that the only legitimate right to govern is an express grant of power
from the governed. The Constitution of the United States is the
instrument containing this grant of power to the several departments
composing the Government. 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. These
precious privileges, and those scarcely less important of giving
expression to his thoughts and opinions, either by writing or speaking,
unrestrained but by the liability for injury to others, and that of a
full participation in all the advantages which flow from the
Government, the acknowledged property of all, the American citizen
derives from no charter granted by his fellow-man. He claims them