Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol III).djvu/681

CHAPTER XL.

PRIVILEGES OF CITIZENS—FUGITIVES—SLAVES.

§ 1798. The fourth article of the constitution contains several important provisions, some of which have been already considered. Among these are, the faith and credit to be given to state acts, records, and judgments, and the mode of proving them, and the effect thereof; the admission of new states into the Union; and the regulation and disposal of the territory, and other property of the United States.^[1] We shall now proceed to those, which still remain for examination.

§ 1799. The first is, "The citizens of each state shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states." There was an article upon the same subject^[2] in the confederation, which declared,

that the free inhabitants of each of these states, paupers, vagabonds, and fugitives from justice excepted, shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of free citizens in the several states; and the people of each state shall, in every other, enjoy all the privileges of trade and commerce, subject to the same duties, impositions, and restrictions, as the inhabitants thereof respectively, &c.^[3]

It was remarked by the Federalist, that there is a strange confusion in this language. Why the terms, free inhabitants, are used in one part of the article, free citizens in another, and people in another; or what is meant by superadding

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1. See ante, Vol. III. §§ 1211 to 1230, §§ 1308 to 1315, and §§ 1316 to 1324.
2. See 1 Tucker's Black. Comm. App. 365.
3. Confederation, Art. 4.

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