By act of Congress of April 2, 1816, it was declared that no cause should be removed from the circuit court of the District of Columbia to the supreme court by appeal or writ of error, “unless the matter in dispute shall be of the value of one thousand dollars or upwards.” The plaintiffs in error were claimed as slaves. Their petition for freedom in the court below had been decided against them; and from this decision they appealed. The defendant in error took the objection that they,--their bodies and souls,--were not worth one thousand dollars, and therefore that they had no right to appeal. But the court said,-- “The matter in dispute, in this case, is the freedom of the petitioners. The judgment of the court below is against their claims to freedom; the matter in dispute is, therefore, to the plaintiffs in error, the value of their freedom, _and this is not susceptible of a pecuniary valuation_. Had the judgment been in favor of the petitioners, and the writ of error brought by the party claiming to be the owner, the value of the slaves as _property_ would have been the matter in dispute, and affidavits might be admitted to ascertain such value. But affidavits estimating the value of freedom are entirely inadmissible; and no doubt is entertained of the jurisdiction of the court.” Now, if the supreme court of the United States, in construing a law, felt constrained by their oaths to hold the freedom of a man,--of any man, though he might be a drivelling idiot, or stretched upon his death bed, with only another hour to breathe,--to be worth more than a thousand dollars, how can a senator of the United States say, that in passing a law, under which human liberty may be retained or lost, he is not bound at least by the “_spirit_” of the constitution, if not by its letter, to hold that human liberty to be of greater value than twenty dollars, and therefore to provide the trial by jury for its protection? What can prove more strikingly that Mr. Webster violates the whole “spirit” of the constitution, when the framers and ratifiers of this amendment covenanted for and decreed the trial by jury, for such a paltry sum of money; and when the judges of the supreme court held human liberty to be worth more than any nameable sum of money, while he regards it as a thing to be disposed of by any corrupt postmaster, which any corrupt administration may corruptly appoint. Yet he says, “Nothing can be more false than that a jury trial is demanded in cases of this kind by the constitution, either in its letter, _or in its spirit_.”