Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 9.djvu/340

312 HARVARD LAW REVIEW. site authority. . . . Admitting, therefore, that formerly the States were not prohibited from infringing any of the fundamental privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States except in a few specified cases, that cannot be said now since the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. In my judgment it was the intention of the people in adopting that Amendment to provide National security against violation by the States of the funda- mental rights of the citizen." We shall show later that since 1873, while the decisions of the court have tended on the whole to give a narrow meaning to the words " privileges and immunities " as used in the Fourteenth Amendment, the intimation of Mr. Justice Miller that the Amend- ment ought to be construed as applying only to the colored race has not been heeded, and all these Amendments are now held to apply to all citizens without regard to their race or color. What then was the change worked by these Amendments in the theory of our National Government? Before we can answer this, it is necessary to state as briefly as we may what was the theory of the Constitution of 1787-89 as regards the personal rights, privileges, and immunities of the indi- vidual citizens, and the manner in which they should have security and protection in the enjoyment of the same. Prior to the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776, owing to the distance of the several Colonies from the mother country and the existing character of the English government, the Colonists for the most part looked solely to their several Colonial govern- ments for the protection of their individual rights. The govern- ment of George the Third they deemed an oppressive one. Their experience with him and his Parliaments rendered the Colonists distrustful of all external government, and made them prefer the local government, which was largely of their own making, and more familiar and more within their own control. " Each [Colony] had its legislature, its own statutes adding to or modi- fying the English common law, its local corporate life and traditions, with no small local pride in its own history and institutions, superadded to the pride of forming part of the English race and the great free British realm. Between the various Colonies there was no other political connection than that which arose from their all belonging to this race and realm, so that the inhabitants of each enjoyed in every one of the others the rights and privi- leges of British subjects." ^ 1 Bryce, The American Commonwealth, Vol. I. p. 16.