Book Description:
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER XVI. POWER OVER NATURALIZATION AND BANKRUPTCY. 1102. Tub next clause is, that congress ' shall have power to ' establish a uniform rule of naturalization, and uniform laws on the ' subject of bankruptcies throughout the United States.' 1103. The propriety of confiding the power to establish a uniform rule of naturalization to the national government seems not to have occasioned any doubt or controversy in the convention. For aught that appears on the journals, it was conceded without objection.1 Under the confederation, the states possessed the sole authority to exercise the power; and the dissimilarity of the system in different states was generally admitted as a prominent defect, and laid the foundation of many delicate and intricate questions. As the free inhabitants of each state were entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in all the other states,2 it followed, that a single state possessed the power of forcing into every other state, with the enjoyment of every immunity and privilege, any alien, whom it might choose to incorporate into its own society, however repugnant such admission might be to their polity, conveniences, and even prejudices. In effect, every state possessed the power of naturalizing aliens in every other state; a power as mischievous in its nature, as it was indiscreet in its actual exercise. In one state, residence for a short time might, and did confer the rights of citizenship. In others, qualifications of greater importance were required. An alien, therefore, incapacited for the possession of certain rights by the laws of the latter, might, by a previous residence and naturalization in the former, elude at pleasure all their salutary regulations for self protection. Thus the laws of a single state were prepostero...
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