the composition of juries; because the exclusion of colored citizens from juries was by hostile State legislation, which is precisely the thing prohibited by the XIVth Amendment. Surely this indicates that the question was considered on its merits simply, apart from race-prejudice or political bias. Seven of the eight Republican members of the court voted for the decision, as well as the Democratic member. No party line was drawn.

3. The decision was solemnly made under oath and the pressure of heavy official responsibility, and pertained to the honest declaration of a simple matter of fact. It is easy for irresponsible spectators to criticise those who act in the necessary discharge of duty, and to tell of what they would do, in a case in which they will never be called to take part. Statesmen are known always to become more cautious and conservative, the moment they are clothed with official power, and are compelled to assume responsibility. And individuals who give advice to others very readily, are slow to decide in their own affairs. Now here is a Court, every member of which had sworn a solemn oath to decide all cases according to law, and to interpret and uphold the Constitution not as it might have been, or as some wish it had been, but as it is; and it acted, before God and the country, knowing that its responsibility was heavy, because the Constitution made its decision final. What right, now, has any man to call in question the conscientiousness of the Court in this particular decision? The one dissenting member has been loudly eulogized for following his convictions, even though he stood alone. That is well. Give him praise. But what proof is there, that the eight did not also follow their convictions with fidelity? They were equally intelligent, of the same high character, and under the same oath. Is the Court so rotten, that eight of the nine members are unprincipled? It were as easy to manufacture a slanderous aspersion of the one as of the eight, and to say, that he had an eye to future political popularity and advancement, and sought, a demagogue, to appear to be the special champion of human rights. It may have cost some of the eight a much harder struggle to follow convictions of right, and to disappoint their colored friends, by a decision against the Civil

as

Rights Act, than it did the one to follow his conviction in its favor. It always takes more resolution and moral courage to offend friends, than to offend enemies; and yet an honest man will not hesitate to do the former, when duty demands, cost what it may of confidence and regard. And apart from the injustice of the accusation, let the writer suggest, that it would be a very unwise policy for the colored people to persuade themselves or others, that the Supreme Court was hostile to their race, or even indifferent to their rights. We all need as many friends as possible, and it weakens our own confidence, as well as our position before others, unduly to magnify the number of our supposed enemies. That man feels and is strongest, who seems to have a great many friends. And all this appears still more plain, when we remember that the responsibility of the Court in this case was to decide a question of fact, with which feelings of friendship have nothing to do. If we asked a carpenter to tell us whether a certain box was six feet long and two feet wide, and he applied his rule carefully and pronounced it to be only five feet in length and eighteen inches in breadth, it would be simply absurd to become angry with him, because we were disappointed in the result of the measurement, having had the box specially made for us, and having set our hearts upon putting into it an article that it would not hold. Men would laugh at us, should we accuse him of not being our friend. Friendship could not alter the facts in the case. He told us the simple truth. Similarly the Supreme Court has simply a fact to declare. the XIIIth and XIVth Amendments to the Constitution long enough and broad enough to take in Sections 1 and 2 of the Civil Rights Bill? They applied the legal rule of measurement and said that these amendments were too short and narrow for the purpose. If they saw that to be the case, they could do no otherwise as honest men than say so; and there is no question of friendship involved. A poor widow asks a Bank President to give her a little of the abundant bank money, that she may pay rent, and buy food, fuel and clothing. The Bank President replies, that he has no legal power to use the bank funds for charitable purposes; whereupon the indignant widow charges him with hard-heartedness and enmity,

Were

and insists that he ought to have such power, and that it is a disgrace that, in such a rich country, the poor are shut out from being relieved by the banks! Is she right? Clearly

not.

4. A decision of this nature was anticipated by many of those who had studied the subject with care, and who were warm friends of the African race. Some of them voted against the Act, in Congress, because they believed it to exceed the power given to Congress by the Constitution; while others voted for it, knowing it was, at least, of doubtful constitutionality, but thinking it might do good, for a time, even should it be set aside, at last, by an adverse decision of the Supreme Court. Senator Carpenter of Wisconsin, one of the ablest lawyers in the land, not only voted against it, but plainly warned the colored people, that it would prove a delusive trust, as it would surely be declared unconstitutional in its application within the States when once a case should reach the Supreme Court. The same position was taken by the N. Y. Independent, as soon as the Act passed; and yet that influential paper has been doing battle for the colored people for thirty-five years, and is especially pronounced against all forms of caste. Surely, when some of the best friends of the Negro have thus, on legal grounds, expected this decision as the only one possible, it ill becomes any one to assail the integrity, or ridicule the supposed weakness of the highest judicial body in the nation, which has rendered it.

