ve is
entitled to the privilege of the writ; for he is held in custody by his
master, simply on the ground of property.

Mr. Christian, one of Blackstone's editors, says that it is this writ
that makes slavery impossible in England. It was on this writ, that
Somerset was liberated. The writ, in fact, asserts, as a great
constitutional principle, the natural right of personal liberty. And the
privilege of the writ is not confined to citizens, but extends to all
human beings.[24] And it is probably the only absolute guaranty, that
our national constitution gives to foreigners and aliens, that they
shall not, on their arrival here, be enslaved by those of our state
governments that exhibit such propensities for enslaving their
fellow-men. For this purpose, it is a perfect guaranty to people who
come here from any part of the world. And if it be such a guaranty to
foreigners and aliens, is it no guaranty to those born under the
constitution? Especially when the constitution makes no discrimination
of persons?

_Eleventh._ "The United States shall guaranty to every state in this
union a republican form of government, and shall protect each of
them against invasion; and, on application of the legislature, or of
the executive, (when the legislature cannot be convened,) against
domestic violence."

Mark the strength and explicitness of the first clause of this section,
to wit, "The United States _shall guarantee_ to every state in this
union a republican form of government." Mark also especially that this
guaranty is one of liberty, and not of slavery.

We have all of us heretofore been compelled to hear, from individuals of
slaveholding principles, many arrogant and bombastic assertions,
touching the constitutional "_guaranties_" given to _slavery_; and
persons, who are in the habit of taking their constitutional law from
other men's mouths, instead of looking at the constitution for
themselves, have probably been led to imagine that the constitution had
really given such guaranties in some explicit and tangible form. We
have, nevertheless, seen that all those pretended guaranties are at most
nothing but certain vague hints, insinuations, ciphers and innuendoes,
that are imagined to be covered up under language which legally means
nothing of the kind. But, in the clause now cited, we do have an
explicit and peremptory "guaranty," depending upon no implications,
inferences or conjectures, and couched in no u