Mr. President and Fellow-Citizens: —
Of all the subjects and issues on which I ever was called upon to speak, the question now before us is certainly the most delicate and perplexing. The fierce attacks and rebukes, the appeals to sympathies and passions, which characterize the wild warfare of political parties, would hardly be appropriate here. Reason alone, calm and clear, ought to govern the people when throwing the judicial ermine on the shoulders of a man, and reason alone, calm and clear, ought to govern those, who undertake to advise the people as to what they shall do, or shall not do. And thus I speak not here, in order to please a multitude, or in order to make a display of brilliant figures of speech, but in order to create convictions as strong as my own.
If the people of Wisconsin had forgotten the question at issue in the impending judicial election, the Supreme Court of the United States took care to remind us of it. We read in the public papers as follows: An important decision was delivered in the Supreme Court this morning in the Glover rescue case, appealed from the Supreme Court of Wisconsin. The case involved the right of State Courts to release on habeas corpus parties in custody, under process for offences against the fugitive slave law. The summary of the decision is:
“When a person is in the custody of an officer of the United States, a State may indeed issue a write of habeas corpus, and the officer holding the person in question in custody, must make return to the write, so far as to show that he holds him under a precept of the United States Court, but no further, and that thereupon the power of the State Court is at an end. Neither the formality nor the validity of the process, nor the constitutionality of the Act under which the process issues, can after such return be inquired into, either upon a writ of habeas corpus, from a State tribunal or upon any other State process.“
We acknowledge our obligations to the Supreme Court for this timely notice. If there had been any doubt about the question at issue, none is left now. It is the question of State Rights.
To argue it fully as it deserves to be argued, requires infinitely more ability and information that I possess. I know it, and all I can offer, is a few ideas and considerations, the results of former mediations and inquiries, hastily linked together.
The subject presents itself to my mind in
three different aspects: as a question of
principle, a question of constitutional construction
and a question of policy. I have often
heard men sneer at general principles when
applied to practical questions of policy. Our
government, they say, has grown and
developed itself out of facts, not out of abstractions;
specious political theories are invented
in order to give the results of history an
artificial meaning and to befog the practical sense
of the people.” Those who say so, see in
history nothing but an accumulation of
anecdotes without interior connection.
But I say, whenever men of sense and conscience acted in the discharge of grave public trusts and with a just appreciation of their responsibility, they always followed certain leading ideas, which stood supreme in their minds; they always endeavored to incorporate them in their acts and creations, although, perhaps, without having reduced them to logical constructions and syllogisms. Who will deny that this can be said of the great men who framed the fundamental laws of this country?
The protection of the natural rights of man is the principal aim and end of all political organizations. Civil liberty can be no other than natural; that is, absolute liberty, so far restrained by human laws, as is necessary for the protection of the liberty and rights of the other members of society. This is the fundamental principle upon which our social compact rests. It means nothing but a mutual guaranty of the enjoyment of equal rights. Whatever may be said of the obligations of individual man to society and of society to the individuals — this principle covers it all. It comprehends the duties of man no less than his rights. It implies the surrender of certain rights, by the individual, and consequently certain grants of power to society. But that surrender of rights and those grants of power must not transcend the limits set my that general principle. All surrenders of rights and all grants of power beyond those limits are concessions to despotism. — All assumptions of power beyond those limits are usurpation. Hence the true source of sovereignty is not in society, as the aggregate of individuals, but in the individuals who in the aggregate constitute the people.
It follows that of all forms of political organization that is most in accordance with this principle, in which the most political functions are directly exercised by the individuals constituting the people, and the least power is delegated to artificially constituted authorities. The nearer the source of sovereignty the functions of Government are placed, the more democratic a government is; while, on the other hand, the farther the functions of government are removed from the original source of sovereignty, the more a government approaches despotism.
The true meaning of the term self-government
is, that the individuals constituting the
people, shall exercise as many of the
functions of government as possible in a direct
manner. Hence it may be said that the true
essence, and the only reliable guaranty of
self-government, in the practical understanding
of the term, consists in the ramification
of political power into an infinite number of
more or less independent functions, reserving
for individual action as much as can be
accomplished. The less extensive that ramification
is, the farther will political power be
removed from the original source of sovereignty.
Political power will accumulate in
the hands of a few, or of one governmental
agency, and this we call centralization. In
whatever manner such governmental agencies
may be constituted, in whatever process they
may have originated, they will always bear a
despotic character. The accumulation of
power is the great stumbling block of
democratic experiments. It is like a rock under
the surface of the water. You are apt not to
notice it until the ship strikes. A Republic
with centralized administration in it, is no
better thatn a despotism without a nominal
King. There the people exercise their
right of suffrage only in order to choose their
own tyrants, and every popular vote means
the suicide of Liberty. [Applause.]
The century in which the general government of this Republic was established and its fundamental laws framed, was exceedingly prolific in theories of government. Philosophers, in philanthropic dreams, built up ideal structures in which mankind was to dwell, and nothing could exceed the irresistible pathos with which human rights were asserted, and the subtle nicety with which they were defined. Those ideas, sublime fancies then, when contrasted with the real state of things in most countries, took possession of the popular imagination. The masses had for a long time borne the burden of their wrongs, which they were suffering, not without resistance, but hardly aware that there was a remedy. Then the doctrines of the rights of man, incorporated in elaborate theories of government, broke upon them like a ray of sunshine. The sullenness of mute suffering gave way to positive hopes, and the people became suddenly aware what they were contending for. Such was the state of things especially in the old world, which brought forth the great revolutionary movements of the eighteenth century.