The representative. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1893-1901, 1893-08-30
labor, worry and expense to undo it's

LABOR, worry and expense to undo It's
mischiefs.
The fact that it has been repealed
inspires our confidence in ourselves
as self-governing people. The peo-
pie, after contemplating it with
amazement for a time, seized upon
the old grey keystone and pulled it
down with scorn.
THE DREAD SCOTT DECISION.
1t is not the first instance of the
repeal of doctrine issuing from a
Judicial throne. A more memorab BILE
instance was the repeal of the bred
Scott decision. That Infamous ju-
dicial illumination, which dehuman-
lied man, was repealed amid the
thunder of cannon. A million men
sprang to arms to repeal it. The
fire of God filed them. They ad-
vanced to the charge shouting the
battle cry Of freedom. And the
earth shook, and the clouds vibrated
to the Eternal Name.
THE NEW CHARTER OF LIBERTY.
On the very points of their bayo-
nets they trust into the constitu-
tion a new charter of liberty, the
Fourteenth Amendment. In doing
that they supposed that they we're
merely providing a safeguard for the
newly emancipated slave, and for
the rights of the scattered Union
men of the South against hostile
and tyrannical majorities. They did
not suppose that they we're erecting
another Federal barrier around cor
porate oppression and power. But,
as was suggested in the argument
of distinguished lawyer before the
supreme court of the United States,
"they builded wiser than they
knew" Indeed they did. The sun
set of life may have given to the
eminent authors of that instrument
mystical lore. To some of them
3
ing men
may have become a crystal, so that
they could see through it, and so
that they could hear spirit voices
behind the wall and learn their ell
emental secrets, power and forces.
They ought, then, easily to have
foreseen that court which had al
ready declared that a corporation aDas a
"citizen" would find no difficulty in
declaring that it was ''person."
But what if it did? The new
charter of liberty declared that no
state should deprive any person of
life, liberty or property without due
process of law, or deny to any person
within it's jurisdiction the equal pro-
lection Of the laws. What if judi
cial Interpretation should apply this
prohibition to the protection to
those artificial persons called cor
porations? Surely no corporation
ought to be deprived of life, liberty
or property without due process of
law, nor ought to be denied the
equal protection of the laws. But
that was not the point. There was
nothing new in this amendment,
except that it turned a provision
which had always existed in Magma
Charta, and which was to be found,
in some form of expression or other,
in the constitution of every state of
the Union, into a Federal prohibi-
tiOn against the several states. 1t
had come down to them in Magma
Charta in the form of the celebrated
declaration that "NO man shall be
taken and imprisoned, or deprived
of his freehold, his liberties or his
privileges, or exiled or outlawed, or
otherwise destroyed, but by the
Judgment of his peers and the law
of the land" Judicial interpreter
tion had always understood the
words Claw of the land" to have the
same meaning as the words "due
process of law" But surely the new
amendment did not intend to make
that due process of law which had
never been due process of law before.
From time immemorial the Par
lament of Great Britain had exer-
cised the power of regulating the
rates of charges of persons and cor
porations engaged in employments
which affected the public interests.
[ shall not offer, before a body of
lawyers, a single instance to prove
that this had always been a legisla-
tive, and never judicial question,
Christ and the Nj