MR. LIVINGSTON'S MOTION. 20TH FEBRUARY, 1800. COMMITTED TO THE COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE HOUSE, TO WHOM WAS COMMITTED ON THE 7TH INSTANT, THE MESSAGE OF THE PRESIDENT, TRANSMITTING THE PAPERS, RELATIVE TO THE REQUISITION FOR, AND DELIVERY OF JONATHAN ROBBINS. PUBLISHED BY ORDER OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.
[Philadelphia: 1800]. 4pp, disbound and moderately foxed. Good+.
Representative Livingston of New York would later become a Louisiana Congressman and a leader of the legal codification movement. Robbins claimed American citizenship by virtue of his birth in Danbury, Connecticut; he had allegedly participated in a mutiny aboard the British frigate Hermione, and was then jailed in South Carolina. The British requested his extradition.
A Jeffersonian [until his dispute with Jefferson over the Louisiana batture], Livingston here emphasizes the Constitution's grant of power to the Courts to decide the case, and warns President Adams not to interfere. "The several questions whether the alledged crime of piracy, and murder, was committed within the exclusive jurisdiction of Great Britain...are all matters exclusively of judicial inquiry."
FIRST EDITION. Evans 38791. Item #13886
Price: $275.00