ment at the expense of thousands of millions, and cemented by such a profusion of the best blood of the nation, after the lapse of a quarter of a century, is a mere mouldy parchment?
A grave philosopher has declared, "The republic which sinks to sleep, trusting to constitutions and machinery, to politicians, statesmen, and courts, for the preservation of its liberties, never will have any." Eternal vigilance is the price of civil liberty. We do not believe that the grave problem of the enforcement of the rights of seven millions of citizens, which the Supreme Court has frequently declared to be one of the main objects of our national policy, can depend upon capricious judgment, or upon any transient phase of juristical faith or public opinion born of the hour. The best men in the country see that favoritism on the one hand, and oppression on the other, are inevitably the contagious result of the free and untrammelled discretion in trusted by the Supreme Court to a body dominated by class interests and instincts. They realize that the love of liberty, and of the civic equality of man, legitimate children of Christian thought and of the Christian religion, are fundamental political truths, which must triumph over the injustice of prejudice with every advance of civilization.
From our view, the points decided in Hall and DeCuir resemble the feudal-castle turrets of the old institution of slavery, which have again reappeared above the subsiding wave. They introduce the infectious example of a theory of discriminative civil rights, racial civil rights, which has led to organized, legalized injustice in civil life, to which the badge of sufferance must be added, and an arbitrary assortment of the civil rights of seven millions of citizens, according to race, color, and previous condition. Viewed in the light of this amendment and that of American history, can aught be more unconstitutional, falser in faith, or more infamous in theory and practice? This case says to the public, out of respect to white citizens, look upon colored citizens not as citizens; their right as citizens is a mere extravagant delusion, which your reasonable discretion enables you to dissipate.
This law-phrase, "reasonable discretion," thus interpolated to shield color-prerogative, sounds as if it meant something, but to
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