^ •« 012 027 035 7 jf T ^)tiy.r ^4 * E 458 .3 .U185 Copy 1 Price, by Mail, prepaid, 25 cts. FEEOHES EOll THE TIMES HON. JAMES W. WALL OF NEW JERSEY. WITH A SKETCH OF HIS VUmM -\5D TOUTICM. HlSTOliY, 'f fV^1»T/!^Coi#itution is tlie Union. :Mm^ — KEW YORK: PUBLISHKD BY J. WALTER .t CO., 19 CITY HALL SQUARE. 1864. Liberal 3)iecount to Agents and the Trade. « SPEECHES FOR THE TIMES BT HON. JAMES W. WALL, OF NEW JERSEY. A SKETCH OF HIS PERSONAL AND POLITICAL HISTORY. v^I^'- "The Constitution is the '' ^- * ?^ ^ NEW YORK: PUBLISHED BY J. WALTER & CO., 19 CITY HALL SQUARE. 1864. E45-8 .3 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year ISM, By J. WALTER & CO., In the Clerk's Office of the District Co\irt of the United States for the Southern District of New York. By NUVV^"" l^ PUBLISHERS' NOTICE Among the works we are getting off, soon to be offered to the pub- lic, IS a volume of about 600 octavo pages, entitled " Speeches for THE Times, bv Eastern Men— Franklin Pierce, James A. Bavard Isaac Tousey, James W. Wall, Wm. B. Reed, Benjamin Wood, Chas' Ingersoll, John MoKeon, and Tnos. H. Seymour." These speeches have, in nearly every case, been selected and revised by their authors, with special reference to their appearance in the work referred to ; and the several sets are in most instances preceded by a sketch, giving some account of the personal and political history of the author. "^ The three speeches contained in this pamphlet, also the sketch that precedes them, will appear in that work; but we have concluded to an- ticipate their publication in that form, and give them an earlier and wider circulation in the way here presented. During the intensely excitino- scenes into which we are now entering, the mass of the people will be more disposed to buy and read small books than large ones ; and the works that will be most eagerly sought for, by the class of people for whom we are writing and publishing, will be those which give the matured convictions of men who, from the first and at all times, re-ard- less ot danger to liberty or life, have firmly denounced the unwise, 5ick- ea, and unconstitutional war, wliich for the last three and a half years has been desolating our once happy and prosperous land. The zeal of new converts to the doctrines of peace is needed to give additional force to the great movement, before which the wild tumult of war IS soon to be hushed. But these new converts, with hands not always unstained with the blood of men slain in this murderous strife, are not the men to whom the multitude will look as the safest and most reliable leaders in this hour of greatest danger and trial. The men to whose counsels most heed will be given, when the multitude are called to the work of rebuilding the temple of liberty, will be those who, at the outset, saw and predicted the calamities which our country has suf- fered and with solemn, earnest, and continued appeals, warned the peo- , pie of the dangers into which they were rushing. A peculiar, deep, 4 publishers' notice. and penniiH.nt interest ^vill attach to tl^e counsels and warnings— the words of political wisdo.n and truth-which those men uttered in times when every truth, whether from heaven or earth, was resisted and repelled with the fierce malignity of devils incarnate. \mong the men who have thus stood unmoved from the first, and wliose spirit and purposes were firm and unfaltering, even when prison walls and bayonets were around him, is Hon. James W. Wall, ol New Jersey. The speeches here brought again to the attention of the public, are not new or very recent; hut old trutlis often appear like newones in the light of new fiacts to which those truths relate. So it will be in this case. Bv givin.^ this and similar documents a large circulation, we hope to be o> some" service in clic, with a view to the public happiness, by secu- ring to the citizen those absohite rights whicli such a doctrine as this overturns at a blow. Let this bill pass, Mr. President, and it places the liberty of every citizen in the loyal States at the will of the President of the United States, with no check, no control ; and it reopens the iron-studded doors of the casemates in your bastiles, to be filled, as before, by men against whom no accusation has been lodged, and who seek in vain to meet their accusers face to face before the legal tribunals of the land. Again will the post-offices, as they were before, become each like the lion's mouth of Venice, where the secret informer may lodge his lying accusation ; and from a tribunal as inexorable as the far-famed Council of Ten shall come as swift and as sure the mandate that consirrns him to some military dungeon of the Republic, which desecrates the names of those martyrs to liberty, it may be Fort Warren, it may be Fort Lafayette. This bill, if it passes, establishes in