Page:The Debs Decision, 1919.djvu/49

 spirits, is in her prisons, to be put out and locked out of the State by her own act, as they have already put themselves out by their principles. It is there that the fugitive slave, and the Mexican prisoner on parole, and the Indian come to plead the wrongs of his race, should find them; on that separate but more free and honorable ground, where the State places those who are not with her but against her—the only house in a slave State on which a free man can abide with honor.

"If any think that their influence would be lost there, and their voices no longer afflict the ear of the State, that they would not be as an enemy within its walls, they do not know by how much truth is stronger than error, nor how much more eloquently and effectively he can combat injustice who has experienced a little in his own person.

"There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly."

Once before the Supreme Court of the United States tried to save a decaying social institution—the institution of Slavery. There was a slave named Dred Scott. He was owned by a resident of Missouri. He was taken into Minnesota and into Illinois. Illinois was a free State by its own laws. Minnesota was free by the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Then his master took Dred Scott back to Missouri, and there Dred Scott tried to gain his freedom. The case was finally decided by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1857.