A pretense was set up by the relator's counsel that the court might claim the desired authority under that part of the Judiciary Act providing necessary means to enforce its appellate jurisdiction, which, after specifying the cases in which such jurisdiction may be exercised, and pointing out the way in which it may be carried into effect, adds to the authority to issue writs of prohibition to the district courts in certain cases--"and writs of mandamus, in cases warranted by the principles and usages of law, to any courts appointed or persons holding office under the authority of the United States." Now the plain intention of this clause of the sentence was to extend the right of issuing a mandamus, in the exercise of its _appellate jurisdiction_, to any subordinate authorities upon whom Congress might confer judicial power, whether that power was given to a court, or to a single officer not constituting a court according to the ordinary interpretation of that word. The commissioners subsequently appointed under the Fugitive Slave Act are officers of that description. To think otherwise is to suppose that the men who framed the Judiciary Act of 1789 designed by the terms they employed to give to the Supreme Court original jurisdiction in cases in which it was denied to it by the Constitution--a design too absurd and too disingenuous to have found even a momentary resting-place in the minds of those great men. The court so far countenanced this interpretation as to assume, for the sake of the argument, that the words "or persons holding office," might embrace the case before it. But it immediately proceeded to disprove the assumption by saying, "It has been stated at the bar that the appellate jurisdiction may be exercised in a variety of forms, and that if it be the will of the legislature that a _mandamus_ should be issued for that purpose that will must be obeyed. _This is true_; yet the jurisdiction must be _appellate_ not _original_,"--and the court goes on to show that this proceeding would in no sense be regarded as an exercise of appellate jurisdiction; adding to that demonstrative refutation the declaration, that if the act would bear the interpretation given to it by the counsel, it would be directly contrary to the Constitution and therefore void. That the court had not the slightest right to do what it was asked to do, or to take original jurisdiction of the matter in any form, was a point upon which it expressed no doubt; and if it had decided the questions in the order in which they were presented by the relator's counsel, the necessity of dismissing the motion before coming to the consideration of the merits of the case would have been too imperative to be overcome.