This interpretation is helped by another suggestion, which supposes the comma in the text of the Constitution misplaced, and that, instead of being after “corruption of blood,” it should be after “forfeiture,” separating it from the words “except during the life of the person attainted,” and making them refer to the time when the attainder takes place, rather than to the length of time for which the estate is forfeited. Thus does this much debated clause simply operate to forbid forfeiture when not pronounced “during the life of the person attainted.” In other words, the forfeiture cannot be pronounced against a dead man, or the children of a dead man, and this is all. Amidst the confusion in which this clause is involved, you cannot expect that it will be a strong restraint upon any exercise of power under the Constitution which otherwise seems rational and just. But, whatever its signification, it has no bearing on our rights against enemies. Bear this in mind. Criminals only, and not enemies, can take advantage of it. * * * * * Such, Mr. President, are the provisions or principles of Constitutional Law controlling us in the exercise of rights against criminals. If any bill or proposition, penal in character, having for its object simply punishment, and ancillary to the administration of justice, violates any of these safeguards, it is not constitutional. Therefore do I admit that the bill of the Committee, and every other bill now before the Senate, so far as they assume to exercise the Rights of Sovereignty in contradistinction to the Rights of War, must be in conformity with these provisions or principles. * * * * * But the Senator from Vermont [Mr. COLLAMER], in his ingenious speech, to which we all listened with so much interest, was truly festive in allusion to certain proceedings much discussed in this debate. The Senator did not like proceedings _in rem_, although I do not know that he positively objected to them as unconstitutional. It is difficult to imagine any such objection. Assuming that criminals cannot be reached to be punished _personally_, or that they have fled, the Senator from Illinois [Mr. TRUMBULL], and also the Senator from New York [Mr. HARRIS], propose to reach them through their property,--or, adopting technical language, instead of proceedings _in personam_, which must fail from want of jurisdiction, propose proceedings _in rem_. Such proceedings may not be of familiar resort, since, happily, an occasion like the present has never before occurred among us; but they are strictly in conformity with established precedents, and also with the principles by which these precedents are sustained.