"The exclusion of the territorial laws since the date of the convention has been open, manifest, and palpable, and I believe rightful. Then, if I am correct in my conclusions, no other laws were in force on the island for the punishment of persons guilty of murder (not connected with the military), but the laws of the United States. In fact, it would follow as a logical sequence, that if the territorial laws were excluded it would be a place 'under the sole and exclusive jurisdiction of the United States,' hence, the laws of the United States would be operative there. "I can see many cogent reasons why it was desirable to exclude territorial laws and territorial officials from the island. The territorial legislature represented but a small fraction of the American people and was far removed from the power which was responsible for a state of peace or war, and before measures could be disapproved by Congress a conflict might be precipitated. Territorial officers were not responsible, directly at least, to the supreme power. It had no control over their official conduct. All will agree that such control ought to be directly with the responsible power. That could only exist legitimately, but by the exclusion of the local jurisdiction and the operation of the national jurisdiction, modified by express convention or necessary implication. "It might be very competent and very proper in the accomplishment of the object in view, for the treaty-making power to suspend the operations of all laws for the punishment of offenders save in the cases where the acts were crimes, by the universal judgment of mankind. The power to suspend or modify must exist somewhere, or in the case of disputed jurisdiction, there could be no treaty or conventions. "All such conventions are founded on the mutual concessions of the high contracting parties. After the convention has been signed, the supreme power in our government, in order to secure its honest and faithful execution, took possession of the disputed Territory, segregated from its former local jurisdiction, and administers, modifies, or suspends its own laws by its own military or judicial agents. The supreme power acts through its own functions and not through that of an inferior jurisdiction. It administers its own laws so far as such administration is not in conflict with the convention. Its power is ample and it need not borrow from the inferior jurisdiction.