stimulus, the philosopher's stone, the statesman's policy, the citizen's protection, and the religionist's faith! He saw in it the rod for error, the plummet of truth, and the car of advancement. Especially did he find in its guarantee a nation's capacity and repose, a people's liberty and happiness. He saw that reason would lose her great office, the pen its pungency and power, and eloquence its fervor and force, if freedom of thought and speech was circumscribed.

What Webster saw and expressed with the glow of a great heart, Thomas Jefferson has handed down in his inaugural message, wherein he has impearled forever the principles of Democratic liberty: a jealous care of the right of election; the supremacy of the civil over the military authority; the diffusion of information, and the arraignment of all abuses at the bar of public reason; freedom of the press and freedom of person, under the protection of the habeas corpus and trial by juries impartially selected. These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages, the blood of our heroes, have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civil instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error and alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which leads to peace, liberty, and safety.

I would to God that I could read to Mr. Lincoln, with such commentary as history furnishes, these principles of his philosophic and Democratic predecessor, that he might retrace his steps with regard to these extraordinary arrests. I would implore him, with that respect due to his high office, and forgetting all considerations but the honor and safety of the people of Ohio whose representative in part I have been so long, to pause before he precipitates any part of our people into the despair which is fast gathering upon their hearts. I would beseech him, in the language of his proclamation for national humiliation, in the name of that God who overrules the designs of Presidents and the orders of Generals, not to add to the "awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land," other and worse 66 punishments for our presumptuous sins." I would beseech him not to turn away from the earnest question which Horatio Seymour has propounded: "Whether this war is waged to put down rebellion at the South or destroy free institutuons at the North;" but to answer it magnanimously by retracing his steps, releasing and stopping at once and forever this system of arrest and inquisitorial trial. He would thus assure you whose sons and brothers are in the field, that our Government shall not be subverted in the North, while our gallant soldiers are maintaining it with their lives in the South.

CIVIL WAR.

335

MAGNA CHARTA-ITS SANCTITY.

a speech delivered in Cooper Institute, in November, 1863.

ler who visits that island meadow in the river Thames, near used as a race course, and still known as Runnymede, does > see the racing, but because that meadow marks an era in f human freedom. There, six hundred and forty-four years orning of the 12th of August, the iron-clad barons met King sted from him the same rights which have been violated by coln, and ostracized by the indemnity bill of the last Conrs.] These rights were written in the Latin of that day, homo capiatur." Dead language, but vital with libertym said was worth all the classics.

man shall be arrested or imprisoned or deprived of his own 1, or of his liberties, or of his own free customs, or outshed, or injured in any manner, nor will we pass sentence send trial upon him, unless by the legal judgment of his peers of the land." [Cheers.]

the germ of our civil freedom, which the pigmies of to-day g to uproot, now that it has grown from the acorn to the ther (Judge Thomas of Massachusetts) has so finely exFrom the gray of that morning streamed the rays, which, the hours, coursing with the years, and keeping pace with have encircled the whole earth with the glorious light of -the liberty for which our fathers planted these commonwilderness; for which they went through the baptism of in the Revolution; which they imbedded and hoped to l in the Constitution; without which the Constitution would he parchment on which it was written." [Cheers.] As if great charter sacred forever in the Anglo-Saxon memory, with the holiest emotions of religion, and to sanction it and the terrors of the unseen world, the Catholic hieday-long before Protestantism arose, before the Reforwe had the transcendental light of our Puritan preach-this Catholic hierarchy, then the friend of the oppressed le, were convoked a few days after the unwilling king arter. Picture to your eye that great convocation. It inster Abbey, the mausoleum of the dead royalty and genius [ere was the king upon his throne, sceptred and crowned, is robes of office; near him were the lords temporal in their ; on his right were the gentlemen of England representing , the people of the realm; and within the altar were the , clad in all the pomp of their pontifical apparel! In the tephen Langton, the primate of England, Archbishop of The great organ rolls its music amidst the Gothic arches; ed with a dim religious light from the stained windows, the thrill of "symphony divine," and the choir sing Te Deum

laudamus-praise to God for the great charter of human freedom!

