The morning star and Catholic messenger. [volume] (New Orleans [La.]) 1868-1881, 1875-10-17

This principle may be found limited ut in
the records OF our own Supreme Court. In
the case of the Draining Co., IL An. 335,
Judge Spoford said:
Perhaps . Court may go behind the Consti-
tuition to seek unwritten bill of rights,
which is said to lie at the foundation of every
iree government, and there and q principle on
which to check legislation not specially in
hibited by the Constitution. Like'the right of
revolution, such power is sometimes obScurely
limited at in judicial opinions.
In taking this stand Judge Spofford was
in advance of his generation, for our
Supreme Court in the same volume of Re-
ports, p. 300, State We. Hufty, had said:
It would be rebellion in q Judge to say that
plain and unqualified grant of power by the
Constitution to Q particular department was
null because against common right
much more despotic and frighful doc
trine than this had before that been held by
our Supreme Court in the case of Bryant
We. Campbell, Rob. All, afterwards aus
tanned in IL An. 169, viz:
The Legislature of this State, unlike Congress,
which can do nothing that the Federal constitu
ton does not authorize, may do everythin that
the State Constitution does not prohibit
The Topeka decision forever destroys
this scandalous judicial doctrine of despot-
lam, not only in Louisiana, but throughout
the Union. 1t says there is no deposit of
Unlimited power in the government, either
State or National, but that all their power
is defined. Aud not only that, bat that
there are private rights which cannot come
within the power or control of the State.
Indeed, q contrary doctrine would be one
not of freedom but of slavery. Any in
fringement on the sacred right of property
is, to that extent, an enslavement of it's
owner. If planter, under the old regime,
had emancipated his slaves, but retained
the right of taxing their incomes ad Hbitum,
they would still be slaves. If he may tax
them merely for their own benefit, to keep
the plantation in order, the houses in repair,
the roads in good condition, the police of
the peace in effective activity, etc.-they
are not, indeed, slaves, but if be may go
further and tax them for his own profit. or
to enrich nilsson, or by granting monopoly
of their custom to a merchant who is his
friend, then they are still slaves; their
earnings are really his property, their labor
is his property, they are themselves his
property. 1t may be that prudence will
prevent him from carrying his exactions
very far, but the same principle which
allows him to take part would make him
master of all.
And it is the same thing with taxation of
those who have never passed as slaves. If
taxed directly or indirectly for the benefit
of individuals or monopolies, or for any
thing but their own good, they are, to that
extent, slaves whether of king or of set
of carpet bag pensioners. Such taxation is
slavery, and slavery is prohibited by the
Constitution of the United States. 1t is
also divestiture of vested rights, and that,
too, is prohibited. 1t is further, and more
than all, q violation of those inalienable
rights of property more ancient and more
sacred than any Constitution.