the Pi-esident arbitrary power ; and history informs us that arbitrary power is progressive, untiring, unresting. It never halts or looks backward. As one has eloquently said of it : "Call it by what holy name you will, saL-ctify it by what pretexts or purposes of patriotism you may, under any flag, in any cause, anywhere and everywhere, it is the foe of human rights, and by the very law of its being is incapable of good. There is, there can he no life for liberty but in the supreme and absolute dominion of law. This lesson is written in letters of blood and fire all over the history of nations. It is the standing moral of the annals of republics since their records began. It is legible upon the marbles of the elder world ; it echoes in the strife and revolu- tions of the new. Wherever men have thought great thoughts and died brave deaths for human progress, its^ everlasting truth has been proclaimed." An encroachment upon the Constitution, striking arbitrarily at the personal liberty of every citizen in the land, is but one of the paths leading straight towards despotism. There are numerous others, but they all run parallel to this. Let the nation, or the nation's represent- atives, submit in silence and inditFerence to such a bold usurpation of power as I conceive is contained in th^.s infamous bill, and from that moment the manly courage which is the defence, and the sleepless vigilance that is the price of liberty, is gone. Every one of these path- ways lies open, inviting the tread of usurpation. Said the aged Selden in reply to the ministers of Charles L : " The personal liberty of the subject is the life and the heart's blood of the com- monwealth, and if the commonwealth bleed in that master vein, all the halmof Gilead is hut in vain to preserve this our body politic from ruin and destruction." Said Algernon Sydney, England's noblest martyr : 14 JA.MES W. WALL. "He who oppuj;ns the liberty of the subject under the constitution of this realm, and in violation of it, not only overthrows his own, but is guilty of the most brutish of all follies." These noble words -were Ikerally sprinkled, and so consecrated, 1)\" that noble martyr's blood. It was for their utterance lie died, the noblest, proudest name upon the martyr roll. He was alike inflexible to king and protector — the champion of liberty against despotism — in the study, at the bar, in the prison and upon the scatfold. To him the world owes those great and eloquent discourses, the lirst complete defi- nition and exegesis of the true nature and duties of government, full of brave and noble sentiments, the well-stored armory from which the fathers of our Republic drew the strongest and the sharpest shafts they shot against the breast of despotism. In view of the vast powers which the Congress of the United States propose to give to the President under the provisions of this bill, T would invite attention to the following sagacious words uttered by Lord Temple in the British Parliament at the commencement of the last century : " Rashly and wilfully to exercise a power clearly against law and the constitution is too great a boldness for this country at any time, and the suspending or dis- pensing power, that edged tool which has cut so deep, is the last that any monarch in his wits, in any emergency, would dare to handle in England. It is a rock that English history has warned against with awful beacou-lights. Its e^sercisc lost one prince his crown and head, and at last drove his family out of the realm. A minister or representative who is not afraid of the exercise of such an iniquitous power, is neither fit for sovereign or subject." Strange and startling as the truth m.ay appear, Mr. President, this suspending power of the absolute rights of the citizen which in peace or war was considered too hazardous to use, either by king, minister, or representative, has proved the easiest thing for republican America in this high noon of the nineteenth century. Nay, sir, more startling even than this, it has even been declared treason to question for one moment tlie right to its exercise. That power the use of which cost one prince his crown and head, and drove his family out of the realm, has been sported with, and is to be again, by the President of the United States, holding liis office u^der a limited Constitution, and wliere the absolute rights of the citizen were supposed to have been placed far beyond the reach of the tyrant grasp of arbitrary power. Fortunately, for the time, an indignan^peoplc rose to vindicate their outraged rights, and struck terror into the hearts of their rulers. Pass this bill, and we shall have the same abnormal acts recommenced, and one by one the landmarks of the Constitution will be obliterated, the laws suspended, the personal liberty of the subject assailed, and provost- THE INDEMNIFICATION