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[208] fields and the birds of the air. Poverty and despair long pleaded to excuse us, but that excuse is not true now. Let the voice of the people ‘throng in and become partakers of the councils of State,’ until the peoples' representatives take away this reproach. It cannot be, as some have urged, that the State which could send over one hundred thousand men to battle and death, may not, under the Constitution for which they fought, rightly expend money for the roll of their names or history of their achievements. It cannot be that the State which can give a money reward to a civil officer for catching a malefactor, cannot give a sword as reward to a soldier for honoring her people in battle. This State were weak, indeed, if so poor in power and right. Long ago, the law was declared in Alabama that the ‘whole, unbounded power’ of man over man, in matters temporal, resides in the government of the State, save as expressly or by necessary implication denied by the State and Federal Constitutions. There is no want of power.
Richmond, VA. 1898.
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