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condition upon some procrustean theory of uniformity, manifests thereby its total unfitness to be entrusted with any species of authority.
The Supreme Court of the United States was not created to sit in judgment upon sentimentalisms. With the opinions which one class, order or integer of a people may entertain of another, it has no legitimate concern. There is nothing in its commission which constitutes it a judge of the abstract merits of states of society; such merits being matters of which there is no known standard by which they may be estimated. Nevertheless, as the court, in its wisdom, has seen fit to regard social qualities as within its jurisdiction, and to make its views thereon the basis of a decision of almost unprecedented portent, a brief comparison of the state of society which it approves with that which it condemns, will not be impertinent.
The factors of every mode of communital arrangement regard their own as the true expression of the perfect in principle. Practically it may exhibit grievous diseases and blemishes, but these are held to be not inherent but accidental; which only need the appliance of supervisions, penalties and other curative processes for their removal. Entertaining these views, they correspondingly look upon every other social mode as wilfully wrong, as sinful and malignant, as contrary to the laws of nature, or, as the case may be, to the commands of God; are prepared to pronounce it wicked and dangerous, inimical to good government, and in direct contravention of the dictates of civilization and the principles of Christianity. Its defects are affirmed to be intrinsic; the necessary outgrowths of its unsound constitution. They are cankers, plague-spots, demanding the knife and the cantery, applied not merely to the diseased tissue, but to the body in which they originate. Hence they feel it their duty to agitate, and the uneasy of their species do agitate. They are prepared to make great sacrifices—not of their own goods and chattels, perhaps, but of the ease and peace of mind of the reprobates—in order that the land may be disenthralled. They find it in the line of their duty to make the naughty, uncomfortable. With agitation, heat is evolved, and communicated; and the sentimental pestilence takes on a malignant form and spreads. The pulpit, which makes haste to catch every prevailing malady, begins to resound. The platform, with its weather-cock out for popular breezes, becomes animated. The press, always on the watch for sensations and cir-