BILL. 15 inarslials and marshals like the cowled "familiars" of the Inquisition dogging the footsteps of the citizen and tracking him to his doom. The time was once, Mr. President, in this Republic, we might say of Americans, as was said to King John by the Archbishop — " Let every Briton, as ]iis mind be free, His person safe, his property seeure, His liouse as sacred as tiie fane of lieaven, ^ Watching unseen his ever open door, Watching the realm, the spirit of the laws; His fate determined by the rules of right, No hand invisible to write his doom, ^ No demon starting at the midnight hour To draw his curtain, or to drag him down To mausious of despair." * * * " Inviolable preserve The sacred shield that covers all the land— The heaven-confessed palladium of the isle — To Britain's sons, the judgment of their peers, On these great pillars ; freedom of the miud, Freedom of speech, and freedom of the pen, Forever changing, yet forever sure, The base of Britain rests." The time was, sir, when this noble eulogy, pronounced by Shakspearo on the British constitution, might be more aptly applied to our own. The great American charter of our freedom had more than conlirmcd to us these laws of the Confessor, and our people had given them as free, as full, and as sovereign a consent as was ever given by John to the bishops and the barons of Runnymede. The mind of the citizen was free, his person was safe, his property secure, his house his castle, the spirit of the laws his body-guard and his house-guard. Would he propagate truth ? Truth was free to combat error. Would he propa- gate error? Error itself might stalk abroad aud do her mischief, and make night itself grow darker, provided Truth was left free to follow, however slowly, with her torches to light up the wreck. But who is it that takQs a retrospective glance over the stirring, awful history of the last two years, but feels how the fine gold has grown dim beneath the tarnishing touch of the hand of despotic power? Those great, absolute rights of the citizen, which were intended to be beyond the reach of arbitrary influence, the right of personal liberty, of property, of free speech and a free press, rudely and ruthlessly vio- lated. Of these absolute rights, during what was not inaptly called the reign of terror, there Was not one that was not trampled upon by the Executive or his subo^-dinates ; and what was worse than all, every assault that was made upon them was applauded to the echo by jurists, lawyers, divines, and contract-hunting renegade Democrats, whose 16 J^^IE3 W, WALL. cowardly hearts eitht-r ran away wilh tbcir better jtulgmcnts, or who really did not understand the very tirst principle of the Constitution under which they lived. Men were arrested and papers seized with- out warrant or oath of probable cause ; prisoners were held without presentment or indictment, denied a speedy and public trial, nay, re- fused a trial altogether, carried away by force from the State or district where their otlVnce must have been committed, and incarcerated for months in the bastiles of the Government, and then set free without being even informed of the nature and cause of the accusation against them. Every Constitutional outpost was driven in, and every personal guarantee of the citizen brushed away by the Executive as easily as cobwebs by the hands of a uiatit. And this by a Government profess- ing it was fighting for the Union, the Constitution, and the enfuiceinent of the laws ; for those, at the outset of this war, were the proud words that glittered upon your advancing standards. Doctrines were preach- ed in hifh places directly at war with all tiie fundamental principles of free government. The central power, under the bald pretence of pre- serving the Government, assumed a new and fearful energy, until men went about with " bated breath and whispering humbleness," not know- ino- where the next blow was to fall, or who was the next friend that was to be stricken down at their sides. Of, these times I may ex- claim, '■^quorum parsfui.''^ It was my lot to have felt the grasp of arbitrary power, and within the damp, grated casemates of one of the bastiles of the Government, to have learned how helpless a thing is the citizen who is deprived of those absolute rights, which, if they do not exist in your Constitution, your Constitution is a miserable delusion and a snare. Having been arrested without cause shown, I was libei-atcd in the same way, after enduring personal indignities, which, to a high-spirited man, cat like iron into the soul. And from the hour of my liberation up to this moment, when I stand upon this floor, the representative of a sovereign State, I have been unable to learn what those charges are. I have in vain demanded of the proper Department whafc were the charges against me, claiming the