$15,000,000 in one day, or nearly twice the value of all the property of the stockyards company. The recent railroad statute in North Carolina imposes fines which would amount to $2,500,000 per day, and in a few days would bankrupt the railroad companies. The Minnesota railroad statute imposes penalties which in one month might aggregate several hundred million dollars. Speaking of these penalties, United States Circuit Judge Lochren justly said: "There is no question but that such legislation is vicious, almost a disgrace to the civilization of the age, and a reproach upon the intelligence and sense of justice of any legislature which could enact provisions of that kind." If any such policy of coercion and intimidation can possibly be enforced by the state or national governments, in any form or under any subterfuge whatever, we shall no longer be living under a constitutional government with effective guaranties of individual rights and liberties. If Congress or a state legislature can compel any class of persons to submit to an unconstitutional statute by imposing ruinous fines and penalties, or other provisions intended to operate _in terrorem_, or by threatening to deprive that class of the protection of the government, then the constitutional limitations imposed by the people can be readily circumvented and nullified, and our supposed rights and liberties will exist only in the grace or self-restraint of legislatures. One class is selected to-day, but another class will be selected to-morrow, depending only on the interest or prejudice or temptation or caprice of the temporary majority. Such an exercise of arbitrary and irresponsible power is in utter conflict with the whole theory of our institutions and in utter disregard and defiance of those fundamental and immutable principles of justice under which alone free governments can exist. As Chief Justice Marshall said in the great case of Marbury _vs._ Madison--and the court was then facing a hostile executive, a hostile Congress and a hostile public opinion--"The very essence of civil liberty certainly consists in the right of every individual to claim the protection of the laws whenever he receives an injury. One of the first duties of government is to afford that protection.... The government of the United States has been emphatically termed a government of laws and not of men. It will certainly cease to deserve this high appellation if the laws furnish no remedy for the violation of a vested legal right."[48]