To deny this proposition is to assert that the United States is not a completely sove eign power, and therefore is not entitled to rank as one of the great and sovereign powers of the world. This indeed would be a mortifying position for a country with over seventy-five million inhabitants and an area of over three million square miles."

This means that the people of the United States constitute a nation.

Nor are the people of the United States a nation for and among themselves alone. The collective responsibility is not represented by that which each enjoys as right within the nation, but by that also which the collective people may secure for each by the reciprocal preservation and recognition of rights, that which marks the comity of nations among themselves for the benefit of all mankind.

The United States is a nation in this broad sense. The Constitution recognized this fact in express terms by the exclusive grant to the national government of the treaty-making power. That the grant gained little by being expressed was suggested in the Federalist.2

"This class of powers forms an obvious and essential branch of the Federal administration. If we are to be one nation in any respect, it clearly ought to be in respect to other nations. The powers to make treaties and to send and return ambassadors speak their own propriety."

§ 91. THE NATION SECURES RIGHTS TO ITS CITIZENS AT HOME AND ABROAD BY RECIPROCITY AND

1 Charles Henry Butler, The Treaty-making Power of the United States, I, sec. 12, p. 28.

2 No. XLII.

COMITY. It is not the grant of the treaty-making power which gives the nation the right and the power to secure for its members reciprocal rights in other nations, but the existence of the treaty-making power is proof of the existence of the nation from which fact the right naturally flows. And if the nation has the power to preserve these rights reciprocally in other lands, it has the power to preserve them within the land as a part of the law of the land.

'sons.

The first duty which a government owes to its citizens is to secure and protect their property and perFor the attainment of this object the citizens have conferred upon the nation the power of treating with other nations for the protection of these rights in their domains, for the continuance or cessation of aggression to this end, and for the same purpose and under the same power the government has the right to assure to the citizens of other nations the same rights it receives in behalf of its own citizens. The nation is expressly given by the Constitution of the United States the right to pass all laws in execution of the power of making treaties. How great a power of legislation this gives to the nation would of course not be a matter free from dispute. Yet it would seem that since the power is conferred for the most vital purpose of the national government, the power must be at least adequate to the attainment of the purpose.

§ 92. THE NATION'S DUTY TO PROTECT FOREIGNERS WITHIN THE STATES. An alien has the same right to sue in the courts in this country for an injury to his person or property as has a citizen of the United States. He stands before the law on a perfect equality with all citizens of the United States without being subjected

to a great many of the duties of a citizen. He has also the advantage that he may bring suit in a court of the United States, a privilege which is not generally extended to a citizen of the United States.

In 1874 and 1875, American citizens were killed at Ahualulco, and at Acapulco, State of Guerrero, Mexico. In a letter of February 9, 1875, Mr. John W. Foster, our minister, writes that he claims full indemnity and compensation to the bereaved family of the American citizen assassinated and for the loss sustained by any failure of the authorities to afford protection guaranteed to American citizens by Articles XIV and XV of the Treaty of 1831.1

Having thus formally made a demand that the federal authorities of a State with a form of government similar to ours punish offences against American citizens which under the laws were cognizable only by State governments of that country, it would be rather stultifying to say that our government is not bound by its treaties to mete out like punishment for offences against aliens. Those rights guaranteed by the national government cannot be secured if they are left to forty-five different irresponsible jurisdictions. They belong as to all, as to aliens by the treaties, as to citizens by the Constitution, in the province of the national government.

$93. THE NATION HAS FULL POWER TO PROTECT RIGHTS WITHIN THE STATES."The President, with the concurrence of two thirds of the Senate, has power to make treaties." 2

Congress has the power to make all laws which

1 Foreign Relations, 1875, Part II (Mexico), pp. 855-884.
2 Constitution, Art. II, sec. 2,
cl. 2.

shall be necessary and proper for carrying out the powers vested in the President." 1

Congress can, therefore, pass a law which is necessary and proper for the proper enforcement of its treaty stipulations. In United States v. Forty-three Gallons of Whiskey, it was held that a law of Congress which provided for the enforcement of a treaty obligation with an Indian tribe that no liquor be sold to any member of that tribe, was valid, and that such an act could be enforced even against a citizen of a State who had sold liquor to an Indian within the State and not on the Indian reservation.

3

In United States v. Pinott Reese, the Supreme Court said:

"Rights and immunities created by or dependent upon the Constitution of the United States can be protected by Congress. The form and manner of the protection may be such as Congress in the legitimate exercise of its legislative discretion shall provide. This may be varied to meet the necessities of the particular right to be protected."

The early theory that the United States had no police power, so-called, or power to protect life or punish crimes of violence within the States,* is already superseded by judicial decision. It is now determined by the highest authority that the United States. has such power, when a federal right or duty is invaded or involved. For example, it is now held that the

1 Constitution, Art. I, sec. 8, cl. 18.

See Logan v. The United States, 144 U. S. 263,

See article by Albert E. Pillsbury, Harvard Law Review, Vol. XV, No. 9.

See National Peace Bill against lynching, 57th Cong., First Session, Senate No. 1117, House No. 4572.

United States, by the hand of its marshal, may lawfully kill one who assaults a federal judge traveling through a State in the course of his duty, and that the State cannot hold the marshal to account for such killing;' and that the United States may punish, as for murder, one who kills a prisoner in the custody of a federal officer within a State. The principle is that the persons so assailed are within the peace of the United States; that the United States owes them the duty of protection; and that the power of protection follows upon the duty.

The equality clause of the Fourteenth Amendment forbids the States to deny to any person within their jurisdiction the equal protection of the law. This clause is judicially held to confer immunity from any discrimination, as a federal right. The omission of the proper officers of the State to furnish equal protection is the omission of the State itself, since the State can act only by its officers. So, too, the responsibility of the United States can be met only through its officers and the provision of a working system by which they may meet the duty which they are admitted to have.

In re Neagle, 135 U. S. 1. See as to federal interference with State administration of criminal law, West Virginia v. Laing, 133 Fed. 1887; Re Loney, 134 U. S. 372; Ex parte Crouch, 112 U. S. 178, 28 L. Ed. 690; United States v. Lewis, 26 Sup. Ct. R. 229; see N. Y. Law Journal, March 14, 1906, editorial.

Logan v. U. S., 144 U. S. 263.

Tenn. v. Davis, 100 U. S. 257, 266; Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U. S. 303, 306, 310; Virginia v. Rives, 100 U. S. 313, 318; Ex parte Virginia, 100 U. S. 339, 345; U. S. v. Harris, 106 U. S. 629, 639; Civil Rights Cases, 109 U. S. 313, 323; Ex parte Yarborough, 110 U. S. 651, 660, et seq.; Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U. S. 356, 373; Baldwin v. Frank, 120 U. S. 653 and (Harlan, J.) 700; In re Coy, 127 U. S. 731; Carter v. Texas, 177 U. S. 442, 447. See Louisville & Nashville R. R. Co. v. Mississippi, 133 U. S. 587, upholding the Jim Crow car law.