freeman's constitutional privilege " to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation, and to be confronted with the witnesses against me." Great heavens ! Mr. Tresident, is it possible that such things can be, under a Constitution whose boast it has been that it was for the protection of the inalienable rights of men against oppression ? If this boast has been in vain, then, sir, that Constitution has but a name to live, an outer seeming to beguile and deceive, a Sodom apple, a hectic flush — " Painting the cheek upon which it preys." THE INDEMNIFICATION" BILL. 17 The liberty I claim, and those who act with me, under that Constitution, Is not the liberty of licentiousness ; it is the liberty united with law ; liberty sustained by law ; and that kind of liberty we have always sup- posed was guaranteed to every man, rich or poor, high or low, proud or humble, under all exigencies, whether in peace or war, and whether that war is foreign, or the State is in the fearful throes of civil strife. This is my loyalty and that of my political friends on this floor— the allegiance, the devotion to organic laws. I know no other loyalty, and I will not bow myself at the shrine of any other. In this Republic, its Constitution declares : "No citizen shall be deprived of his life, liberty, or property, without due pro- cess of law." lie may be made to part with all three by the power of the State ; but that power must look well to it, sir, that in its exercise it does not transcend the limits in which it is appointed it to move. If it does, it becomes despotic ; and then, among men who know their rights, and knowing, dare maintain, resistance follows as naturally as light succeeds to darkness. If by a simple mandate, nay, by the lightning flash over the telegraph wire, of any Cabinet officer, in States where the people are loyal, and where the courts of law arq open, you or I may be torn from our homes and consigned for an indefinite time to the gloomy walls of a Government fortress, the same mandate or dispatch, only altered in its phraseology, may consign us immediately to the hands of the executioner, or deprive us of our properties, confiscating them to the State. If not, why not ? The right to have our lives secure against interference without due process of law is equally guaranteed in the same clause which protects our liberty and our property. These privileges can trace their lineage back to the grassy lawns of Runnymede, where they were born, more than six hundred years ago. They were extorted then and there by the rebellious barons, and uttered in glowing language that has come down to us from the ages long ago, and is still sounding in our ears as the sweetest note that ever came from the silver clarion of freedom. Listen, Senators, to the music, strong and sweet as it sounded in the solemn midnight centuries ago : "No freeman shall be seized or imprisoned, or disseized, or outlawed, or in any way destroyed \ nor will we go upon him or send upon him, except by the judgment of his peers, or the law of the laud." Our fathers caught the inspiring strain, and it was prolonged in that sonorous sentence in our own once glorious Constitution : " No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law ;" " due process of law," the law which hears before it condemns, and punishes only after conviction. 2 18 JAMES W. WALL. Mr. President, eveiy arrest made during the reign of terror by the I>resident or his subordinates was in direct antagonism to this fmida mental principle of our Constitution, violative of its solemn sanctions, and, because abnormal, revolutionary ; for it encouraged, nay, sanctified resistance. I remember well, sir, the excitement in Europe when the Kino- of Naples, the infamous Bomba, seized a few young men of the first\milies by military force, who were engaged in plotting against Ills throne, and immured them in those horrid dungeons, blasted out of a rock, in that State fortress which, like Fort Lafayette in the bay of New York, is the only dark -and hateful thing upon the bright waters of the beautiful bay of ' Naples. The military guard, without warning, without accusation, just as was done with the members of the Maryland Leo-i:^lature and the BaUimore prisoners, surrounded their houses at the midnight hour, and they were torn suddenly from the luxurious com- forts of their splendid homes, to be immured in those awful prison- houses, wet with " the accursed dew of dimgeon damp," sunk far below the surface of the waters of the Neapolitan bay. They were suspected of treasonable practices. Their offence had that extent, no more. A cry of horror went up from almost every nation in Europe, and from the then imtrammelled press of the American Republic. England remon- strated through the manly, eloquent appeal of her indignant Gladstone. France raised