Congress had been placed by the framers of the Constitution and these amendments under the "noble necessity" of being true to their double trust; and, continuing their discourse, he expressed a desire to obtain a fuller comprehension of the meaning of the terms "civil rights," "immunities," and "privileges."
The Chief Justice inquired what works he had read. He replied, that he was not unfamiliar with the general doctrines contained in Cicero and Aristotle, Vattel, Droit des Gens, Lerminier, Philosophie du Droit, the Pandects, Grotius, Stoicesco, Gaius, Fœlix, Calvo (Ortolan), the provisions of the Civil Code of France, Zouche De Jure, Gutierrez, Codigos, Derecho Civil Español, Montesquieu, Savigny, Eichhorn, Schröder, Mommsen, Rudorf, and other treatises upon the philosophy of jurisprudence.
"These great authors," said the Chief Justice, "have prepared you for the course of study I was about to suggest. No foreigner can ever comprehend the meaning of the terms 'civil rights,' 'privileges,' and 'immunities,' in our republican acceptation of them, until he has spent his nights and days over Magna Charta, the Confirmatio Chartarum, the Statute of Treasons, the Petition of Right, the Habeas Corpus Act, the Bill of Rights, the Massachusetts Body of Liberties, the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America, the Declaration of the Virginia Bills of Rights, the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights, and that crowning glory among the memorable achievements of the human race, the Constitution of the United States, which, as you have already learned, bound in indissoluble union thirteen original States, and to-day is the central force which binds together the individual orbs of our stupendous American system,' superior, as experience has shown, to the wiles and forces of all enemies, within and without."
