Page images
PDF
EPUB

generalization are apparently not sufficiently broad to perceive that the miscellaneous crimes, assassinations, insurrections, banishments, bastiles, reigns of terror, sovereign conquerors, new parties, invasions, executions, revolts, intrigues, councils, treaties, annexations, leagues, reformations, conspirators, policies, cabals, impeachments all summed up, involve the recognition, denial, and reassertion before God and man, under the ever-varying phases of the political condition of mankind in the present and bygone ages, of the sacred principle of the equality of man's rights in the state; and they all seem to be directed toward this end; the fundamental doctrine of Christianity arising from its assertion of the common brotherhood of man by the

"Divinity that shapes our ends,

Rough-hew them how we will."

-Justice and Jurisprudence.

"Its unclarified eye has not penetrated beyond the surface of these great events, which teach that universal equality is the foundation of the stability of the state. It is blind to the stern events and terrible truths which glare out from the past. It seems unaware that the story of man in the Old World is written in the history of princes, kings, and tyrants who also and in like manner trampled this sacred principle beneath their unhallowed feet. These precedents for the disdain of the equality of man are contained in the field-books of ancient conquerors, those butchers of mankind who deluged the

earth with blood rather than submit to this law of right reason' and the whispering of the divinity within them." -Justice and Jurisprudence.

"These are only a few of the witnesses which attest the eternal struggle between the warring elements, tyranny against quality, seeking the overthrow of the divine principle which has entered into the economy of Providence ever since the foundation of governments. Upon France, following fast upon Louis XIV. and the iron scourges of their kind who rebelled against this decree of the great Author of governments on earth, came a terrific avenger, the French Revolution, making war upon the permanently privileged orders of the old states and overthrowing the fiendish tyrants who denied this Godgiven prerogative of man. It could find no sanctuary on earth; and inscrutable Providence, which does not always stay the impending avalanche, but, suddenly unbending the ordinances and letting loose the powers of nature, sometimes burns and wastes a vast country by the fiery current of a volcanic irruption, called up that gorgeous bloodstained specter, the terrific apparition of the French Revolution, which, like the bruised adder, turned and struck its mortal fangs inflamed with rage and hate' into those monsters who claimed the right divine to oppress, brutalize, and torture their brother man.”—Justice and Jurisprudence.

"The majesty of the principle of equality in the state is indeed inviolable. In the French Revolution, though

long delayed, this law, which had been grossly violated, struck back 'most serpent-like'; and the awful tragedy in which that lesson was veiled spared not any order in its progress. Justice, treading ruthlessly in its slippery, bloody shambles, cried aloud, saying, Why callest thou me murderer, and not rather the wrath of God, burning after the steps of the oppressor and cleansing the earth when it is wet with blood? And strange indeed it must seem if the working of Providence is not kept steadfastly in view, that while the sun of liberty was thus eclipsed; while the presiding demons of that storm of havoc from day to day 'nursed the dreadful appetite of death'; while the swinish commune sat at their banquet of blood, the multitude, with a fixed and determined will and in a strange but steadfast handwriting, traced upon the walls of Paris the true watchwords of human progress, Liberté, Fraternité, Egalité. It is the misunderstanding or misapplication of these terms which has constituted, through the courses of time, the original sin of all governments."-Justice and Jurisprudence.

"The principle of equality by due process of law is founded upon the doctrine that 'Man is by nature a political being.' The principles of equality before the law, by due process of law, occupy great historical places in the arena of the world's history. They cannot be interpreted by mere legal fiction generated by partisan passion. Their sap is not derived from the scholastic tree of technical jurisprudence. In their political and con

stitutional interpretation these venerable provisions touch the life of humanity. Their historical, Christian significance means 'the unity of the human in the divine Fatherhood.' The noble lineage of these legal phrases is to be traced through all those proverbs and axioms of freedom and liberty which represent the coined wisdom and humanity of past ages. In whatever language they are written, by whatever tongue they are spoken, their true interpretation and mission is: 'Justice against violence; Law against anarchy;' 'Freedom against oppression."―Justice and Jurisprudence.

"Some Paracelsus of heathendom, 'covered with the awful hoar of innumerable ages' and older far than jurisprudence, who had witnessed the mighty formations of the ages, and had come, in these latter days, to testify to the process of blood, through which the crude, coarse principle of inequality had been finally transmitted into that of pure equality in America, just as the mighty Meynour, conjured up by Bulwer in that marvel of creative genius, Zanoni, had watched the gradual change of gross metals into gold, the pearl, the diamond, and the ruby by the fire of the lamp of the Rosicrucians; some political seer, some Solon, familiar with all the precedents, principles, and charlatanry of despotism, would smile an icy smile when told by explanatory, excusatory, but selfaccusatory Jurisprudence, I have relaxed a little from a vigorous construction, a rigid enforcement of the constitutional, organic law, in order to accommodate its strict

equality of right to the weakness of our humanity."Justice and Jurisprudence.

"These gross approaches to inequality are the short cuts, the by-roads, over which the loathsome phantom, Despotism, always makes stealthy advances upon the territory of freedom."-Justice and Jurisprudence.

"Is it a task too Herculean for the intellectual backwardness of the enlightened aristocracy of America to apprehend the truth, that upon the divine side of this principle stand the Christian martyrs, the articles of Magna Charta, the Declaration of Independence, Washington, Sumner, Seward, Lincoln, those advance couriers of Equality, those agitators of the slavery question, the authors of civil rights, and an innumerable array of bright and shining lights? That by its human side stand Herod of Jewry, the Middle Ages of serfdo feudalism, slavery, the original compromise between the North and South embodied in the Constitution which acknowledged slavery, the Fugitive-Slave Law, and the slavery events which preceded secession and armed rebellion in America, the dark shadows of the spirit of the piratical Malay, the assassinating Thug, Booth, Czardom, Nihilism, the socialism of Chicago."—Justice and Jurisprudence.

[ocr errors]

"From prehistoric ages downward this divine principle has erected temples to the unknown Providence which worked by universal, inevitable law which altereth not; the law of a wise Providence, the unvaryingness of

« PreviousContinue »