed.

Mr. CURLL, of Armstrong, said he understood most of the bulky documents were contained in the third volume, and were already printed.

MI. FULLER, of Fayette, offered an amendment, but withdrew it. Mr. DICKEY asked for the yeas and nays on the resolution, and they were ordered.

The question was then taken, and the resolution was agreed to by the following vote.

YEAS-Messrs. Ayres, Baldwin, Banks, Barclay, Barndollar, Barnitz, Biddle, Bigelow, Brown, of Northampton, Carey, Chandler, of Chester, Chandler, of Philadelphia, Clapp, Clarke, of Beaver, Clark, of Dauphin, Clarke, of Indiana, Cleavinger, Cochran, Cope, Cox, Craig, Crain, Crum, Cummin, Cunningham, Curll, Darrah, Denny, Dickey, Dickerson, Donagan, Dunlop, Farrelly, Foulkrod, Fry, Fuller, Gamble, Gearhart, Gilmore, Harris, Hastings, Hayhurst, Hays, Helffenstein, Henderson, of Allegheny, Hiester, High, Hopkinson, Houpt, Hyde, Ingersoll, Jenks, Kennedy, Kerr, Konigmacher, Krebs, Long, Maclay, Magee, M'Sherry, Merrill, Merkel, Miller, Montgomery, Myers, Payne, Pennypacker, Porter, of Lancaster, Read, Riter, Ritter, Rogers, Royer, Russell, Saeger, Sellers, Seltzer, Shellito, Smyth, of Centre, Snively, Stickel, Taggart, Thomas, Todd, Weaver, White, Young-87.

NAYS-Messrs. Dillinger, Fleming, Grenell, Martin, M'Cahen, Nevin, Overfield, Smith, of Columbia, Sturdevant, Woodward, Porter, of Northampton President pro tem.-11.

Mr. INGERSOLL, of Philadelphia, asked leave to offer a resolution to suspend the forty-fourth rule, restricting the time allowed a member to one hour, during the discussion of the sixth section.

Mr. FULLER, of Fayette, asked for the yeas and nays, and they were ordered.

The question was then taken, and decided in the negative, as follows:

YEAS-Messrs. Ayres, Baldwin, Bedford, Biddle, Carey, Chambers, Chandler, of Chester, Chandler, of Philadelphia, Clarke, of Indiana, Coates, Cochran, Cope, Crain, Cunningham, Curll, Denny, Dillinger, Donagan, Doran, Dunlop, Farrelly, Fleming,

Grenell, Hays, Helffenstein, Henderson, of Dauphin, Hopkinson, Ingersoll, Jenks, Maclay, Martin, M'Cahen, M'Sherry, Merrill, Porter, of Lancaster, Read, Riter, Rogers, Russell, Shellito, Woodward, Young, Porter, of Northampton, President pro tem.-43. NAYS-Messrs. Banks, Barclay, Barndollar, Barnitz, Brown, of Northampton, Brown, of Philadelphia, Clapp, Clarke, of Beaver, Clark, of Dauphin, Cleavinger, Craig, Crawford, Crum, Cummin, Darrah, Dickey, Dickerson, Earle, Foulkrod, Fuller, Gearhart, Gilmore, Harris, Hastings, Hayhurst, Henderson, of Allegheny, Hiester, High, Houpt, Hyde, Keim, Kennedy, Kerr, Konigmacher, Krebs, Magee, Merkel, Miller, Montgomery, Myers, Nevin, Overfield, Payne, Pennypacker, Ritter, Royer, Sellers, Seltzer, Smith, of Columbia, Smyth, of Centre, Snively, Sterigere, Stickel, Sturdevant. Taggart, Thomas, Todd, Weaver, White-59.

NINTH ARTICLE.

The convention resumed the second reading of the report of the committee to whom was referred the ninth article of the constitution.

The following section being under consideration:

"SECTION 6. The trial by jury shall be as heretofore, and the right thereof remain inviolate."

And the question pending on the amendment offered by Mr. Biddle, in these words:

"And shall be granted to all persons who may be arrested as fugitives from labor, and who shall claim to be freemen."

Mr. INGERSOLL said that the great importance of this question, moved him to break the silence he had observed since the regulation restraining debate. This is the question of the Union-of our country, on the determination of which depends whether all our proceedings here shall be of any avail; for it matters little how we may regulate the state, if the United States cease to be such. When, as citizens of one confederated state, we deal with institutions involving the welfare and the supreme authority of states united, it becomes us to act with peculiar circumspection, and to suffer no impulse of mere feeling to get the better of the sober reason and lofty patriotism which ought to prevail. To the American union of states we owe it that this nation is the comfort, the refuge, the admiration and the envy of all others; that this convention is sitting here, the legislature at Harrisburg, and congress at Washington, each in its sphere deliberating the will and the good of one great people; and he must he insensible of the advantages we enjoy over other people, who does not acknowledge and feel that, slavery and all--domestic slavery and the foreign slave trade, while the federal constitution allowed it, taken into the account-still the American condition of free white men, slaves and free blacks, is not to be rashly risqued for any modern notion of the right of immediate emancipation of slaves, or political equality of blacks; or that notwithstanding the slavery lawful in some states of the Union, it is the happiest allotment of mankind--slaves included.

