A man's "original and natural right" to make all contracts that are "intrinsically obligatory," and to coerce the fulfilment of them, is one of the most valuable and indispensable of all human possessions. But Marshall assumes that a man may "surrender" this right to "society," under a pledge from "society," that it will secure to him "a more safe and certain" fulfilment of his contracts, than he is capable of himself; and that "society," having thus obtained from him this "surrender," may then turn around to him, and not only refuse to fulfil its pledge to him, but may also prohibit his own exercise of his own "original and natural right," which he has "surrendered" to "society!"
This is as much as to say that, if A can but induce B to intrust his (B's) property with him (A), for safekeeping, under a pledge that he (A) will keep it more safely and certainly than B can do it himself, A thereby acquires an "unquestionable right" to keep the property forever, and let B whistle for it!
This is the kind of assumption on which Marshall based all his ideas of the constitutional law of this country; that constitutional law, which he was so famous for expounding. It is the kind of assumption, by which he expounded the people out of all their "original and natural rights."
He had just as much right to assume, and practically did assume, that the people had voluntarily "come into society," and had voluntarily "surrendered" to their governments all their other natural rights, as well as their "original and natural right" to make and enforce their own contracts.
He virtually said to all the people of this country:
You have voluntarily "come into society," and have voluntarily "surrendered" to your governments all your natural rights, of every name and nature whatsoever, for safe keeping; and now that these governments have, by your own consent, got possession of all your natural rights, they have an "unquestionable right" to withhold them from you forever.
If it were not melancholy to see mankind thus cheated, robbed, enslaved, and murdered, on the authority of such naked impostures as these, it would be, to the last degree, ludicrous, to see a man like Marshall—reputed to be one of the first intellects the country has ever had—solemnly expounding the "constitutional powers," as he called them, by which the general and State governments were authorized to rob the people of all their natural rights as human beings.
And yet this same Marshall has done more than any other one man—certainly more than any other man within the last eighty-five years—to make our governments, State and national, what they are. He has, for more than sixty years, been esteemed an oracle, not only by his associates and successors on the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States, but by all the other judges, State and national, by all the ignorant, as well as knavish, lawmakers in the country, and by all the sixty to a hundred thousand lawyers, upon whom the people have been, and are, obliged to depend for the security of their rights.
This system of false definitions, false assumptions, and fraud and usurpation generally, runs through all the operations of our governments, State and national. There is nothing genuine, nothing real, nothing true, nothing honest, to be found in any of them. They all proceed upon the principle, that governments have all power, and the people no rights.