Page:State v. Buzzard.pdf/26

Rh

Rh

from the personal rights of its citizens. They are indissolubly bound up together in the same great bond of union, and, to my mind, they are incapable of division. The distinction may be in names, but it cannot be in the nature and essence of things. It is certainly true, that, in one sense of the term, the political rights of the State and the personal privileges of the citizen may be contradistinguished from each other. There is a certain class of rights, which belongs to the State in her corporate character, and cannot be exercised except through the intervention of her authority. By far the most important and largest of the rights of the Constitution appertain exclusively to the person of the citizen, and concern the inherent rights of life, liberty, and property. Many of these rights lie behind the Constitution, and existed antecedent to its formation and its adoption. They are embodied in its will, and organized by its power, to give them greater sanctity and effect. They are written, that they may be understood and remembered; and then declared inviolate and supreme, because they cannot be weakened or invaded without doing the Government and citizen manifest injustice and wrong. Among these rights, I hold, is the privilege of the people to keep and to bear their private arms, for the necessary defence of their person, habitation, and property, or for any useful or innocent purpose whatever. We derive this right from our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, and under the form of that government it has ever been regarded as sacred and inviolable. It is of great antiquity and of invaluable price. Its necessary operation, in times of convulsion and of revolution, has been the only means by which public liberty or the security of free States has been vindicated and maintained. Here, the principles of equal and natural justice, as well as the obvious meaning and spirit of the Constitution, have placed it above legislative interference. To forbid a citizen, under the penalty of fine and imprisonment, to carry his own private arms about his person, in any manner that he may think proper for his security or safety, is, in my opinion, an unauthorized attempt to abridge a constitutional privilege, and therefore I hold the law in question to be of no effect.

[But the majority of the Court being of a different opinion, the judgment was reversed.]