the matter published is proper for public information, the truth thereof may be given in evidence; and in all indictments for libels, the jury shall have a right to determine the law and the facts, under the direction of the court, as in other cases.

14. That no power of suspending laws shall be exercised, unles by the legislature or its authority.

27. That emigration from this state shall not be prohibited.

28. To guard against transgressions of the high powers which we have delegated, we declare, that every thing in this article is excepted out of the general powers of the government, and shall forever remain inviolate; and that all laws contrary thereto, or contrary to the constitution, shall be void.

SEC. 15. GENERAL COMMENTS ON BILLS OF RIGHTS.

Having noticed the declarations of rights of nearly all the state constitutions, adopted prior to the year 1800, it is sufficient to observe, that the others not specially referred to, and those adopted since that time, do not contain any important new provisions, to declare and secure either the civil, religious, or political rights and liberties of the people.

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The 3d section of article 10 of the constitution of Kentncky declares the religious rights and liberties of the people with more clearness, precision, and accuracy, than any of the other constitutions or bills of rights. The bill of rights of Vermont declares "that no man ought to, or of right can be compelled to attend any religious worship, or erect or support any place of worship, or maintain any minister, contrary to the dictates of his conscience." The Kentucky constitution declares he shall not be compelled to do 80 against his consent." If he consent, then there is no compulsion at all. But should a person who approves the doctrines of a church, and attends it, be compelled to contribute to support a clergyman whom he disapproves, or to contribute to build a new church on a plan which he thinks too expensive and extravagant, merely because he may have no conscientious scruples on the subject? Is it not a direct violation of the principles of religious liberty to compel a person in any case, and under any circumstances, to contribute to the support of a church or ministry, except so far as to require him to fulfil his contracts upon the

subject? Such is the generally received opinion of religious liberty in this country at the present day, except among the puritans of New England, and some of their descendants in other states.

Laws to compel persons to attend a particular church established by law, and to pay tithes or taxes for the support of the same, and the ministry thereof, and laws to compel them to attend some church, and to contribute to the support of the ministry thereof, allowing every person the privilege of selecting the church of his choice, are both inconsistent with religious liberty, and essentially unjust and tyrannical; though the latter may not violate the conscience of any person, and are therefore less tyrannical and objectionable than the former.

The popular sense of the words "religious liberty," as used in this country, is that any person has a right to attend any church or churches, and to aid in supporting the same, and the ministry thereof, or to refuse to attend, or to aid in supporting any; that religion should be propagated by moral suasion only, and not by compulsion; and that churches and ministers should be supported by contracts and donations voluntarily made, and not by tithes nor taxes laid by law.. It is an abuse of language to say a person enjoys religious liberty, if any compulsory power whatever can be exercised over him upon religious subjects, or over his property for religious purposes, by virtue of the law. The puritans of the 17th and 18th centuries regarded such liberty as unbridled license→→→→ tending directly to irreligion, dissoluteness, and infidelity; but fortunately for our country, their contracted, rigid, and bigoted views upon religious subjects have mostly disappeared before the light and intelligence of the 19th century.

The 4th, 5th, and 6th amendments to the constitution of the United States are essentially the same as the 8th and 10th sections of the bill of rights of Virginia, and the 12th, 13th, and 14th sections of the bill of rights of Massachusetts, from which they were probably borrowed, and the phraseology slightly changed and improved. All those provisions were intended to secure the personal liberty of the citizen. They show the great importance attached by the people of Virginia and Massachusetts, and afterwards by congress and the legislatures of nearly all the states, to personal liberty, and how jealous they were of arbitrary arrests

and imprisonments without due process of law. These provisions were at that period, in some respects, new and extraordinarygoing far beyond any English precedent. Hence they may be claimed as of American origin. The writ of habeas corpus provided for by act of parliament, in 1678, was the principal reliance of Englishmen for the protection of personal liberty, and for the security of the rights declared in the petition of rights of 1628,, and the bill of rights of 1689.

SEC. 16. ARBITRARY IMPRISONMENTS, AND THE WRIT OF HABEAS

CORPUS.

