Page:State v. Buzzard.pdf/9

26

Rh

mature and careful investigation, as to the object for which the right was retained, their fallacy becomes evident. The dangers to be apprehended from the existence and exercise of such right, not only to social order, domestic tranquillity, and the upright and independent administration of the government, but also to the established institution of the country, appears so obvious as to induce the belief that they are present to every intelligent mind, and to render their statement here unnecessary.

I cannot, therefore, indulge the opinion, that they were not distinctly foreseen by those who recommended, as well as those who adopted the article under consideration, or that they intended to incorporate into the charter of their civil policy, a principle pregnant with such dangers. Besides, it cannot have escaped the observation of any person of intelligence, whose mind has been directed to the subject, that to resist, or oppose by force, the constituted public authorities of the State acting in pursuance of law, in the discharge of any public duty enjoined upon them, must, according to the extent and success of such resistance or opposition, either produce some revolution in the government itself, or subject those who so act to such consequences as are denounced against them by law. Suppose a portion of the community consider their private rights invaded by some act or exercise of authority, on the part of the government, which they consider as unauthorized, can they, by virtue of any legal right with which they are invested, either prevent or redress such injury by private force? In my opinion they cannot; their private rights being in this, as in most other cases, committed, as it were, to the care and custody of the law; and to it, so long as our civil liberties and republican institutions remain unimpaired, they are bound to look for protection as well as redress; both of which the government is under a positive obligation to provide.

I also deem it proper to remark here, that, in my opinion, the provisions contained in the article under consideration, were designed to furnish the people of the United States precisely such security for the preservation and perpetuation of their civil liberty and republican institutions, as it was the object of those who framed the constitution of this State to provide for those subject to its jurisdiction, by the 21st