5. It is a somewhat curious fact, that this decision is made. upon principles of constitutional interpretation which used to be affirmed by anti-slavery statesmen, and denied by the proslavery politicians and by the Supreme Court as it was, when controlled by the slave-power. It is this fact which enables the assailants of the Court to make it appear inconsistent in its present utterance. But it is the commendable inconsistency of abandoning a false and dangerous principle of interpretation, which had been repeatedly used of old by the Supreme Court, by inferior courts and by legislators, to strain the Constitution into an unwarranted exercise of power in behalf of slavery. It was a dangerous two-edged tool, which cut in harmful as often as in useful directions. The writer confesses

to a certain natural satisfaction, that the Supreme Court has been converted, even at this late day, to the very principle upon which others and himself used, in the year 1850 and subsequently, to oppose the constitutionality of the Fugitive Slave Law. We then contended that Congress had no power to legislate upon any subject not referred to its legislative jurisdiction by the Constitution; and that while the 4th Article of the Constitution forbade indeed the several States to set free fugitives who "owed service," it gave to Congress no power whatever to make laws upon the subject, but left the matter wholly to the States. Many of the Northern States, on this very ground, passed laws, known as "Personal Liberty Bills," to protect colored citizens who might be unjustly claimed as fugitive slaves. But the pro-slavery Federal courts of that day refused to adopt that safe principle, which vindicated genuine State-rights-although the Southern politicians were always harping on State-rights-and they adopted the latitudinarian principle, that, without a direct grant of power, Congress might legislate about anything which the Constitution mentioned only negatively in the way of laying restrictions on the States. The Civil Rights Bill was unfortunately based on that same dangerous principle; which, if used to accomplish a good thing to-day, might be used for most pernicious purposes to-morrow, and might even work a total subversion of one of the chief and most valued characteristics of our American nationality, to wit: the division of power between the States and the Federal Government, and the strict limitation of the latter. For the Fourteenth Amendment, which was relied on to sanction the legislation of Congress in the Civil Rights Act is so broad in the subjects to which it refers, that if its mere prohibition to the States of abuses sanctioned by State law, is authority for Congress to legislate directly for individual and corporate action unauthorized by State law, there is scarcely a subject on which Congress may not interfere, and State rights will be quite swept away. Its language is: "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its

jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." Now if Congress may claim, under this Amendment, a right directly to legislate upon the unauthorized action of private parties on all the subjects related to the protection of citizens against injustice touching any question of life, liberty, and property, and the equal bearing of laws upon all persons and classes, what matter of State legislation would be left? Does not almost every offence committed in a State infringe justice as regards life, or liberty, or property, or the equal protection of the laws? State legislation would become superfluous, if not invalid, and State rights would cease to exist, under such an interpretation, although Article IX says: "The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people;" while Article X. declares: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." A thoughtful man can hardly say that he regrets the return of the Supreme Court to the strict construction of the Constitution from which it ought never to have departed; even though at times it may deprive Congress of the power to do very desirable things. This will be more than balanced by its depriving Congress of an unlimited power to intermeddle with State concerns, and to convert our Union into a great centralized authority, contrary to the whole theory of our government, and to the only method by which such an immense territory can be held in a national unity. Hence the ground would seem to be wisely taken by the Supreme Court, in this decision:

The XIVth Amendment is prohibitory upon the States only, and the legislation authorized to be adopted by Congress for enforcing it, is not direct legislation on the matters respecting which the States are prohibited from making or enforcing certain laws, or doing certain acts, but is corrective legislation, such as may be necessary or proper for counteracting and redressing the effect of such laws or acts.

6. It is further to be considered that this decision has not a word against the equal rights of colored people, but simply remands them to the same legal protection as that upon which the whites rely. Every citizen, white or black, it has been said, owes allegiance, and has in turn a right to protection.