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5

nor do its terms justify the construction that other proof that the accused had fled from justice, should be adduced than is required by the laws of Nations. One State cannot be called upon to make good the injury committed by its citizens upon the rights of another State, or the property of its citizens. So far as this matter is concurred the states are to be regarded as one great community, each one protecting its own rights and those of its citizens by the effectual enforcement of its penal laws enacted for this purpose, the other states, or the General Government affording all the necessary means of securing offenders against the laws, who might convey themselves out of its jurisdiction and therefore beyond the reach of its process, & be found in the limits of another state. Adopt the construction which Your Excellency gives to the Constitution and in cases where a state would have the unquestionable right by the laws of Nations to demand either a recompense for the wrong, or the surrender of him who perpetrated it, there would be no redress. It is not supposable that a proposition to exempt from the operation of the second clause of the second section of the fourth article of the Constitution of the U.S. the citizens of our State who should while in the territory of another state commit treason felony or other crime, and escape or return to his own state before an accusation was preferred against him, or who perpetrated the offence while in the act of departing from the State, would have been counter[vanced?] by the great