children; but let that war be constantly renewed, and urged before the courts, in the press, on the hustings, and before the public throughout our educational institutions.
The Dred Scott decision judicially doomed to slavery a vast empire of mankind. By the Fourteenth Amendment the nation released it, and that great organ of freedom, liberty, and truth cannot now be converted into an instrument for the public debasement of unprotected, helpless victims, at the very foot of the altar of justice, by the vesting of irresponsible powers in the public servants and labor-guilds of America.
The system of Hall and DeCuir, which licenses this spirit of tyranny, resembles the ancient judicial system of Athens far more than it does our American judicature. In Athens six thousand judges were chosen by lot, they had ten departments of justice, with five thousand judges, and a reserve force of one thousand. But the American dicastery is not chosen by lot. Our judges elect themselves, by taking out charters or licenses from the State and organizing guilds, unions, secret labor associations, boycotts, and strikes; they are not limited to six thousand nor six million of dicasts, but are divided into as many legions or departments as there are States, counties, cities, villages, hamlets, municipal or private corporations, and industrial employments yet, according to Hall and DeCuir, the common notions of justice prevailing among this enlightened body of tradesmen are superior to the policy and wisdom of the Fourteenth Amendment. In spirit and letter these judges deny the verity of the common law maxim ubi jus ibi remedium. They assert that the right may be given by the Fourteenth Amendment but the remedy can be refused by the public, and as we understand Hall and DeCuir, the courts of civil jurisdiction have only the office of affirming their discretionary arbitrament, as the Supreme Court did in that celebrated cause. Is it not manifest that rules of construction which it would be absurd to apply to white citizens are not less ridiculous when applied to others?
The Fourteenth Amendment requires in its interpretation a system of comprehensive principles, not a dispute about words or doctrines. The great governing, controlling law, which supplies the link in the change or transition from slavery to
