common law, “In all the colonies the common law is received as the foundation and main body of their law.”  In the Declaration of Rights, made by the Continental Congress at its first session in ’74, there was the following resolution:  “Resolved, That the respective colonies are entitled to the common law of England, and especially to the great and inestimable privilege of being tried by their peers of the vicinage according to the course of that law.”  Soon after the organization of the general government, Chief Justice Ellsworth, in one of his decisions on the bench of the United States Supreme Court, said:  “The common law of this country remains the same as it was before the revolution.”  Chief Justice Marshall, in his decision in the case of Livingston vs. Jefferson, said:  “When our ancestors migrated to America, they brought with them the common law of their native country, so far as it was applicable to their new situation and I do not conceive that the revolution in any degree changed the relations of man to man, or the law which regulates them.  In breaking our political connection with the parent state, we did not break our connection with each other.” [See_Hall’s Law Journal, new series._] Mr. Duponceau, in his “Dissertation on the Jurisdiction of Courts in the United States,” says, “I consider the common law of England the jus commune of the United States.  I think I can lay it down as a correct principle, that the common law of England, as it was at the time of the declaration of Independence, still continues to be the national law of this country, so far as it is applicable to our present state, and subject to the modifications it has received here in the course of nearly half a century.”  Chief Justice Taylor of North Carolina, in his decision in the case of the State vs. Reed, in 1823, Hawkes’ N.C.  Reps. 454, says, “a law of paramount obligation to the statute was violated by the offence—­COMMON LAW, founded upon the law of nature, and confirmed by revelation.”  The legislation of the United States abounds in recognitions of the principles of the common law, asserting their paramount binding power.  Sparing details, of which our national state papers are full, we illustrate by a single instance.  It was made a condition of the admission of Louisiana into the Union, that the right of trial by jury should be secured to all her citizens,—­the United States government thus employing its power to enlarge the jurisdiction of the common law in this its great representative.

Having shown that the abolition of slavery is within the competency of the law-making power, when unrestricted by constitutional provisions, and that the legislation of Congress over the District is thus unrestricted, its power to abolish slavery there is established.