over all federal grants of which it is the only judge. With no authority to enact laws, it is its duty to determine the legality and constitutionality of those enacted by Congress."

If we have fairly stated the office of the judiciary, it is hardly necessary to add that its suppression is fatal to the Union. It leaves a quivering, lifeless body to testify that the heart has been torn from it by the ruthless hand of ambition.

It is certainly a wonderful turn of the wheel of fortune, which imposes upon the American people an occasion for the discussion and maintenance of rights of persons and property, which are not only inherent in every freeman, but which are acknowledged in every line of their Constitution and laws. Nothing but the most astounding events of the day could have provoked this extraordinary condition of things. We cannot believe, as thousands of the best informed unquestionably do, that a disposition anywhere prevails to overthrow our free system of laws. That we have committed great mistakes in managing public affairs; that we have shamefully violated almost every principle of constitutional government; that we have conceded too much power to the Executive, where power is never legally exercised; that we have, in short, trusted most to that which, in the nature of things, should be trusted least, cannot be questioned. The plea on which these things have been done, too, is scarcely less criminal and treasonable, than the acts and omissions of which we complain. A large portion of the people proclaimed that the civil commotions of the state made it necessary practically to abandon the government of the Constitution in favor of the existing Administration. This monstrous heresy has borne its legitimate fruit. We have a despotism without a dynasty.

With no partiality for dynastic government, and no belief in the possibility of its maintenance, in the present temper of the American people, it is certainly much to be preferred to the reckless system now in force at Washington.

The President of the United States, by a strict construction of the Constitution, is endowed with no creative powers whatever. He is called the Executive, and required to fill certain offices, by the advice and consent of the Senate. As the political head of the

nation, it is his duty to conduct all foreign relations and generally to see to it that the laws shall be faithfully executed. He is not intrusted with the power, by virtue of his own action, to execute a single law of Congress governing the ordinary affairs of the people. It is the province of Congress to create all local executive offices necessary to carry into effect the laws of the Union. The President may appoint incumbents, by the consent of the Senate. He is a sort of commander to give orders to engineers, whose duty it is to execute the laws. In the event of failure, his power is exhausted by removing the delinquent, who is then turned over to the judiciary, where justice is administered and the rights and dignities of the state vindicated. There is not an element of constitutional government in the executive department. Compare this theory of the Union with its present administration, and let us see what we have done.

Without the dignity which commands respect, the stability which assures order, or the magnanimity which often springs from the exercise of supreme power, we have a weak, vacillating political hybrid, so vulgar and offensive as to be no longer endurable even to its own parasites. It is the revel of the midnight robber in the house of the peaceful but despoiled citizen. It is that prodigal use of power, which in itself establishes its abuse.

The governments of the States and the Union are not a mere arbitrary arrangement of covenants and obligations. They were founded on great moral rights and principles, every one of which would be binding, without a single section of law authorizing their enforcement.

It would, for instance, be wrong and sinful to take life, liberty, or property without resorting, in every case, to recognized legal tribunals; so of trials and punishments, without an impartial jury; so of arrests of persons, without written proof of guilt; so of forfeitures of property for treason or other felony. It would be wrong and sinful, in the event of arrest, to deny the right of a rehearing.

Any departure from these settled principles, aside from the guilt involved in the deliberate violation of the Federal Constitution, is a great moral crime. The rights assailed are inherent and indestruc

tible, except by violence. The President, in no event, can have jurisdiction over them. They are matters which, in their very nature, come within the exclusive government of the judiciary. The latter is far more an executive department, so far as the enforcement of laws is concerned, than that of the President; because it is charged with the special duty of enforcing laws, and endowed with absolute power to determine their binding force and constitutionality. For illustration, the Constitution declares that "treason shall consist only in levying war against them (see Sec. 5), or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort; and that "no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood or forfeiture, except during the life of the person attainted." Convictions for treason and forfeiture of property on any other ground than this are void. It is the exclusive office of the judiciary to declare them so, and to hold to legal account those who act in violation of this fundamental law of the Union.

But it is urged, we repeat, that pressing exigencies of public affairs demand the exercise of unrestricted power by the chief of the state; and justify a disregard of acknowledged principles and obligations of law. This is the philosophy of despotism.