her voice in denunciation of the outrage ; while republi- can America shuddered as she thanked God " that no such outrage could ever stain her national escutcheon." We professed to know then what liberty was worth ; and as we sent cheering words to those brave spirits engaged in the work of Italian liberation, we told those rebellious chU- dren^of the sun, "it is worth all your struggles, every sacrifice, and oceans of blood." The vengeance of an oppressed people soon rose to vindicate the race and punish the oppressor. In vain were her dungeons filled and her hearthstones desolate. The bright dream of " Itaha Libera" remained, the scattered manna upon which the concealed en- thusiasm of a whole nation fed itself, and to-day Naples is redeemed, disenthralled. The Bourbon family is in exile, and the people's king rules over the warm hearts that welcomed him to the throne. Ven- geance is certain, sooner or later, to overtake the oppressor ; and the Nemesis of retribution, with the tiaming sword, follows swiftly after the tyrant. But the objection of the danger to the public liberty and safety is not the only objection to this bill. It is by its own title an iivlemnity bill, and proposes to shelter behind the protecting regis of its strange legis- lation the unlawful acts of the President and his subordinates. In other words it proposes to Ic-alizc an illegality. It is the legislative powe' THE IXDEMNin CATION BILL. 19 sheltering the executive bi-auch of the Government from the conse- quences of its abnormal, unconstitutional acts. You mio-ht as well attempt by legislation to screen the judiciary from the consequences of inalfeasance in office. If one department can thus protect the other, I a.sk, what becomes of official responsibility and the oblio-ations of official oaths ? I hold, sir, that the remedy is provided by the Constitution, article second, section four, in case the President is guilty of any official mis- conduct. By that article he is made liable to impeachment for treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors. The President mav violate his official duty in three ways: 1. By refusing to execute the laws and treaties of the United States. 2. By usurping a. power not confided to him by the Constitution, although in some cases this may amount to treason. 3. By an arbitrary and corrupt use of an authority lawful in itself, but which was intended to be exercised with a single view to the public good, to answer the piirposcs of a selfish intrigue. In England the king is not constitutionally answerable for any of his official conduct ; but it is presumed that he always acts by the advice of his ministers, and they are held personally responsibfc for all political measures adopted during their administration. Some of them have suffered capitally for such alleged misconduct. It is on this account, in part, that ministers send in their resignation as soon as they find that the majority of Parliament is against them. But hl>re it is diff"erent. The President is answerable for his own official conduct, and is liable to impeachment for any default in the discharge of his sworn duty. To say that any co-ordinate branch of this Government could shield him from the consequences of such acts would be an absurdity, and tend to annihilate the whole system upon which this Government was founded. Again, this bill, if I understand it, not only proposes to shelter the President from the consequences of illegal acts— for the provisions of the bill really amount to this, if fully carried out— but to protect and shelter those of his subordinates whom he may have commanded to perform unconstitutional or illegal acts. Now, Mr. President, if there is one fundamental principle of law better established than any other, it is this : that, within the limits of their respective powers, all officers, from the President of the United States downwards, ought to be sub- mitted to and obeyed ; bict if theij should overstep the limits of their oficiul authority/, if they should usurp powers not delegated to them by the Constitution, or by some law made in pursuance of it, they would cease to be under the protection of their offices, and would be recog- nized merely as private citizens for any act of injustice or oppression 20 JASIES W. WALL. they miirht commit, and liable to a civil or criminal prosecution in the same manner as a private citizen, with tins distinction : that if the wrong-doer has availed himself of his official character, or of the oppor- tunities which liis office affords him, to commit acts of injustice or oppression, it will be considered as a great aggravation of Ids guilt in a criminal prosecution, and will be a ground for a juiy to find exemplary- damages in a civil action. This is the principle that runs through all the cases ; and all the indemnity bills that