pled under foot by the jurisprudence which has only a primitive conception of the justice and of the ethics of the Fourteenth Amendment. We know that the jurisprudence in Hall and DeCuir, which substitutes the "free and untrammelled discretion of the public to ostracise and disenfranchise the civil rights of any class of citizens" for justice, is a repudiation of the Fourteenth Amendment. The subject is too vast to admit of discussion in this address; it will furnish matter for a great and important work, involving the legal status of the civil rights of all American citizens. No matter how long enshrouded in the labyrinthine mazes of obscure decisions and jargon of words it may have slept, the absolute verity of the sublime truth will be in the fulness of time revealed: that the grand bond which unites American citizens, the glory of our common country, is the universality of that liberty which makes the meanest member of the state sacred in the glory of its reflected lustre, that liberty which abounds with pure and heartfelt love for the cause of humanity, regardless of class, color, race, creed, or previous condition; the Christian liberty which imposes the duty of universal benevolence and charity, because the soul of each human being is alike precious and immortal in the sight of the great Author of nature and government.
