general public was apathetic, and in a controversy which enlisted the sympathy of not a single friend. Deeply impressed with the painful consciousness of his inadequate qualification and of the responsibility of his undertaking, ever doubtful of the expedients of his unaided individual judgment, yet possessed with a profound and earnest desire, in a stern and truthful way, to perform a professional duty, by maintaining the free and absolute civic rights of a large body of citizens, under a civil contract which was compacted into the Constitution of a common country, it is not impossible that the wide and deep strokes of the discussion may have exceeded the narrow limitations within which legal controversies are ordinarily conducted. In an humble way he has striven to perform this—the highest and most unquestioned duty to his clients.
Any serious treatment of a broad subject, of such grave import, involving the national polity of the government, and the construction of articles of amendment upon which depend the right and title of seven million citizens to their constitutional estate of freedom, imposes upon one who speaks with the authority of many voices, the simple performance of duty. The fulfilment of his duty being the edict of God to man, "that strong-siding champion, conscience," will leave no place for fear in his quiet bosom. Being an authority over-ruling all other authorities, it imposes upon counsel engaged in such an undertaking as this, the grave professional obligation, not alone of investigating the rights of those who stand in a cliental relation, and exhibiting an abstract of their title to the enforcement of public justice, according to the judgment of the learned, but entails upon him the additional obligation, by independent original methods of inquiry and research, of exploring the recesses, and laying bare and criticising the internal motives and external measures, through which the universal equity contemplated by the Fourteenth Amendment (a law of justice and humanity of inestimable value to the whole family of mankind) has been practically annulled by an unjustifiable and alarming innovation upon the letter and spirit of its provisions.
This second American Bill of Rights having extended the authority of civil equality to all races, a momentary reflection
