"These Amendments," he continued, "granting civil rights to American citizens of African descent, involve the eternal difference between the rights of freedom and wrongs of slavery, and should never be subject to sectional bias, to the fluctuations of public opinion, to race-prejudice, nor to industrial, social, or individual idiosyncrasies and interests. In their workings these great principles of civil liberty must be immutable and independent of the public, corporate, or individual interests and prejudices, upon which it is assumed they produce hardships."
The Chief Justice, continuing, said, "The saviours of the nation, by the invention and enforcement of a rigorous system of taxation, produced the means to sustain the national credit; for at the commencement of the Rebellion our treasury was nearly empty. Billions were thus raised, entailing sacrifices upon the whole Union, and half a million of lives were lost to secure those very civil rights which it is asserted a two-penny public servant may now repudiate because he may lose a dime in his business if the civil rights of one class of citizens are not sacrificed to the objections of another class. Those illustrious friends of mankind who represented the Republican party were a noble band, now admired by men of every political faith. Wherever the language of civilization is spoken they are regarded as great teachers and thinkers; they are acknowledged to be the enlightened patriots, the earnest law-givers, and the true sages of the nineteenth century. In truth, the history of civil rights is their biography."
The student inquired, in a grave manner, whether it was possible to regard their great lives and works, and the civil rights of seven millions of people, purchased by a vast national debt, as trifles light as air, compared with the alleged loss to the public servants of the patronage of passengers whose sectional prejudice is opposed to the operation of these amendments, and who, in effect, repudiate and repeal them by their covert acts as much as if pro-slavery feeling in a State had, by hostile legislation, encouraged their violation. He continued,—
"I am not well versed in the history of American constitutional law, sir, but I venture to assert that the records of legal disputations furnish no parallel to such an unwarrantable con-