Congress might pass from now to the crack of doom would not disturb the force and efficacy of that principle, in the mind of a high-minded, intelligent jurist, who had a professional reputation to guard, however it might affect those imita- tors of the Crawleys and Vernons of the first Charles's day, who have crawled to judicial positions by base servility and disgusting obsequi- ousness, and who might be willing to exclaim, as they did in the ship- money case — " That the King, ^ro bono publico, may charge his subjects, both in their proper- ties and persons for the safety and defence of the kingdom, notwithstanding any ect of Parhament, and may even dispense with law in case of necessity." The attempt of the President to shelter his subordinates from respon- sibility upon the sic volo, sic jubeo principle, is only another ■ phase of the delusion under which men's minds have been laboring. He certainly ought to be lawyer enough to know that the Supreme Court has decided in 2 Cranch, 119 — " That if the President should mistake the construction of an act of Congress or of the Constitution, and, in consequence of it, should give instructions not warranbed by the act or the Constitution, any aggrieved party might recover damages against the officer acting under such instructions, xohich, though given by the President, would furnish no justification or excuse." I admit that in general, whep a particular duty devolves upon the President, but the means to be used in discharge of it are not pointed out, he may adopt those which are most proper for that purpose, pro- vided they are not repugnant to the Constitution or prohibited by acts of Congress. Thus, in time of war, lie has the right to use all the cus- tomary means to carry it into effect, but he cannot override the Consti- tution in doing it. It would not, perhaps, be a sufficient foundation for an impeachment if the President should make use of the discretion in- trusted to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States impru- dently and injudiciously; for, in any such case, the people must be content with the honest exercise of such ability as they see fit to elevate to this high office. But they have a right to expect, nay, demand, in- tegrity and fair purposes and intentions, and that the civil rights guar- anteed to them by their fathers shall be scrupulously preserved. Many THE INDEMNIFICATION BILL. 21 very honest citizens think that in a time of war or rebellion the Presi- dent becomes, by some political legerdemain, invested with all the functions of a dictator, and holds the lives, liberties, and properties of the citizen in his all-powerful grasp. Within the sphere of his consti- tutional duties the President may justly claim the support of all good citizens ; but when he transcends the powers conferred on him by the Constitution, to strike down the liberties of the subject, he must ex- pect, nay, he invites opposition. Some Senators, on the other side of this Chamber, seem to think that the test of loyalty is to be found in a blind adhesion to the President and his administration ; but I would say to them that my loyalty is akin to that so well described in those lines of Cowper : " "We too are friends to loyalty : we love The king who loves the law, respects its bounds, And reigns content within them." As to the responsibility of high officials, there are very many in the community who labor under the erroneous idea that the office protects the transgressor. The legal authorities arc all the other way. Both the authorities in this country and England point but one way upon this subject. In England the responsibility of an official who usurps power has never been questioned, and the loftiest officials have been held to a just retribution for their wrongs, and governors admitted to be viceroys in effect have been made to answer for their assumptions of power, not only in their estates, but with theu- lives. What said Chief- Justice Pratt, afterwards Lord Camden, in overruling a motion for a new trial made by the defendant in an action of trespass for arresting the plaintiff on a warrant from Lord Halifax, the Secretary of State? " If the jury had been confined by their oath to consider the mere personal injury only, perhaps twenty pounds damages would have been sufficient ; but the small injury done the plaintiff and the lowness of his station did not appear to the jury in that striking light in which the great point of law touching the hbcrty of the subject appeared to them on the trial ; they saw a magistrate over all the king's subjects exercising arbitrary power, violating 3fagna Charta, and attempting to de- stroy the liberty of the kingdom by insisting upon the legality of general warrants in a tyrannical and severe manner. These are the ideas which struck the jury and induced them to give these