pose of a calm and impartial judicial inquiry, and tend at the same time to bring the subject within the range of vision of the non-professional reader, to assume an unbiased attitude, and follow steadily and closely the friendly inartificial dialogue which opens in this chapter between our unprejudiced student from abroad and the illustrious Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. The former has already been introduced and described as having suddenly landed in our midst, without experience of the chill blasts of racial adversity, and being unacquainted with the long-established order of white civil rights in America.
"I am free to confess," said the Chief Justice, "that I am anxious to see in what light the question of civil rights presents itself to the dispassionate mind of one who is unfamiliar with our local institutions. Should you desire to glance at the decisions, permit me to explain, as a preliminary, that questions daily occur in the course of practice demonstrating the obscurity of the subject. Like the problems relating to the previous condition of slavery, the doctrines of civil rights and their enforcement puzzle the greatest adepts in jurisprudence and political science. The subject requires deliberation, patient investigation, and sound judgment; for it is a misfortune inseparable from human affairs that these mixed questions are rarely considered with that freedom from prejudice which is essential to a just estimate of their tendency to advance or obstruct the public good. I make no apology for not referring you to the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States and to those of the various State courts; for you must bear in mind that, according to our form of procedure, we pass only upon such questions as the records of the causes tried by the inferior courts present, and are in nowise responsible for the issues thereby and therein raised, upon which questions of civil rights have been determined.
"A review of these cases will reveal the varied aspects in which the civil rights of our American citizens of African descent have been viewed by the courts throughout the country; and after a critical examination you cannot fail to surmise that some imperceptible mystery, preventing the enforcement of the Fourteenth Amendment, was at work beneath their sur-
