Even at this price
Mr. Hill is supposed to have made a brilliant bargain.
This brings me to the heart of my theorem. Ever since Hamilton's time,
it has been assumed as axiomatic, by conservative Americans, that courts
whose function is to expound a written constitution can and do act as a
"barrier to the encroachments and oppressions of the representative
body."[33] I apprehend that courts can perform no such office and that
in assuming attributes beyond the limitations of their being they, as
history has abundantly proved, not only fail in their object, but shake
the foundations of authority, and immolate themselves. Hitherto I have
confined myself to adducing historical evidence to prove that American
courts have, as a whole, been gifted with so little political sagacity
that their interference with legislation, on behalf of particular
suitors, has, in the end, been a danger rather than a protection to
those suitors, because of the animosity which it has engendered. I shall
now go further. For the sake of argument I am willing to admit that the
courts, in the exercise of the dispensing prerogative, called the
Police Power, have always acted wisely, so much so that every such
decree which they have issued may be triumphantly defended upon
economic, moral, or social grounds.
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