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Constitution, to insert an express stipulation in regard to fugitives from service. The law of comity would have obliged each State to protect and restore property belonging to a citizen of another, without such a stipulation ; but it would not have required the restoration of fugitive slaves from a sister State, unless they had been expressly mentioned. 

In the interpretation of Treaties we ought always to give such a construction to the words as is most consistent with the customary use of language; - most suitable to the subject, and to the legitimate powers of the contracting parties; - most conformable to the declared principles of the Government; - such a construction as will not lead to injustice to others, or in any way violate the laws of nature.

These are in substance the rules of interpretation as given by Vattel, B. II. ch. 17. The construction claimed in behalf of the Spanish libelants, in the present case, is at war with them all. 

It would be singular, indeed, if the tribunals of a Government which has declared the slave-trade, piracy, and has bound itself by a solemn Treaty with Great Britain, in 1814, to make continued efforts "to promote its entire abolition, as a traffic irreconcilable with the principles of humanity and justice," should construe the general expressions of a Treaty which since that period has been revised by the contracting parties, as obliging this nation to commit the injustice of treating as property the recent victims of this horrid traffic; more especially when it is borne in mind, that the Government of Spain, anterior to the revision of the Treaty in 1819, had formally notified our Government that Africans were no longer the legitimate objects of trade; with a declaration that "His Majesty felt confident that a measure so completely in harmony with the sentiments of the Government, and all the inhabitants of this Republic, could not fail to be equally agreeable to the President." Doc. 48. 2 Ses. 16 Cong. p. 8. 

Would the people of the United States in 1819, have assented to such a Treaty? Would it not have furnished just ground of complaint by Great Britain, as a violation of the 10th article of the Treaty of Ghent? 

But even if the Treaty in its terms were such as to oblige us to violate towards strangers the immutable laws of Justice, it would, according to Vattel, impose no obligation. Vattel c. 1, [[?]] 9; B. II. c 12, 161; c. 17, 311.

The law of nature and the law of nations, bind us as effectually to render justice to the African, as the Treaty can to the Spaniard. Before a foreign tribunal, the parties litigating the question of freedom or