The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1898-03-10
LEEDY IS HOT.
CONTINUED from First Page.1

IOF corporations, say this. Mr.. Hare IN
his work on American Constitutional
Law, says;
The main object of this amendment
! Is clear It is to render all persons born
! or naturalized in the United States and
| especially the recentIy ernanciDated ne
! groes, citizens of the United States and
| OF the state wherein they reside and
also to afford the possessors of such
citizenship an effectuaI guarantee
! against arbitrary and UNEQUAL Iegfsla-
ton on the part of the several states.
| The amendment was adopted in 1868.
and nobody dreamed that it had anv
appncatlon to corporations until an in
Surance company down in Louisiana
tried to crawl under its protection and
I cover, upon the ground that it was a
person Mr.. Justice Woods of the
wards went upon the United States su-
preme bench, spurned it away, say
ing:
Only natural persons can be born or
naturalized; only natural persons can
be deprived of life or liberty; so that it
IS clear that artificial persons are ex-
GUIDED from the provisions of the first
two clauses just quoted. If we adopt
the construction claimed by complain
antsysS we must hold that the word per
son. where it occurs the third time in
this section, has a wider and more com
prenenS1Ve meaning than in the other
causes OF the section where it occurs
This would be a construction for which
we ind no warrant in the rules of inter-
probation. The plain and evident mean
ing OF the section is, that the person to
whom the equal protection of the law
is secured are persons born or natural
lied or endowed with life and liberty
and consequently natural and not ar
tthcial persons.
THE corporation lawyers will find this
case reported in 1 Woods United States
circuit report, page IS. That decision
was made in 1870, and it remained the
unqueStiOned law followed by Califor-
MA. Rhode Island and 0fhpr CT a nd
by the federal courts until 1882, when
Judge Field and another federal Justice
OF the peace named Sawyer decided the
other way, and since then whenever a
corporation starts out to commit hiG,P
way robbery, pick a mans pocket or
loot public treasury, it DISCUSSES itself
as a person and goes out on it's mis-
sion OF plumber. Nobody but a slave or
a knave will yield assent to the hideous
distortion of meaning which Judge Har-
Ian gives to the word person as used
IN the 18th amendment, and upon which
he bottoms his famous decision, and
which shows to what depths of iniqui-
ty the supreme court of the United
States has descended -
Gov. Leedy here quotes several decis-
ions of the United States supreme court
-prefacing the quotations as follows:
I desire to quote some of the Opin-
ions of the supreme court of the United
States before it went into partnership
with Morgan, Vanderbilt, Gould & Co.,
in opposition to the opinion they hold
in the Nebraska rate case"
The decisions quoted are Chief Justice
Marshall in the case of the Providence
Bank VS.. Billings & Pitt, the Maryland
case in the 21st Wallace and the cele-
brated Mum case. Continuing, after
quoting the decisions, Governor Leedy
says:
yet, today I see that Chauncey De-
pew, uphOlding the recent decision of
his associate counsel on the supreme
bench Of the United States. says: AS
to what are reasonable rates, the SUI
preme court would decide finally
And in October, 1876, in the case of
Pick VS.. G. N. r. company, the supreme
court of the United States said, Chief
Justice Waite delivering the opinion:
6 AS to the claim that the courts
must decide what is reasonable, not the
legislature, this is not new to this case.
1t has been fully considered in Mum
VS.. Illinois, where property has been
clothed with a public interest the legis-
lature may fix a limit to that which
shall in the law be reasonable for it's
use. This limit binds the courts as well
as the people. If it has been improperly
fixed, the legislature, not the courts,
must be appealed to for the change
This law is applied to the maximum
rate law of Nebraska would say that if
the charge fixed by the legislature of
Nebraska is unreasonable and seemed
improper, the supreme court of the Uni
ted States says, that if it has been i'm
properly fixed, the legislature, not the
courts must be appealed to for the
change. But now comes Mr.. Chauncey
DepeW's associate counsel and in the
decision of the railroad attorneys which
was read by justice of the supreme
court of the United States sitting on the
bench of that august tribunal, after
waiting for a long year to give their
subsidized newspapers time to prepare
the public mind for the enOrmity, tells
us that it is time to reverse the decis-
ions that have stood from the days of
John Marshall and to say to the COM
mOnWealthS of this Union that they no
longer have the power to decide what
is reasonable, that the courts them
selves have taken that into their hands;
that whenever a state legislature shall
cut the rates of a railroad three per
cent, the supreme court of the United
States shall spring to the rescue of the
corporations that most of its members
represent and inform the legislature
that they can't make the laws that
John Marshall and Waite and a dozen
supreme courts have held to be con-
StitutiOnal and just"
Referring to the effect of the decision
on the proposed Kansas law, Governor
Leedy says:
LAS to the effect of this decision upon
the bill proposed by me in regard to
rates and placed before the people of
Kansas, it will have no effect whatever.
Ever since the decision of the supreme
court in the income tax case, / have
had the utmost confidence in the dis
honesty and nefariOus purposes of the
court. These conclusions were forced
upon me by the fact that
they declared unconstitutional
law that had been passed
upon. signed, and enforced by Abraham
Lincoln as president of the United States.
Mr.. Lincoln, in signing this law and en-
forcing it to the extent of collecting hun
dreds of millions of dollars, made plain
the fact that in his opinion the law was
constitutional. As to the wisdom and
knowledge of law possessed by Abraham
Lincoln, need not speak; and the re-
port of the administra tor of his estate
shows that in his conclusions he had not
been moved by corrupt means. VIII the
administrators of the estates of Judge