value, as if this government were constitutional only in form,—
Whose hollow womb inherits naught but bones,—
it is this nefarious system, attempted to be executed through fraud or force, which is not limited to color, race, or the previous condition of any citizen,—it is this evil-disposedness of ever-recurring turbulent, insidious, and covert factions, protean in shape, which will not down at the bidding, which will not yield to the authoritative force, nor recognize the "unblenched majesty" of the Constitution, which calls with solemnity for a close scrutiny into the working of the machinery of jurisprudence, in the administration of the justice of that grand pledge for the equality of all men before the law, the Fourteenth Article of Amendment to the Constitution.
Although jurisprudence may be regarded in the nature of an apparatus for the administration of justice, yet it is not a machine, inert, and without natural power of self-propulsion, to be set in motion either by the almighty fiat of party or by the gross delusion of popular opinion. So foul a blot, upon the escutcheon of those who dispense justice for the state, as the bare suspicion that its mighty axe in their hands could cut two ways, that its sharp edge could be bated by the foul breath of popular opinion, or uplifted at the almighty fiat of party, would render questionable, throughout all the departments of justice, the moral parentage of the decrees of all her ministers. And a few such precedents, of distorted birth but poor validity, would shortly destroy the harmonious working and in time wither the strength of our entire system of jurisprudence.
The question is not whether a juridical construction of the Fourteenth Amendment which defeats its spirit, and deprives the colored race of the authorities, rights, and liberties guaranteed under constitutional limitation, may not, in view of their former condition and present relation, be the wiser course, and be actuated by good will, benevolence, and a high moral consideration for the permanent advantage of the citizens for whose betterment this amendment was made a part of the Constitution. The moral beauty and comeliness of so virtuous a purpose could be safely admitted; but the objection is that it
