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These questions are answered in the negative by all the most approved writers on the laws of nations. 1 Burg. Confl. 741; Story, Confl. 92.

"There exists," says Burge, "a status which is legal in the country in which it is constituted, but illegal in another country to which the person may resort. In this conflict there has been an uniformity of opinion among jurists, and of decisions by judicial tribunals, in giving no effect to the status however legal it may have been in the country in which the person was born, or in which he was previously domiciled if it be not recognized by the law of his actual domicil. This principle was adopted by the Supreme Council of Mechlin as established law in 1531. It refused to issue a warrant to take up a person who had escaped from Spain, where he had been brought and legally held in slavery." Christ. Dec. tom 4. Dec. 80.

By the law of France, the slaves of their colonies, immediately on their arrival in France, become free. 

In the case of Forbes vs. Cochrane, 2 Barn. and Cress. 463, this question is elaborately discussed and settled by the English Court of K. B. "The right to slaves," it is there said, "when tolerated by law is founded not on the law of nature, but on the law of that particular country. It is a law in invitum; and when a party gets out of the power of his master, and gets under the protection of another power, without any wrongful act done by the party giving that protection, the right of the master, which is founded on the municipal law of the particular place only, does not continue. The moment a foreign slave puts his foot on our shores, he ceases to be a slave, because there is no law here which sanctions his being held in slavery. And the local law which held him to slavery against the law of nature has lost its force." 9 Eng. C. L. Rep. 145.

By the law of the State of New York, a foreign slave escaping into that state becomes free. And the Courts of the United States in acting upon the personal rights of men found within the jurisdiction of a free state, are bound to administer the laws as they would be administered by the state courts, in all cases in which the laws of the state do not conflict with the laws or obligations of the United States. The United States as a nation have prohibited the slave trade as inhuman and piratical, and they have no law authorizing the enslaving of its victims. It is a maxim, to use the words of an eminent English judge in the case of Forbes vs. Cochrane, 2 B, and C., "that what is called comitas inter communitates, cannot prevail in any case, where it violates the