As thus employed the phrase is nearly identical with legal, as distinguished from moral or merely ab-` stract, rights. It does not in a given case necessarily comprehend all the privileges of citizenship, still less the privileges which political philosophers may claim as incident to citizenship. Thus the rights to life, to liberty, and to the pursuit of happiness, asserted in the American Declaration of Independence, are civil rights only in so far as they are defined and protected by the Constitution and laws of the United States. Further than that they are merely rhetorical and philosophical claims as to the rightful position of the individual in organized society.

The expression "civil rights" thus includes the rights which people have and which they are legally capable of enforcing against one another, as well as those rights which individuals may assert and defend against the State. It is sometimes employed in a more limited sense, as referring only to the latter class of rights, such as are asserted in the Declaration of Rights made by the Lords and Commons of England at Westminster in 1688 and presented to William of Orange and Mary, his wife, as the conditions of their accession to the throne, the Bill of Rights passed by the British Parliament in 1689, such provisions of law as are embodied in the first ten amendments to the Federal Constitution of the United States, and corresponding or similar provisions in the constitutions of the several States.

These provisions relate to the religious freedom of the citizen, to the liberty of speech and of the press,

to the right to assemble and petition for the redress of grievances, to the right to bear arms, to the protection of the individual against arbitrary arrest, to the guaranty of an orderly administration of justice, to the right of habeas corpus, and to security against arbitrary interference with property and the like. Congress in 1793, and This was speedily fol

Article XI was passed by was ratified in January, 1798.

lowed by Article XII in 1803, which was ratified, in September 1804, and deals with the election of the President and Vice-President.

From that date to the Civil War, no amendments to the original instrument were adopted. The next three amendments, Articles XIII, XIV, and XV, were adopted in 1865, 1868, and 1870, respectively, as a part of the reconstruction policy of the government after the Civil War, in order to secure to the lately emancipated slaves the legal and political benefits of full citizenship in the United States and in the several States. In the United States the phrase "civil rights" is employed in a specific sense to denote the rights intended to be secured by the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the Federal Constitution, and by certain acts of Congress and of the legislatures of the several States to the same effect. The more important provisions of the two amendments referred to are: First, those forbidding the States to make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, or to deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, or to deny any

person the equal protection of the laws; Second, that providing for the reduction of the representation of a State in Congress in proportion to the number of its male citizens over twenty-one years of age who are denied the right of suffrage; and, Third, that which declares that the right of the citizens of the United States to vote shall not be abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

It is generally conceded that these provisions of the Constitution have failed of their object and that they have done little to secure to the negro in America the civil rights to which they refer. As to the second provision above enumerated, no effort has been made by the National government to enforce it. The third provision has been generally evaded in the Southern States, and in some of them the negro has been effectually excluded from suffrage by constitutional and statutory provisions prescribing strict educational or property qualifications for the exercise of the right to vote.

The first provision, which aims to secure to all citizens equality of rights and privileges, though not as completely futile as the others to which reference has been made, has had a very limited effect. Being by its terms restricted to the acts of States, it does not extend to the acts of individuals, unless they are State officials in the performance of their public duties. Thus, the power of Congress to pass legislation for the enforcement of the provision is limited to action which is corrective of State legislation. The

citizen is still dependent upon State law for his protection against individuals who threaten his life, liberty, or property or who discriminate against him on account of his race. Then, too, the operation of the provision has been more restricted by judicial construction, as in the decision that a statute forbidding the intermarriage of whites and blacks was not within the condemnation of the Constitution, as the amendment in question was designed to secure rights of a civil and political nature only and not social or domestic rights.

It has also been held that the amendment does not add to the privileges and immunities of citizens, but only protects those which they already have. Thus, it does not extend the franchise nor the right to serve on juries to negroes or to women who do not already possess it.

These illustrations show that the civil-rights legislation of the Nation at large has been of little effect. The more immediate and complete jurisdiction of the several States over their citizens, however, renders legislation of this character when enacted by them much more efficacious.

Several of the Northern States have accordingly passed effective civil-rights laws of the general tenor of the constitutional provisions above considered, but aimed at individual rather than governmental interference with such rights.

Thus, in many of the States railroad and other transportation companies, hotels, theatres, school

boards, etc., are forbidden to discriminate against persons because of their color or previous condition of servitude, and such laws have been found to be reasonably capable of enforcement. The strong sentiment of the decade immediately following the Civil War has to a considerable extent abated, however, and though the negro is still far from the enjoyment of the civil rights of his fellow white citizens, the demand for such legislation as that above described has, at the beginning of the twentieth century, well-nigh died out. This is probably due in a measure to a growing conviction that such rights are rather to be won by the growth of intelligence, virtue, and industry than gained by legislation.

From 1870 to 1913 there were no amendments. In the latter year Article XVI was adopted, February 25, and Article XVII, May 31. Article XVIII was adopted January 29, 1919, and Article XIX, on August 26, 1920. The last two amendments are still fresh in the memories of most of us. Of all the amendments, the eighteenth experienced more agitation and more reverses than any, without exception.

Until after the Civil War the movement towards prohibitive legislation was merely local. One of the earliest State and National forms of prohibition forbade the sale of liquor to Indians. Some of the early laws enacted local option-which may be local prohibition-following Connecticut's (1839) example. Maine was the first State to establish prohibition, the law was made effective in 1851 and was finally incorporated into the State constitution. In 1852