Censers swing and the incense rises, an offering to the God of justice! And in that impressive presence the Archbishop arises, and gathering upon his brow and in his voice the terrors of the invisible and eternal world, he sequesters and excludes, and from the body of our Lord Jesus Christ, from the company of the saints in heaven and the good on earth, he forever excommunicates and accurses every one who should dare violate that great charter of Anglo-Saxon freedom! [Cheers.] Think you, men of New York, these curses are not living yet? A Massachusetts Senator has said that your honored Governor is now being dragged at the chariot of a Federal Executive, usurping the rights of the people and violating the great charter, as eternized in our traditions, our history, and our Constitution. But the people of this country are meeting as of old, not in any Gothic minster, not in the presence of the great hierarchs, not with ceremony of Church and State, not to the music of organ and choir or the rising incense of praise, not amidst the fulminations of primates; but under the great sky of heaven, from the Atlantic to the Mississippi; and they, too, are sequestering and excluding, excommunicating and accursing-and from the body of the just God in heaven and from the company of the good and patriotic everywhere-all the minions of power who have dared in this age and land to violate these sacred rights of personal and constitutional liberty. [Great cheers.]

CONFISCATION.

ITS HISTORY-EXPERIENCE OF IRELAND-CAN BELLIGERENCY AND TREASON EXIST TOGETHER?PHILOLOGY PROGRESSIVE-CONSTITUTIONAL PROVISIONS-EFFECTS OF CONFISCATION.

"It is advisable to exceed in lenity rather than in severity; to banish but few rather than many; and to leave them their estates, instead of making a vast number of confiscations. Under pretence of avenging the republic's cause, the avengers would establish tyranny. The business is not to destroy the rebel, but the rebellion. They ought to return as quickly as possible into the usual track of government, in which every one is protected by the laws, and no one injured."-Montesquieu.

THE joint resolution explanatory of the Confiscation Act being before the House, on January 14, 1864, Mr. Cox said: -I do not desire to detain the House at any length. The general subject of confiscation, its legality and policy, was exhaustively discussed in the last Congress. I may be allowed to add a few considerations to those which have heretofore been offered here: first, as to the general policy of the confiscation system, with a view to putting down this rebellion; and secondly, as to the specific mode pointed out by this bill and its proposed amendments. My impression is, that the confiscation system has been an utter failure. Because it has failed, we are to have it newly tinkered session after session, and from day to day, with a view to encourage rapacity and aggravate grievances. Such legislation, sir, only stimulates rebellion. It destroys what remnant of Union feeling may be still remaining in the South. It ignores

the first lesson of history, what has been truly called "the principal observation of the best historians, that a whole nation, how contemptible soever, should not be so incensed by any prince or State, how powerful soever, as to be driven to take desperate courses." Instead of disarming the rebel, it arms him, when nearly exhausted, with the weapons of revenge and despair. Mr. Burke once said, speaking of America: "You cannot frame an indictment against a whole people." History is, alas! too full of examples of the ruthless savagery of confiscation. In proportion to the atrocities have been the resistance of the people and the desolation of the lands to which such savagery has been applied. If I should wish to present a case where all the horrors of subjugation, penury, devastation, and confiscation have been felt, I would go to Ireland. Crushed by the cruelty of a system similar to that now and here sought to be inaugurated, Ireland points with skeleton finger continually in all her sad history a warning to our rulers. I do not think these cruelties of England toward Ireland are attributable solely to the Puritan spirit of the time of Cromwell, although I find in her history an appeal from New England, in the person of one of her pastors, to Old England, to make the "English sword drunk with Irish blood, to make them heaps upon heaps, their country a dwelling-place for dragons, an astonishment to nations." These excesses

