of guarding and securing the liberties of the citizen, into a military despotism, in which the people have no rights, but such as the throne, or the power behind the throne, pleases to accord to them.

There is many a supporter of the powers claimed in behalf of the present administration, who, if he had been told five years since, that within that period he would have sacrificed the principles of liberty, upon the altar of any party, or policy, by the maintenance of his present opinions respecting the powers of the President in times of war, would indignantly have exclaimed, in the language of Hazael to the prophet Elisha, "is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great thing."

This change from the principles of a free republic, to those of a military despotism, would be "passing strange," and "piteous wonderful," did we not consider the facility with which men persuade themselves of the truth and soundness of that which is in accordance with their own wishes."

It is not to be assumed and it might be uncharitable, perhaps, to believe that all those who a few years since constructed elaborate arguments to prove that the clause in the Constitution of the United States, respecting the return of fugitives from service, or labor, did not apply to fugitive slaves, because the term slave was not found in the paragraph, were mere fraudulent pretenders, who not only knew their arguments to be altogether unsound, but wilfully misrepresented the import of the provision, for the wicked purpose of misleading others, in order to accomplish sinister purposes; notwithstanding a uniform construction by the framers of the Constitution, by Congress, and by the Judiciary, for more than half a century, could have left no doubt in the mind of any honest, sane man, whose powers of reasoning had not been perverted by his wishes, or something worse, that the true construction was as little liable to "dispute, as his own existence, and that such construction did embrace fugitive slaves, and was designed to apply to no other class of persons.

We certainly cannot suppose that all the members of the community, who have attempted to sustain the constitutionality of the personal liberty laws of some of the Northern

States, were actuated by sinister motives, for there are names in that catalogue above the suspicion of an attempt at deception; but we may well conclude that their desire to believe that those laws were within the pale of the Constitution, had to some extent affected their powers of reasoning; because on other subjects, where there was nothing to bias the judgment, they were in the habit of arriving at sound conclusions.

A reasonable charity may lead us to think that the person, who, upon the election of Mr. Lincoln, boasted that we had "got our heel upon the neck of the slave power," and intended to keep it there, had some faith in the actual existence of that supposed subjugation; and did not at that time anticipate the war which may have been promoted, to some extent, by that unfortunate declaration.

And it is not a great stretch of credulity to conclude, that another individual, who, in the Senate, undertook to prove, by nine resolutions, that the acts of secession had converted the seceding States into Territories of the United States; and who thereby ignored all the history of the formation of the States, and of the subsequent construction of the Union, and perverted the principles of law applicable to that history, was to some extent influenced by the wish, that by means of such a territorial subjugation, he might advance his favorite project of magnifying the Senator, through the emancipation of the slaves.

On the other hand it would undoubtedly be rather too hard a strain upon the credulity of the community, to ask their undoubting confidence that all persons who, in Congress and out of Congress, have attempted to sustain an alleged constitutional right of slaveholders to take their slaves into any of the Territories of the United States, and to hold them there in slavery, irrespective of the legislation of Congress, prohibiting slavery there, were misled by their wishes into a belief that such doctrine was sound Constitutional Law.

And it must require a full exercise of that Christian charity which "believeth all things," to convince us of the entire faith, on the part of those who adduce them, in the soundness and validity of all their arguments, in favor of

that construction of the Constitution which changes its whole character in time of war, from that which it had in time of peace, and renders all its provisions in favor of private rights, not merely a dead letter, but a mockery and a deception.

The first half of the present century was marked by astounding events and wonderful inventions. The rise of an imperial despotism upon the ruins of the French Republic, at the close of the last century, is significant in its warning. to us at the present time. God grant that we may not follow republican France through the extremes of a popular frenzy, wading in blood on the one hand; and the iron rule of a military despotism on the other; with all the intermediate experiments of government which have marked her history during the last fifty years.

