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in contempt of its authority, it had no power to make. The orders judging them in contempt were equally void, and their imprisonment is without the authority of law. It is therefore ordered that the petitioners be discharged." In re Ayres, in re Scott, in re McCabe, 123 United States Reports, 443.

The victory over usurpation was conclusive.

Mr. Justice Matthews, for the court, gave the following rule of interpretation of the Eleventh Amendment:

"To secure the manifest purpose of the constitutional exemption guaranteed by the Eleventh Amendment requires that it should be interpreted not literally and too narrowly, but fairly and with such breadth and largeness as effectually to accomplish the substance of its purpose. In this spirit it must be held to cover not only suits against a State by name, but those also against its officers, agents, and representatives, where the State, though not named as such, is nevertheless the only real party against which alone, in fact, the relief is asked, and against which the judgment or decree effectively operates."

Chief Justice Marshall, speaking for the court, in Osborn vs. the Bank of the United States, 9 Wheaton, 783, held that, however interested a State might be in the judgment, it was not to be

considered as sued unless named in the record. The decision and interpretation of Justice Matthews, in the name of the court, departs from the opinion of Marshall. In the same case it was also held that as the State of Ohio itself, which threatened the franchises of the bank, could not be made a party defendant, the suit might be maintained against the officers and agents of the State who were intrusted with the execution of the laws thereof. The opinion of Justice Matthews was a decided victory over the centralizing opinion of the court dominated by the great Chief Justice.

Is the Supreme Court infallible?

By no means; although the habit of reaffirming old opinions would appear so. If the States adjourned the court sine die by an amendment to the Constitution, they would only recommit to themselves respectively delegated judicial powers. If the court shall ever attempt to consolidate the States, it is here predicted that this will be a remedy. There are two ways of punishing justices of the Supreme Court: by Congress cutting down the number of justices as they die, or abolishing the court by the States.

What of the income tax?

A direct tax is a tax levied on land and houses.

The Supreme Court of the United States (1895) decided that the income derived from such a source was a direct tax, and the money collected by revenue officers under a law of Congress passed and promulgated, was, in consequence, refunded by the Secretary of the Treasury.

The nullification of the act produced great excitement. It was denounced as plutocratic. But a majority of the court had decided on a rehearing at the instance of the Attorney-General, and public opinion, that Congress had no right to directly tax a class of citizens who were opulent, or owners of bond securities, or with fixed limited income. Taxation must be uniform. To be uniform it must be apportioned among the people of the States. A dissenting justice, Harlan, predicted great evils would flow from an opinion which demolished the power of the United States to levy a direct tax. It had served the country in the war between the States, and there might be good reason to impose such a tax again. The Chief Justice and a majority of the court thought there were other and fairer sources of revenue than direct Federal taxation.

Patrick Henry and William Grayson (the latter a senatorial colleague of Richard Henry Lee in the first Congress) opposed the ratification of the Constitution in the Virginia Convention, and one

of the grounds was that the instrument took from the several States the sole right of direct taxation, which was the highest act of sovereignty.

What would Henry and Grayson now think of a decision of the Supreme Court which relegates to the several States this "highest act of sovereignty" more than a century after their eloquent opposition?

The truth is the general government is weakened in proportion to the number of States, because the enumerated powers are small compared with the reserved powers of the several States; and, further, the distribution of powers is the diffusion of powers, and diffusion is not a tonic, but a relaxant, in politics as in medicine.

Men love and protect weakness, not inherent strength. So long as the United States are the agent of the States and the people they will endure by common consent. When they become despotic they will share the fate of all tyrants.

Elsewhere it is shown how the war amendments destroyed the enumeration which was intended to preserve representation by equal apportionment of taxation. The Fourteenth Amendment is fatal to direct taxation as set forth in Article I.

Article XII. readjusts the duties of electors, and so amends Article II., section 3, of the unamended Constitution as to prevent a repetition

of the Jefferson-Burr contention, and prescribes that the Vice-President must have the same constitutional eligibility as the President. This important addition was omitted by the framers.

The amended article did not prevent the formation of an electoral commission outside of it, and which disfranchised Louisiana and Florida, and "counted in " Rutherford B. Hayes as President.

Where is "slavery" first mentioned?

For the first time the word slavery occurs in the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. The future historian who reads the orations and debates on "slavery" in and out of Congress will be amazed to find the words "held to service or labor "the passionless language of Article IV., section 3, of the Constitution signed by Washington. These are the words of the framers: "No person held to service or labor in one State under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."

If the exact words of the Constitution had been used, instead of being suppressed by public speakers, a million and more of valuable lives and billions of treasure might have been spared by

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