Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 5.djvu/915

 IN BK AH LEE. 903 �state, and is clothed with the state's power, his aet îs that of the State. This must be so or the constitùtional prohibition bas no meaning, when the state has clothed one of its agents with power to annul or evade it." �And again, in speaking of the power of congress to enforcë these prohibitions, and the suppesed want of it in regard to the injunctions addressed to the states in the original consti- tution, as was said in Kentucky v. Dennuon, 24 How. 66, he says: "But the constitution now expressly gives authority for congressional interference an'd oômpulsion in the cases em- braced within the fourteenth anleiidnient. It is but a lini- ited authority, triie, extending ônly tp a single dass of cases, but 'within its liinits it is complete." In re Parrott,!]. S. Q. C. Dist. of Csl., Sawyer and Hoffmdn, JJ.,* lately held that ihe constitution and làws of Galifornia, forbidding the employment of Chinese by corporations, was à deniai by the state of the equal protection of the laws to the Chinese, and therefore void, and took Parrott upon a hahecùs corpus out of the hanàs of the state authorities, where he was held upon a criminal charge forviolating these làws, and discharged him, as being in custody contrary to the constitution of the United States. �It is admitted that the state has the power to deprive per- Bons of life, lîberty, and property, provided it is not done without due prôcess of law. The power to do this, so far as it ever existed, is denied to and in eff ect taken away f rom the state by the fourteenth amendaient. And this is not ail. In case the state does so deprive any one, or attempts to, power is conferred upon the general government to interfere and prevent or correct the wrong. It is worse than idle to talk about the right of a state to do what the constitution prohib- its it from doing, or the want of right in the United States to do what the constitution expressly authorizes it to do. The constitution, and not the local cpnvenienee, passion, or inter- est, is the standard and measurô' of the relative right and power of a state and the United States in our form of government. This fourteenth amendment was made a part of the constitu- tion by the ratification of the states, including Ôregon, and ����
 * Reported la. 1 Fed. Rep. 481.