But the pretension is yet otherwise hostile to good government. Here is a monopoly on a gigantic scale and with an unprecedented field, in a country which sets its face against all monopolies as unequal and immoral. If any monopoly deserves unhesitating judgment, it must be that which absorbs the rights of others and engrosses political power. How vain to condemn the petty monopoly of commerce, while allowing this vast, all-embracing monopoly of Human Rights!
Clearly, most clearly, and beyond all question, such a government is not “republican in form.” Call it oligarchy, call it aristocracy, call it caste, call it monopoly; but never call it a republic.
Of course such a government can exist only in defiance of the National Constitution, and it is _the duty of Congress_ to interfere against it.
The guaranty is by the United States; therefore Congress must perform it; and, in the discharge of this eminent duty, it must affix the true meaning to the requirement, declaring what is a republican government, and supplying the long-sought definition. Here Congress is sole and final arbiter, binding all other branches of Government. Let a State make office hereditary,--let it shut from the courts all who have not the “blue blood” of ancient ancestry,--let it accord to a favored class controlling power and influence,--let it apply any discrimination on account of race or color, whether against Anglo-Saxons, Celts, or Germans, whether against black or white,--let it do any of these things, all so plainly inconsistent with constitutional requirement, and the legislative power of the nation must recall the State from its aberration, and bring it home to the republican standard.
President Johnson, in his recent annual message, says:--
“In case of the usurpation of the government of a State by one man or an _oligarchy_, it becomes a duty of the United States to make good the guaranty to that State of a republican form of government.”
The President forgets to mention an aristocracy, and does not add, what is true, that the authority bound to make good the guaranty is the sole judge of the exigency. To this end everything centres in Congress, whose powers are commensurate with the occasion. In aid of the guaranty are those other words providing that Congress “shall have power to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the powers vested by the Constitution in the Government of the United States.” Under this ample provision there is a duty to be performed, by any means that seem best. The jurisdiction is complete, and it is in Congress. If any authority were needed for this proposition, it would be found in the words of Chief Justice Taney himself, speaking for the Supreme Court of the United States:--