1912.] OF THE UNITED STATES. 407 



Note 13. — The language of the Court is as follows: "In 1796, but a few 

 years later, this Court said: ' If doubts could exist before the adoption of the 

 present national government, they must be entirely removed by the sixth 

 article of the Constitution, which provides that " all treaties made or which 

 shall be made under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme 

 law of the land, and the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, anj'- 

 thing in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstand- 

 ing." There can be no limitation on the power of the people of the United 

 States. By their authority the State Constitutions were made, and by their 

 authority the Constitution of the United States was established; and they had 

 the power to change or abolish the State Constitution or to make them yield 

 to the general government and to treaties made by their authority. A treaty 

 cannot be the supreme law of the land, that is, of all the United States, if 

 any act of a State legislature can stand in its way. If the Constitution of a 

 State (which is the fundamental law of the State and paramount to its 

 legislature) must give way to a treaty and fall before it, can it be questioned 

 whether the less power, an act of the State legislature, must not be prostrate? 

 It is the declared will of the people of the United States that every treaty 

 made by the authority of the United States shall be superior to the Constitu- 

 tion and laws of any individual State, and their will alone is to decide. If 

 a law of a State contrary to a treaty is not void, but voidable only, by a repeal 

 or nullification by a State legislature, this certain consequence follows, — that 

 the will of a small part of the United States may control or defeat the will 

 of the whole.' Ware vs. Hylton, 3 Dall., 199. It will be observed that the 

 treaty-making clause is retroactive as well as prospective. The treaty in 

 question, in Ware vs. Hylton, was the British treaty of 1783, which terminated 

 the war of the American Revolution. It was made while the Articles of Con- 

 federation subsisted. The Constitution, when adopted, applied alike to 

 treaties ' made and to be made.' . . . 



"In Chirac vs. Chirac (2 Wheat., 259), it was held by this Court that a 

 trestty with France gave to her citizens the right to purchase and hold land in 

 the United States, removed the incapacity of alienage and placed them in pre- 

 cisely the same situation as if they had been citizens of this country. The 

 State law was hardly adverted to, and seems not to have been considered a 

 factor of any importance in this view of the case. The same doctrine was 

 reaffirmed touching this treaty in Carneal vs. Banks (10 id., 181), and with 

 respect to the British treaty of 1794, in Hughes vs. Edwards (9 id., 489). A 

 treaty stipulation may be effectual to protect the land of an alien from for- 

 feiture by escheat under the laws of a State. Orr vs. Hodgson, 4 id., 453. 

 By the British treaty of 1794, ' all impediment of alienage was absolutely 

 levelled with the ground despite the laws of the States. It is the direct con- 

 stitutional question in its fullest condition. Yet the Supreme Court held 

 that the stipulation was within the constitutional powers of the Union.' " 



Note 14. — As is well known, after this decision. Congress, passed the 

 Wilson Act (26 Stat., 713) which was construed by the Supreme Court as 

 constituting an adoption by Congress of a special rule enabling the States 



