justify those broad, sagacious, and Christian constructions universally attributed to them, and which have filled the professional mind with admiration and wonder, shall prove in the end to have been only the diplomacy of juristic partisans, veiled under hyperbolical metaphors; and if those passages were merely the fashionable embroidery of a new garb, presented by the Republican court at the birth of Civil-Rights, the High Priest of slavery, with his "iron eye and cold sneer," might indeed find ample food for a hearty repast. Time, the sole test of truth, will determine if the spirit which breathes so fervently throughout many of these decisions was only the falling down of the Republican Party before the newly-born Amendment. But neither the Mephistopheles of pro-slavery, nor his lineal descendant, the color-line obstructionist of constitutional liberty, can deny, that, whether or not the declarations in these opinions were merely whiffs of political incense, "the perfume and suppliance of a moment," the sweet, but ephemeral extravagance of a party, flushed with triumph, assuredly those noble sentiments reflect truly the radical changes in the thought and feeling of the American people, which the great revolution had wrought. Lord Bigot's cynical sneers and snarls at the spirit of the earlier decisions will not prove more acceptable to the pro-slaveryites than to the rest of the world appears the lofty smile with which Christian Philanthropy, arrayed in the awful garb of constitutional law, greeted the long-lost Child of Humanity, saying, You have found favor in our sight; the sunshine is upon your path. It does not admit of serious confutation, that, in their wide range, the earlier decisions have taken in the past, present, and future condition of the citizens of the United States of African descent; and that, by the law of the land, they have established upon a foundation of adamant the irrevocable doctrine of the equality of civil rights, which must endure so long as the gorgeous ensign of the Republic floats over the broad dominions of Civil Liberty.
It may prove not only an interesting, but a very useful labor, to gather some of these scattered sweets; to stir the pure odor of these judicial findings, and preserve, by way of remembrance and grateful acknowledgment, the essence of their extracts.