But it was reserved to the last half of the nineteenth century, to present to the world events more surprising in their character, and an invention which ought to be more astonishing in its inception, than all those of the half century which preceded it. Events which have turned the exultation of a magnificent prosperity, such as the world never saw, into the sadness and gloom of civil war; — and an invention which may yet prove far more disastrous to the freedom of the people, and to the hopes of constitutional liberty throughout the world, than the inventions of the previous fifty years have proved beneficial to its physical and material prosperity. The events are the rebellion of the people of the Southern States, with the immediate causes. and concomitants of that rebellion. The invention is that of "the war powers of Congress and of the President," under a new construction of the Constitution.

The rebellion stands without a parallel, and without reasonable excuse, an outrage upon civilization, a vast crime. against humanity, an insurrection against free principles, and treason against liberty, shaking to its foundations the confidence of mankind in the capacity of the people to govern themselves.

There were doubtless conflicting interests, to some extent, between Northern and Southern productions, and of course conflicting views respecting free trade and protective duties.

These conflicting interests did not originate in slavery, though that may have rendered them more antagonistic. They would still have existed, if the labor of the South, like that of the North, had been the labor of freemen. The conflict is rather one of production, than of the means of production; one of interests, rather than of institutions. There were no material causes for the discontent on this score, which did not exist on the formation of the Union, except that the introduction of the culture of cotton, and the extent of its use have aggravated the antagonism of interests, to a much greater degree. The difference of latitude indicated, from the outset, difference of production, and variance of interests; against which were great national advantages, far outweighing and counterbalancing local considerations. And the reason for complaint, that local interests were attempted to be sustained without regard to the greatest good of the whole, — was certainly not all upon one side. That there were also sources of discontent from a somewhat different organization of society, and diverse systems of labor resulting therefrom, is undoubtedly true, but these systems of free and slave labor, which had existed for half a century, without collision, under the Constitution, might have existed half a century more, without any "irrepressible conflict" resulting in an appeal to armed force, had not the unholy passions and the irrepressible ambition of individuals urged them into a collision, in order to gratify a greed of gain, a lust for power, and a thirst for revenge. Here again it must be admitted that the greed, the lust, and the thirst, have not been all on one side. And although the professions of philanthropy may have been somewhat unequally distributed, the annoyance arising therefrom may have been counterbalanced by violence and threats in the districts where that article was deficient.

Constitutional obligations have availed little to restrain the extravagance of ultraists on either side; the attempts forcibly to resist the execution of the fugitive slave law, on the one hand, and the determination to force slavery into the Territories despite the constitutional power of Congress to govern these Territories in the wisdom of its discretion, on the other, being the types of antagonism of the different sections.

Secession was the work of conspirators in the interest of politicians at the South. The discovery or invention of what are now called " the war powers of Congress and of the President," has grown out of the rebellion, for the purpose of accomplishing the designs of conspirators at the North. It may properly be termed an invention, because in two wars in which the Republic has been engaged, at different periods, one to assert rights violated and outraged by Great Britain, and one in reality with a design of conquest, waged under the plea of wrongs, which if true required no such resort to arms, nothing was heard of such war powers as are now said to exist in Congress and in the President as commander-in-chief. And nothing would have been heard of them now, had it not been that certain politicians of an ultra school, had an object to accomplish, which could not be effected by any of the powers heretofore supposed to exist under the Constitution, (an object which is in its nature as revolutionary as the rebellion itself, though not so atrocious,) and being unwilling, with here and there an exception, to avow their object as revolution, they have sought to disguise it under the pretence of constitutional authority.

A claim is set up, through the means of these war powers, to change the institutions of the States at the pleasure of Congress, or of the President, a claim that the President may institute martial law over States within which no hostile foot has trod, or is likely to tread, over persons within those States, whose only notice that they are to be subjected to the government of force, is the arrest which confines them in the dungeon, — and a claim that the President may suspend the Writ of Habeas Corpus, throughout the United States, so that that imprisonment will continue at the pleasure of somebody who orders the arrest, unless the President in his mercy or justice rescinds the order.

If these claims are valid, every person at the South, whether loyal or disloyal, holds the title to his property at the pleasure of the President; and every person at the North retains his liberty, only until a presidential fiat, or the warrant of some judge advocate, issued, perhaps, upon a vague and unfounded suspicion, deprives him of it.

Claiming to be powers derived from and under the Con