The federal constitution, built on the basis of this concession, guards it with abundant caution by many provident provisions. The first clause of the ninth section of the first article stipulates for twenty years continuance of the slave trade, both foreign and domestic, prohibiting the states from stopping it. The fourth article, in all its several clauses, is appropriated to this and analogous objects. By the first clause of that article full faith and credit is secured in each state to the judicial proceed

ings of every other, and congress is empowered by general laws to prescribe their effect. By the second clause the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states are allowed to the citizens of each state, necessarily excluding black freemen. The third clause provides for the extradition of criminal fugitives from one state to another. And the fourth clause declares that no bondsman escaping from the state by whose laws he owes service, shall be discharged from it by any law or regulation of another state, but shall be delivered up on claim of the master. Soon after such a frame of federal government was settled by and among the states and the people; the act of congress of February, '93, became a law, making particular arrangements for the manner of carrying into effect these provisions of the supreme law. And we can not doubt that the framers of that law supposed they had guarded against every possible difficulty, contingency or feeling on this delicate and critical subject, when, to the forementioned provisions they superadded the power conferred on congress by the eighteenth clause of the eighth section of the first article, to make all laws necessary and proper for carrying the granted powers into effect, and all others constitutionally vested in the federal government or any of its departments, and finally the solemn injunction of the second clause of the sixth article, to all judges in every state to be bound by the constitution and laws of the United States, as the supreme law of the land, notwithstanding any thing in the constitution or laws of any state.

Every emergency that could be foreseen or conceived was thus provided for. The power is given to the federal government in express terms, with much auxiliary authority for its enforcement and security. The power is an exclusive power; it is so in its terms and it is so in its nature. It has been acted on by a federal law exercising the whole power; and nothing is left to the state either in principle or practice.

I ask gentlemen, adverting to this foundation, to recollect the time and the circumstances of the act of '93. Washington signed it without hesitation. I do not invoke the sanctity of his name for any reverential im. pression: but because he was a member of the convention which so shortly before organized the government, of which this law was one of the fundamental and earliest acts. As soon as the government could be arranged by the indispensable acts of legislation that attended its origin, this law was one of its first duties. No hesitation or doubt attended it. Jefferson was in the department of state, Madison, another framer of the constitution, a leading member of congress, Jay was chief justice; and. if I mistake not, his successor in that office, Ellsworth, who contributed largely, it is understood, to the early laws of the federal government, together with many other eminent statesmen who would not have sanctioned an unconstitutional act, were likewise in congress; Bradford, of this state, I think, was the attorney general.

Can we suppose that the imperfections, now, after forty years unquestioned enforcement of it, imputed to the act of '93, escaped the attention of these statesmen and magistrates, as much alive as we can be to all legitimate aversion to slavery, and familiarized with the true meaning of the constitutional provision concerning it, by either membership in the convention, or in the congress that established the frame of government it organized? No act of congress has higher claims to be deemed the supreme

law than that of '93, enacted less than three years after the constitution was ratified; with such advisement, and executed ever since by all the judicial officers of every state, without the suggestion of a doubt of its constitutionality. I shall not expatiate upon it, but content myself with much more authoritative argument, the judgment of all the courts of this and other states that have passed upon it. In 1795, when a prosecution was instituted under our act of '80, against Gen. Sevier, of Virginia, for the unlawful abduction of a slave, Chief Justice M'Kean said "But we are unanimously of opinion as soon as it was proved the negro was a slave, that not only his master had a right to seize and carry him away, but that in case he absconded or resisted, it was the duty of every magistrate to employ all the legitimate means of coercion in his power, for securing and restoring the negro to the service of his owner, whithersoever he might be afterwards carried."

In this early case Chief Justice M'Kean (and his successor, Chief Justice Shippen, was on the bench concurring with him, together with the rest of the court,) acts on the grounds that a master may seize a slave as soon as he is proved to be such; and that it is the duty of every magistrate to employ coercion, if necessary, to restore the slave to his master, to be taken where he would. On such grounds, fortified by primeval authority, the right has stood ever since, exercised every day, and never disputed till very lately. Many years afterwards the subject came before the supreme court of Pennsylvania again, by an attempt to replevy a slave when Chief Justice Tilghman, (the present Chief Justice Gibson associated and concurring with him, and Judge Duncan,) declared that "from the whole scope and tenour of the constitution and act of con gress, it appears that the fugitive is to be delivered up on a summary proceeding, without the delay of a formal trial in a court of common law. If a certificate be given by a state judge, agreeably to the act of congress, after a hearing; such certificate is a legal warrant to remove the slave, and no writ of homine replegiendo afterwards lies, on the part of the slave in a court of this state, where such certificate is given, to try his right to freedom. Such writ is a violation of the constitution. If the slave in such case has a right to freedom, he may try it in the state to which he is removed." 66 When, therefore, a judge of a state court, after a hearing on habeas corpus,' says Judge Sergeant, in his treatise on constitutional law, " gave a certificate agreeably to the act of congress, and the slave sued out of the supreme court a homine replegiendo aganist the keeper of the prison where he remained, the court quashed the writ;" referring to the decision given by Chief Justice Tilghman, and the supreme court as I have cited it.

Thus from the first Judge appionted, Chief Justice M'Kean, to the last, Judge Sergeant; including all the chief justices and other judges, the act of '93 has always been taken in Pennsylvania in a correct execu tion of the constitution. Not a lawyer on the bench or at the bar has ventured to call it in question; and with such an unbrokon series of high authorities, he must be a bold lawyer, if not a rash man, who now, in this state, denies its conformity to that instrument. Yet the argument has no option but to do so. That law must be set aside as void by unconstitutionality, or the trial by jury to a fugitive slave cannot be.

Other judicial acknowledgements of that act, of the most convincing