Part 14 (1/2)

resided in either.

And the question was never settled, until it was settled at the cost of a million of lives, and some ten thousand millions of money. And then it was settled only as the same question had so often been settled before, to wit, that ”the heaviest battalions” are ”sovereign” over the lighter.

The only real ”sovereignty,” or right of ”sovereignty,” in this or any other country, is that right of sovereignty which each and every human being has over his or her own person and property, so long as he or she obeys the one law of justice towards the person and property of every other human being. This is the only _natural_ right of sovereignty, that was ever known among men. All other so-called rights of sovereignty are simply the usurpations of impostors, conspirators, robbers, tyrants, and murderers.

It is not strange that we are in such high favor with the tyrants of Europe, when our Supreme Court tells them that our government, although a little different in form, stands on the same essential basis as theirs of a hundred years ago; that it is as absolute and irresponsible as theirs were then; that it will spend more money, and shed more blood, to maintain its power, than they have ever been able to do; that the people have no more rights here than there; and that the government is doing all it can to keep the producing cla.s.ses as poor here as they are there.

SECTION XXIV.

John Marshall has the reputation of having been the greatest jurist the country has ever had. And he unquestionably would have been a great jurist, if the two fundamental propositions, on which all his legal, political, and const.i.tutional ideas were based, had been true.

These propositions were, first, that government has all power; and, secondly, that the people have no rights.

These two propositions were, with him, cardinal principles, from which, I think, he never departed.

For these reasons he was the oracle of all the rapacious cla.s.ses, in whose interest the government was administered. And from them he got all his fame.

I think his record does not furnish a single instance, in which he ever vindicated men's natural rights, in opposition to the arbitrary legislation of congress.

He was chief justice thirty-four years: from 1801 to 1835. In all that time, so far as I have known, he never declared a single act of congress unconst.i.tutional; and probably never would have done so, if he had lived to this time.

And, so far as I know, he never declared a single State law unconst.i.tutional, on account of its injustice, or its violation of men's natural rights; but only on account of its conflict with the const.i.tution, laws, or treaties of the United States.

He was considered very profound on questions of ”sovereignty.” In fact, he never said much in regard to anything else. He held that, in this country, ”sovereignty” was divided: that the national government was ”sovereign” over certain things; and that the State governments were ”sovereign” over all other things. He had apparently never heard of any natural, individual, human rights, that had never been delegated to either the general or State governments.

As a practical matter, he seemed to hold that the general government had ”sovereignty” enough to destroy as many of the natural rights of the people as it should please to destroy; and that the State governments had ”sovereignty” enough to destroy what should be left, if there should be any such. He evidently considered that, to the national government, had been delegated the part of the lion, with the right to devour as much of his prey as his appet.i.te should crave; and that the State governments were jackals, with power to devour what the lion should leave.

In his efforts to establish the absolutism of our governments, he made himself an adept in the use of all those false definitions, and false a.s.sumptions, to which courts are driven, who hold that const.i.tutions and statute books are supreme over all natural principles of justice, and over all the natural rights of mankind.

Here is his definition of law. He professes to have borrowed it from some one,--he does not say whom,--but he accepts it as his own.

Law has been defined by a writer, whose definitions especially have been the theme of _almost_ universal panegyric, ”_To be a rule of civil conduct prescribed by the supreme power in a State._” In our system, the legislature of a State is the supreme power, in all cases where its action is not restrained by the const.i.tution of the United States.--_Ogden vs. Saunders, 12 Wheaton 347._

This definition is an utterly false one. It denies all the natural rights of the people; and is resorted to only by usurpers and tyrants, to justify their crimes.

The true definition of law is, that it is a fixed, immutable, natural principle; and not anything that man ever made, or can make, unmake, or alter. Thus we speak of the laws of matter, and the laws of mind; of the law of gravitation, the laws of light, heat, and electricity, the laws of chemistry, geology, botany; of physiological laws, of astronomical and atmospherical laws, etc., etc.

All these are natural laws, that man never made, nor can ever unmake, or alter.

The law of justice is just as supreme and universal in the moral world, as these others are in the mental or physical world; and is as unalterable as are these by any human power. And it is just as false and absurd to talk of anybody's having the power to abolish the law of justice, and set up their own will in its stead, as it would be to talk of their having the power to abolish the law of gravitation, or any of the other natural laws of the universe, and set up their own will in the place of them.

Yet Marshall holds that this natural law of justice is no law at all, in comparison with some ”rule of civil conduct prescribed by [what he calls] the supreme power in a State.”

And he gives this miserable definition, which he picked up somewhere--out of the legal filth in which he wallowed--as his sufficient authority for striking down all the natural obligation of men's contracts, and all men's natural rights to make their own contracts; and for upholding the State governments in prohibiting all such contracts as they, in their avarice and tyranny, may choose to prohibit. He does it too, directly in the face of that very const.i.tution, which he professes to uphold, and which declares that ”No State shall pa.s.s any law impairing the [natural] obligation of contracts.”

By the same rule, or on the same definition of law, he would strike down any and all the other natural rights of mankind.

That such a definition of law should suit the purposes of men like Marshall, who believe that governments should have all power, and men no rights, accounts for the fact that, in this country, men have had no ”_rights_”--but only such permits as lawmakers have seen fit to allow them--since the State and United States governments were established,--or at least for the last eighty years.

Marshall also said: