CASES ARGUED AND DETERMINED IN THE CIRCUIT COURTS OF THE UNITED STATES WITHIN THE SECOND CIRCUIT. Ee parte THOMAS KAINE. The proceedings on a writ of habeas corpus in the Federal Courts are not governed by the laws of the States on the subject, but by the common law of England, as it stood at the adoption of the Constitution, subject to such alterations as Congress may see fit to prescribe. Under that system, a decision under one writ, refusing the discharge of a prisoner, is no bar to the issuing of any number of other successive writs by any Court or magistrate having jurisdiction. Where the prisoner was arrested under an extradition treaty between the United States and Great Britain, and committed by a magistrate after examination, and then a habeas corpus was sued out by him before a Circuit Court of the United States, which, after a hearing, dismissed the writ and remanded the prisoner to be held under the commitment of the magistrate: Held, that the decision of such Court was no bar to an inquiry by a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, upon a habeas corpus issued by him, into the legality of the detention of the prisoner under said commitment. The views expressed by Mr. Justice Nelson in his opinion In re Kaine (14 How., 103, 129), as to the construction of the Treaty between the United States and Great Britain, of August 9th, 1842 (8 U. S. Stat. at Large, 572, 576) and of the Act of Congress of March 3d, 1843, passed in pursuance thereof (5 Id., 623), and as to the jurisdiction of the committing magistrate, and as to the competency of the evidence on which the prisoner was committed, applied to this |