of Louisiana. The dissenting judges asserted emphatically that the clause inhibiting such denial was not to be confined in its operation to legislation aimed at the negroes as a race; its terms were most general and comprehensive, “nor shall any state deny to any person." In fine, the fourteenth

amendment was enacted to supply a great want which had existed from the commencement of the government. While the states were from the outset forbidden to pass ex post facto laws, or bills of attainder, or laws impairing the obligation of contracts, they might in any other manner invade the rights of citizens, and the national courts could grant no relief. This beneficent amendment throws the protection of the nation, of its Congress and its courts, around the lives, liberty, and property of all its citizens, and enables the supreme tribunal to annul all oppressive laws which the partisanship of local courts might perhaps sustain. To limit the meaning of the amendment, to confine its effect to one portion of the inhabitants, and that a comparatively small part, was to defeat its most important design and to destroy its highest usefulness.

§ 256 e. The decision made in the Slaughter-House Case can hardly be regarded as final in giving a construction to the fourteenth amendment. When the court is so evenly divided, and when the dissenting minority support their position by such powerful reasoning, and especially when the course of argument pursued by the majority is not absolutely essential to the correctness of the actual conclusion reached by them, the case cannot be considered as a very strong and weighty precedent. The validity of the Louisiana statute might perhaps have been sustained on the ground that it was a mere police regulation, a measure tending to preserve the public health; in other words, the decision might have. been placed upon exactly the same basis as that adopted in the subsequent case involving the Iowa excise law. I am of opinion that the fundamental position taken by the minority in the Slaughter - House Case, the broad, general principle of interpretation adopted by them, is correct, and that it will in time be universally accepted. The "immuni

ties and privileges of citizens of the United States" embrace those civil capacities and rights which belong to all persons as citizens, and these rights are the same as those which belong to citizens of the several states. National citizenship always existed, and the essence of the immunities resulting from it is the protection due from the nation to its citizens in all places and at all times. This protection could always be exercised by the national government over its citizens in other countries, or on the high seas; but until the fourteenth amendment was passed, there was not the same facility, there were not the same means and instruments, for exercising that protection over its citizens when at home and within the territory of a state. This want · this casus omissus — is now supplied, and the nation, through its Congress and its courts, can afford to its citizens at home complete protection against the discriminating legislation of the states which may attempt to invade their privileges and immunities.

This grand principle of interpretation may, I think, be regarded as settled, and the questions which remain open all resolve themselves into this one: What particular rights and capacities are embraced within the privileges and immunities which belong to United States citizens? All the courts and all the judges are agreed that the privileges and immunities spoken of must be such as belong to all citizens as such, as flow from, or rather are involved in, the notion of citizenship itself. The other parts of the Constitution, which arrange the governmental machinery, and leave the power of regulating the right of suffrage with the states, show that these privileges and immunities belonging to citizenship of the nation must all be civil in their nature and not political. The reasoning of both the majority and of the minority in the Slaughter-House Case inevitably leads to this conclusion. It follows that the right of voting - the electoral franchise - is not protected nor in any manner affected by the first section of the fourteenth amendment. That matter was originally placed within the exclusive control of the states, and as they might confer the electoral fran

chise at will, it plainly was not an attribute of national citizenship. This political arrangement has not been changed except in one particular. The states alone may still regulate the right of suffrage under the single limitation that they may not deny it to any person on account of his race, color, or previous condition of servitude. To sum up the foregoing discussion: All the rights which inhere in the national citizenship as such, are fully secured against hostile state legislation. The negative clauses of the fourteenth amendment, executing themselves in the same manner as the clauses forbidding ex post facto laws and the like, invalidate every state statute which is opposed to their inhibitions. The rights thus protected are all civil in their nature and not political, and embrace the fundamental capacities and rights to pass through the states at will, to enter and dwell in any one at will, to acquire, hold, and transmit personal and real property, to enter into contracts, to engage in and pursue all lawful trades and avocations, to obtain redress in the courts, and to be equal before the laws. Such civil rights as these make up the privileges and immunities of United States citizens ; but it must be understood that they are all to be enjoyed subject to the exercise of the three great governmental powers which are left with the states, the power of taxation, the power of eminent domain, and the power of police.