Wherever it prevails, we apprehend, however, it will be found that extra-constitutional measures have not only preceded such exigencies, but caused them-that civil commotions have been fomented for the sole purpose of justifying such measures. Upon this point we need refer only to the conduct of the Federal Government, during the existing war, in all the border Slave States; to the policy adopted to degrade those States into the merest dependencies upon the public administration; to the suppression of the judiciary in all the States, which might otherwise have vindicated the laws of the Union; to the exercise of legislative powers by every local military commander; and finally, to the practical exercise of supreme and absolute power, over the people, by the President of the United States.

These examples of usurpation not only prove the wickedness of the pretence that extra-constitutional measures were demanded to meet unlooked-for and overwhelming difficulties; but they show conclusively, in the sequence of events, that such difficulties were

created for the very purpose of justifying the assumption of absolute power. They indicate the process by which the free system

of laws, under which the American people have lived and prospered for more than two centuries, has been swept away, almost unnoticed, within the few months of our criminal civil war.

It must be confessed, in reviewing this degrading picture of public affairs, that there has been no midnight intrigue and deception in the work. This is the President's view of his powers: "As commander-in-chief of the army and navy in time of war, I have the right to take any measure which may best subdue the enemy.

It is equally candid and explicit. If trial by jury, though an explicit constitutional right, should interfere with the efficiency of the army, he may suspend it. If the judicial arm of the States and of the Union, in his judgment, should render the military less effective, he may set it aside. If the seizure of private property for public uses without compensation, the arrest and imprisonment of citizens without any process of law, the suppression of the press, of religious freedom, free speech, and the confiscation of estates 3, 4 by military commissions, provost marshals and their county deputies, should, in his judgment, be regarded as appropriate war measures, he would have the right to enforce them.

Then comes, from the same exhaustless fountain of despotic power, the right of transportation on the part of the President by order of military commissions—the right to seize a citizen, try him by court martial, sentence him to imprisonment or death, and to commute his punishment by an arbitrary edict, commanding that he be sent beyond the jurisdiction of the United States. It will not do to pass this flagrant outrage upon the people and the Federal Constitution by a reference to one or two prominent cases. It is the regular and every-day practice of the Administration in quite all the border States; and the power is exercised by local commanders and provost marshals, without any supervisory control by the war department. Blackstone, speaking of this gross violation of the plainest rights of the people and of the highest dignities of the state, in the same act, says:

"A natural and regular consequence of personal liberty is, that every Englishman may claim a right to abide in his own country so

long as he pleases; tence of the law.

and not to be driven from it, unless by the senThe king, indeed, by his royal prerogative, may issue out his writ ne exeat regum, and prohibit any of his subjects from going into foreign parts without license. This may be necessary for the public service and safeguard of the commonwealth. But no power on earth, except the authority of Parliament [which is the same as that of the States and the people in this country], can send any subject of England out of the land against his will—no, not even a criminal. For exile and transportation are punishments unknown to the common law; and wherever the latter is now inflicted, it is either by the choice of the criminal himself to escape a capital punishment, or else by the express direction of some modern act of Parliament. To this purpose the great charter declares that no freeman shall be banished unless by the judgment of his peers or by the law of the land. And by the Habeas Corpus Act (that second Magna Charta and stable bulwark of liberties) it is enacted that no subject of this realm, who is an inhabitant of England, Wales, or Berwick, shall be sent prisoner into Scotland, Ireland, Jersey, Guernsey, or places beyond the sea (where they cannot have the full benefit and protection of the common law), but that all such imprisonments shall be illegal, and that the person who shall dare to commit another contrary to the law, shall be disabled from bearing any office, shall incur the penalty of a premunire, and be incapable of receiving the king's pardon; and the party suffering shall also have his private action against the person committing, and all his aiders, advisers, and abettors, and shall recover treble costs, besides his damages, which no jury shall assess at less than five hundred pounds.","

So far is this exemption of the subject from exile carried, in England, that the Government has no power to force one of its people to discharge diplomatic or other duties abroad, except persons in the naval and military service, because such a power might be construed into a right of actual transportation.

It must be conceded, if the President has a right to take any measure he may deem proper, in time of war, in order to subdue the enemy, it extends to transportation as well as absolute domestic rule.