heavy damages. I think they have done right. To enter a man's house and drag him from thence by means of an unconstitutional warrant is worse than the Spanish Inquisition— a law under which no Englishman would wish to live an hour. It was a most daring public attack made upon the liberty of the subject." Pass this bill, Mr. President, and you not only confer upon the Presi- dent an authority which I conceive you have no power to confer, but 2,2 ja:mes w. wall. you also, by your legislation, give to him and his subordinates assurance that they may do the like again, and escape the punishment that should always be meted out to violations of constitntii^nal law. It does really seem to me, sir, when I listen to Senators on the otlicr side defendiu"- acts which they admit to be abnormal, and insisting that the public necessities demand the sacrifice, as if those gentlemen were tryino- to persuade us that the best way to preserve our liberties would be to give them up, and that the surest mode of securing a government of law would be to suftor arbitrary power to destroy it. " The dearest interests of this country," said Junius — and I adopt his nervous language — "are its laws and its constitution. Against every attack upon these, there will, I hope, be always found among us the firmest spirit of resistance, superior to the united efforts of faction and ambition." Mr. President, this bill, in leaving it discretionary with the President, at any time and place and at his own option, to sus}x;nd the privilege of this great writ, in fact gives countenance and support to that political heresy that the right to suspend the writ exists in the President of the United States, and not in Congress. This bill does not suspend the privilege of the writ ; it leaves it for the President to do, whenever he thinks the public exigency demands it. It certainly could never have been the intention of the framers of the Constitution to authorize the Executive to suspend the privileges of the writ at his option. If this was a novel question that had never been mooted before, one might well understand how there might possibly be some variance in men's opinions. But when it is considered that in 1807 it had a most thorough and exhausting discussion in Congress; that it had been before the judicial tribunals of the country, and frequently the subject of discussion by commentators upon the Constitution and by statesmen ; that up to the year 1861 there was an entire unanimity of opinion as to where the power to suspend the privileges of this writ rested, namely, in the legislative department of the Government, we can only be astonished that there should be any difference of opinion about it. But now we are told that the peculiar legal optics of modern statesmen and lawyers have been enabled to discover that which the keen, searching, patriotic vision of the men who framed the Constitution foiled to see. That which the luminous perception of Marshall, Kent, Story, and Curtis could not discover, has been reserved for the keener optics of Bates and Lincoln. It appears to me, Mr. President, that the true spii'it of the habeas corpus clause in the Constitution is as clear as sunlight to any man who will study the debates both at the time of the formation of the Constitution and when it was submitted to the States for their adoption. There THE I^fDEMKIFlCATIOX BILL. 23 were members in the Convention who were in favor of uiakino- the en- joyment of the priviloo-e of the writ absolute at all times, in "the same manner that it was intended the liberty of the press, of speech, and of re!i^-ion should be enjoyed. There were others again who fa\-ored limitations of time and suspension on certain conditions. The clause itselt; therefore, appears to me to have been a mean between extremes of opinion, and was intended to reconcile conflicting view^. There is very little light thrown upon the subject by the discussion in the Con- vention j but the peculiar position occupied by the clause in the Consti- tution is signiiicant, and if not conclusive, is certainly suggestive of the partiQular department upon which it was intended to confer this power. But if from the proceedings of the Convention and the debates in tbat body nothing satisfactory can be gleaned upon the subject, much may be learned from the after debates in the State conventions. We shall give but one reference upon this subject, although we might quote many others. Governor Randolph, of Virginia, who bad much to do with the fashioning of our Constitution, in a speecb in reply to Patrick Henry in the Virginia Convention, who had assailed the Constitution be- cause it conferred the power to suspend the privilege of the writ of haheas corjnis upon the Legislature, said : "I contend, Mr. President that the habeas cwpws inthis Constitution is at least on as good an