History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III

by Unknown

The Constitution of the United States is the result of a fourfold compromise: First—Of unity with individual interests; of national sovereignty with the so-called sovereignty of States; Second—Of the republic with monarchy; Third—Of freedom with slavery; Fourth—Of democracy with aristocracy.

What is local self-government? Briefly, that without any interference from without, every citizen should manage his own personal affairs in his own way, according to his own pleasure; that every town should manage its own town affairs in the same manner and under the same restriction; every county its own county affairs, every State its own State affairs. But the independent exercise of this autonomy, by personal and corporate individuals, has one fundamental condition, viz.: the maintenance of all these individualities intact, each in its own sphere of action, with its rights uninfringed and its freedom uncurtailed in that sphere, yet each also preserving its just relation to all the rest in an all comprehensive social organization. Every citizen would thus stand, as it were, in the center of several concentric and enlarging circles of relationship to his kind; he would have duties and rights in each relation, not only as an individual but also as a member of town, county, State and national organization. His local self-government will be at his highest possible point of realization, when in each of these relations his individual duties are discharged and his rights maintained.

It is such a disorganization of this well-balanced, harmonious and natural system as shall result in the absorption of all substantial power by a central authority, to the destruction of the autonomy of the various individualities above mentioned; such as was produced, for instance, when the municipia of the Roman empire lost their corporate independence and melted into the vast imperial despotism which prepared the way for the collapse of society under the blows of Northern barbarism. Such a centralization must inevitably be produced by decay of that stubborn stickling for rights, out of which local self-government has always grown. That is, if individual rights in the citizen, the town, the county, the State, shall not be vindicated as beyond all price, and defended with the utmost jealousy, at whatever cost, the spirit of liberty must have already died out, and the dreary process of centralization be already far advanced. It will thus be evident that the preservation of individual rights is the only possible preventative of centralization, and that free society has no interest to be compared for an instant in importance with that of preserving these individual rights. No nation is free in which this is not the paramount concern. Woe to America when her sons and her daughters begin to sneer at rights! Just so long as the citizens are protected individually in their rights, the towns and counties and States cannot be stripped; but if the former lose all love for their own liberties as equal units of society, the latter will become the empty shells of creatures long perished. The nation as such, therefore, if it would be itself free and non-centralized, must find its own supreme interest in the protection of its individual citizens in the fullest possible enjoyment of their equal rights and liberties.

Equality under the laws for all citizens is the corner-stone of the structure of the restored harmony from which the ancient friendship is to rise. In this pathway I am going, the pathway where your illustrious men led—your Jefferson, your Madison, your Monroe, your Washington.

There are cases where it seems as if the constitution should empower the federal government to step in and protect the citizen in the State, when the local authorities are in league with the assassins; but, as it now reads, no such provision exists.

That a number of citizens of the United States have been killed, there can be no question; but that is not enough to enable the government of the United States to interfere for their protection. Under the constitution that duty belongs to the State alone. But when an unlawful combination is made to interfere with any of the rights of natural citizenship secured to citizens of the United States by the national constitution, then an offense is committed against the laws of the United States, and it is not only the right but the absolute duty of the national government to interfere and afford the citizens that protection which every good government is bound to give.

Why, it is asked, does our government permit outrages in a State which it would exert all its authority to redress, even at the risk of war, if they were perpetrated under a foreign government? Are the rights of American citizens more sacred on the soil of Great Britain or France than on the soil of one of our own States? Not at all. But the government of the United States is clothed with power to act with imperial sovereignty in the one case, while in the other its authority is limited to the degree of utter impotency, in certain circumstances. The State sovereignty excludes the Federal over most matters of dealing between man and man, and if the State laws are properly enforced there is not likely to be any ground of complaint, but if they are not, the federal government, if not specially called on according to the terms of the constitution, is helpless. Citizen A.B., grievously wronged, beaten, robbed, lynched within a hair's breadth of death, may apply in vain to any and all prosecuting officers of the State. The forms of law that might give him redress are all there; the prosecuting officers, judges, and sheriffs, that might act, are there; but, under an oppressive and tyrannical public sentiment, they refuse to move. In such an exigency the government of the United States can do no more than the government of any neighboring State; that is, unless the State concerned calls for aid, or unless the offense rises to the dignity of insurrection or rebellion. The reason is, that the framers of our governmental system left to the several States the sole guardianship of the personal and relative private rights of the people.

Before getting into a quarrel and perhaps war with Mexico about the treatment of our flag and citizens, would it not be as well, think you, for the government to try and make the flag a protection to the citizens on our own soil?

I greatly fear this policy, under cover of what is called local self-government, is but an ignominious surrender of the principles of nationality for which our armies fought and for which thousands upon thousands of our brave men died, and without which the war was a failure and our boasted government a myth.

The State exercises its proper functions when it makes local laws, promotes local charities, and by its local knowledge brings the guardianship of government to the homes of its citizens; but the State transcends its proper functions when in any manner it interferes with those equal rights recorded in the Declaration of Independence.