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86 constitutional liberty, I cannot well imagine. It is impossible, from the nature of things, by any metaphysical legerdemain to annihilate these Constitutional Amendments. It transcends the wildest extravagance of fancy to assert that any class may thus trample on justice and defile reason. The common understanding of the whole world revolts at the defence set up, that the principles of the common law, which are in force in America, regulating the rights and duties of the public servants, sanction a violation of the supreme law of the land. It appears to me that it does not require a very piercing glance to probe these arguments to the bottom. The clear atmosphere of the judicial mind, at least in the northern clime, must penetrate the fog; your courts must listen with impatient reluctance to dull stolidities, which no talent could make respectable; for there can be no reasonable reply to arguments of arrogant shallowness, breathing only defiance to the Constitution and the general voice of the nation.

"What possible benefit can these seven millions of enfranchised citizens derive from the comprehensive language of the Fourteenth Amendment, and the precise, specific, and general terms in which their civil rights are therein set forth, if common sense and plain reason are thus to be trampled under foot? Is not the language of the Amendments to be understood as all language should be,&mdash;that is to say, as people generally understand it,&mdash;and not according to the fancy of the popular caprice, or the special interests of the public servants, mechanics, and artisans? Is it not the grossest absurdity for lawyers to maintain that these Amendments are to be construed as if the States, Congress, the common law, or the public, had annexed to them a clause providing that nothing herein contained shall be so construed as to impair the emoluments which industrial orders, or which hotel-keepers, common carriers, or the proprietors of places of public resort for instruction or amusement may hereafter receive from citizens who repudiate these amendments; and that in all cases in which it may prove to the interest of said mechanics or said public servants to foment discord, to foster and gratify race-prejudice by individual or class discriminations on account of color or of previous