E. T. Merrick

“ If the colored race has any virtue in it, it will assert itself. Sturdy integrity, sturdy intelligent industry, and patience, will command respect and will be accorded consideration everywhere. I know of no instance in history where a people has attained eminence without exhibiting energy on its own part. All great peoples have earned their positions. Recognition of the African race, for all it is worth, will come (if it is not now here) in due time. ”

“ A marriage contract, as viewed by the law, is only a contract in solemn form between two persons of different sexes, to live together in the state of matrimony until one of them shall die. In this aspect the contract is simply between two persons and binds only two. ”

“ Assuming, according to the prejudices of the largest number, that the white is the superior race, ought laws to be passed prohibiting marriage between white persons and Indians, negroes, Australians, or Chinese? ”

“ The writer of the article referred to thinks it is a great hardship that one eighth of the people of the United States are prohibited by law from marrying with the other seven eighths.
We think he is mistaken about the fact of prohibition, and that the legal prohibition is very far from universal in the several States. We think, further, that the general sentiment of the negro race, where they dwell in large bodies, is at present opposed to marriage between the races. At all events, such marriages rarely take place where they are legally permitted. ”

“ Statutes which authorize the setting aside of contracts for their willful violation, or for fraud in their inception, come more properly within the police power, and as touching questions of morals and status, than as laws infringing a sound contract, and such laws are never thought to impair the obligation of a contract in the sense of the Constitution. The party who violates the contract is he who impairs it.
lie will ask the courts in vain to enforce what he himself has willfully destroyed. So, too, the innocent victim ought not to be bound, where the other party refuses to be bound. ”

“ It therefore seems to be of little avail to contend about the adoption of laws distasteful to the community in which they are to be enforced, and little use in passing them. The only true mode of obtaining beneficial legislation is to educate the people, who are to enforce the laws among themselves, to understand their necessity or usefulness. ”

“ Negroes certainly have a higher regard for persons of full blood of both races, and seem in the main entirely unconscious of the injuries which the laws of some of the States are supposed to inflict on them. ”

“ Whatever discrimination is made in the punishment prescribed in the two sections is directed against the offense designated and not against the person of any particular color or race. The punishment of each offending person, whether white or black, is the same. ”

“ So large a nation as ours, whether the laws are promulgated from Washington or the capitals of the several States, will always furnish the philanthropist with worry enough on a great variety of questions to make him comfortable, if not happy. ”

“ Section 4,189 of the same code declares that, "if any white person and any negro, or the descendant of any negro to the third generation inclusive, though one ancestor of each generation was a white person, intermarry or live in adultery or fornication with each other, each of them must, on conviction, be imprisoned in the penitentiary, or sentenced to hard labor for the county for not less than two nor more than seven years." ”

“ Laws in force in a State are considered as forming a part of all contracts made during the existence of such laws. We may assume for this country, that there is no State in which it is not fundamental ”

“ The one prescribes, generally, a punishment for an offense committed between persons of different sexes; the other prescribes a punishment for an offense which can only be committed where the two sexes are of different races. There is in neither section any discrimination against either race. Section 4,184 equally includes the offense when the persons of the two sexes are both white and when they are both black. Section 4,189 applies the same punishment to both offenders, the white and the black. ”

“ It is highly probable that the cause of the deplorable disregard of the binding force of the marriage tie, in certain of the Eastern States, must be sought for outside of the statute laws themselves. Laws or constitutions have but little value except public opinion demands their enforcement. ”