hat all the people of this country should enjoy the rights
conferred upon them by this bill. But, supposing the bill had all the
merit in the world, it would not be effective to attain the ends hoped
for by its friends; and apart from that, its provisions were
exceedingly dangerous. It gave married women and minors the right to
make and enforce contracts. The grammatical structure of a portion of
the bill was such as to enable a corrupt, passionate, or prejudiced
judge to take advantage of it in order to widen the jurisdiction of
the United States courts, and drag into them all the business which
had heretofore occupied the State courts. This would be enough in this
nineteenth century to make a man tremble for the fate of
constitutional government. "If," said Mr. Cowan, "we had undoubted
authority to pass this bill, under the circumstances I would not vote
for it, on account of its objectionable phraseology, its dubious
language, and the mischief which might attend upon a large and liberal
construction of it in the District and Circuit Courts of the United
States." The trouble and expense of obtaining justice in the United
States courts, but one, or at most two existing in any of the Southern
States, would debar the African from applying to them for redress.
"Your remedy," said the Senator, "is delusive; your remedy is no
remedy at all; and to hold it up to the world as a remedy is a gross
fraud, however pious it may be. It is no remedy to the poor debtor
that you prosecute his judge, and threaten him with fine and
imprisonment. It is no remedy to the poor man with a small claim that
you locate a court one or two hundred miles away from him which is so
expensive in its administration of justice that he can not enter
there.

[Illustration: WM. M. Stewart, Senator from Nevada.]

"There is another provision of the bill, which, notwithstanding the
act of Congress relied upon by the honorable Senator from Illinois, I
think is unquestionably anomalous, and to me not only anomalous, but
atrocious; and that is, the substitution of an indictment for the writ
of error. What has been the law of these United States heretofore?
When an act of Congress came in contact with a State law, and the
judge of a State court decided that the law of Congress was
unconstitutional, there was an appeal given to the debated party to
the Supreme Court of the United States in order to determine the
constitutionality of the law. But, sir, who, unti