To answer this question in the affirmative is to violate the sole object of the Constitution and acts of Congress concerning the surrender of fugitives from justice. Foreign nations stand in treaty relations with the United States and with each other. The States composing the American Union do not stand, and by the Constitution, cannot stand in treaty relations with one another or with any other State or power.[325] 126. A fugitive from a foreign nation seeking refuge in the United States is not extraditable unless by the terms of the treaty between that nation and the United States. There is nothing in the Constitution, or in the Statutes at large of the United States in reference to interstate rendition of fugitives from justice which can be regarded as establishing any compact between the States of the Union (such as a treaty between the United States and another nation does or may contain), limiting their operation to particular or designated offenses. And it is questionable whether the States, or any of them, could constitutionally enter into any agreement or stipulation one with another for the purpose of defining or limiting the offenses for which fugitives would or should be surrendered. “The plain answer is that the laws of the United States do not recognize any right of asylum on the part of the fugitive from justice in any State to which he has fled.”[326] The principle here laid down finds further explication: To apply the rule of international, or foreign extradition to interstate rendition involves the confusion of two essentially different things, which rest upon entirely different principles.[327] In the former, the extradition depends upon treaty contract, or stipulation, which rests upon good faith, and in respect to which the sovereign upon whom the demand is made can exercise discretion, as well as investigate the charge on which the surrender is demanded, there being no rule of comity under and by nature of which independent nations are required or expected to withhold from fugitives within their jurisdiction the right of asylum. In the matter of interstate rendition, however, there is the binding force and obligation, not of contract, but of the supreme law of the land, which imposes no conditions, or limitations, upon the jurisdiction and authority of the State to which the fugitive is returned.[328] 127. The decision as to whether a State possesses a republican form of government,—or what government in a State is the lawful government rests with the political, not the judicial power. “It is the province of the court to expound the law, not to make it.”[329] Thus the courts follow the political authority. In the case of foreign nations, the government acknowledged by the President is always recognized in the courts of justice; and this principle has been applied, by the act of Congress, to the sovereign States of the Union.[330]