The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1896-09-20
LETTERS FROM THE PEOPLE.
LINCOLN ON THE SUPREME COURT.

WAS He PoPULIsT, BRYAN DEMOCRAT AND
AN ANARCHIST ALL IN ONE?
8Fditor San Francisco CdlE-SIR: Permit me to
say in a preliminary remark that letters are
beginning to pour in on me inquiring why
am not writing for THE CALL, as usual, and
desire to say to my Populist friends thatit is
wholly my fault. have had so much COM
mittee work to do besides attending 10 the
new duties have undertaken as an editorial
writer on the new Popullst journal about to be
issued under the name of 1.-THE Californian"
that have not had hour could give to
writing dieter" for THE CALL, but shall try
to be prompt hereafter.
Much has been said in Republican newspa-
pers and by Repup lican orators since General
Harrison made his great speech in New York
City, August 81, in Carnegie Hall, opening the
campaign in the East as TO the dangerous and
revolutionary attitude of Mr.. Bryan toward
the Supreme Court of the United States, and
as q plain Populist it seems to me that the
danger TO American liberty and the eonstitu-
ton of our country lies III the opposite dlrec-
ton entirely. On that occasion General Har-
rison said:
1.-THE Supreme Court, the. most digniied
judicial body in the world, was APP
pointed to interpret the laws and the
constitution, and when that court pro-
nounces decree as to the power OF
question, there is but one right method If we
uisagree"-to amend the constitution. The
question at issue, the reader will remember, is
whether the Supreme Court had right to de-
clare the income tax unconstitutional; In
other words, whether the Supreme Court is a
coordinate branch of the Government, or the
supreme authority over all.
We have Harrison's view, and now let US
read what Lincoln said in his first inaugural
address on the Limitation of the authority of
the Supreme Court: 81 do not forget the posi-
ton assumed by some that CONSTITUTE onal
questions are to be decided by the Supreme
Court, nor do l deny that such decision must
be binding to the parties to the suit
If the policy of the Government upon the
vital questions affecting the whole people is to
be irreyocably fixed by the decisions OF the Su-
preme Court the moment they are made, as in
ordinary cases between parties in personal
actions, the people will have ceased to be their
cwn masters. having to that extent resigned
their Government into the hands OF that emf
| nent tribunal
Which is right, Lincoln or Harrison? If
Harrison and the Mckinley Republicans are
right then Lincoln is dangerously and radi-
cally wrong. i hold with Lincoln, and 1 can
distinctly remember that the same charge was
made against the early Republicans and abo-
lttionists because of their attitude of avowed
antagonlsm to the decision of the Su-
preme Court in the famous bred Scott
case, which was to the effect that "the
negro has no rights which the white man
is bound to respect" OF course that decision
was warmly defended by the slave power
which ruled the Nation and the Supreme
Court then just as the money power does now.
The same charges were made by the slave
power against Lincoln because he denounced
the bred Scott decision as the money power
now makes against Bryan because he de-
nounces the income tax decision. Lincoln was
then just as revolutionary as Bryan is now.
The Supreme Court was held just as infallible
by the slave power then as IL is now by the
money power and Harrison.
The slave power then had It's orators, its
newspapers and its Harrisons, who said of
Lincoln and the Republican party just w hat
Harrison said the other night in New York of
Bryan and the Peoples party In solemn tones
they said, as Harrison says now: "You are to
answer then, my fellow-citizens, in all the
gravity OF great crisis whether you will sus-
tain party that proposes to destroy the ball
ance which our fathers instituted in our form
OF government, and whenever tumultuous
Congress does not agree with the Supreme
Court and subservient President" etc. Dear
mel dear me! Think of "tumultuous Con-
gress" OF Populists and Bryan Democrats and
Silver Republicans, with Bryan as ''a subser-
Went President" and weep for your country.
Lincoln says that elf the policy of the Gov
eminent is to be fixed by the Supreme Court"
in word II Congress is subject to the Supreme
Court, 1.-The people will have ceased TO be their
own masters" and this court will bseome
their master in so far as they consent TO the
subordination of their Congress, the law-mak-
ing department of the Government to this
non-electve life-tenure, autocratic Supreme"
Court. Harrison SAYS that 'when that court
pronounces decree as to the powers of
Congress or as TO any other constitutional
question" why that decree" is to stand till
II car be changed by constitutional amend
ment. Lincoln says that If the people allow
this court to fix the limit TO those powers of
congress they nave ceased 10 be their own
masters, ETC., thereby implying in plain terms
that they, the people, must resist these en-
croachments on their liberties or they consent
to the mastery OF the Supreme Court
But listen once more to General Harrison:
81 cannot exaggerRte the gravity and the i'm
portance and the danger of the assault upon
our constitutional form of Government"
meaning that if Bryan is elected these corpo-
ration-lawyer Judges with which the court
has been packed in recent years, fact so no.
tortous as to be public disgrace) will have
their infallibility annulled by the appoint
ment OF additional judges who will not try to
subordinate Congress and will sustain the
| rights of the people in their integrity. What
an assault-on the corporations and the usur-
pations OF that infallible COURT Think of a
decree" OF that infallible court being reversed
| in few weeks in the income-tax case by a
| 'right-about-face' of one Judge, who thus saved
the millionaires about $50, 100000.
General Harrison then referred to an "Eng-
lish friends" criticism, but did 1t occur to
him to refer to the fact that an act OF Parlia-
ment stands as law, and no supreme" court
or tribunal of any kind ever undertook to set it
aside, except one-the people when they repeal
1t? The acts of Congress should stand Just the
same in the United States till "decree" of
the people annuls them. That is not the prov.
1nee of the Supreme Court.
But have passed my limits and will reserve
other points for another time.
JOSEPH AsBURY JOHNSON.
San Francisco. Sent 1900