These are specimens only. To what meanness of inquiry has not the judicial mind descended in the enforcement of an odious prejudice? Such decisions are a discredit to Republican Government; and so also is the existing practice of public institutions harmonizing with them. The words of the Gospel are fulfilled, and the Great Republic, “conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,”[214] becomes “like unto _whited_ sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones and of all uncleanness.”[215] Are not such decisions worse than dead men’s bones or any uncleanness? All this seems the more irrational, when we recall the Divine example, and the admonition addressed to the Prophet: “But the Lord said unto Samuel, _Look not on his countenance_, … for the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, _but the Lord looketh on the heart_.”[216] To the pretension of looking at the skin and measuring its various pigments in the determination of rights, I reply, that the heart, and not the countenance, must be our guide. Not on the skin can we look, though “white” as the coward heart of Macbeth, according to the reproach of his wife,--but on that within, constituting character, which showed itself supremely in Toussaint L’Ouverture, making him, though black as night, a luminous example, and is now manifest in a virtuous and patriotic people asking for their rights. Where justice prevails, all depends on character. Nor can any shade of color be an apology for interference with that consideration to which character is justly entitled. Thus it stands. The word “white” found no place in the original Common Law; nor did it find any place afterward in our two title-deeds of Constitutional Liberty, each interpreting the other, and being the fountain out of which are derived the rights and duties of the American citizen. Nor, again, did it find place in the Constitutional Amendment expressly defining a “citizen.” How, then, can it become a limitation upon the citizen? By what title can any one say, “I am a white lord”? Every statute and all legislation, whether National or State, must be in complete conformity with the two title-deeds. To these must they be brought as to an unerring touchstone; and it is the same with the State as with the Nation. Strange indeed, if an odious discrimination, without support in the original Common Law or the Constitution, and openly condemned by the Declaration of Independence, can escape judgment by skulking within State lines! Wherever it shows itself, whatever form it takes, it is the same barefaced and insufferable imposture, a mere relic of Slavery, to be treated always with indignant contempt, and trampled out as an unmitigated “humbug.” The word may not be juridical; I should not use it if it were unparliamentary; but I know no term which expresses so well the little foundation for this pretension. CITIZENSHIP.