Second. During the whole planting and growth of the British colonies in America, and at the time when they passed from that government into the federal Union, the Empire of Great Britain was slaveholding in all its parts. The obvious consequence is, that the government formed by the thirteen colonies in a part of the territory of that empire, inherited the legal condition of their mother, in this particular. In seceding from that empire, they brought away the slaveholding _status_; and this subsisted _ipso facto_, except where it was changed by the _lex loci_. All the original territory of the American Union was slave territory, as was that subsequently acquired from France. Hence slave owners of course possessed their rights in all this territory, unless they were expressly restrained by special legislation of the States, sovereign each one within its own borders. The consequence cannot be denied, if the premise be admitted. Let the reader consider the following evidences of it: In 1772, only four years before the Declaration of Independence, Lord Mansfield, in the Court of King's Bench, decided the famous Somersett case, by which, it has usually been asserted, slavery was forever terminated in England, and the principle was settled that this relation was inconsistent with her free laws. Mr. Stewart, a citizen of Virginia, going to England on business, carried with him a negro slave, Somersett, whom he had bought in Jamaica. After a time he indicated a purpose to return home, carrying his slave with him; whereupon the negro absconded. His master had him seized, and placed on board a ship in the Thames, to be forcibly carried to Jamaica and sold. The negro then sued out an application for _habeas corpus_, which being argued at a previous term, was finally decided by Lord Mansfield, at the Trinity term, 1772. The true extent of that decision will hereafter be shown. Our purpose here is to cite the admissions made by the court, as to the existing state of English laws.[49] It is noticeable, that this tribunal exhibited a great reluctance to decide the case, declaring that it was attended with great, and almost inextricable difficulties, and that Lord Mansfield proposed to evade a decision by recommending a compromise between Mr. Stewart and the black. This not being done, the court stated that there were then fifteen thousand negro slaves in England, worth not less than seven hundred thousand pounds sterling. It also recognized the decisions of Sir Philip Yorke, and Lord Chief Justice Talbot, confirmed in 1749, by that of the chancellor, Lord Hardewicke, that if a slave, brought by his master to England, should be detained from him, an action of _trover_ for his recovery would lie; and the decision of Lord Talbot, that a negro slave brought by his master to England from a colony, or baptized by the clergy, did not thereby gain his liberty; and the opinion of the latter that while the Statute of Tenures had abolished