Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1898-03-16
NUMBER A

States supreme bench, spurned IL
away, saying:
"'Only natural persons can be born
or naturaiized; only natural persons
can be deprived of life or liberty; so
that it is clear that artificial persons
are excluded from the provisions of
the first two clauses just quoted. If
we adopt the construction claimed by
complaiuants, we must hold that the
word person. where il occurs the
third time in this section, has a wider
and more comprehensive meaning than
in the other clauses of the section
where it occurs. This would be a con-
struction for which we find no warrant
in the rules of Interpretation.
"The corporation lawyers will find
this case reported in Woods United
States circuit report, page S. That
decision was made in 1870, and it re-
mained the unquestioned law followed
by California, Rhode Island and other
states and 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 highway robbery,
pick mans pocket or loot public
treasury, it disguises itself as per
SON. and goes out on its mission of
pluuder. Nobody but a slave or a
knave will yield assent to the hideous
distortion of meaning which Judge
Harlan gives to the word person as
used in the fourteenth amendment,
and upon which he bottoms his famous
decision, and which shows to what
depths of iniquity the supreme court
of the United States has descended"
Referring to the effect of the de-
cision on the proposed Kansas law,
Governor Leedy says:
Gas 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 what
ever. Ever since the decision of the
supreme court in the income tax case,
have had the utmost confidence in
the dishonesty and nefarious purposes
forced upon me by the fact that they
declared unconstitutional a law that
had been passed upon, signed and en-
forced by Abraham Lincoln as presi-
dent of the United States. Mr.. Lin
coin, in signing this law and enforc-
ing 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 report of the administrator of
his estate shows that in his conc1u-
Sims he had not been moved by cor
rupt means. Will the administrators
of the estates of Judge Shiras and his
gang be able to show as much for
them? Being profoundly convinced
by these considerations that the SUI
preme court had gone so far along the
path of iniquity that it could not and
would not retrace its steps, the rail-
road law that 1 propose was framed es-
pecially to accord with what 1 con-
ceived would be the decision of the
court. am sorry to say that my
opinion of the nefarious practices of
the court have been justified. But
this bill having been drawn for the
purpose of according, not with the con-
S tuition, the law, or the decisions of
the courts previous to 1885, but drawn
to accord with the views now held by
the court, that the rates must be reas-
enable to be constitutional and that
the court is the sole Judge of that mat
ter, l believe this bill will agree with
the reasoning of the court. In the first
place, as maximum, a rate has been
fixed that was made by the railroads
themselves, and which, if enacted into
law, would be rate indorsed by the
railroads and by the legislature, and 1
want to put the courts on record to see
if this is a reasonable rate or not, and
if they declare it unreasonable, upon
what grounds.
again, the court in its decision
takes the ground that the making of
rates is judicial, not a legislative
function. Having read the decisions
of the courts on this question since
they first parted with their virtue in
1885, and seeing no place for them to
land short of this position, / prepared
this bill extending the powers of the
railroad commissioners SO as to give
them equal judicial standing with the
district courts. This was for the pur-
pose of having the supreme court pass
upon the question as to whether one
court can attack the decisions of an
other collaterally. Either the court
will have to say that, and thereby set
aside the universal practice of the
courts of the United States, or they
will have to say that the rates made
by the commission cannot be enjoined.
| and only changed upon appeal. If We
can force the courts to. admit the cor
rectness of these two propositions.
which are in line with and
not opposed TO this last de-
cisiou of the court, we will have gained
/ a point. If, on the other hand, the
court still pursues the corrupt and rot
ten practices that it has heretofore.
by changing its decisions to suit the
shifting interests of the railroad cor
lporations, it will make piaIu the fact
that the people of the United States
need not look further to the courts for
Justice, but that they must either
make up their minds to submit, not
Ionfy to the present exactions, but to
the payment of future mortgages that
may be piled upon them by the rail-
roads, or they must take issue with
the courts and exact from them guar
antees that provisions of the coustittf.