es and make them
defenceless in war? If so, on what principle, or for what equivalent,
did she do it? Did she not rather take care that the guaranty for a
republican government should be inserted in the same paragraph with that
for protection against invasion, in order that both the principle and
the extent of the liability she incurred, might distinctly appear?

The nation at large, then, as a political community under the
constitution, have both interests and rights, and both of the most vital
character, in the republicanism of each of the state governments. The
guaranty given by the national constitution, securing such a government
to each of the states, is therefore neither officious nor impertinent.
On the contrary, this guaranty was a _sine qua non_ to any national
contract of union; and the enforcement of it is equally indispensable,
if not to the continuance of the union at all, certainly to its
continuance on any terms that are either safe, honorable or equitable
for the north.

This guaranty, then, is not idle verbiage. It is full of meaning. And
that meaning is not only fatal to slavery itself, but it is fatal also
to all those pretences, constructions, surmises and implications, by
which it is claimed that the national constitution sanctions, legalizes,
or even tolerates slavery.

[Footnote 18: This language of the Supreme Court contains an admission
of the truth of the charge just made against judges, viz: that rather
than lose their offices, they will violate what they know to be law, in
subserviency to the legislatures on whom they depend; for it admits,
1st, that the preservation of men's _rights_ is the vital principle of
law, and, 2d, that courts, (and the Supreme Court of the United States
in particular,) will trample upon that principle at the bidding of the
legislature, when the mandate comes in the shape of a statute of such
"_irresistible clearness_," that its meaning cannot be evaded.]

[Footnote 19: "Laws are construed strictly to save a right."--_Whitney
et al._ vs. _Emmett et al., 1 Baldwin, C.C.R._ 316.

"No law will make a construction do wrong; and there are some things
which the law favors, and some it dislikes; it favoreth those things
that come from the order of nature."--_Jacob's Law Dictionary, title
Law._]

[Footnote 20: In the convention that framed the constitution, when this
clause was under discussion, "servants" were spoken of as a distinct
class from "slaves." For instanc