property claimed as forfeited for violation of the customs laws, who in the performance of his duty actually makes a seizure in order to enforce the claim of the Government to the property seized, is an "agent having charge of" the claim within the meaning of section 3469 Rev. Stat. In such case, upon a report from him recommending that the claim be compromised, the Solicitor of the Treasury would be authorized under that section to make a recommendation to the Secretary of the Treasury concerning the same matter. Opinion of Oct. 13, 1880, 16 Op. 570.

CONFEDERATE DEBT.

The payment of the confederate debt by the United States or the States cannot be prevented by legislation. Opinion of Feb. 28, 1866, 11 Op. 432.

of the United States of title by conquest. Opinion of Oct. 5, 1866, 12 Op. 76.

7. Where a libel in confiscation against real property has been dismissed and the property has been ordered by the court to be restored to the administrator of the former owner, the fact that such administrator is the guardian of the heir of the estate and is an unpardoned rebel should not restrain the Executive from surrendering the property to him. Opinion of Jan. 5, 1867, 12 Op. 104.

8. A general review of the situation of the Memphis navy-yard property with reference to the provisions of the confiscation acts. Opinion of March 6, 1867, 12 Op. 125.

CONFLICT OF LAWS.

Consideration of the international relation of the period of majority in the United States. Opinion of Aug. 29, 1856, 8 Op. 62.

4. The Cooke's Foundery property should be proceeded against for forfeiture in the proper United States court in Georgia, and the claimant remitted by the Secretary of War to that forum for the ascertainment of his rights under the pardon granted him by the President. Opinion of April 25, 1866, 11 Op. 480.

5. The President has no power to restore property in the possession of a person claiming under a confiscation sale. Opinion of Sept. 27, 1866, 12 Op. 54.

6. The institution of proceedings against real property under the confiscation act of August 6, 1861, chap. 60, waives any claim on the part

3. But separate resolutions of either House of Congress, except in matters appertaining to their own parliamentary rights, have no legal effect to constrain the action of the President or the heads of Departments. Ibid.

4. Semble that Congress cannot make a contract for the transportation of the mails or for any other administrative matter, that being parcel of the constitutional power of the Executive. Opinion of May 10, 1855, 7 Op. 135.

5. But it may, by appropriation, provide for paying an additional sum to a contractor as compensation, in the nature of a bill for private relief. Ibid.

6. The Committee on Accounts of the House of Representatives has exclusive and final ju

not from the government de jure which has been expelled. Opinion of May 15, 1858, 9 Op. 140.

CONSTITUTIONAL LAW.

See also CONGRESS.

1. The act of South Carolina authorizing the seizure and imprisonment of persons of color who may come into any of her ports from any other State or any foreign port until the vessel to which they may be attached shall depart is void, as being against the Constitution, treaties, and laws of the United States, and is incompatible with the rights of all nations in amity with them. Opinion of May 8, 1824, 1 Op. 659.

2. By the national Constitution the power of regulating commerce with foreign nations and among the States is given to Congress; and this power is, from its nature, exclusive. It is the power of prescribing the terms on which the intercourse between foreign nations and the United States, and between the several States of the Union, shall be carried on. Congress has exercised this power; and among those terms there is no requisition that the vessels permitted to enter the ports of the several States shall be navigated wholly by white men. All foreign and domestic vessels complying with the requisitions prescribed by Congress have a right to enter any port of the United States, and a right to remain there, unmolested in vessel or crew, for the peaceful purposes of commerce. Ibid.

3. The act of South Carolina, called the port or police bill, authorizing the seizure and detention of free persons of color within the limits of that State, having for its object the regulation and government of free persons of color within the limits of that State, as strictly belongs to her internal police as a law regulating the course of descents, or one defining the crime of murder and prescribing the penalty which shall attach to its commission, and is valid. If there be laws of the United States passed in the exercise of the right to regulate commerce, they cannot control the exercise of this reserved power, except so far as they may be necessary to the preservation of the com

merce of the Union. Opinion of March 25, 1831, 2 Op. 427.

4. The fugitive-slave act of September 18, 1850, chap. 60, is not in conflict with the provisions of the Constitution in relation to the

writ of habeas corpus. Opinion of Sept. 18, 1850, 5 Op. 254.

