It is no time,
then, to be judging according to his precedents, but to establish a
precedent for the future. I would much rather trust to the sentiment
of the people. In their vote you would get something of some value, at
least, however small; but in the other case, only the trammeled
judgment of an individual, of no significance, be it which way it
might.
It is to some extent fatal to the courts, when the people are
compelled to go behind them. I do not wish to believe that the
courts were made for fair weather, and for very civil cases merely;
but think of leaving it to any court in the land to decide whether
more than three millions of people, in this case a sixth part of a
nation, have a right to be freemen or not! But it has been left to the
courts of justice, so called- to the Supreme Court of the land- and,
as you all know, recognizing no authority but the Constitution, it has
decided that the three millions are and shall continue to be slaves.
Such judges as these are merely the inspectors of a pick-lock and
murderer's tools, to tell him whether they are in working order or
not, and there they think that their responsibility ends. There was
a prior case on the docket, which they, as judges appointed by God,
had no right to skip; which having been justly settled, they would
have been saved from this humiliation. It was the case of the murderer
himself.
The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the
law free.
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