CHAPTER XIV.

LEGISLATIVE POWERS.-GENERAL.

$179. THE 2d and 4th sections of Article IV., requiring more particular examination, may be appropriately considered here, under the head of the General Powers of Congress. The 2d section, in three consecutive sentences, disposes of three distinct and important subjects; giving the supreme law on each, without any details of the mode or means of execution, and without any reference to future legislation for supplying them in either case. The first is," The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States." The citizens of each State in the Union, whether natural-born or naturalized citizens, are ipso facto citizens of the United States. Or, rather, every citizen of the United States is, by virtue of such citizenship, a citizen also of every State in the Union, and entitled to all the privileges and immunities thereof. He is entitled to all the rights and privileges guarantied or recognized by the Constitution, independent of this clause,

as well as by it; and, in addition to them, he is also entitled, by this clause, to all the privileges and immunities which may be held or exercised exclusively under, and by virtue of, the Constitution and laws of any State in this Union.

§ 180. These are, at the least, a right to actual membership of the community, whenever they may choose to exercise it, and a right to participate in all the benefits intended to be guarded and secured thereby. The value of these, or any other rights under State constitutions and laws, will surely not be questioned by Staterights men; and, if they exist, they appertain, by this provision of the Constitution, and are of equal value to one citizen of the United States as to another, who will put himself in a position to need and to use them on the same terms. Whatever they are, they are expressly granted by this clause to the citizens of every other State; and thus are made constitutional rights, protected and secured by that instrument, and placed, in the language of Chief Justice Taney, under the guardianship of the general government." These "privileges and immunities," whether originally natural, personal, or commonlaw rights, or civil and political rights, all become, by this guaranty, legal rights secured by the Constitution to every citizen of the United States.

§ 181. The clause itself, however, supplies no means for its own execution, and directly in

vokes no legislative aid from Congress.

For more than three quarters of a century, without any legislation or governmental action of any sort, it stood a perfect dead letter in the Constitution; not only without an attempt at enforcement, but almost without enough of sympathy for the oppressed, to raise a complaint on account of the want of it. During this time, some of the States, directly in the face of this provision, actually, practically, and persistently denied to one half of their own citizens any rights whatever, natural, civil, or political, under the Constitution of the United States or of their own State, by the laws of God or man; and sold them in the market like cattle.

§ 182. In one instance, an authorized agent of a sister State was sent into another, for the modest purpose of instituting legal proceedings in their own Courts, in order to test the constitutional validity of some of these violations of right; but was debarred from executing his mission, and forcibly expelled from the State, contrary to law and without remedy.

§ 183. But, on the 9th of April, 1866, a statute was enacted for executing this part of the Constitution; not, however, without running the gauntlet of an executive veto. The veto, however, did not deny the constitutional power of Congress to legislate on the subject for this purpose, but substantially admitted it, by promising" cheerfully to co-operate with Congress

in any measure that may be necessary for the preservation of the civil rights of . . . all . . . classes of persons throughout the United States." The President's objections were to the details of the bill. As they were all overruled by more than a two-thirds vote of both Houses of Congress, it is unnecessary to discuss them.

§ 184. The statute begins by declaring the citizenship of "all persons born in the United States." The truth of this declaration will hardly be called in question at this late day. It was true before the people became a separate nation. It was true by the common law afterwards, and before the Constitution was adopted. It was made so true by the terms of the Constitution itself, that it was found necessary, in order to diminish the effect of the principle, to insert an express disfranchisement of a portion of the native Indians. So it was true, independent of the statute; and, if it had not been, it is made absolutely true by the statute. The fact loses none of its importance by having been a pre-existing fact. The statute is a distinct recognition and re-enactment of it, by the supreme law-making power of the government, and carries along with it all the rights and duties which the fact includes.

§ 185. If a man is a citizen, he has all the attributes of a citizen, entitled to all the rights, and liable to all the duties, of citizenship; and the whole is covered by the same law that asserts

the fact. A statute may enlarge his rights, or add to his duties. It may perhaps diminish or remit a portion of his constitutional duties; but it cannot abate or abrogate any portion of his constitutional rights. This statute does not attempt to do either; but it specifies certain rights particularly, which, whether they are broader or narrower than those recognized in the Constitution as appertaining to all citizens, cannot at any rate disparage any that may be omitted. The statute expressly specifies, that he shall have the right, in every State and territory, to the full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and property;" and, by declaring him to be a citizen, it necessarily entitles him "to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States," whether they are guarantied by the States themselves or by the United States, and whether they are pre-existing rights independent of the statute, or rights now for the first time. conferred by the statute.

§ 186. The 2d section of the statute prescribes the remedy, and is equally broad with the first. It extends "to the deprivation of any right secured or protected by this Act.". Now, whether all the constitutional rights of citizenship are granted by this Act or not, there is no room to doubt that they are all intended to be secured and protected by it; and, so far as its provisions may be effectual for the purposes in