most propriety, apply to their several guarantees as they now stand what has so justly been said of one of them:[1] 'These are not vain words. Within the sphere of their influence no person can be created, no person can be born, with civil or political privileges not enjoyed equally by all his fellow-citizens, nor can any institution be established recognizing distinction of birth. Here is the great charter of every human being drawing vital breath upon this soil, whatever may be his condition and whoever may be his parents. He may be poor, weak, humble, or black; he may be of Caucasian, Jewish, Indian, or Ethiopian race; he may be of French, German, English, or Irish extraction; but before the Constitution all these distinctions disappear. He is not poor, weak, humble, or black, nor is he Caucasian, Jew, Indian, or Ethiopian; nor is he French, German, English, or Irish: he is a Man, the equal of all his fellow-men. He is one of the Children of the State, which, like an impartial parent, regards all its offspring with an equal care. To some it may justly allot higher duties according to higher capacities; but it welcomes all to its equal hospitable board. The State, imitating the divine justice, is no respecter of persons.' We take the liberty to quote somewhat from Mr. Everett on the same general subject.[2] 'Grant that no new benefit—which, however, can by no means with truth be granted—be introduced into the world on this plan of equality, still it will have discharged the inestimable office of communicating, in equal proportion, to all the citizens, those privileges of the social union which were before partitioned in an invidious gradation, profusely among the privileged orders, and parsimoniously or not at all among the rest.' 'The people of this country are, by their constitutions of government, endowed with a new source of enjoyment, elsewhere almost unknown,—a great and substantial happiness. Most of the desirable things of life bear a high price in the world's market. Everything usually deemed a great good must, for its attainment, be weighed down in the opposite scale with what is usually deemed a great evil,—labor, care, danger. It is
