cannot, by legal enactment, when the use is at the time not required or necessary for military purposes, prohibit it, is to my mind as mischievous as it is erroneous. To assert that a citizen is entitled to protection from his government, and then deny to that government the means of securing it, is a contradiction in terms, difficult if not impossible to be reconciled.
The provision of the Federal constitution, under which the appellee claims his discharge, is but an assertion of that general right of sovereignty belonging to independent nations, to regulate their military force. Nor has the General Assembly attempted to interfere with the exercise of that right. The enactment in question is a mere police regulation of the State for the better security and safety of its citizens, having reference to weapons and arms of a wholly different character from such as are ordinarily used for warlike purposes. The principle contained in the provision of our constitution, which declares that "the freemen of this State shall keep and bear arms for their common defence," is precisely similar to that of the United States; it stands upon the same ground, and is declaratory of the same right. The terms "common defence," in ordinary language, mean national defence. The reason for keeping and bearing arms, given in the instrument itself, is clearly explanatory, and furnishes the true interpretation of the claim in question. The militia constitutes the shield and defence for the security of a free State; and to maintain that freedom unimpaired, arms and the right to use them for that purpose are solemnly guarantied. The personal rights of the citizen are secured to him through the instrumentality and agency of the constitution and laws of the country; and to them he must appeal for the protection of his private rights and the redress of his private injuries. To deprive the General Assembly of the power to regulate and control those rights, when not inconsistent with the grant to the General Government, would be to take away from the State the terrors of the law and the restraint of its moral influence, upon which its prosperity mainly depends. It is true, the terms of the grant are affirmative; but affirmative words are often, in their operation, negative of other objects than those affirmed; and in the construction of an article of the constitution, the whole must be taken in view, and that construction adopted,
