are within its grants of power, when made, are still within them, and those things not within remain still excluded. * * * Any other rule of construction, would abrogate the judicial character of this Court, and make it the mere reflex of the popular opinion or passion of the day."
The proper test is never merely to ask what we might guess the meaning now; but what was their meaning then? What the drafters of the Constitution would say of the interpretation asked? If the Court can say that the makers of the Constitution would not give the interpretation contended for, that, "they never would have approved of them," that: "The struggle against arbitrary power, in which they had been engaged for more than twenty years, would have been too deeply engrafted on their memories to have allowed them to approve of such insidious disguises of the old grievances, which they had so deeply abhorred," the interpretation becomes impossible. Boyd vs. United States, 116 U. S., at page 630.
And "to determine the extent of the grant of power we must * * * place ourselves in the position of the men who framed and adopted our Constitution, and inquire what they must have understood to be the meaning and the scope of those grants." South Carolina case, 199 U. S., at page 450.
"It must be interpreted in the light of the Common Law, the principles and history of which were familiarly known to the framers of the Constitution." Wong King case, 169 U. S., at page 654.
"The language of the Constitution, as has been well said, could not be understood without reference to the Common Law." This principle is firmly established in the South Carolina case, 199 U. S. 450; the Minor
