nd "to bear arms"!
As if this would not be to a true jurist and just judge expounding a
Constitution made "to establish justice" itself the ground to for
deciding that citizenship was opened to them by emancipation; as if the
blessings of liberty ought not to prevail over any inconveniences to
slave-holders.

His argument from subsequent legislation was perfectly idle. For, at
most, the statutes of Naturalization and Enrolment merely showed that
Congress did not then choose to apply to colored persons the power given
to them in absolute terms, and which he admits they had as to Indians.
While in other statutes, as that of 1808, of Seamen, and in several
treaties, as, for instance, those whereby Louisiana, Florida, and New
Mexico were acquired, colored persons are expressly named as citizens.

Having denied the clear facts of history, renounced the obligation of
explicit language, professed to stand on an argument every member of
which was destructive of his conclusion, he thus stated the result:
"They were at that time," 1789, "considered as a subordinate and
inferior class of beings, who had been subjugated by the dominant race,
and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their
authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held
the power and the government might choose to grant them"; that the
opinion had obtained "for more than a century" that they were "beings of
an inferior order," with "no rights which the white man was bound to
respect," who "might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery," "an
ordinary article of merchandise and traffic wherever a profit could be
made of it"; and this opinion was then "fixed and universal in the
civilized portion of the white race,"--"an _axiom_ in morals as well as
politics." He then declares, that to call them "citizens" would be "an
abuse of terms" "not calculated to exalt the character of the American
citizen in the eyes of other nations."

No wonder the nations pointed the finger of scorn, and cried out, "Is
this the perfection of beauty, the joy of the whole earth? Shade of
Jefferson! is this the reading America was to give the Declaration? Did
you publish a lie to the world? Spirits of Franklin, Adams, and
Washington! is this your work? Americans! is this your character?"

He declares, further, that the Court has no right to change the
construction of the Constitution; that "it speaks in the same words,
with the same meaning and intent,