different regulations of the several states. The pow er with respect to the coin, both domestic and foreign, is rendered exclusive, by a subsequent provision of the Constitution, prohibiting the individual states from its exercise. And the power of fixing the standard of weights and measures seems also proper to be exclusively exercised by Congress; but until it shall legislate on the subject, each state, it is presumed, retains the right of adopting and regulating its own standard. The power of providing for the punishment of counterfeiting the public securities and current coin of the United States is incidental to the foregoing powers relative to the coin, and in itself seems to purport the exclusion of state power, as it is an appropriate means for carrying into effect other delegated powers not antecedently existing in the states. It appears, nevertheless, by the acts of Congress relative to this subject, that cognizance of such cases may, under certain circumstances, be concurrently exercised by the state courts. The Judiciary Act of 1789, vested, as we have seen, in the Federal Courts, exclusive jurisdiction of all offences cognizable under the authority of the United States, unless where their laws should otherwise direct.* The states, therefore, could not exercise a concurrent jurisdiction in those cases without coming into direct collision with the laws of Congress. But by a proviso in a subsequent act concerning counterfeiters of the current coins of the United States, Congress has declared that the jurisdiction of the Federal Courts, in certain specified cases, should not be exclusive; so that the concurrent jurisdiction of the state courts is restored, so far as it can be exercised under state authority. There are, besides, other acts * Wheaton, 26, 11. J. R., 549. of Congress which permit jurisdiction over the offences described in them to be exercised by the state courts under the same condition, and in all these cases where the jurisdiction of the state courts is made concurrent with that of the Federal Courts, the sentences of the one, whether of acquittal or conviction, are a bar to the prosecution in the other for the same offence. IV. The power to prescribe by general laws the man ner in which the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of each state shall be proved, and the effect they shall have in other states, is referred to this class by the authors of "The Federalist." It is an evident and valuable improvement on the provision relating to the same subject in the Articles of Confederation, of which the meaning was so indeterminate as to render it of little practical importance. The power, as it now stands, has been found, as was intended, to be a convenient instrument of justice, and particularly beneficial on the borders of contiguous states, where persons and effects liable to judicial process may be suddenly and secretly withdrawn to a foreign jurisdiction. The clause in the Constitution which vests this power in Congress, previously declares that "full faith and credit shall be given in each state to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state." And the act passed by Congress in execution of this power, prescribes the manner of authenticating such acts, records, and proceedings, and declares that, when so authenticated, they " shall have such faith and credit given to them in every court within the United States, as they have by law or usage in the courts of the state from whence they are taken."* * Laws U. S., 1790, ch. 38. Under the clause of the Constitution, and this legislative provision for giving it effect, if a judgment have the effect of record evidence, or, in other words, be conclusive evidence, i. e., admitting neither of impeachment nor contradiction in the courts of the state in which it was rendered, it has the same effect in the courts of all the other states.* And the Supreme Court of the United States, in so ruling, declared that the common law gives to a judgment of the courts of one state the effect of prima facie evidence, i. e., evidence open to impeachment, explanation, or contradiction, in the courts of every other state; but that the Constitution contemplates a power in Congress to give a conclusive effect to such judgments; which power it has exercised by rendering a judgment conclusive when the courts of the particular state would pronounce the same decision. And in a recent case, it was declared that the clause in question cannot, by any just construction of its words, be held to embrace an alleged error in a decree of a state court, asserted to be in collsion with a prior decision of the same case.‡ V. The power" to establish a uniform system of naturalization," which was the next we proposed to examine, is necessarily exclusive; especially as it is provided, in a subsequent part of the Constitution, that "the citizens of each state shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states." The dissimilarity of the rules of naturalization which existed in the different states, had given rise, under the Confederation, to some intricate and delicate questions, from the ambiguous terms of the article in relation to the subject. To put an end to all * 7 Cranch, 481. 3 Wheaton, 234. 14 Peters, 481. such questions in future, the new Constitution authorized the General Government to establish a uniform rule throughout the United States. There is, indeed, no express prohibition of state legislation in regard to it; but if each state retained the power of naturalization, while the citizens of each state were entitled to the privileges of citizens in the several states, any one state might impose on all the others such persons as citizens whom it might think proper to admit. In one state, a short residence, with a slight declaration of allegiance, as was the case under the first Constitution of Pennsylvania, might confer the right of citizenship: in another, higher qualifications, as was, in fact, generally the case, might be required; and an alien, desirous of eluding the latter, might, by complying with the former, become a citizen of a state in opposition to its own regulations; and thus the laws of one state might become paramount in a matter of vital consequence to another. Hence the importance of rendering this power exclusive. That it is, indeed, so vested in Congress, was considered incontrovertible by the Supreme Court of the United States, in a case in which the decision depended on that point;* and it was declared, subsequently, to have been so held on the ground of a direct repugnancy or incompatibility in the exercise of a similar power by the states.† No definition of the character of a citizen is contained in the Constitution of the United States. The term is used with a plain indication that its meaning must have been generally understood, by reference to that system of national jurisprudence which, as I had occasion to observe in a former lecture, is justly regarded as the means or instrument of exercising the † 5 Wheaton, 49. * 2 Wheaton, 269. jurisdiction conferred by the Constitution. At the time of its adoption, the citizens of the several states collectively constituted the citizens of the United States. They were either native citizens, or those born within the states, or naturalized citizens, or persons born elsewhere, but who, upon assuming the allegiance, became entitled to the privileges of native citizens. All who were resident citizens at the time of the Declaration of Independence, and deliberately yielded to that measure an express or implied assent, became parties to it, and are considered as natives, their social tie being coeval with the nation itself. It has been admitted, both in the English courts and our own,* that all persons born within the colonies, while subject to the crown of Great Britain, were natural-born British subjects; but it was held as a necessary consequence that this character was changed by the separation of the colonies from the parent state, and the acknowledgment of their independence. The rule, however, as to the point of time at which Americans born before the separation ceased to be British subjects, differs in this country and in England. The rule established by the English courts adopts the date of the treaty of peace in 1783, while ours have fixed upon that of the Declaration of Independence. But in the application of the rule to different cases, some difference of opinion The settled doctrine in this country is, may arise. that a person born here, who left the colonies before the Declaration Independence, and never returned, thereby became an alien; and, as a general rule, the character in which Americans born before the Revolution are to be regarded, depends on the situation of the party, and the election made by him, at the Dec * 3 Peters, 128. |