Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 9.djvu/209

 YANCEY decision tells you, gentlemen, that the Terri- torial Legislature has no power to interfere with the rights of the slave-owner in the Terri- tory while in a Territorial condition. That de- cision tells you that this government is a union of sovereign States; which States are coequal, and in trust for which coequal States the gov- ernment holds the Territories. It tells you that the people of those coequal States have a right to go into these Territories, thus held in trust, with every species of property which is recog- nized as property by the States in which they live, or by the Constitution of the United States. But, we are met right here w^ith this assertion : we are told by the distinguished advocate of this doctrine of popular sovereignty that this opinion is not a decision of the Supreme Court, but mere- ly the opinion of citizen Taney. He does not tell you, my countrymen, that it is not the opin- ion of the great majority of the Supreme Court bench. Oh, no! but he tells you that it is a matter that is obiter dicta, outside the jurisdic- tion of the Court; in other words, extra-judi- cial — that it is simply the opinion of Chief Jus- tice Taney, as an individual, and not the decision of the Court because it was not the subject-mat- ter before the Court. Now, Mr. Douglas and all others who make that assertion and undertake to get rid of the moral, the constitutional, the intellectual power of the argument, put themselves directly in conflict with the venerable chief justice of the 199