Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 9.djvu/230

 THE WORLD'S FAMOUS ORATIONS to it, and intend to give to it, unfaltering sup- port and allegiance, but I choose to put that allegiance on the true ground, not on the false idea that anybody's blood was shed for it. I say that the Constitution is the whole compact. All the obligations, all the chains that fetter the limbs of my people, are nominated in the bond, and they wisely excluded any conclusion against them, by declaring that ' ' the powers not granted by the Constitution to the United States, or forbidden by it to the States, belonged to the States respectively or the people." Now I will try it by that standard; I will subject it to that test. The law of nature, the law of justice, would say — and it is so ex- pounded by the publicists — that equal rights in the common property shall be enjoyed. Even in a monarchy the king can not prevent the sub- jects from enjoying equality in the disposition of the public property. Even in a despotic gov- ernment this principle is recognized. It was the blood and the money of the whole people (says the learned Grotius, and say all the publicists) which acquired the public property, and there- fore it is not the property of the sovereign. This right of equality being, then, according to justice and natural equity, a right belonging to all States, when did we give it up ? You say Congress has a right to pass rules and regula- tions concerning the Territory and other prop- erty of the United States. Very well. Does that exclude those whose blood and money paid 220