“All persons are equal before the law, so that no person can hold another as a slave: and the Congress shall have the power to make all laws necessary and proper to carry this declaration into effect everywhere within the United States and the jurisdiction thereof.”
By the latter clause the declaration is plainly applicable to the States, while the earlier words assert the equality of all persons before the law,—a fruitful principle, assuring to all the same rights. Inter pares non est potestas, “Among equals there is no superiority,” is a received maxim of law, expressing a natural truth. Therefore, where all are equal, there can be no Slavery; so that, in declaring equality before the law, you make Slavery, alike with superiority, impossible. This language, though unknown to the Common Law and new in our country, has a fixed place in modern constitutional history. To understand how it has reached its present authority we must repair for a moment to France, so rich in experience and in genius.
Bills of Rights in England were moderate in terms, compared with our Declaration of Independence, and with the Declarations of Rights first announced by France in the throes of terrible revolution, and since recognized among the permanent triumphs of that prodigious outbreak. Until this period there had been no written Constitution in France, though since there have been many in succession. The earliest, in September, 1791, was preceded by a Declaration of Rights, proposed by Lafayette, which, after setting forth that “ignorance, forgetfulness, or contempt of the rights of man are the sole causes of public evils and of the corruption of Governments,” undertakes to announce what it calls “the natural rights of man, inalienable and sacred”; and this is done—
“To the end that this Declaration, being constantly present to all the members of the social body, may incessantly recall to them their rights and their duties; to the end that the acts of the legislative power, and those of the executive power, being every moment capable of comparison with the object of every political institution, may be more respected by them; to the end that the claims of the citizens, being henceforth founded on simple and incontestable principles, may always turn to the maintenance of the Constitution and to the happiness of all.”
This too elaborate, but instructive preamble, is followed by an article with a generality of expression not unlike that of our own Declaration:—
“Article I. Men are born and continue free and equal in rights.”
In the sixth article of the Declaration this is explained by declaring that the law “ought to be the same for all, whether it protect, whether it punish,” and then it speaks of “all citizens being equal in its eyes.”[298]
In June, 1793, another Constitution was adopted, which, after a brief preamble, opens with these articles:—
“Article I. The object of society is the common happiness. Government is instituted to guaranty to man the enjoyment of his natural and imprescriptible rights.