ssity, fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unanimity is
impossible; the rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly
inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or
despotism in some form is all that is left.

I do not forget the position assumed by some, that constitutional
questions are to be decided by the Supreme Court; nor do I deny that such
decisions must be binding, in any case, upon the parties to a suit, as to
the object of that suit, while they are also entitled to very high respect
and consideration in all parallel cases by all other departments of the
government. And, while it is obviously possible that such decision may
be erroneous in any given case, still the evil effect following it, being
limited to that particular case, with the chance that it may be overruled
and never become a precedent for other cases, can better be borne than
could the evils of a different practice. At the same time, the candid
citizen must confess that if the policy of the government, upon vital
questions affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by
decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made, in ordinary
litigation between parties in personal actions, the people will have
ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned
the government into the hands of that eminent tribunal. Nor is there in
this view any assault upon the court or the judges. It is a duty from
which they may not shrink to decide cases properly brought before them,
and it is no fault of theirs if others seek to turn their decisions to
political purposes.

One section of our country believes slavery is right, and ought to be
extended, while the other believes it is wrong, and ought not to be
extended. This is the only substantial dispute. The fugitive slave clause
of the Constitution and the law for the suppression of the foreign slave
trade are each as well enforced, perhaps, as any law can ever be in a
community where the moral sense of the people imperfectly supports the law
itself. The great body of the people abide by the dry legal obligation
in both cases, and a few break over in each. This, I think, cannot be
perfectly cured; and it would be worse in both cases after the separation
of the sections than before. The foreign slave trade, now imperfectly
suppressed, would be ultimately revived, without restriction, in one
section, while fugitive slaves, now only partially surrendere