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constitutional, the Attorney General quotes a clause
in the third section of the Bill of Rights as laid down
in the present constitution of this State which says:
"No grant of exclusive, separate, public emoluments
or privileges shall be made to any man, or set of
men, except in consideration of public services."
And then preceeds to argue that Confederate soldiers
have rendered no public services to Kentucky, and
therefore they are not entitled, under the constitu-
tion, to receive a pension at the hands of the State.
Public service in the present constitution means the
same public service named in the old constitution.
And the Court of Appeals has decided that public
service as used in the old constitution means a ser-
vice rendered to the public by heroic deeds, inventive
genius, or great mental endowments, and a life of
public virtue. The person attaining such distinction
becoming in the judgment of the Legislature a pub-
lic benefactor. Ferguson, c. vs. Landrum, c., 1
Bush, page 593."
   It is claimed that the Confederate soldiers rend-
ered Kentucky no service because Kentucky did not
secede from the Union. Grant that Kentucky did
not secede. What was the Confederate army fight-
ing for They were fighting to maintain the princi-
ple on which alone it was possible to form the
American Union of States. That principle was the
right of each State to manage its own local affairs
in its own way, and Kentucky was as much interested
in the preservation of that fundamental doctrine as
any other State in the Union. If the debates in the
convention that adopted the present constitution of
the United States be carefully read by any one, it will
take no further argument to prove the truth of the