Mr. Christian, one of Blackstone's editors, says that it is this writ that makes slavery impossible in England. It was on this writ, that Somerset was liberated. The writ, in fact, asserts, as a great constitutional principle, the natural right of personal liberty. And the privilege of the writ is not confined to citizens, but extends to all human beings.[24] And it is probably the only absolute guaranty, that our national constitution gives to foreigners and aliens, that they shall not, on their arrival here, be enslaved by those of our state governments that exhibit such propensities for enslaving their fellow-men. For this purpose, it is a perfect guaranty to people who come here from any part of the world. And if it be such a guaranty to foreigners and aliens, is it no guaranty to those born under the constitution? Especially when the constitution makes no discrimination of persons? _Eleventh._ "The United States shall guaranty to every state in this union a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion; and, on application of the legislature, or of the executive, (when the legislature cannot be convened,) against domestic violence." Mark the strength and explicitness of the first clause of this section, to wit, "The United States _shall guarantee_ to every state in this union a republican form of government." Mark also especially that this guaranty is one of liberty, and not of slavery. We have all of us heretofore been compelled to hear, from individuals of slaveholding principles, many arrogant and bombastic assertions, touching the constitutional "_guaranties_" given to _slavery_; and persons, who are in the habit of taking their constitutional law from other men's mouths, instead of looking at the constitution for themselves, have probably been led to imagine that the constitution had really given such guaranties in some explicit and tangible form. We have, nevertheless, seen that all those pretended guaranties are at most nothing but certain vague hints, insinuations, ciphers and innuendoes, that are imagined to be covered up under language which legally means nothing of the kind. But, in the clause now cited, we do have an explicit and peremptory "guaranty," depending upon no implications, inferences or conjectures, and couched in no uncertain or ambiguous terms. And what is this guaranty? Is it a guaranty of slavery? No. It is a guaranty of something flatly incompatible with slavery: a guaranty of "a republican form of government to every state in this union."