5. The act of Congress of September 18, 1850, chap. 60, is a valid and constitutional Opinion of Sept. 11, 1854, 6 Op. 713.

act.

6. The expression "ambassadors and other public ministers," which occurs three times in the Constitution, must be understood as comprehending all officers having diplomatic functions, whatever their title or designation. Opinion of May 25, 1855, 7 Op. 189.

7. Within their respective spheres of action the Federal Government and the government of a State are both of them independent and supreme, but each is utterly powerless beyond the limits assigned to it by the Constitution. Opinion of Nov. 20, 1860, 9 Op. 517.

8. If the feeling against the United States in any State should induce the Federal officers to resign and render it impossible for the President to fill the offices by the appointment of other persons, a military force would be out of place and its use wholly illegal. Ibid.

9. If a State should declare her independence the President would have no power to recognize her independence or absolve her from her Federal obligations. Ibid.

10. Although it is clear that the Constitution does not give Congress power, either expressly or by implication, to make war against a State, and to require the Executive to carry it on by force drawn from the other States, yet that question is one for Congress itself to consider. Ibid.

11. If it be true that war cannot be declared, nor a system of hostilities carried on by the Federal Government against a State, it follows that an attempt to do so would be, ipso facto, an expulsion of such State from the Union; and in that event, it would seem, all the States will be absolved from their federal obligations. Ibid.

12. The General Government may lawfully repel a direct aggression on its property and officers, but cannot carry on an offensive war to punish the people for the political misdeeds of their State government, or to prevent threat

ened violation of the Constitution, or to enforce an acknowledgment that the Government of the United States is supreme. Ibid.

13. In all cases of plain and obvious conflict between the provisions of the Constitution and the provisions of a statute, not only the judiciary but every department of the Government required to act upon the subject-matter must determine what the law is, and obey the Constitution. Opinion of June 12, 1861, 10 Op. 56. 14. Congress, by Article IV, section 3, of the Constitution, has power to admit new States into the Union, but cannot make, form, or create new States. A free American State can be made only by its component members, the people. Opinion of Dec. 27, 1862, 10 Op.

426.

15. The bill for the admission of the State of West Virginia into the Union is not warranted by the letter of the Constitution, whether the provisions of section 3, Article IV of that instrument be construed as prohibiting the formation of a new State within the jurisdiction of any other State, or as authorizing such formation with the consent of the legislatures of the States concerned. Ibid.

16. The sense and spirit of the constitutional provision mentioned require that the legislature which gives consent on behalf of a State to the formation of a new State within its jurisdiction should be a legislature representing and governing the whole, and not merely a part, of such State.

Ibid.

17. The legislature which, at Wheeling, on

8 of article 1 of the Constitution of the United States. Opinion of Aug. 6, 1866, 12 Op. 4.

CONVICTS.

1. District courts of the United States have power to provide specially for the confinement of persons convicted by Federal law, if refused admission into the jails of the State. In such case the prisoner may be confined in the penitentiary of the District of Columbia. Opinion of Jan. 9, 1856, 7 Op. 615.

2. The United States not possessing any places of imprisonment within the States, Federal convicts are admitted by each State into its prisons on conditions agreed for the indemnification of the State; and although the State so employ a Federal convict as to derive returns from his labor, still it may demand compensation for entertaining him in its penitentiary, to be paid by the United States. Opinion of Jan. 5, 1857, 8 Op. 289.

3. The compensation in such case is due to the State as such, but is payable to any lawfully appointed agent of the State. Ibid.

4. Insane convicts in the penitentiary of the District of Columbia may be transferred to the insane asylum on order of the Secretary of the Interior. Opinion of Feb. 14, 1857, 8 Op. 390.

CONSUL.

berment of the State of Virginia, being com

posed chiefly, if not entirely, of persons representing the forty-eight counties which constitute the State of West Virginia, was not a legislature competent to give consent, on behalf of Virginia, to the formation of West Virginia. Ibid.

18. On account of its intrinsic demerits and its revolutionary character, the Attorney-General gives it as his opinion that the act in question is highly inexpedient and improvident. Ibid.

