6

REPORT.

The committee to whom was referred so much of the governor's
message and acompanying documets as relates to his demand upon
the executive of New York for the surrender of three fugitives from
justice, have had the same under consideration and agree to the
following

REPORT:
In July last the executive of Virginia made a demand upon the
governor of New York for the surrender of Peter Johnson, Edward
Smith and Isaac Gansey attached to the schooner Robert Center then
in New York, who were duly charged by affidavit regularly made
before Miles King, mayor and justice of hte peace for Norfolk, with
having feloniously stolen and taken from John G. Colley a certain
negro slave Isaac the property of said Colley. The governor of New
York refused to comply with the demand, and assigned as his
reasons for the refusal, that the right to demand and the reciprocal
obligation to surrender fugitives from justice between sovereign and
independent nations, as defined by the law of nations, include only
those ccases in which the acts constituting the offence charged are
recognized by the universal law of all civilized countries; that the
object of the provision in the constitution of the United States relative
to the demand of fugitives from justice was to recognize and establish
this principle in the mutual relations of the states as independent,
equal and sovereign communities; that the provision applies only to
those acts which, if committed within the jurisdiction of the state in
which the person aused is found, would be treasonable, felonious or
criminal by the laws of that state; that no law of New York at this
time recognized, no statute admitted, that one man could be the
property of another, or that one man could be stolen from another; and
that cosequently the laws of this state making the stealing of a slave
felony did not constitute a crime within the meaning of the constitution.

Your committee have bestowed upon each of these propositions the
reflection which their importance demanded; and that reflection has
brought them to very different conclusions from those arrived at by the
governor of New York.

A citizen of one nation is permitted to enter the territory of
another upon the tacit condition that he shall not violate her laws. If he
does violate them he may be punished according to those laws, if