citizen against oppressive legislation, wheth er national or local, so that he cannot be deprived of them without due process of law. The monopoly created by the legisla ture of Louisiana, which was under consider ation in the Slaughterhouse Cases, was, in my judgment, legislation of this sort and ob noxious to this objection. But police regu lations, intended for the preservation of the public health and the public order, are of an entirely different character. So much of the Louisiana law as partook of that char acter was never objected to. It was' the un conscionable monopoly, of which the police regulation was a mere pretext, that was deemed by the dissenting members of the court an invasion of the right of the citizen to pursue his lawful calling. A claim of right to pursue an unlawful calling stands on very different grounds, occupying the same plat form as does a claim of right to disregard license laws and to usurp public franchises. It is greatly to be regretted, as it seems to me, that this distinction was lost sight of (as I think it was) in the decision of the court referred to." In the Civil Rights Cases, 109 U. S. 3, on the other hand, he held, in opposition to Mr. Justice Harlan's powerful dissent, that the denial of equal public accommodations im posed no badge of servitude upon persons, within the meaning of the Thirteenth Amendment; and that the Federal legislation authorized by the Fourteenth Amendment is not direct legislation on matters respecting which the States are prohibited from mak ing and enforcing certain laws and doing certain acts, but corrective legislation, such as may be necessary or proper for counter acting or redressing the effect of such laws or acts. The reports contain many illustrations of Justice Bradley's devotion to individual lib erty. Whenever the rights of the individual were demonstrated, he was firmly opposed to any impairment thereof, however slight.
"Illegitimate and unconstitutional prac tices," he said in Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616, "get their first footing by silent approaches and slight deviations from legal modes of procedure. This can only be ob viated by adhering to the rule that constitu tional provisions for the security of person and property should be liberally construed. A close and liberal construction deprives them of half their efficacy, and leads to a gradual depreciation of the right, as if it consisted more in sound than in substance." See, also, Campbell v. Holt, 115 U. S. 620, and Davidson v. New Orleans, 96 ib. 97. Justice Bra'dley's decisions in patent law exercised the very highest authority and contributed materially to the development of the patent system. In Atlantic Works r. Brady, 107 U. S. 192, he stated the true philosophy of the subject. "The process of development in manufactures creates a con stant demand for new appliances, which the skill of ordinary head-workmen is generally adequate to devise, and which, indeed, are the natural and proper outgrowth of such development. Each step forward prepares the way for the next, and each is usually taken by spontaneous trials and attempts in a hundred different places. To grant a sin gle party a monopoly of every slight ad vance made, except where the exercise of invention, somewhat above ordinary me chanical or engineering skill, is distinctly shown, is unjust in principle and injurious in its consequences. The design of the pa tent laws is to reward those who make some substantial discovery or invention which adds to our knowledge and makes a step in advance in the useful arts. Such inventors are worthy of all favor. It was never the object of these laws to grant a monopoly for every trifling device, every shadow of a shade of an idea, which would naturally and spontaneously occur to any skilled mechanic or operator in the ordinary progress of man ufactures. Such an indiscriminate creation
