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James the First is binding as a precedent upon the Supreme Court of the United States, or is a justification of its decrees in any case or under any circumstances. From the theologico-ethical notions of that period, the only safe rule is a wide departure. The parliament of Great Britain, of that era, may have been no wiser or freer from unwholesome influences, than the parliament of the United States of the present; and of the latter it may, not without justice, be said, that it is to be hoped its successors of two centuries in the future will be too prudent to follow many of its examples. At any rate, the fact that such a statute was passed at such a time, or at any other time, under such or any other auspices, is as frail a basis upon which to found a judgment, by a tribunal in this age and country, in a matter of incalculable importance to a great community, and involving their dearest rights highest interests and most sacred affections, as could well he discovered; and it is to be hoped that the court had the grace to feel a sense of littleness when it made the citation. It is the paltriness of pettifogging arrogance thus to grope among the relies of dead barbarisms to find excuses for oppression.
It would seem to he matter of doubt, judging from the tenor of the decision, whether the court very well understood itself; while in respect to its understanding of the relations between society and government, there can be no doubt whatever. While in one sentence it gives the information that society is founded upon marriage, and in the next that government is founded upon society, in the very next it conveys the astounding intelligence that it is within the legitimate power of government to take jurisdiction of the fabric of society and to appoint the relations in which its factors are to stand to each other. According to the deliberate opinion of the Supreme Court of one of the moat enlightened of modern nations, society and government hold to each other the positions of mutual creators and created. Society creates government; government, by way of returning tho favor, turns round and creates society. It does even more than this, it dives to the very bottom of things and ordains the relations upon which society vests for its foundation. Hints of another such an interchange of functions are to be found nowhere else than in some of the fantastical—sometimes called heathen—mythologies.
This is communism. It is the fundamental doctrine of modern communism that government is the creator of society, from which
