On an
examination of that instrument it will be found to contain
declarations of power granted and of power withheld. The latter is
also susceptible of division into power which the majority had the
right to grant, but which they do not think proper to intrust to
their agents, and that which they could not have granted, not
being possessed by themselves. In other words, there are certain
rights possessed by each individual American citizen which in his
compact with the others he has never surrendered. Some of them,
indeed, he is unable to surrender, being, in the language of our
system, unalienable. The boasted privilege of a Roman citizen was
to him a shield only against a petty provincial ruler, whilst the
proud democrat of Athens would console himself under a sentence of
death for a supposed violation of the national faith--which no one
understood and which at times was the subject of the mockery of
all--or the banishment from his home, his family, and his country
with or without an alleged cause, that it was the act not of a
single tyrant or hated aristocracy, but of his assembled
countrymen. Far different is the power of our sovereignty. It can
interfere with no one's faith, prescribe forms of worship for no
one's observance, inflict no punishment but after well-ascertained
guilt, the result of investigation under rules prescribed by the
Constitution itself.
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