Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

In the Year One Thousand Eight Hundred and FortyFive.

AN ACT

Concerning Principals, Factors and Agents.

BE it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives, in General Court assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:

1 SECT. 1. Every person in whose name any mer2 chandise shall be shipped for sale, shall be deemed to 3 be the true owner thereof, so far as to entitle the con4 signee of such merchandise to a lien thereon, for any 5 money advanced, or securities given, to the shipper 6 thereof, for, or on account of such consignment: pro7 vided, that the lien aforesaid, shall not exist when

8 such consignee shall have notice, by the bill of lading, 9 or otherwise, at, or before the time of the advancing 10 of money, as aforesaid, or giving such securities that 11 such person is not the actual and bona fide owner 12 thereof: and provided also, that the merchandise so 13 shipped was in lawful possession of the shipper at the 14 time of shipment.

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SECT. 2. Every factor or other agent entrusted 2 with the possession of any merchandise for the pur3 pose of sale, or any bill of lading, consigning the same 4 to such factor or agent for that purpose, shall be 5 deemed to be the true owner thereof, so far as to give 6 validity to any bona fide contract made by such factor 7 or agent with any other person for the sale of the 8 whole or any part of such merchandise.

SENATE, March 20, 1845.

Passed to be engrossed.

Sent down for concurrence,

CHARLES CALHOUN, Clerk.

Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, March 25, 1845.

The Joint Special Committee, to whom was referred the several messages of his Excellency the Governor, in relation to the treatment of the Hon. Samuel Hoar, in South Carolina, and the Hon. Henry Hubbard, in Louisiana, and also an order of the House of Representatives of March 18, 1845,-have had the several subjects under consideration, and ask leave to present the annexed Report and Resolves.

For the Committee,

JOSEPH BELL.

Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

REPORT.

The Committee have already presented a full report on the treatment of the Hon. Samuel Hoar, in South Carolina; to this, on that subject, they have nothing to add.

When that report was presented, official information had not been transmitted to the Committee, of the result of the mission of the Hon. Henry Hubbard to Louisiana. This has now been presented to and considered by the Committee.

It

The subject of controversy referred to in the message of his Excellency the Governor, between Massachusetts and her sister States of Louisiana and South Carolina, demand and must receive the profound consideration of every state in the Union. Massachusetts is not alone interested in this matter. deeply and vitally concerns the whole Union, and all its parts. The claim of Massachusetts is simply that her citizens may have secured to them the personal and commercial rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution and laws of the nation, while pursuing their lawful callings in the other states of the Union.

These rights, Louisiana and South Carolina deny to a certain description of the citizens of Massachusetts, not on account of crime charged, or proved, or committed, but simply and solely on account of origin, race and color.

Against this great injustice, Massachusetts has remonstrated, but without effect; she has endeavored to present the violated

rights of her citizens, to the judicial tribunals of the countrybut in vain. No citizen of Louisiana or South Carolina has dared to present the wrongs of this much injured class of our citizens-wrongs inflicted under color of the laws of the states -to the only tribunals having the power of adequate redress, the judicial tribunals of the national government.

Massachusetts, failing in every attempt to secure the rights of her own citizens through the aid of the citizens of Louisiana, commissioned one of her most respected citizens to repair to that state, and there to render such aid as it might be in his power to render, to all her citizens who might require it,—to bring the subject of controversy between herself and Louisiana to a peaceful and final determination, by means of the paramount authority of the judicial tribunals of the national gov

ernment.

This peaceful mission has signally failed. Massachusetts will only refer to its details to shew that neither the laws of our common government, nor those of our common nature, the laws of civility and hospitality, have been found in effective operation, on this occasion, in our sister state.

Under these circumstances, therefore, Massachusetts has no other constitutional or peaceful resort but to the national gov

ernment.

To that government she has surrendered her whole power to protect the rights and redress the wrongs of her own citizens, when without the limits of her own Commonwealth.

Mindful of her own constitutional duties, she asks of the national government that those states may be obliged to remember theirs, and remembering, not to be permitted to disregard them with impunity.

Massachusetts claims, in short, that her citizens may have what the Constitution so clearly and emphatically declares they shall have, "all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states."

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She also claims all the commercial rights secured to her citizens under the constitutional power to regulate commerce among the several states," and the laws of Congress made in pursuance thereof. These are her claims, and these claims