158 



CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



Mr. Niblack : " Then I understand that the 

 gentleman is unwilling to trust the courts of 

 this country for the assertion of the rights of 

 the people, and that is the reason why he wants 

 to institute this extraordinary machinery for 

 the purpose of overriding the laws of the vari- 

 ous States to do what cannot be done under 

 State laws." 



Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts:' "Now let me 

 answer the other question. We go to the 

 United States courts for two reasons. In the 

 first place we hear that in certain portions 

 of our country, under our flag, the judges of 

 the local courts have to run away by night in 

 order to save their lives from assassination, 

 and we do not think that a judge so situated 

 is in a proper condition to judge between a 

 man who has nothing but his civil rights and 

 the men who refuse him those rights. There- 

 fore we put the case in the United States courts 

 where the man is likely to get justice; and 

 what objection, may I ask, has the gentleman 

 from Indiana to having all these cases of wrong- 

 doing carried into the courts of his country 

 recognized by the laws of his country? " 



Mr. Niblack: ".The gentleman knows that it 

 is five times as expensive to litigate in the Fed- 

 eral courts as it is to litigate in the State courts, 

 and to require a poor man to go into the Fed- 

 eral courts is often to deny him the opportunity 

 to get justice." 



Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts : " Permit me. 

 We make it the duty by this bill of the district 

 attorneys to see that the penalties provided for 

 in this statute are enforced." 



Mr. Lynch, of Mississippi, said: "Believing 

 as I do that the Constitution as a whole should 

 be so construed as to carry out the intention 

 of the framers of the recent amendments, it 

 will not be surprising to the House and to the 

 country when I assert that it is impossible for 

 me to agree with those who so construe the 

 Constitution as to arrive at the erroneous con- 

 clusion that the pending bill is in violation of 

 that instrument. It is not my purpose, how- 

 ever, to give the House simply the benefit of 

 my own opinion upon the question, but to en- 

 deavor to show to your satisfaction, if possible, 

 that the construction which I place upon the 

 Constitution is precisely in accordance with 

 that placed upon it by the highest judicial tri- 

 bunal in the land, the Supreme Court of the 

 United States. And this brings us to the cele- 

 brated Slaughter-house cases. But, before re- 

 ferring to the decision of the court in detail, I 

 will take this occasion to remark that, for the 

 purposes of this debate at least, I accept as 

 correct the theory that Congress cannot con- 

 stitutionally pass any law unless it has ex- 

 pressed constitutional grant of power to do so ; 

 that the constitutional right of Congress to 

 pass a law must not be implied, but expressed ; 

 and that in the absence of such expressed con- 

 stitutional grant of power the right does not 

 exist. In other words 



The powers not delegated to tlie United States by 



the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, 

 are reserved to the States respectively, or to the 

 people. 



" I repeat, that for the purposes of this de- 

 bate at least, I accept as correct this theory. 

 After having read over the decision of the 

 court in these Slaughter-house cases several 

 times very carefully, I have been brought very 

 forcibly to this conclusion : that so far as this 

 decision refers to the question of civil rights- 

 the kind of civil rights referred to in this bill 

 it means this and nothing more : that what- 

 ever right or power a State may have had prior 

 to the ratification of the fourteenth amendment 

 it still has, except in certain particulars. In 

 other words, the fourteenth amendment was 

 not intended, in the opinion of the court, to 

 confer upon the Federal Government addi- 

 tional powers in general terms, but only in 

 certain particulars. What are those particu- 

 lars wherein the fourteenth amendment con- 

 fers upon the Federal Government powers 

 which it did not have before ? The right to 

 prevent distinctions and discriminations be- 

 tween the citizens of the United States and of 

 the several States whenever such distinctions 

 and discriminations are made on account of 

 race, color, or previous condition of servitude ; 

 and that distinctions and discriminations made 

 upon any other ground than these are not pro- 

 hibited by the fourteenth amendment. As the 

 discrimination referred to in the Slaughter- 

 house cases was not made upon either of these 

 grounds, it did not come within the constitu- 

 tional prohibition. As the pending bill refers 

 only to such discriminations as are made on 

 account of race, color, or previous condition 

 of servitude, it necessarily follows that the bill 

 is in harmony with the Constitution as con- 

 strued by the Supreme Court. 



" I will now ask the Clerk to read the fol- 

 lowing extract from the decision upon which 

 the legal gentlemen on the other side of the 

 House have chiefly relied to sustain them in 

 the assertion that the court has virtually de- 

 cided the pending bill to be unconstitutional." 



The Clerk read as follows : 



Of the privileges and immunities of the citizen of 

 the United States, and of the privileges and immu- 

 nities of the citizen of the State, ana what they re- 

 spectively are, -we will presently consider ; but we 

 wish to state here that it is only the former which 

 are placed by this clause under the protection of 

 the Federal Constitution, and that the latter, what- 

 ever they may be, are not intended to have any ad- 

 ditional protection by this paragraph of the amend- 

 ment. 



If, then, there is a difference between the privf- 

 leges and immunities belonging to a citizen of the 

 United States as such, and those belonging to the 

 citizen of the State as such, the latter must rest for 

 their security and protection where they have here- 

 tofore rested, for they are not embraced by this para- 

 graph of the amendment. 



Mr. Lynch : " If the court had said nothing 

 more on the question of civil rights, then there 

 would probably be some force in the argument. 

 But, after explaining at length why the case 



