tween France and this country which gives me the right over all of your little local State laws to do business in America as I please." Judge Meldrim, under this doctrine, admits that to be true, and allows the barroom to continue. Well, Bill Jones has been a good citizen of Savannah, and he is anxious also to make an honest penny. He pays taxes there; his boys are going to the war; he is himself prepared to fight the battles of his country; and he opens a bar. He is taken before Judge Meldrim and quickly sentenced or fined. Why? Because Bill Jones is not a Frenchman, but is a simple citizen of Georgia and has violated her laws, and, when he is taken to jail, he at least has this consolation, that he can look through the bars of the jail window and see his old friends going into the Frenchman's barroom. If Jones is imprisoned for violating the local law of Savannah, and the Frenchman is held free from such violation because of the treaty, the Frenchman has greater rights in Savannah than Savannah's own citizen. It would seem to be strange indeed that alienage should give greater rights than citizenship, and this can not be unless the Constitution clearly grants such absurdity. True, the doctrine of exterritoriality and inviolability give to foreign sovereigns and their ambassadors certain exemptions and immunities in foreign countries, but these are exceptional, and are due to the character of the parties and the necessity of interchange of relations between nations under the sanction of international law, and international courtesy, and in no wise apply to any others.

That is the proposition maintained by this School of Thought, that the treaty, when once enacted, is the supreme law of the land, all laws of the States to the contrary notwithstanding. My proposition, gentlemen, is this, that wherever a treaty attempts to invade an essential right of a State, as set forth in one of her laws, it is unconstitutional and void, and I maintain further that the Supreme Court of the United States has never held that a treaty has annulled the law of a State. That may seem a broad statement to some of you, but it is to that proposition that I now invite your attention.

But first let me say that a number of judges of the court in