tion of dependencies. In Magna Charta the provision in which the expression "the law of the land" occurs reads as follows:

No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or dispossessed or outlawed or banished or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him, nor send upon him, except by the legal judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.

The words "the law of the land" here undoubtedly mean the law of England. This provision of Article VI. is almost verbatim in the words of Pinckney's draft of the Constitution, with the single exception that the words "the Constitution of the United States" are added. In that draft, the Congress was given no power whatever in the administration of dependencies, and yet all Acts made by the Legislature of the United States pursuant to the Constitution were declared to be "the supreme law of the land." The Constitution and laws of the United States are the supreme law of the land in the American Union; they are only the basis of the supreme law of the land in the dependencies of the American Union, because these dependencies are under an unwritten Constitution based on the Constitution and laws of the United States.

That the clause presented by Gouverneur Morris relating to the administration of dependencies should have been accepted so promptly by the Convention was not surprising. By his action in conducting the negotiations between the Congress and the British Government in 1778, followed by his masterly statement, in his Observations on the American Revolution, of the whole position taken by the American Colonies in their contest with Great Britain, he had made himself the leading authority in America upon all Imperial questions. In crowding into one short sentence a complete description of the

Imperial power and obligation, as America claimed it to be, he had but fulfilled what the Convention had expected of him. Evidently they recognized instantly that there was no room for debate or criticism—that the clause was complete and perfect in itself.

From the exercise of power subject to the Imperial obligation, the District of Columbia was excepted. In that dependency, Congress was given power "to exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever," and this specification of power was placed in the list of specifications of the "legislative powers" of Congress. Within the District of Columbia, the Congress has exactly the same powers as were claimed by the British Parliament over the American Colonies by the Declaratory Act of 1766,-a power "to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind [the District] and its inhabitants in all cases whatsoever." The District of Columbia has no inherent right of statehood. The political rights are only such as Congress shall grant of its mere will, as a "privilege" or "indulgence." This is necessary, in order that Congress and the President may be free from local influence. The very fact that the two kinds of power are so separated and distinguished in the Constitution serves to show the great distinction between the powers themselves. The power to "legislate" for the District of Columbia is the Magisterial power to command and govern the power to "dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting" the other dependencies is the Imperial power to administer and govern.

It will be remembered that Grotius, in the passage which has been already quoted, said:

It is well worth our observation that what the Latins express by the word imperare, to command, the Greeks more modestly express by the word ráooεv, to dispose or set in

order.

The British had expressed the Imperial power in the same way as had the Latins. The Americans repudiated this definition of the Imperial power, but did not fall into the mistake into which the Greeks had fallen. The too great haughtiness of the Romans had resulted in a loss of power through excessive centralization. The too great modesty of the Greeks had resulted in an entire absence of power because of the lack of centralization. The Americans chose the middle ground. That which the Romans called the power to command and which the Greeks called the power to dispose or set in order, the Americans called the power to dispose or set in order and to command accordingly.

CHAPTER XXIV

EUROPEAN ADMINISTRATION, 1787-1902

JUST at the moment that the Constitution of the
United States was being framed, France entered

Jus

upon a period of experimentation in the matter of the administration of its dependencies. Louis XVI., in March, 1787, granted to the Provinces of France the right to elect local Parlements, with restricted and provisional powers of legislation; and in June, 1787, he granted the same right to the French Colonies in the West Indies. The consequence was that when the Revolution broke out, these Colonies demanded representation in the General Assembly of France, taking the ground that, as the principles of liberty, equality, and frater nity were universal, France and its dependencies constituted a Unitary State, and that the dependencies could not be excluded from proportionate representation in the General Assembly. On July 4, 1789, deputies elected by the Colonial Legislature of San Domingo presented themselves in the Assembly and demanded the full rights of deputies from the domestic Provinces. After a long debate, their demand was granted. On October 14, in the same year, deputies from Martinique made a similar demand, and were admitted, and their example was followed July 7, 1790, by deputies from Guadaloupe, with the same result. In March and April, 1790, the General Assembly took up the colonial question and resolved that:

While this Assembly considers the Colonies as a part of the French Empire and desires to grant them the enjoyment of the

fruits of the happy regeneration which is now going on, it has never intended to include them in the Constitution which it has decreed for the Realm, and to subject them to laws which might be incompatible with their local and particular requirements and customs.

The General Assembly, therefore, authorized the Colonies, through their deputies, "to make known their wishes in regard to the Constitution, the legislation, and the administration which would be best adapted to their needs," and permitted them to elect Local Assemblies whose powers should be on this basis of relationship. A Colonial Committee of twelve members was named, charged with drawing up a plan for a Constitution which should serve as a model for all the Colonial Constitutions, but which should be merely for the guidance of the Colonial Assemblies, they having full permission either to use it only in part or not to use it at all, as they saw fit. committee reported a guide-plan as directed, and by order of the Constituent Assembly it was sent to the Colonies on June 15, 1791.

The

Meantime, in May, 1791, political rights as citizens had been granted by the Constituent Assembly to free negroes, and the negroes in the West Indian Colonies had become excited by the prospect of freedom held out to them by the speeches of the Revolutionary radicals and by the actions and publications of the French Society for the Abolition of Slavery. Before the permission had arrived from France to form Colonial Assemblies on the new basis, they had been formed by the white populations, in the interest of the whites; and an organization was immediately formed among the white populations to start a reactionary movement which would make the Colonies independent of France and thus prevent the abolition of slavery, on which institution they felt the prosperity of both the white and the black population