charge of its very highest, most important function, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that its military suppression is plain treason. But leaving that for the courts, and not expecting you to act in advance of their decision, there is a point which every one of your intelligent countrymen, whether legally learned or not, can decide and will decide, that is, the suppression of free ballot in Kentucky by your military subordinates was an illegal, unnecessary, tyrannical abuse of usurped power.

What shall be your action toward those subordinates, it is for you to determine, not for your memorialist to suggest. That it may be such as is required by your duty as a citizen and a public servant; such as is required by every incentive of true patriotism; and such as is required by proper care for your own fair fame, now or hereafter, toward relieving it from the imputation or suspicion of complicity with such foul wrong, is the earnest hope of Your fellow-citizen,

S. S. NICHOLAS.

In October, 1864, the regular Committee of the Democratic party of Kentucky, composed of respectable and intelligent gentlemen, published a temperate, well-matured address, in which was collated military orders and other proof showing the interference of the Federal authorities preceding and during the election, from which address the following abstracts are made:

1. The people were warned that when property was needed for the United States army it would be taken from rebel sympathizers, the receipts given therefor to be marked "disloyal," and not to be paid till the end of the war, or on proof that the owner was a loyal man.

2. Rebel sympathizers defined to be, all those not in favor of a vigorous prosecution of the war, and an unconditional supply of men and money for that purpose, and votes given at the election to be a test of loyalty.

3. Persons offering to vote whose votes are rejected, to be arrested by the military.

4. Judges of election to be held responsible by the military if they permit any disloyal men to vote.

5. The Democratic ticket ordered to be struck from the poll books in many places.

6. Oaths unknown to Constitution or law required from voters and judges.

7. Under an illegal trade regulation, "boards of trade" were organized in nearly every town, without whose permission no merchandise could be imported into the State or transferred from one part of it to another, and no permit to be given except to those whom such board chose to deem loyal; the commercial prosperity of every trader, manufacturer, and mechanic being thus placed at the mercy of these inquisitorial boards. Speaking of these trade regulations and the operations under them, Governor Bramlette, in his message to the Legislature, said: "It is a most shameful, corrupt system of partisan political corruption and oppression."

8. More than a third of the voters deterred from going to the polls.

9. "We publish statements showing outrages committed at different places in more than twenty counties. Our materials are ample to swell the list almost indefinitely, but these are sufficient to indicate the general character of the whole." "In twelve counties not a single vote was permitted to be cast for the Democratic ticket; in eight others it received less than ten votes in the county; in fifteen others less than fifty; and in sixteen others less than one hundred; these fifty-one counties embracing many of the strongest Democratic counties of the State." "In only twenty-eight counties was Mr. Bramlette voted for by a majority of those entitled to vote."

10. Two Democratic candidates for Congress were imprisoned to prevent them from canvassing; many voters and several judges of election were also imprisoned.

These abstracts are made from the address of the Committee for the purpose of showing that there was no exaggeration in the preceding memorial. Every citizen can judge what free ballot amounts to or is worth in this country under the dominance of an unscrupulous political party.

GENERAL SCOTT ON MARTIAL LAW.

General Winfield Scott, by long odds the ablest military legist our country has produced, published, in 1843, a review of the

author's pamphlet on martial law, to be found in the first volume, from which review the following extracts are made for the purpose of neutralizing, if not annihilating, whatever of respect may be supposed to be due to General Jackson on the subject of the right of a military man to proclaim martial law in this country. It will also serve to dispel the false notion that an officer is bound to obey the unlawful order of his superior. See the review, p. 284, vol. i., Autobiography of General Scott.

"This timely publication, understood to be from the pen of an ex-judge of the Kentucky Court of Appeals, discusses the extraordinary doctrines recently avowed in Congress and elsewhere, attributing to the commander of an army the right to proclaim and enforce martial law as against citizens (including legislators and judges) wholly unconnected with the military service.

"The monstrous proposition avowed has raised the indignant voice of 'A Kentuckian,' and it is only necessary to read him to consign the speeches and writings he reviews to the same repository with the passive obedience and non-resistance doctrines of the Filmers and Hobbses of a former age.

