LANE, JOSEPH. 



LAW, CONSTITUTIONAL. 475 



any one, would make the farmers of Ireland, 

 in large numbers, owners of their holdings, and 

 which would give to those who had to con- 

 tinue tenants, fixity of tenure at a fixed rent, 

 and, of course, as a natural consequence, the 

 right of free sale. (See GREAT BRITAIN.) 



LANE, JOSEPH, born December, 1801, in 

 North Carolina; died April 19, 1881, in Ore- 

 gon, aged eighty years. In 1802 his father 

 settled in Kentucky, and in 1821 Mr. Joseph 

 Lane became a resident of Indiana. His talents 

 and ability were so marked that in one year 

 after his settlement in the State he was sent to 

 the Legislature, and, in one House or the other, 

 continued to serve until 1846. He then re- 

 signed his seat in the State Senate, and at the 

 head of an Indiana regiment went to the Mexi- 

 can War. After a time he \vas appointed brig- 

 adier-general, and at the famous battle of 

 Buena Vista commanded the left wing of the 

 American army. After his recovery from a 

 wound received in that battle, he returned to 

 the army, and defeated Santa Anna at Hua- 

 mantla, following up the victory shortly after- 

 ward with the capture of important posts. On 

 the 22d of November, 1847, he took the town of 

 Matamoros, with a quantity of military stores. 

 At the end of the war he was brevetted major- 

 general, and in August, 18 i8, was appointed 

 by President Polk Governor of Oregon, from 

 which office he was removed by President Tay- 

 lor. On the admission of Oregon into the 

 Union he was made United States Senator, 

 and in 1860 was put on the same presidential 

 ticket with John 0. Breckenridge, being the 

 nominee of one of the wings of the Democracy 

 for Vice-President. His defeat ended his 

 prominent political career. Though he bore so 

 illustrious a part in the war with Mexico, the 

 gratitude of his country was never manifested 

 by a pension or other mark of sympathy, and 

 only a year before his death he declined an 

 invitation to attend a reunion of Mexican vet- 

 erans, because he was too poor to make the 

 journey. With the modest dignity of true self- 

 reverence he accepted his obscure old age in 

 the Oregon village, where he calmly passed 

 away from the scenes and affairs amid which 

 he had long endeavored to make his life useful 

 to his fellow-men. 



LAW, CONSTITUTIONAL: ITS RECENT PRO- 

 ORESS. In no period of our history have more 

 and greater constitutional questions of vital im- 

 portance been adjudicated by the highest judi- 

 cial tribunal of the nation than have recently 

 been decided by the Supreme Court of the 

 United States, in cases involving the relations 

 existing between the States and the General 

 Government. Most of these questions grew 

 out of the constitutional and congressional 

 enactments following the war, and involved 

 issues raised before, during, and after the war. 

 The post-war amendments to the Constitution 

 made a radical change in the relations borne 

 by the States to the General Government. They 

 carved out a vast extent of State sovereignty, 



and added it to Federal sovereignty. The 

 power of Congress has thus been greatly en- 

 larged, and that of the States correspondingly 

 diminished. In the exercise of this power Con- 

 gress has made extensive limitations upon State 

 rights. The Supreme Court has frequently 

 been called upon to determine the purport and 

 validity of this legislation, and the meaning of 

 the Constitution on questions of State and Fed- 

 eral sovereignty ; and the doctrines it has af- 

 firmed, generally on a divided opinion of the 

 judges, have greatly strengthened if not en- 

 larged the sovereignty of the nation. Hence 

 there has been in recent years a steady and ex- 

 tensive development of a central power, or a 

 remarkable advance toward centralization, in 

 our system of government. A striking illus- 

 tration of this fact is afforded by a brief re- 

 view of some of the most important consti- 

 tutional doctrines recently affirmed by the Su- 

 preme Court. 



The fourteenth amendment declares that 

 " all persons born or naturalized in the United 

 States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, 

 are citizens of the United States and of the 

 State wherein they reside." It then declares 

 that " no State shall make or enforce any law 

 which shall abridge the privileges or immunities 

 of citizens of the United States, nor shall any 

 State deprive any person of life, liberty, or 

 property, without due process of law; nor 

 deny to any person within its jurisdiction the 

 equal protection of the laws." This enactment 

 clearly limits the power of a State over its citi- 

 zens, but in what respects the limitation oper- 

 ates, or how far it goes, is a vitally important 

 question, on which the Supreme Court has 

 divided in every case which has come before 

 it under the amendment. In the Slaughter- 

 House cases the majority of the court drew a 

 distinction between the privileges and im- 

 munities of a citizen of the United States and 

 those of a citizen of a State, and held that it 

 was only the former which the States were pro- 

 hibited from abridging. In Strauder against 

 West Virginia (100 U. S. Reports, 306), the 

 majority went further, and declared that the 

 amendment " was designed to assure to the 

 colored race the enjoyment of all the civil 

 rights that under the law are enjoyed by 

 white persons, and to give to that race the 

 protection of the General Government in that 

 enjoyment whenever it should be denied by 

 the States. It not only gave citizenship and 

 the privileges of citizenship to persons of color, 

 but it denied to any State the power to with- 

 hold from them the equal protection of the 

 laws, and authorized Congress to enforce its 

 provisions by appropriate legislation." But 

 what are the "civil rights" which the States 

 may not withhold? Is it a civil right of a col- 

 ored person to marry a white person, to attend 

 a school for whites, to follow the same profes- 

 sions and callings followed by whites? The 

 court has held that the privilege of practicing 

 law in the courts of a State is not a right 



