the sacred privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, of the right to bear arms, of the right of petition, of the right of free conscience, free speech, free press, and free ballot, with the right of exemption from "unreasonable searches or seizures," and from any other arrest or seizure but by "warrant issued upon probable cause, supported by oath particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized;" and, also, the guarantee to each State of a "Republican form of government."

Hence, also, the guarantee of exemption to every citizen against trial or punishment by any military tribunal, "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; also the guarantee that he should not be "deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law," and that his "private property shall not be taken for public use without just compensation."

Hence, also, were prohibited all titles of nobility, all bills of attainder, all ex post facto laws, all excessive bail, and all cruel punishment.

Hence, also, the Constitution proclaims itself to be the "supreme law of the land." This declared supremacy is without exception or limitation. It was intended for all time and under all circumstances. The calumny of its having been intended for time of peace and not for war is a modern weak invention of the enemies of civil liberty, to excuse usurpation or abuse of power. By its own plain showing, it was made for observance more especially in time of war and public danger. In time of peace civil liberty is generally in little danger. It is in time of public danger, in time of civil war, that men's passions are aroused, and under their influences they are most prone to tyrannical persecution. It was to restrain those passions, to prevent such persecutions in such junctures, that the guarantees of the Constitution were made.

Much reliance was placed upon the then comparatively new device of a written constitution for securing liberty. To that end it must be inviolable. To secure its inviolability an oath for its support was required from Federal and State officers. The President, from his great power and peculiar liability to sinister influences, being an object of special distrust, was required to be very emphatic in his official oath. He was required to swear that he

would, "to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution."

These oaths admit no evasion, no mental reservation or equivocation, but require implicit obedience. A man cannot honestly "take the oath to obtain power and then break the oath in using the power." A President is allowed no mental reservation of intention to break the oath whenever he should deem it "indispensable" to usurp non-granted power, substituting his own opinion for that of the nation as to what is or is not indispensable; nor can he honestly, for any purpose, substitute his arbitrary will for law or constitution, or substitute military despotism for our free Republic.

The excuse of violating the Constitution for the purpose of preserving it has no possible basis of fact or morality. There is but the one only mode for its preservation-that is, by obedience. All other modes, whatever the simulated pretext, are mere treachery. No officer is trusted with discretion to disobey the Constitution. Whenever he usurps such discretion, he perpetrates the basest moral treason an officer can commit. When he does it by suppressing civil authority with military force, he is guilty of actual treason, within both the letter and spirit of the definition of treason, as given in the Constitution. If he escape hanging, it will be only because the laws of his country are not administered upon him. Officers cannot be allowed a discretion to commit treason any more than citizens are allowed discretion to commit murder.

As said by Webster: "The spirit of liberty will not permit power to overstep its prescribed limits, though good intent, patriotic intent, come along with it. This is the nature of constitutional liberty. THIS IS OUR LIBERTY."

The Constitution being the creator of our national life,-the only true preserver of free national life,—its defense and protection constitute the very highest duty of American patriotism.

All supersedure of the Constitution by an alleged higher law, law of necessity or of war, are mere pretexts for unnecessary usurpation by would-be tyrants. It gives ample power to meet all the exigencies of any war. So thought the great men by whom it was made; so thought the wise nation by whom it was adopted; and so the nation continued to think with near entire

unanimity, till the Government fell into the hands of incompetents, who endeavor to cloak their imbecility under alleged demerits of the Constitution. So also profess to think some of the most respectable and talented of the dominant party. One of them has said in the Senate: "Necessity is the plea of tyrants, and if our Constitution ceases to operate the moment a person charged with its observance thinks there is necessity for its violation, it is of little value. I want no other power for putting down even this gigantic rebellion than such as may properly be derived from the Constitution. The more we study its provisions, the more it is tried in troublous times, the greater will be our admiration and veneration for the wisdom of its authors."

Even if it were true that any power necessary to proper efficiency in the government had been withheld, that would afford no justification for usurpation. For, as said by Washington: "Let there be no change by usurpation; for though this in one instance may be the instrument of good, it is the customary instrument by which free governments are destroyed. The precedent must always greatly overbalance in permanent evil any partial or transient benefit which the use can yield.”

Martial Law.

