only the unbought, spontaneous, essential circumstances of our nature and condition that yield a liberal enjoyment. Our religious hopes, intellectual meditations, social sentiments, family affections, political privileges,—these are springs of unpurchased happiness; and to condemn men to live under an arbitrary government is to cut them off from nearly all the satisfaction which nature designed should flow from those principles within us by which a tribe of kindred men is constituted a people.'"[1]
Except for the better understanding of the law, as it has been expounded in the decision of the Civil Rights Cases, and in the dissenting opinion, it can serve no other than an historical purpose at this late day to stir the dust of those cases. In substance, the majority of the court held, that, until some State law has been passed, or some State action through its officers or agents has been taken, adverse to the rights of citizens sought to be protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, no legislation of the United States under said Amendment, nor any proceeding under such legislation, can be called into activity, for the prohibitions of the Amendment are against the State laws, and acts done under State authority. Legislation may and should be provided in advance to meet the exigency when it arises; but it should be adapted to the mischief and wrong which the Amendment was intended to provide against; and that is, State laws, or State action of some kind, adverse to the rights of the citizen secured by the Amendment. Such legislation cannot properly cover the whole domain of rights appertaining to life, liberty, and property, defining them and providing for their vindication. That would be to establish a code of municipal law regulative of all private rights between man and man in society. It would be to make Congress take the place of the State legislatures, and to supersede them. It is absurd to affirm that, because the rights of life, liberty, and property (which include all civil rights that men have) are by the Amendment sought to be protected against invasion on the part of the State without due process of law, Congress may therefore provide due process of law for their vindication in every case; and that, be-
- ↑ Story, Const., 4th ed., ii. p. 658, note 1.
