United States, except in cases of impeachment." According to a familiar rule of interpretation, the single specified exception leaves the power of the President applicable to all other cases: Expressio unius exclusio est alterius. Mr. Berrien, in one of his opinions as Attorney-General, recognizes "the pardoning power as coextensive with the power to punish"; and he quotes with approbation the words of another writer, that "the power is general and unqualified," and that "the remission of fines, penalties, and forfeitures, under the revenue laws, is included in it." (Opinions of the Attorneys-General, Vol. I. p. 756.)

On this power Mr. Justice Story thus remarks: "The power of remission of fines, penalties, and forfeitures is also included in it, and may, in the last resort, be exercised by the Executive, although it is in many cases by our laws confided to the Treasury Department. No law can abridge the constitutional powers of the Executive Department, or interrupt its right to interpose by pardon in such cases. -Instances of the exercise of this power by the President, in remitting fines and penalties, in cases not within the scope of the laws giving authority to the Treasury Department, have repeatedly occurred, and their obligatory force has never been questioned." (Story, Com. on Constitution, Vol. II. § 1504.)

It has been decided by the Supreme Court, after elaborate argument, that "the Secretary of the Treasury has authority, under the Remission Act of the 3d of March, 1797, chap. 361, to remit a forfeiture or penalty accruing under the revenue laws, at any time, before or after a final sentence of condemnation or judgment for the penalty, until the money is actually paid over to the Collector for distribution"; and that "such remission.

extends to the shares of the forfeiture or penalty to which the officers of the customs are entitled, as well as to the interest of the United States." In giving his opinion on this occasion, Mr. Justice Johnson, of South Carolina, made use of language much in point. "Mercy and justice," he said, "could only have been administered by halves, if collectors could have hurried causes to judgment, and then clung to the one half of the forfeiture, in contempt of the cries of distress or the mandates of the Secretary." (United States v. Morris, 10 Wheaton, 303.)

A case has occurred in Kentucky, to which reference has been already made, in which it is confidently and broadly assumed that the pardoning power under the Constitution extends even to the penalties due to informers. The following passage occurs in the opinion of the Court. "The act of 1823 says that any prosecuting attorney, who shall prosecute any person to conviction under it, shall be entitled to twenty-five per cent of the amount of such fine as shall be collected. The act gives the prosecuting attorney one fourth of the money, when collected, but vests him with no interest in the fine or sentence, separate and distinct from that of the Commonwealth, that would screen his share from the effect of any legal operation which should, before collection, abrogate the whole or a part of it. It would require language of the strongest and most explicit character to authorize a presumption that the Legislature intended to confer any such right. We could never presume an intention to control the Governor's constitutional power to remit fines and forfeitures. If he can in this way be restrained in the exercise of his power to remit for the fourth of a fine, so can he be for

the half or the whole. This part of his prerogative cannot be curtailed. With the exception of the case of treason, his power to remit fines and forfeitures, grant reprieves and pardons, is unlimited, illimitable, and uncontrollable. It has no bounds but his own discretion. It is no doubt politic and proper for the Legislature to incite prosecuting attorneys and informers, by giving them a portion of fines, when collected; but in so doing the citizen cannot be debarred of his right of appeal to executive clemency." (Routt v. Feemster, 7 J. J. Marshall, 132.)

According to these authorities, it seems reasonable to infer, that, under the Constitution of the United States, the pardoning power, which is clearly applicable to the offence of "transporting" slaves of the District, might remit the penalties in question. These penalties, though allotted to the owners and the county, when finally collected, are neither more nor less than the punishment, under sentence of a criminal court, for an offence of which the parties stand convicted upon indictment. They can be collected and acquitted only by the United States. No process for this purpose is at the command of the slave-owner. He had no control whatever over the prosecution at any stage, nor did it proceed at his suggestion or information. The very statute under which these public proceedings were instituted in the name of the United States secured to the slave-owner his private action on the case for damages, thus separating the public from the private interests. These it seems the duty of the President to keep separate, except on the final collection and distribution of the penalties. Public policy and the ends of justice require that the punishment for a criminal offence should, in every case, be exclusively subject to the supreme pardoning power,

without dependence upon the will of any private person. An obvious case will illustrate this. Suppose, in the case of Drayton and Sayres, it should be ascertained beyond doubt that the conviction was procured by perjury. If, by virtue of the judgment, the slave-owners have an interest in the imprisonment of these men which cannot be touched, then the prisoners, unable to meet these heavy liabilities, must continue in perpetual imprisonment, or owe their release to the accident of private good-will. The President, notwithstanding his beneficent power to pardon, under the Constitution, will be powerless to remedy this evil. But such a state of things would be monstrous; and any interpretation of the Constitution is monstrous which thus ties his hands. Mercy and justice would be rendered not merely by halves, but, owing to the inability of prisoners, from poverty, to pay the other half of the fine, they would be entirely arrested.

The power of pardon, which is attached by the Constitution to offences generally, should not be curtailed. It is a generous prerogative, and should be exercised generously. Boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem. This is an old maxim of the law. But if it be the duty of a good judge to extend his jurisdiction, how much more is it the duty of a good President to extend the field of his clemency! At least, no small doubt should deter him from the exercise of his prerogative.

The conclusion from this review is as follows.

1. By the English Common Law the costs and one half of the fines may be remitted. It is not certain that by this law, as adopted in the United States, the other half of the fines may not also be remitted.

2. Under the statutes of Maryland, now the law of the District, the Governor, and, of course, the President, may remit "the whole or any part of any fine," without exception.

3. Under the Constitution of the United States, and according to its true spirit, the pardoning power of the President is coextensive with the power to punish, except in the solitary case of impeachment.

Several courses are open to the President in the present case.

I. By a general pardon he may discharge Drayton and Sayres from prison, and remit all the fines and costs for which they are detained. Such a pardon would unquestionably operate effectually upon the imprisonment and upon the costs, and also upon the half of the fines due to the county. It would be for the courts, on a proper application, and in the exercise of their just powers, to restrict it, if the pardon did not operate upon the other moiety.

Among the opinions of the Attorney-General is a case which illustrates this point. In 1824 Joshua Wingate prayed for a credit, in the settlement of his accounts, for his proportion of a fine incurred by one Phineas Varney. It appeared that suit was instituted by the petitioner as Collector of the District of Bath, Maine, on which judgment was obtained in May, 1809; the defendant was arrested and committed to jail, under execution on that judgment, and the fine was afterwards remitted by the President. The petitioner contended that the President had no constitutional or legal power to remit his proportion of the fine, the right to which had vested by the institution of the suit. On this Mr.