230 CAMPBELL'S CASE.

passed, (f) Such statements of facts, of a public nature, upon
which the government had acted, must, for all such public pur-
poses, be taken to be true. But then no particular fact can be
assumed or declared by the legislature to be true so far as to affect
the rights of a person, or the title of an individual to any property.
Not because it would be indecent or improper to question the mo-
tives or purity of the legislative body, who must always be pre-
sumed to act rightly and to set forth the truth, until the contrary is
clearly shewn; but because, in all such cases, it may, without any
impeachment of their integrity, be presumed that they have been mis-
led or misinformed. As where a statute recited, that a certain person
had been attainted, when in truth such was not the fact, the party
was not thereby concluded and prevented from shewing the truth, (g)
And so where the preamble of an act of parliament recited, that
the plaintiff's father had not been married, yet he was allowed to
prove that he had been married; and so to obtain a verdict, founded
upon the fact of his legitimacy, in direct opposition to the recital in
the act of parliament, (h) But the parliament of England, on prin-
ciples of state policy, not applicable to eases of a civil nature, have,
in many instances, passed bills of attainder, by which facts have
been assumed to be true, without the formality of proof, and indi-
viduals have been attainted, condemned to death, and their estates
confiscated without even calling on them to answer. It cannot be
denied, that for all such purposes, that that legislative body has
the power to assert the truth of any facts to the destruction of an
individual without leaving to him the means of controverting
what had been thus asserted in any judicial manner or form what-
ever, (i)

Even in England there are many cases in which the courts of
justice found their judgments upon considerations of public utility,
looking to politics, or that which is deduced from the frame of
the government of the country. (j) Here it has become very com-
mon of late to speak of the sovereign power, and of the sovereignty
exercised by our government. These words do not, however,
occur either in the constitution of this state, or in that of the
Union. The words sovereign and sovereignty refer to him, or that
body of men who possess the supreme power of the state; who

(/) Rex v. Sutton, 4 Ma. & Sel. 532.—(g) The Earl of Leicester v. Heydon, 1
Plow. S98.-(h) Bull, N. P. 113; Co. Litt. 360.—(t) 4 Inst 37; Com. Dig. tit
Parliament, H. 6.—(j) Earl of Chesterfield v. Janssen, 2 Ves. 156.

*