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sent to the violatory acts I have enumerated, by making its
Tossels return with the passengers who have been refused
This act, Mr Secretary, cannot be in any
admittance.
way held to be one of consent; infortunately, like every-
thing else which happened, it shows a condition of impo-
tence against the acts of a Government which, disposing of
all means of coercion exercised an irresistible pressure on
a company that could offer no opposition, and whore sole ob
ject wa to protect its commercial interests. It is a
well known principle of public law, that the waivers of th
benefits obtained under & contract, must be expressed in
writing; that they cannot be general and must be specific
with invocation of the laws which are waived. None of
these reisites have been fulfilled in the cases referrea
to by the Board of Health, and even granting that the wal-
vers had been made, they would be unquestionably void, ba-
cause it is an equally well known principle that the man-
dates of the public laws, amongst which is that of unques-
tioned preference, and which establish the rights of man,
cannot be waived either by the authorities or by the indl-
viduals of a corporation.
It has been very clearly demonstrated that there
was a violation if not an attack on individual guarantees
perpetrated by the sanitary Delegate who expelled the pus-
sengers from the National mer itory and returned them to
the steamers on which they had arrived. This return wab
made with the assistance of the military, in a way that is
not provided for in any part of the Constitution. What
is ingenuously called re-embarkation by the Delegato, was
the usurpation of a public office which is granted to the
Executive of the Union, the only one authorized to expel
for causes which certainly are not connected with the pub-
lic health, and in the case of pernicious foreigners. This
violation