were not the result of religious bigotry alone. They date from the earliest connection of Ireland with England. All her rebellions were the reaction of suffering against rapine. With permission, I extract from Smythe's Ireland, Historical and Statistical, volume eleven, page 117, the terrible lesson I have pondered on the general subject of confiscation. After the expulsion of James II. from the throne of England, the slender relics of Irish possessions became the subject of fresh confiscations. From a report made in 1698, it appears that nearly 4,000 Irish subjects were outlawed, and their possessions, amounting to 1,060,792 acres, were confiscated. The area of Ireland is estimated at 11,042,682 acres. The historian says, that the forfeitures in the reigns of Mary and Elizabeth were 2,838,972 acres; in the reign of James I., at the Restoration, and in 1688, the forfeitures were 11,697,629 acres; so that the whole island has been confiscated, and some parts twice. In one century no inconsiderable portion of the island was confiscated twice, or perhaps thrice; so that at the Union, the situation of Ireland was unparalleled in the history of the world. Such universal ruin only served then, as it will serve in this devoted land, to inspire hatred and scorn between the conquered people and the victors who trampled upon them. Retaliation and murder ever follow closely upon the heels of confiscation. There is not a wise writer who has pictured this history but has condemned the impolicy, not to say illegality, of the forfeitures. They operated always against the conclusion of the war. Had the Irish been regarded as alien enemies instead of domestic rebels, they would have had one relief-they would have retained their possessions under the established law of civilized nations.

If I were to assume the premises sometimes assumed by gentlemen upon the other side of the House, that this war is a territorial war, and that every man, woman, and child, loyal or disloyal, within the limits of the belligerent territory are alien enemies, and should suffer all the consequences of belligerency, according to the law of nations, then there would

If the rebel becomes an

be no foundation at all for acts of this kind.* alien enemy, you cannot confiscate the private property as these bills propose. If there be a line of force, protected by bayonets, which, according to the Supreme Court in the Hiawatha case, makes the confederacy a de facto government; if this be true, as argued by the Solicitor of the War Department, and as has been argued by a gentleman in the other end of the Capitol, then there can be no confiscation of rebel property at all in the manner prescribed by the confiscation act. But I do not propose to inquire too curiously into this matter, though it may well engage the attention of jurists to inquire how treason can be alleged or confiscation follow where the accused were under the dominion of a power capable of coercing allegiance to it and holding the sword of the magistrate de facto, though not de jure. Protection and allegiance are correlative. While government gives the one, it may command the other. If it fail to give protection, would it be just or rational to punish for treason? This subject is treated in the books, and, indeed, was the subject of English statutes. It is thus stated by a writer in the New American Cyclopædia, under the title Treason:

"But, from the obvious absurdity of exacting from every individual a sound, or rather a fortunate, judgment as to the obscure and complicated grounds on which the claim to sovereignty often rested, it became and still remains a well-settled rule, that no one incurs the guilt of treason by adherence to a king or government de facto, although that king or government has but the right of a successful rebel, and loses it all by a subsequent defeat."

*A succinct statement of this heresy is to be found in a letter of William Whiting, Esq., the Solicitor of the War Department, addressed to the "Union League of Philadelphia," in exposition of the political situation created by the progress of the war. In this publication Mr. Whiting contends that the war between the Government and the insurgents has at present reached such a stage that, alike in law and in fact, it has become a territorial civil war," that is, as he adds, "a war by all persons situated in the belligerent territory against the United States." He says:

"Whenever two nations are at war, every subject of one belligerent nation is a public enemy of the other. An individual may be a personal friend and at the same time a public enemy to the United States. The law of war defines international relations. When the civil war in America became a territorial war, every citizen residing in the belligerent districts became a public enemy, irrespective of his private sentiments, whether loyal or disloyal, friendly or hostile, Unionist or Secessionist, guilty or innocent."

According to this logic, therefore, every citizen and subject of the Southern Government, whether loyal or disloyal, friendly or hostile, Unionist or Secessionist, guilty or innocent, black or white, bond or free, is to be held and treated as a public enemy of the United States.

The rights of persons inhabiting the seceded States are thus comprehensively defined: "Each person inhabiting those sections of the country declared by the President's proclamation to be in rebellion has the right to what belongs to a public enemy and no more. He can have no right to take any part in our Government. That right does not belong to an enemy of the country while he is waging war or after he has been subdued. A public enemy has a right to participate in or to assume the Government of the United States only when he has conquered the United States. We find in this well-settled doctrine of belligerent law the solution of all questions in relation to State rights. After the inhabitants of a district have become public enemies, they have no rights, either State or personal, against the United States. They are belligerents only, and have left to them only belligerent rights."

If this be true-which, however, I deny-then those who urge it at least are estopped from urging trials for treason, and confiscations as the penalty. There can be no treason in case of a belligerent who is in the position of a public enemy.