Sec. 1: "Be it enacted, &c. That, from and after the first day of April next, no master or captain of any ship or vessel, or any other person, shall import or bring, or cause to be imported or brought, any negro, mulatto, or other person of color, not being a native, a citizen, or registered seaman of the United States, or seamen, natives of countries beyond the Cape of Good Hope, into any port or place of the United States, which port or place shall be situated in any State which by law has prohibited, or shall prohibit, the admission or importation of such negro, mulatto, or other person of color," &c. &c. This Act also is most manifestly framed upon this section of the Constitution. It renders illegal the importation of any negro, mulatto, or person of color, into States prohibiting such importation, unless such negro, &c. is a native, citizen, or registered seaman of the United States, or native of countries beyond the Cape of Good Hope; that is, it renders illegal the importation of African negroes into any State whose laws prohibit such importation. And, as no African negro has yet been imported as a free laborer, this Act was directed against the African slave-trade. And, not to multiply proof, the importation of persons is not to be prohibited by Congress prior to 1808. On the 2d day of March, 1807, President Jefferson approved (Stat. 1807, c. 77) "An Act to prohibit the importation of _slaves_ into any port or place within the jurisdiction of the United States, from and after the _first day of January_, in the year of our Lord _one thousand eight hundred and eight_." That is, at the very earliest day allowed by Const. Art. 1, sec. 9, for the passage by Congress of an Act prohibiting the importation of persons, a law is passed totally prohibiting the _importation of slaves_. RESTORATION OF FUGITIVE SLAVES. (Const. Art. 4, sec. 2.) On the 12th day of February, 1793 (Stat. 1793, chap. 7), there was approved "An Act respecting fugitives from justice, and persons escaping from the service of their masters." This is the law which, for over half a century, has prescribed the modes in which a runaway slave may be retaken. It is what is now called "the infamous law of '93." Thousands of runaway slaves have owed their return to their happy condition to the beneficent operation of this law, obviously framed, as it is, with an eye to this constitutional provision. Sec. 3 provides that,--