The daily Madisonian. [volume] (Washington City [i.e. Washington, D.C.]) 1841-1845, 1845-04-17
EQUAL La S.

or all the empty, meaningless, deceptive
cant phrases, most frequently used BY those
whose patriotism is entirely founded upon dol
lars and cents, upon calculations Of profit and
loss, there is none more hollow in itself, or more
prejudcial to the cause of progress and improve
ment so earnestly battled for by the Young De-
mocracy, than that which assures the American
people that they are supremacy blest in having
government of Equal Ldws.
That they shouldhare such government, is
well nigh universally admitted. Every Constr
tuition and every Bill of Rights declare it in
the very first sentence; but alas the position
is usually forgotten before the first paragraph is
completed, and denied almost as often as occa-
sion offers for punctual application of the prin
ciple. Yet THE PEopLE-good, easily satisfied
souls-because they indirectly make the laws,
imagine, as a matter of course, that all laws
must be made right; and from being so often
told that they ought to be, take it for granted
that they are so, and never think farther of the
matter. In the mean time, the feD who profit
by the law-created andlaw-fostered distinctions,
and indeed made them specially for their own
profit, are ever active in sustaining this cruelty
decep'ive idea and by thousand trivial and
even isise pretenses and false issues, are ever
leading the many off in any other direction but
the true one that would lead to the discovery
and correction of their wrong -doings.
We do not desire that our assertion that all
this talk about equal laws is deceptive, and that
all the pride and glory built upon the idea is fall
l. l.
The fact. Indeed, in this, we wish to be doubt
ed we desire that the assertion should be ques-
toned and discussed. 1t is only through the
portal of doubt, that man enters the temple of
knowledge; but direct, positive denial is as
fatal to truth, as blind, implicit assent is to phi
losophical wisdom. Let our assertion, then, be
neither accepted nor denied, but doubted
questoned--examined.
Look into the Constitution of the United
States and you will find the equal rights of man
as man, recognised as the basis, for the protec-
ton of which the Constitution was written, and
government itself instituted but when you look
to see in what way those rights have been pro-
tected, you will find the rights Of man have been
merged in the rights of property, and the rights
of the individual in the rights of the particular
class in which accident may have placed him.
Our government is superior to any other in the
single fact that it recognises the absolute right
of every man TO life; but at the very next step,
there is fearful and fatal denial of mans rights,
No man, even in this country, by virtue of the
simple fact that he is man, has right to ex-
pect constant labor; when it is on labor, on the
very fruits of labor that his very life depends
AS for the right to hold, use, and transmit pro-
perry, that is of very little consequence to him
from whom society withholds an equal chance
Of obtaining property; or to him who cannot
win by whole life of honest industry, what
another obtains by accident, in moment, by
special legislation.
1t is a sad-it should be startling truth,
that hardly one page of our statute books, is
undefaced with outrage and injustice; outrage,
because violence is done to the natural and So
cial rights of man injustice, because the penal
ties of the law do not fall equally on all who in
cur them.