that the great truths of the Fourteenth Amendment should give way to treachery, cupidity, cruelty, and tyranny. What was meant for bread it appears to regard itself as authorized to turn into stone.
But to leave for the present this monstrosity of our civilization, your addressers conceive and respectfully set forth, that it requires no great understanding nor labor of thought to unfold those fundamental principles, which to every enlightened mind, imbued with the love of liberty, ought to be self-evident. It is apparent to the student of history, that American society, to be in conformity with the polity of this amendment, must submit to some radical changes; that new feelings and sensibilities must be introduced into the departments of industry; and that the effects of a different scheme of government and system of law, and superior methods of training and education, must eventually lead the citizens whom these addressers represent to a higher civic recognition. It appears to them, that the past and present attitude of classes in America, under a democratic government, presents an exterior structure similar to that of classes in Central Europe under feudalism. Although the American realization of constitutional government is set forth in the model principles of the amendments, which unite all the excellences found in different systems of ancient or modern liberties, nevertheless they are regarded by some statists as mere political theories inapplicable to their race. One of the main purposes of these addressers is to draw attention to the peculiar tenets of these jurists and statesmen, and to the difference between the abstract theories of jurisprudence and their practical administration of justice. The addressers submit, with great deference to the better judgment of their patrons, that there are judicial procedures the end of which is justice, but which are nevertheless a mere verbal identification of jurisprudence with justice; that the primitive element of justice in America is the conformity of the nation to the law of the Fourteenth Amendment; that its commandment was given because it was deemed just, but that jurisprudence seems to regard it as just only because it is commanded.
These addressers consider that the ancient system of slavery
