INTRODUCTION.

No apology is needed for offering to the public a work

on The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

of the United States, the most important of all the additions made to that great instrument. That amendment speaks principles of free government of overruling import. True, these principles are not new; they are but the principles of Magna Charta. They had already been incorporated into the constitutions of the states before the advent of that amendment; and they had been put into the federal Constitution by the Fifth Amendment; but that amendment restrains the powers of the national government only, and until the Fourteenth Amendment came there was no power in the Nation to coerce the states to grant and observe the rights of Magna Charta to their people; the states could grant or deny them. The supreme importance of the Fourteenth Amendment thus lies in the fact that it does compel the states to concede those rights, else the national power can be invoked to coerce their concession. The Fourteenth Amendment thus wrought wonderful change in the governmental relations between states and nation, we may say in the governmental fabric almost; it vastly increased the national power over a large field, and correspondingly decreased the sovereign or final power

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of the states. It is this fact, not simply the principles themselves of the amendment, that causes it to mark a new era, a new departure, in American government. It can not be too well understood or discussed. To show its vast practical importance we need only turn to the index head "Constitutional Law" in the reports of federal and state courts and see how those courts are burdened with cases involving that amendment. More and more every year that amendment is invoked in state courts, and more still in federal courts, to challenge the action of state governments. The reports teem with cases upon it. The present work treats of that amendment as it bears upon National Citizenship, Naturalization, Privileges and Immunities of Citizens of the Republic, Life, Liberty, Property, Equal Protection of the Law as affected by unwarranted State Action, Due Process of Law, Police Power, Taxation, Eminent Domain, and kindred subjects. I have endeavored to refer to the main decisions upon the amendment, state and federal, particularly those of the Supreme Court of the United States, as its jurisdiction is final in such cases. It will be seen that much of the work is literal quotation from the opinions of the courts. I have purposely adopted this course, preferring to give the deliverances of the courts themselves in their own words, rather than a construction or version of my own.

The following pages will fully sustain the statement that the Fourteenth Amendment has vastly widened the powers of the Nation over the States. It has "centralized" the government, to use the expression of those who, in the formation of the Constitution and in the many and continuous subsequent contestations upon its construction, op

posed the policy of depositing with the Union so many vital powers directly operating upon the people. This amendment has made the national government federal as distinguished from confederate. The mere change from the government instituted after the Revolution by the Articles of Confederation really altered its structure from that of the confederate to that of the federal character, and on this score mainly the adoption of the Constitution in its original form was intensely opposed; but the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment has still very much further widened the federal power over that of the states. The amendment could never have been adopted prior to the Civil War. It could not have been adopted but for that war. The truth is, when we reflect a moment; when to the vast power committed by the Constitution originally to the Union, we add those given to it by the Fourteenth Amendment; when to functions already possessed by it we superadd jurisdiction in the national government to revise and annul any action of a state, however exerted, impairing the privileges and immunities of citizens of the Nation, or the life, liberty, property or legal equality of persons within the jurisdiction of the nation, the final powers left to the states are quite limited; for, as Justice Bradley said in the Civil Rights Cases, the rights touching the life, liberty and property of a person and his equality before the law cover practically all of the essential rights of man. A government having power, as the Union has under the amendment, not to originally legislate upon these subjects, but to review and reverse all action of another government touching them, virtually possesses those powers, and the residuum of final power left to the

subordinate government of the state is comparatively small. Such is the effect of the Fourteenth Amendment. Whether its adoption was wise is a "dead issue." There are weighty arguments pro and contra. On the one hand is the strong claim that local self-government is indispensable and dear to the people of the states, and ought to reside at home with them, in smaller governments, more closely and effectually under the control of those immediately affected; that it is unwise and dangerous, upon any consideration, however weighty, to entrust the rights of life, liberty, property and legal equality of the people of West Virginia to far-off California and other states; but on the other hand, comes the argument that these rights are not local, but fundamental and essential to the citizen, the same everywhere, and should be regulated by uniform judicial decision, and should not be subject to local prejudice or changing sentiment, or varying and inconsistent legislative action or judicial decision, dependent on as many different ones as there are states, but that power should be given the general government over all, as a last resort, to see that such rights are not arbitrarily disregarded. The governmental theory or dream. of Cicero here finds some weight, when he expressed the wish for the time to come when there should not be one law at Athens, another at Rome, one law now, another hereafter; but that one universal and everlasting law should contain all peoples of the earth.

Who will deny the right of the principles of the Fourteenth Amendment? Who will contest the inestimable value of the sacred personal rights which it guarantees ? Who will dare to contest the principles of Magna Char

ta? The only question is, or was, whether their concession should be left to the states ultimately and finally, or their guaranty and vindication be left ultimately and finally to the nation, as under the Fourteenth Amendment. That question is not before us; the adoption of that amendment has relegated that question to the past. The amendment is here. It has been with us for thirty-two years; a generation has not seen it mar the harmony of the nation and the states. The Supreme Court has applied it with such even, impartial and temperate hand, between States and Nation, that no collision has occurred. May it be ever so. The states are not aliens and enemies of the nation; the nation not alien and enemy of the states. We are all one in the procession of time and progress. What matters it by which government the powers of administration happen in distribution to be exercised, so they are administered "by the people, through the people and for the people?"