19. The twelfth section of the act of March 3, 1865, chap. 79, providing, in certain contingencies, for the restoration of an officer dismissed from the military or naval service, is constitutional under the fourteenth clause of section

CONSULAR COURT.

1. The act of August 11, 1848, chap. 150, giving certain judicial powers to ministers and consuls of the United States in China and Turkey, not having designated any particular place for the confinement of prisoners arrested for crime, the same is left for regulation under the fifth section, or, in the absence of any such regulation, to the discretion of the acting functionary. Opinion of Jan. 31, 1849, 5 Op. 67. 2. The expenses of arrest and support in prison in such cases must be paid from the fund created by the execution of the act. Ibid.

3. Whether the act embraces Egypt and the Barbary States, which are under the dominion of the Ottoman Porte, is a political question, which cannot be solved without the aid of the Department of State. Ibid.

4. In the absence of any specific appropriations for the object, the expense of transporting prisoners held for trial by the authorities of the United States in China are a lawful charge on the general appropriations for defraying the judicial expenses of the Government. Opinion of June 28, 1853, 6 Op. 59.

5. In virtue of the treaty between the United States and China, all citizens of the United States in China enjoy complete rights of exterritoriality, and are amenable to no authority but the United States. Opinion of Sept. 19, 1855, 7 Op. 496.

6. The act of August 11, 1848, chap. 150, empowers the commissioners and consuls of the United States in China to exercise judicial authority over their fellow-citizens. Ibid.

7. The several consuls, each in his consular circumscription, have, by express provision of statute, original jurisdiction in all civil cases of contract, or the like sounding in damages, which arise between two or more citizens of the United States, and in all crimes committed by an American. Ibid.

8. In such civil matters of contract, or the like sounding in damages, the consul sits with or without assessors, according to circumstances; and in case of difference of opinion between him and his assessors, an appeal lies to the commissioner. Ibid.

9. In all criminal matters, except certain petty misdemeanors, the consul sits with assessors, and decides, subject to appeal, as in civil cases, to the commissioners, save that in capital cases there is no appeal; but the conviction is invalid unless approved by the commissioner. Ibid.

10. In controversies between citizens of the United States and subjects of China the case is to be tried by the court of the defendant's nation; and so in controversies between citizens of the United States and those of any friendly foreign Government. Ibid.

11. The consular court has no authority by the treaty or the statute to entertain jurisdiction of a suit by the Chinese Government for duties. Ibid.

matters of contract or the like sounding in damages, the commissioner has only appellate jurisdiction.. Ibid.

13. As to all other matters, such as probate of wills, divorce, intestacy, copartnership, chancery, admiralty, proceedings de re or in rem, personal or prerogative writs, division of lands, and the like, the statute makes no specific provision, leaving them to regulations of the commissioner and consuls. Ibid.

14. Vice-consuls are competent to act when duly appointed or approved as such by the Secretary of State. Ibid.

15. A United States consular court in Japan cannot, in the case of a suit by a person not a citizen of the United States against an American merchant, entertain a plea of set-off further than to the extent of the claim asserted by the plaintiff. Opinion of April 21, 1866, 11 Op. 474.

16. Such a court cannot, under the treaty with Japan and the statutes of the United States (act of June 22, 1860, chap. 179), render a judgment against a person of foreign birth not a citizen of the United States. Ibid.

17. The consular courts of the United States at Honolulu have the right and power, without interference from the local courts, to determine, as between citizens of the United States, who comprise the crew of an American vessel, and are bound to fulfill the obligations imposed by the shipping articles. Opinion of June 26, 1866, 11 Op. 508.

18. In the case of consular courts clothed with criminal jurisdiction, as in the case of other courts invested with similar jurisdiction, the rule applies that a sentence of imprisonment cannot be legally executed beyond the territorial jurisdiction of the court which pronounced it, unless authority thus to execute the sentence is conferred by the legislature. Opinion of Feb. 4, 1875, 14 Op. 522.

19. Hence, in the absence of any law giving power to send the convicts of the consular courts at Smyrna and Constantinople to this country for imprisonment, if such convicts were brought to the United States for that purpose they could not legally be held. Ibid.

20. Semble that, under present statutory provisions (see Revised Statutes, sections 4121 to 4125, inclusive), it is contemplated that the sentences of those courts, pronounced in the