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the court is the embodiment of the Constitution—especially created to reflect its spirit, give to its clauses just interpretation, and to stand a sentinel between the people and the law-making power, vigilant to ensure that, in its name, and under pretense of its authority, no fanatical wrong shall be inflicted, no flagrant injustice grow into a precedent, with its manifold progeny of errors and injuries.
The question before the court, it is reported, was argued mainly upon the proposition that the statute of 1862, is adverse to the principles of religious liberty as laid down in the following words, in the first constitutional amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Whether or not there is a religious question involved in the issue is immaterial to this inquiry.
Future generations of lawyers and legislators would, perhaps, have grown up wiser if the Supreme Court of the United States had found it convenient to cite the canons of interpretation whereunder a constitutional clause which contemplates only property, affords legitimate sanction to a statute which contemplates only persons. It is no trivial problem to be disposed of properly in less than half a dozen lines: by a naked dogma, without show of reason or of precedent. It is an important problem—not only in its present, but in its possible other connections: worthy the labors of the ablest intellects, of the profoundest philosopher and the most impartial publicist; and it is equally an unhappy reflection upon the character of the court, whether it did or did not comprehend its significance. Not so have the predecessors of the present bench treated questions of constitutional interpretation; and when a constitutional clause which contemplates only public property is held competent to sustain a statute which contemplates only private persons, there is a chasm to be bridged, for the accomplishment of which enterprise, no amount of constructive ingenuity can be more than sufficient.
It is an universal rule of interpretation, that grants of power are to be construed strictly. Every express grant carries with it the implication that no more is granted than is expressed. Concessions of authority are therefore limitations of authority. They mean that, before the concession there was no authority; from which it follows that there is none beyond what is conceded. It is not an admissible presumption, in the law, that the authors of an instrument left gaps which it devolves upon judges to supply. If
