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descent through him. He was a bar, cutting 

 off the relationship between grandfather and 

 grandson. Laud which would have come to 

 the grandson if the father had not been a per- 

 son attainted, instead of going to the heir, was 

 (1 in transit to the heir by the corruption 

 of blood, and passed either to the lord of the 

 fee or to the king. 



" So that the Constitution deals merely with 

 corruption of blood and its operation. There 

 shall be no corruption of blood worked by at- 

 tainder or forfeiture except during the life of 

 the person. Attainder worked no forfeiture 

 after the death of the party except by corrup- 

 tion of blood. The forfeiture of a fee-simple 

 estate was not a forfeiture after the life of the 

 party ; the whole fee was in the person attaint- 

 ed, his heirs had no interest in it, and no law- 

 yer would ever dream of describing a forfeiture 

 for life by the words of the Constitution, or 

 describe the forfeiture of a fee-simple estate as 

 a forfeiture worked by attainder after the life 

 of the party. It was one of the settled laws of 

 England at that time, and which also prevailed 

 in some of the States of this Union, that the 

 corruption of blood did, what the gentleman 

 from Ohio so properly execrates, operate upon 

 innocent persons with reference to their rights 

 coming from a different source after the criminal 

 had expiated his crime. Xow, without mean- 

 ing to say positively that that is the meaning 

 and operation of the section, I say that in my 

 judgment it comes nearer an intelligible expo- 

 sition of it than any such theory as this, that 

 you cannot take lands in fee, but you may take 

 all his personal property absolutely, which was 

 the ground of the President's threatened veto 

 of last year ; that you can fine a man to the 

 extent of his estate, but you cannot take his 

 lands to pay the fine. And being unintelligible, 

 with all respect to our recent friends, they are 

 driven to say, that in the punishment of treason 

 the Constitution has been guilty of this intoler- 

 able folly : that for robbing the mail, or piracy, 

 for any ordinary offence, or murder on tl: 

 or hi the army or navy ; that for any ordinary 

 crime, Congress may prescribe what punish- 

 ment they please ; take the land in fee ; but in 

 providing for the punishment of treason, the 

 greatest crime, the most dangerous crime, it 

 has feebly attempted to protect innocent off- 

 spring by saving the lands of the convict, but 

 leaving his life and all his personal property at 

 the mercy of the law ; that it has been guilty 

 of sanctioning the unrepublican discrimination 

 between real and personal property, and adopt- 

 ing the aristocratic idea that land was some- 

 thing that must not be taken, but preserved for 

 the heir, that must come down to him by a 

 perpetual constitutional entail. And this anti- 

 republican view is urged to fetter us in break- 

 ing the power of an aristocratic rebellion found- 

 ed on land hi large bodies and on negroes. 

 Were there no other objection than this, that 

 eimplu reductio ad absurdum disposes of the 

 argument. 



"But, Mr. Speaker, the question here, as 1 

 have said, is not, what is the true meaning of 

 this clause of the Constitution, but does it de- 

 clare that no forfeiture, that no confiscation 

 under any process of law shall affect land for a 

 longer period than the life of the owner ? Does 

 it apply to any case where there is no attainder, 

 no conviction ? 



" The law of the last Congress prescribed a 

 different process from conviction in a court of 

 law of the person guilty of the crime. It pro- 

 vides that upon proceedings in the district court 

 in the nature of proceedings in admiralty, the 

 lands of certain classes of persons, and all their 

 personal property, shall be forfeited for the use 

 of the Government. 



' And the Constitution provides that the 

 property of citizens shall not be taken without 

 due process of law. Xow, the question which 

 gentlemen on the other side of the House have 

 to argue is, not the law of attainder, but whether 

 the process in the district courts of the United 

 - to confiscate the property of persons 

 proved to be of the specified classes is due pro- 

 cess of law for depriving a man of his property 

 under the Constitution. If they cannot main- 

 tain that that is not due process of law within 

 the meaning of the Constitution, they cannot 

 throw the least doubt on the constitutionality 

 of this mode of procedure/' 



On the 22d the question being again before 

 the House. Mr. Stevens, of Pennsylvania, said : 

 " I begin simply by denying that the Constitu- 

 tion has the least reference to any one of the 

 provisions of the bill in question, and I intend 

 to show that the act of 1862, which was modi- 

 fied by a resolution which it has been truly said 

 was passed under duress very little to the credit 

 of the Congress that passed it that act of 1862 

 is not affected directly or indirectly by any one 

 of the provisions of the Constitution, and that 

 especially that part of the act which provides 

 for seizing property and confiscating it in fee- 

 simple is purely a proceeding under the laws 

 of war and under the law of nations, over which 

 the Constitution has no control, and in regard 

 to which it has no effect whatever. The first 

 section of the act of 1862 punishes the crime 

 of treason with death and the forfeiture of per- 

 sonal estate. That, I believe, is not objected 

 to, because personal estate, once forfeited, is 

 forfeited forever. There is no such thing as a 

 life estate in personal property. He who gets 

 it for an hour gets it forever. That is the plain- 

 est principle of law. The second provision is 

 that those who incite to rebellion shall be pun- 

 ished with fine and imprisonment. That has 

 nothing to do with the Constitution. It is not 

 pretended, I suppose, that the Constitution in 

 any way affects it. Then comes the clause of 

 the bill to which gentlemen take exception ; 

 and what is that? It is to be found in the 

 statute-books of that session of Congress, page 

 313. It provides that, to insure the speedy 

 termination of the present rebellion, it shall be 

 the duty of the President of the United States 



