10 about as little respect for a packed court as I have for a packed jury—a majority of them interested, too, as I believe, in the very question to be decided ; for, I believe, the majority who concurred in the opinion were all slaveholders, and, of course, if anybody was interested to give a favorable construction to -the holders of that species of property, these men were interested in the question. Strange as it may appear, those who complain of Northern aggression have not only every other department under their feet, but with less than one-third of the population of the North, you happen to have a majority of the Supreme Court on your side, and always have had. I will not say that that is the reason why the decisions of courts of late are magnified into such importance. Immaculate their decisions are now, it seems. The very party who, a few years ago, within the memory of us all, held that their decisions were of no effect whatever on governmental action, when coming in conflict with the views of the President or the co-ordinate branches of the Government, have turned round of late, and have found a virtue in that court that can ride triumphantly over every other department of this Government. It is a palpable heresy, and must be abandoned. 'The liberties of this nation cannot consist with the doctrine now set up on the other side of this Chamber with regard to your Supreme Court. I do not want to go back to see what Jefferson and others said about it. I know the nature of man. I know, as they knew, that to arm this judiciary with a power, not only to decide questions between private individuals, but to affect the legislation of the nation, to affect the action of your President, to affect the coordinate branches.of this Government, is a fatal heresy, that, if persisted in by a majority of the people, cannot result in any other than an utter consolidated despotism; and I am amazed that men who have had their eyes open, and who have, held to other doctrines in better days, should, for any temporary purpose, heave overboard, and bury in the deep sea, the sheet-anchor of the liberties of this nation. I say to my friends on the other side—for I call them friends for this purpose—we are all interested alike in this question. God knows, if you once have it established and acquiesced in by the people of this Union, that the dicta of the Supreme Court—a political court by its very constitution, yea, packed on this very subject, as every Senator here knows—are to be the laws binding on every other department, we have the meanest despotism that ever prevailed on God Almighty’s earth. But I have no fears of it, sir. You may effect a temporary purpose by it; but a doctrine so absurd, so incompatible with the minds of the Anglo-Saxon race, so inconsistent with the great principles of free government, will never be permitted to stand. In the Dred Scott decision—I will not call it a decision, but in this dictum, this talk of the judges, for that was all it was—they overturned every decision their own court had made for more than seventy years ; they holding, prior to that time, that Congress had full and plenary power over the Territories of the United States. Judge Marshall so decided, and the court had followed his decision, and every other department of the Government was well satisfied. Therefore, this infallible court can overturn the most settled decisions of its own and of other courts, and nobody can question its acts I A strange doctrine that, that the sayings of men who were put upon the bench under the most questionable circumstances, packed for a particular decision, and not having a chance even to make that upon the question before them, should be the ne plus ultra, after they themselves have overturned all that have gone before them. This is a position that cannot outlive this generation. Where did these judges find the power in the Constitution of the United States to carry slavery into the Territories ? If they had anything to ground their dicta upon, they had the power to show it written in the Constitution of the United States; but there is no such thing there. I remember very well reading (for I was not here at that time) that in 1850 Mr. Calhoun set up this doctrine, and it was so extreme that he had no second in the Senate. He was challenged by Mr. Clay upon it. Mr. Clay told him he was amazed and astonished, that any man should hold such a doctrine, and he asked him: “ Where do you find your constitutional warrant for it ? ” and told him, at the same time, that it was more latitudinous than anything ever held by old John Adarps and the Federal party at any period. Mr. Calhoun, I think, found no warrant in the Constitution; he did not deign to reply. Yet, within ten years, this doctrine has grown up into a great tree, so that some fowls lodge in the branches thereof. [Laughter.] They find no warrant in the Constitution; they find none in legal logic or reason. It is said now that the Territories being the common property of the States, the citizens of each State have a right to go into them with any property that they perchance may have. I deny the postulate. These Territories do not belong to the States, as States. They belong to the people of the United States. Congress is the trustee for them ; but no State can claim any portion of them. The States, as States, have nothing to do with them. Suppose the Senator from Illinois [Mr. Douglas] owns a plantation in Mississippi, in his own right or that of his children, and he has slaves there working upon that plantation, while he is a resident of the State of Illinois. Suppose there is a Congressional prohibition saying that he cannot take his property into that new Territory. Let me ask these casuists now, which State is it whose
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTM4ODY=