period of twelve months unmolested in their endeavors to obtain the restitution of their property and rights which had been confiscated; that Congress should recommend to the States a reconsideration and revision of all their confiscation laws, and a restoration of the rights and property of the last-mentioned persons, on their refunding the _bona fide_ price which any purchaser might have given for them since the confiscation. It was also agreed, that all persons having any interest in confiscated lands, either by debts, marriage settlements, or otherwise, should meet with no lawful impediment in the prosecution of their just rights.[239] It was further provided, that there should be no future confiscations made, nor any prosecutions commenced against any person on account of the part he might have taken in the war, and that no person should, on that account, suffer any future loss or damage, either in person, liberty, or property, and that those who might be in confinement on such charges, at the time of the ratification of the Treaty in America, should be immediately set at liberty, and the prosecutions be discontinued.[240] These provisions related to a great subject, with which, in the existing political system of this country, it was difficult to deal. The action of the States, with regard to some of the interests involved in these stipulations, had been irregular from an early period of the war. The Revolutionary Congress, on the commencement of hostilities, had suffered the opportunity of asserting their rightful control over the subject of alien interests, except as to property found on the high seas, to pass away; and the consequence was, that the States had, on some points, usurped an authority which belonged to the Union. A Union, founded in compact, and vesting the rights of war and peace in Congress, was formed in 1775; and from that time the Colonies, or, as they afterwards became, States, were never rightfully capable of passing laws to sequester or confiscate the debts or property of a national enemy[241]. After the great acts of national sovereignty which took place in 1775-6, a British subject could not, with any propriety, be considered as the enemy of Massachusetts, or of Virginia; he was the enemy of the United States, and by that authority alone, as the belligerent, was his property, in strictness, liable to be seized, or the debts due to him sequestered. But neither the Revolutionary Congress, nor that of the Confederation, appear to have ever exercised the power of confiscating the debts or property of British subjects, within the States, or to have recommended such confiscation to the States themselves[242]. On the other hand, they did not interfere when the States saw fit to do it.