§ 256 f. Right of Admission to the Bar. The same general subject was presented for decision in the case of Bradwell v. The State,1 which came up on error from the courts of Illinois. Mrs. Bradwell, a married woman, applied to the Supreme Court of that state for admission to the bar. Her demand was refused on the ground that the law of Illinois only permitted males to practise as counsellors. She thereupon brought the matter before the Supreme Court of the United States, and claimed that the state law was invalid, because, first, she was as she alleged a citizen of Vermont although residing in Illinois, and as such was protected by Art. IV. Sec. II.; second, her privileges and immunities as a

1 16 Wall. 130.

citizen of the United States were abridged. The same five judges who formed the majority in the former case again united in rendering the judgment. The first ground taken by Mrs. Bradwell was disposed of as a question of fact. Although she alleged that she was a citizen of Vermont, yet her own affidavit showed that this allegation was untrue, for it stated in an unqualified manner that she resided and had resided for many years in Illinois, and this, by force of the first section of the fourteenth amendment, made her a citizen of the latter state. If, however, she had been in truth a citizen of Vermont, this fact would not have aided her case, for the right to practise law is not one of the privileges belonging to citizens of a state as such. In answer to the other ground of objection taken by her, the five judges reaffirmed the doctrine of the Slaughter-House Case. Three members of the court, Field, Swayne, and Bradley, JJ., concurred in this decision, but not in all the reasoning which led to it. Repeating the interpretation which they had advocated in the former cause, namely, that the amendment was intended to protect all the fundamental civil rights which flow from the status of national citizenship, they simply held that the right of any person to be admitted to the bar is not embraced within the number of these privileges and immunities; it is a special right—or rather capacity - conferred or withheld at the option of the state legislature, and has no necessary connection whatever with citizenship.

§ 256 g. Right to sell Liquors. The effect of the first section of the fourteenth amendment upon an entirely different class of state statutes was discussed, and to some extent determined, in a very recent adjudication. A statute regulating the sale of intoxicating liquors, providing for the li censing of lawful vendors, and prohibiting the sale by persons not licensed, in short, one of the ordinary forms of legislation in reference to this particular subject-matter, was attacked on the ground that it was obnoxious to the provisions of the amendment. This statute had been in existence for several years prior to the adoption of the amendment, and the argument was that the addition thus

made to the organic law swept it out of existence. Without inquiring to any extent into the full meaning of the first section, the Supreme Court of the United States simply declared that the right to sell intoxicating liquors is not one of the privileges and immunities belonging to citizenship of the United States which the states are forbidden to abridge. This particular trade is a matter which has been always under the control of the states by virtue of their powers of police regulation, and such universally admitted police power has not been in any manner affected. The court added, however, that if such a law, purporting to be an exercise of police regulation, should absolutely forbid the sale of liquors, or of any other lawful property, which an owner had on hand at the time of its passage, it would violate that clause of the first section which prohibits a state from depriving any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. This statement was of course a dictum, but its correctness is sustained by numerous judgments of other courts.

§ 256 h. Right of Suffrage. In Minor v. Happersett,2 the question was, Is a woman, being a citizen of the United States and of Missouri, entitled to vote in that state, whose laws confine the right of suffrage to men? Do those laws conflict with the fourteenth amendment?

"There is," say the court, 66 no doubt that women may be citizens." The word "citizen," as used in the Constitution, "is understood as conveying the idea of membership of a nation, nothing more." As to those who were originally associated together to form the nation, all such were citizens. New citizens are made by birth or by naturalization. It is enough for this case to hold "that all children born of citi zen parents within the jurisdiction are themselves citizens." Then followed a review of the legislation touching citizenship. Woman's right to citizenship has always been assumed. The

1 Bartemeyer v. Iowa, 18 Wall. 129. Affirmed in Beer Co. v. Massa chusetts, 97 U. S. 25; Foster v. Kansas, 112 U. S. 201, and many other cases. So as to sale of opium. State v. Ah Chew, 16 Nev. 50. ED. 2 21 Wall. 162.