772 



UNITED STATES. 



tention. The scheme by which it was intended 

 to place the telegraph system of the country in 

 the hands of the Government was brought be- 

 fore Congress without obtaining success. Con- 

 siderable popular opposition was manifested 

 to it, and at present its adoption does not ap- 

 pear probable. Another project was, the en- 

 largement of the system of land-locked navi- 

 gation from Maine to the Gulf of Mexico, and 

 from the Mississippi Valley to the various ports 

 of the Atlantic seaboard. Some investiga- 

 tions on this subject were proposed, but re- 

 ceived little favor. It was also suggested, 

 more particularly by the Governor of Virginia 

 in a message to the State Legislature, that the 

 assumption of the State debts by the Federal 

 Government should be made. No public ac- 

 tion was taken upon the subject. In New 

 Hampshire, however, the payment of the local 

 debts of the cities and towns was assumed 

 by the State government. 



A change was made in the bench of the 

 Supreme Court of the United States, by the 

 retirement, in consequence of age, of Justice 

 Samuel Nelson, from New York, and the ap- 

 pointment to the active duties of the position 

 of ex-Governor Ward Hunt from the same 

 State. A decision rendered by the court, dur- 

 ing the year, confirmed the validity of slave 

 contracts entered into before the proclamation 

 of emancipation. In Osborn vs. Nicholson, 

 from Arkansas, there was a warrantee that 

 the slave was sound, and that he was a slave 

 for life. The court held that the contract, 

 being valid when made, was enforceable in 

 the courts, and that the emancipation of the 

 slave, being an exercise of sovereign power of 

 the State, was not a breach of the warrantee 

 and did not invalidate the contract. In "White 

 vs. Hart et al. (error from Georgia), which 

 was an action on a promissory note given for 

 the purchase-money of a slave, the defence 

 was that, by the new constitution of Georgia, 

 the State courts were prohibited from enter- 

 taining any cases involving the validity of a 

 slave contract. The United States Supreme 

 Court decided three points : 1. That the States 

 in rebellion were never out of the Union, and 

 were never absolved from the prohibition in 

 the Constitution of the United States against 

 passing any law impairing the obligation of 

 contracts ; 2. That, as the constitution of 

 Georgia takes away the remedy upon the con- 

 tract, it does not simply deny jurisdiction to 

 her courts to enforce it, but it annihilates the 

 contract also, and is, therefore, in this regard, 

 repugnant to the Constitution of the United 

 States ; 3. That the constitution of Georgia 

 was not the act of Congress, directly or indi- 

 rectly (as was claimed), but the act of the 

 people of Georgia, and that therefore it comes 

 within the prohibition contained in the United 

 States Constitution. In another decision ren- 

 dered on April 14th, the relation of the civil 

 to the ecclesiastical courts of the country was 

 considered. In the case of Watson et al. vs. 



Jones et al. on appeal from the Circuit Court 

 of Kentucky, Mr. Justice Miller delivered the 

 opinion, in which he said : 



The questions which, have come before the civil 

 courts, concerning the rights to property held by 

 ecclesiastical bodies, may, so far as \ve have been 

 able to examine them, be profitably classified under 

 three general heads, which of course do not include 

 cases governed by considerations applicable to a 

 church established and supported by law as the re- 

 ligion of the State. 



1. The first of these is when the property which 

 is the subject of controversy has been, by the deed 

 or will of the donor, or other instrument by which 

 the property is held, by the express terms of the 

 instrument, devoted to the teaching, support, or 

 spread of some specific form of religious doctrine or 

 belief. 



2. The second is when the property is held by a 

 religious congregation which, by the nature of its 

 organization, is strictly independent of other eccle- 

 siastical associations, and, so far as church govern- 

 ment is concerned, owes no fealty or obligation to 

 any higher authority. 



3. The third is where the religious congregation 

 or ecclesiastical body holding the property is but a 

 subordinate member of some general church organi- 

 zation in which there are superior ecclesiastical tri- 

 bunals with a general and ultimate power of control 

 more or less complete. 



After a brief reference to the first and second 

 class of cases, Justice Miller thus speaks of the 

 third: 



But the third of these classes of cases is the one 

 which is oftenest found in the courts, and which, 

 with reference to the number and difficulty of the 

 questions involved, and to other considerations, is 

 every way the most important. 



It is the case of property acquired in any of the 

 usual modes for the general use of a religious con- 

 gregation ; which is itself part of a large and general 

 organization of some religious denomination, with 

 which it is more or less intimately connected by 

 religious views and ecclesiastical government. 



The case before us is one of this class, growing out 

 of a schism which has divided the congregation and 

 its officers, and the presbytery and synod, and which 

 appeals to the courts to determine the right to the 

 use of the property so acquired. Here is no case of 

 property devoted forever by the instrument which 

 conveyed it, or by any specific declaration of its 

 owner, to the support of any special religious dogmas, 

 or any peculiar form of worship, but of property pur- 

 chased for the use of a religious congregation, and, 

 so long as any existing religious congregation can be 

 ascertained to be that congregation, or its regular 

 and legitimate successor, it Is entitled to the use of 

 the property. In the case of an independent con- 

 gregation, we have pointed out how this identity or 

 succession is to be ascertained, but in cases of this 

 character we are bound to loolc at the fact that the 

 local congregation is itself but a member of a much 

 larger and more important religious organization, 

 and is under its government and control, and is 

 bound by its orders and judgments. There are in 

 the Presbyterian system of ecclesiastical government, 

 in regular succession, the presbytery over the session 

 or local church, the synod over the presbytery, and 

 the General Assembly over all. These are called, in 

 the language of the church organs, judicatories, and 

 they entertain appeals from the decision of those 

 below, and prescribe corrective measures in other 

 cases. 



In this class of cases, we think the rule of action 

 which should govern the civil courts, founded in a 

 broad and sound view of the relations of Church and 

 State under our system of laws, and supported by a 

 preponderating weight of judicial authority, is, that 