"In England the land forces are governed by an annual mutiny act and a sub-code called 'articles of war,' made by the king under the express authority of the act. The preamble of that act always recites, among other things: whereas, no man can be forejudged of life or limb, or be subjected to any kind of punishment within this realm, by martial law, or in any other manner than by the judgment of his peers and according to the known and established laws of this realm, yet it being requisite for retaining the forces in their duty that soldiers be brought to a more exemplary and speedy punishment than the usual forms of law will allow, be it therefore enacted, etc.; followed by a careful enumeration of crimes for which officers and soldiers shall be punished by court-martial.

"It is in view of the high principles of civil liberty consecrated by Parliament as above, that Tytler, for a long time Judge Advocate of Scotland, says, in his essay on Military Law: 'Martial law was utterly disclaimed as binding the subjects in general.' So also Chief Justice Loughborough said in 1792: 'Martial law, such as it is described by Hale and Blackstone, does not exist in England at all; it is totally inaccurate to state martial law as

having any place whatever within the realm of Great Britain as against subjects not in the line of military duty.'

Notwithstanding those conservative views, long embodied in the laws and public opinion of England, which hold in utter abhorrence the application of martial law to any person not at the time in the military service, one general and several eminent statesmen are found on this side the Atlantic who ignorantly suppose that that law, described by Hale and Blackstone as 'no law,' is a part of the law of these States, which every commander may indulge himself with, at his own discretion, against the free citizens of republican America.

"There is nothing in our military code to give the slightest pretense that any part of it can be applied to citizens not attached to an army. But in a matter so infinitely important to the existence of free government and our civil liberties, the Constitution is not silent. The fifth amendment expressly declares: 'No person shall be held to answer for a capital or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia when in actual service, in time of war or public danger.' The sixth amendment is to the same effect: 'In all criminal prosecutions the accused shall enjoy the right to speedy and public trial by an impartial jury.'

'If these clauses do not expressly secure the citizen, not belonging to an army, from the possibility of being dragged before a council of war or court-martial for any crime, or on any pretense whatever, then there can be no security for any human right under human institutions. Congress and the President, if they were unanimous, could not proclaim martial law over any part of the United States without throwing those amendments into the fire. And if President Madison (begging pardon of his memory for the violent supposition) had sent an order to General Jackson to establish the odious code over the citizens of New Orleans, it would have been the duty of the general, under his oath to obey the Constitution, to have withheld obedience; for, by the ninth article of war, officers are not required to obey any but lawful commands.'

'General Jackson took the responsibility with as little of necessity, or even of utility, as of law. In this he stands distinguished

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from every American commander from the Declaration of Independence down to the present day. Whatever may be our astonishment at the fact that a court of American officers should have proceeded under illegal orders to try a citizen under such charges, they saved themselves and the country from that last of degradations-the finding the prisoner guilty because accused by the commanding general. Mr. Louallier was acquitted. "When Pompey played the petty tyrant at Sicily, as the lieutenant of that master despot Sylla, he summoned before him the Mamertines. That people refused to appear, alleging that they stood excused by an ancient privilege granted them by the Romans. 'What!' said Sylla's lieutenant, will you never be done with citing laws and privileges to men who wear swords?' Roman liberty had already been lost in the distemperature of the times. Inter arma silent leges found its way into our young republic in the thirty-ninth year of its existence. This odious reply of Pompey to the Mamertines shows that the lovers of law and of human liberty would have gained nothing if he had gained the battle of Pharsalia.

"Under the thirty-third of our rules and articles of war, General Jackson's own officers were bound to aid in causing the writ of habeas corpus to be executed against him, as also in executing the precept for his appearance before the judge, if he had refused appear and to submit to the sentence of the court. This article is as old on our statute book as our glorious revolution of 1776, and as old in England, whence we borrowed it, as the glorious revolution which drove out James the Second and his martial law, which has never again appeared there from that day to this.

to

"It is vulgarly supposed, particularly by those who, dressed in a little brief authority, lust for more, that the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus lets in martial law upon the citizen. The suspension by Congress would certainly, for the time, enable power to hold any citizen incarcerated without cause and without trial, but if brought to trial it must still be before one of the ordinary courts of the land. It is a curious fact that this writ has been but twice practically suspended, (by Generals Wilkinson and Jackson, in both instances at New Orleans,) and never once constitutionally anywhere in the United States since the Declaration of Independence."