Inasmuch as the attacks on private rights in property, franchises, and corporate privileges came principally from the state legislatures, it was necessary to find some way to subject them to legal control--some juristic process for translating _laissez faire_ into a real restraining force. These leading statesmen and lawyers were not long in finding the way. The Federal courts were obviously the proper instrumentalities, and the broad restrictions laid upon the states by the Fourteenth Amendment no less obviously afforded the constitutional foundation for the science of legislative nihilism. "No state," ran the significant words of that Amendment, "shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." What unseen implications lay within these phrases the most penetrating thinkers divined at once. Protest was made by the New Jersey legislature against the Fourteenth Amendment in 1866 on the ground that it would destroy all the essential rights of a state to control its internal affairs; and such opinion was widespread. But the most common view was to the effect that the Amendment would be used principally to surround the newly emancipated slaves with safeguards against their former masters who might be tempted to restore serfdom under apprentice and penal laws and other legal guises. Still there is plenty of evidence to show that those who framed the Fourteenth Amendment and pushed it through Congress had in mind a far wider purpose--that of providing a general restraining clause for state legislatures.