1. That which goes by the name of martial law is no law. So say the most eminent jurists of England and America, while no respectable jurist has ever said to the contrary. The power misnamed martial law is that which necessarily comes unsought to a military commander in the presence of actual active military operations, because of the silence of the civil law or the paralyzing of its proper functionaries by the operations of the war. Arising solely from the necessity of the occasion, the power is produced by no proclamation, lasts only for the occasion, and needs no revocation. The power is undefined and undefinable, because resting in the discretion of the commander to the extent that its exercise is permissible. As it comes only from necessity, it is limited by that necessity. It exists only because of and in the absence of the civil authority. It is a power to prevent aid to the enemy or obstruction to our own force. So far as it gives control over non-combatants or citizens not attached to the mili

tary service, it is a preventing not a punishing power. If the commander, or any subordinate by his order, transcends this narrow limit of the power, or abuses his discretion, he is responsible to the law, both civil and criminal.

2. While conducting the nation during war, neither Washington nor Madison ever supposed he could enlarge his power by his own proclamation, or suspend the civil law. Neither of them ever attempted the exercise of a right, under any supposed necessity, to usurp the prerogative of court and jury in the trial and punishment of citizens not attached to the military service.

3. Martial law is not only denounced in the Declaration of Independence, but national abhorrence for that mode of tyranny is amply developed in the State Constitutions. Nearly all of them contain a clause which, if not identical in language, is of equivalent import with the following, taken from one of the oldest among them, and made, like some of the others, in the very midst of the revolutionary war, for the government of a then independent State. "In all cases and at all times the military ought to be under strict subordination to and governed by the civil power.' "No person can, in any case, be subjected to law martial, or to any pains or penalties by virtue of that law, except those employed in the army or navy, and except the militia in active service, but by authority of the Legislature." "The power of suspending law ought never to be exercised but by the Legislature."

The Act of Indemnity.

1. Congress, not being omnipotent like the English Parliament, has no power to give absolution to Federal officers for either civil or criminal liability for past acts violating the rights of a citizen or the law of a State. In its criminal aspect the power could be deduced only from the pardoning power, which belongs exclusively to the President, and applies only to offenses against Federal law, with no bearing whatever upon offenses against, or penalties incurred under State law. In its civil aspect it is an attempt to deprive a citizen of his vested right to remuneration for the illegal act of an officer. Its violation of justice, on sound principle, is equivalent to an attempt to take one man's property and give it to another. It is arbitrary legislative confiscation, a species of

bill of attainder, without even pretense of fault in the party to be injured.

2. Could the President and higher officials be absolved on the score of motive in the court of conscience, yet it could not be pretended that all their subordinates can be so absolved for their multitudinous illegal arrests and extortions. With the very many known instances of outrages perpetrated by them, to give them all indiscriminately the absolution of the proposed indemnity, would be one of the foulest wrongs with which a party majority ever attempted to disgrace a nation in an enlightened era. act is a stain on our national character.

Abolition Diplomacy.

The

The Trent affair proves either gross ignorance in the assertion of absurd pretensions not warranted by the law of nations, or a dastardly betrayal of national honor by the sudden surrender of those pretensions at the first growl of the British lion.

The kidnapping extradition of Arguelles was a usurpation of power to inflict another stain on the nation's honor, by violating the cherished right of asylum, so universally recognized among civilized nations, and heretofore so earnestly asserted by our own. It was a foul thing, done in an illegal, disgraceful manner.

It is the undoubted prerogative of either House of Congress to keep careful watch over our foreign relations, and give expression to such opinions concerning them as the national interest may seem to require. The House of Representatives was acting legitimately within this prerogative when reannouncing and reaffirming the "Monroe doctrine," for the purpose of influencing the action of France in Mexico.

The conduct of the President and his Cabinet, in their attempted effort to soothe the apprehended resentment of the French Emperor at that action, was a disgraceful betrayal to a foreign court of the want of harmony in our own councils-a treacherous, not to say treasonable, promise of aid in counteracting a policy unanimously proclaimed by the representatives of the nation-a ridiculous assumption of exclusive control over our foreign relations--a pusillanimous truckling to the apprehended displeasure of a foreign potentate-a national degradation in the opinion of