[18] This language of the Supreme Court contains an admission of the truth of the charge just made against judges, viz: that rather than lose their offices, they will violate what they know to be law, in subserviency to the legislatures on whom they depend; for it admits, 1st, that the preservation of men's rights is the vital principle of law, and, 2d, that courts, (and the Supreme Court of the United States in particular,) will trample upon that principle at the bidding of the legislature, when the mandate comes in the shape of a statute of such "irresistible clearness," that its meaning cannot be evaded.
[19] "Laws are construed strictly to save a right."—Whitney et al. vs. Emmett et al., 1 Baldwin, C.C.R. 316.
"No law will make a construction do wrong; and there are some things which the law favors, and some it dislikes; it favoreth those things that come from the order of nature."—Jacob's Law Dictionary, title Law.
[20] In the convention that framed the constitution, when this clause was under discussion, "servants" were spoken of as a distinct class from "slaves." For instance, "Mr. Butler and Mr. Pickney moved to require 'fugitive slaves and servants to be delivered up like criminals.'" Mr. Sherman objected to delivering up either slaves or servants. He said he "saw no more propriety in the public seizing and surrendering a slave or servant, than a horse."—Madison Papers, p. 1447-8.
The language finally adopted shows that they at last agreed to deliver up "servants," but not "slaves"—for as the word "servant" does not mean "slave," the word "service" does not mean slavery.
These remarks in the convention are quoted, not because the intentions of the convention are of the least legal consequence whatever; but to rebut the silly arguments of those who pretend that the convention, and not the people, adopted the constitution—and that the convention did not understand the legal difference between the word "servant" and "slave," and therefore used the word "service," in this clause, as meaning slavery.
[21] Gibbons vs. Ogden.—(9 Wheaton, 1.)
[22] "The government (of the U.S.) proceeds directly from the people; is 'ordained and established' in the name of the people."—M'Culloch vs. Maryland, 4 Wheaton, 403.
"The government of the Union is emphatically and truly, a government of the people; and in form and in substance it emanates from them. Its powers are granted by them, and are to be exercised directly on them, and for their benefit."—Same, pages 404, 405.
"The constitution of the United States was ordained and established, not by the United States in their sovereign capacities, but emphatically, as the preamble of the constitution declares, by 'the people of the United States.'"—Martin vs. Hunter's lessee, 1 Wheaton, 324.