The writ of habeas corpus is the great remedial writ relied upon. by Americans, as well as by Englishmen, for the protection of personal liberty; and yet the 9th section of article I. of the constitution of the United States recognizes the authority of the government to suspend the privileges of that writ, "when in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it;" but it does not in express words grant the power either to the executive or legislative branches of the government. It would seem in its nature to be an executive power, to be exercised when the public safety requires it, whether congress be in session or not, and in such district or districts of country as the danger may exist, by reason of invasion or rebellion, and for such period of time as the danger may continue. It would seem that all these things must be determined by executive discretion, it being supposed that the executive is always cognizant of the facts, and always ready to act, which is not the case with congress; and yet it would seem that the legislative power may properly prescribe by law the mode of its exercise may prescribe limits to its exercise, and may define, to some extent, the exigencies which justify and authorize its exercise.

The law might require charges to be filed and served on the party imprisoned, within a certain number of days after his arrest, and require him to be discharged if that were not done, and some reasonable ground of suspicion furnished by affidavit of some overt act of treason, or of a conspiracy against the government, or of correspondence, or other acts to aid, or preparatory to aiding, the invasion or rebellion. Much might be done by a proper statute

to secure the government from the machinations of conspirators, rebels, spies, informers, and other dangerous enemies, by authorizing their arrest and detention for a certain period, in times of invasion or rebelion, on some reasonable evidence of good grounds of suspicion of their active disloyalty to give time for further investigation into their acts and conduct and to collect evidence against them. But they should be immediately informed of the charges against them, to give them and their friends an opportunity for explanation, and to furnish evidence, if they could do so, to refute the charges, and show their loyalty.

Constitutions, as well as statutes, must have a reasonable construction. The 4th, 5th, and 6th amendments to the federal constitution should be construed with, and as modified by the section in relation to the suspension of that great remedial writ. It is obobviously impossible to carry those amendments into effect in districts of country controlled either by an invading army, or by an armed rebellion, comprising many states, in which the rebels have subverted the federal government, declared their independence, and established a revolutionary government of their own in its stead. Hence those amendments to the constitution of the United States to secure personal rights and a fair trial to persons charged with crime, cannot now apply to any of the seceded confederate states, where no courts of the United States can be held; and hence the necessity of suspending the writ of habeas corpus, and declaring, to some extent, martial law, in such exigencies, and of punishing some classes of persons by imprisonment, and others by martial law. Such has been the practice in England since 1688, to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, by act of parliament, and to allow arbitrary arrests and temporary imprisonments of suspected persons; which was done prior to that time by the King alone. During the present rebellion, the condition and exigencies of the country, in all the confederate states, and at times in portions of the border states of Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, have been such as to justify the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, and the declaration of martial law, and all the rules and laws of war.

But that great remedial writ constitutes the palladium of the personal liberty and security of our citizens, and to suspend it in

the free states, hundreds of miles from the seat of rebellion and war, merely because a great and wicked rebellion exists in many of the slave states and to seize by arbitrary power, and without legal process, hundreds of persons on mere suspicion of disloyalty, and for words only, and not for acts declared by the laws to be criminal and send them off and incarcerate them for months in military prisons, without giving them any information of the grounds or causes of their arrest, or any opportunity to explain the matter, and show their loyalty, seems like a terrible and alarming abuse of arbitrary power; which, if drawn into a precedent, may be used by some ambitious president of the Cæsarian, Cromwellean, or Napoleonic order, to overthrow the constitution, subvert the liberties of the people, change the very nature of the government, and substitute in its place a military despotism, like that of Cromwell, France, Russia, or the ancient Roman Empire. This is no fancy picture, and hence our people are, and should be, jealous of, and alarmed by such fearful and shocking abuses of power, heretofore unknown in our country.

Great numbers of men have been arrested in the free states. hundreds of miles distant from the rebellion, and confined in military prisons for months, for words only-which were construed as evidence of disloyalty to the federal government, and as tending to discourage enlistments. We have no laws which make disloyalty to the government, without overt acts against it, a crime or of fence; nor have we any laws which make words only, an offence, which can be punished by imprisonment or otherwise. Hence all such arrests and imprisonments are acts of arbitrary power, not only without law, but contrary to law. They are as despotic as any of the acts of Oliver Cromwell, Napoleon Bonaparte, or Louis Napoleon.

The president may issue proclamations to carry laws into effect, and may make temporary rules and regulations, (not inconsistent with the laws of congress), to govern the army, and to carry into effect the laws of war, in districts where war actually exists, and in their immediate vicinity-but he has no power to make laws, and no power to make words used, or acts done, at a distance from the seat of war, crimes, or offences, and to punish them as such, by imprisonment or otherwise. His attempt to make mere words