free will and sovereign pleasure. Are great affirmative grants of political powers to be determined by this technical rule of verbal criticism? If so, its rigid application to other portions of the Constitution would erase from its pages many of its most important and salutary provisions. Such a principle, I apprehend, should never be recognized or adopted by any judicial tribunal, in determining the inherent and original rights of the citizen. It goes to abridge, instead of enlarging the constitutional guaranties of personal liberty.
If the Legislature have the custody of the people's arms and the treasury of the State, what becomes of the separation and division of the political powers of the government? Are not those powers united in the same body of magistracy? And if this be the case, the balance of the Constitution is overthrown, and the State then possesses no real security for personal liberty. It is no answer to this argument, to say that the people may abuse the privilege or right of keeping and bearing arms. The Constitution thought and ordained it otherwise; and therefore it was deemed far safer to entrust the right to their own judgment and discretion, rather than to the will or ambition of the Legislature; and this right was excepted out of the general powers of the government, and declared inviolate. Now, if the Legislature had the right to forbid the people from keeping arms secretly, may they not prohibit them from carrying them openly or exposed? and if they could do this, may they not appoint the times and places when and where they shall be borne? And as the construction relied on assumes the principle that they can only be used for a specific and single purpose, then of course the whole subject matter, in regard to keeping and bearing either private or public arms, falls within the power of the Legislature, and they can control or regulate it in any manner that they think proper. This principle I utterly repudiate. I deny that any just or free government upon earth has the power to disarm its citizens, and to take from them the only security and ultimate hope that they have for the defence of their liberties and their rights. I deny this, not only upon constitutional grounds, but upon the immutable principles of natural and equal justice, that all men have a right to, and which to deprive them of amounts to tyranny and oppression. Can it be doubted, that if the Legislature, in moments of high political
