The representative. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1893-1901, 1893-08-02
VERY IMPORTANT.
How the Courts have EncrOached
upon the Rights of the
People
And are Turning this Nation into
an Oligarchy of Lawyers Con-
trOlled by Corporations.
An Article which Every RefOrmer
Should Read.

An Article which Every RefOrmer
Should Read.
I'VE desire to especially call the at
tention of our readers to one of the
most striking and important arti-
cles that have appeared for long
time. We regret that we have not
space to get more than extracts
from it, but we shall continue them
from week to week.
The article is from the March
April 1892 number of ''The American
Law Review" published at st. Louis,
one of the oldest and most distin-
guished law magazines of this coun-
try. 1t is entitled 'Abuses of Cor
porate Privileges" written by Judge
Seymour d. Thompson, Chief editor
of the Review and one of the ablest
lawyers in the West We want our
readers to remember, while reading
this significant article, that it's bold
and radical utteranceS are not from
some populist stump orator, but
from Judge and an attorney by
profession. Nothing could indicate
more clearly than this article the
abyss towards which the free people
of this country are advancing.
The article begins as follows:
Eor poapv voarc tho OuoCtiOn has
been addressing itself to the Amer
lean people, and pressing with more
and more earnestness for decision,
whether the corporation is to rule
the State, or the State the corpora
tion. Corporations have been null
tiplying with an accelerated rapidity
and invading and appropriating
every field of industry. Their pro-
moters have purchased, by bribery
and corruption, exclusive privileges
from the temporary tenants of leg
islative power, and judicial casuistry
has made these privileges irrepeal-
able and endowed them with immOr-
tality. They have found means to
combine all the corporations en-
gagged in producing particular COM
mOdities so as to engrOss those COM
mOdities, suppress all competition
therein, crush out and destroy all
rival producers; and, aided by the
Chinese Wall of protective tariff, eX-
Guiding the worlds competition,
they have thus been enabled to die
tate to the American people what
they shall pay for them, without
submitting, as other people have to
do, to the Inconvenience of having
the price regulated by the natural
law of supply and demand. At every
step in this baleful progress they
have had the aid of the only branch
of our national government which is
nOn-elective, which is in no practical
sense responsible to the people or to
any one for it's acts, and which is to-
tally out of touch with the people
in it's sympathies,- Federal jul
dietary. Individual members of that
judiciary have struggled for popular
right, but they have been overborne
by the general current. The pro-
gress of usurpati on has been as
steady in one direction as the opera
tiOn of that mechanical continuance
called the ratchet, or as the march
of glacier, or the southwark move
ment of the great and wonderful
Russian nation to execute the will
of Peter Jurisdiction has been
seized on casuistic pretenses; the
right of trial by jury has been
set aside by vast reaches of country:
the courts have gone into the bust
ness of the common carrier; the by
laws of the corporations have over
topped in the judicial estimation the
legislation of States achich acere once
called sovereign; and constitutional
ordinances, earned on the field of
battle and intended as charters of
human liberty, having been turn
ed into the shield of Incorporated
monopoly. The barons of corporate
power, outrivaling in wealth and
splendor the merchant kings of Ven
ice, have purchased of venal legisla-
tors seates in the senate of the Unit
ed States, and have found no diff
Guilty in placing their allies on the
judicial bench, throughout all this
the press,-that 0gis of a free people,
has been directly or indirectly sub
sidized into silence. Or where it
would speak, it has not been able to
speak, because the bar, who alone
can instruct the press in legal mat
tiers, pursuing their courtier-like ha-
bits, have not dared to raise their
voices in public opposition to the
work of the judges in whose courts
they must earn their daily bread.
Meanwhile the masses of the people,
scattered, isolated, ignorant,