Newspaper Page Text
PAGE TWO
when that supreme tribunal said to Congress,
in substance—
“ln your pursuit of District Attorney Mar
shall, you have exceeded your powers, and
your proceedings are null and void: therefore,
they are quashed!"*
Not only was (lie Income-tax law of 1893
set aside as unconstitutional, but the Sherman
anti-Trust act was virtually annulled, and the
Pure food law radically changed.
At this very time, the State of Georgia
lies under a mandate from the U. S. Court in
Atlanta, which forbids her to lower her
freight rates, in accordance with the law.
Everybody remembers' how Judge Jones
was constantly shackling Alabama with in
junctions.
Nobody can have forgotten how Judge
Pritchard issued judicial orders to the State
of North Carolina.
Ever since the famous “Slaughter House*’
eases of St. Louis, the Judiciary has taken
jurisdiction over petitions, duly presented,
which raise the question—
Is this law constitutional?
Doesn't every one remember that the Rail
road managers threatened to disobey the
kdamson 8-hour law. until the Supreme
Court could pass on it?
Didn't the daily papers state that the Gov
ernment would actively endeavor to have the
Court give right of way to the case, with a
view do a speedy decision?
All these matters are within common
knowledge, and they are so recent that I am
. mazed at the threats being thrown out. with
vie apparent purpose of intimidating all citi
es who are inclined to appeal to the Judi
ciary against the Conscription Act.
Such threats are not only an outrage against
the constitutional rights of citizenship, but
:.re an affront to that branch of the Govern
r ■■■nt whose supreme prerogative arid duty it
h to protect the citizen from Congressional
■''urpatloii.
If the citizen may no longer fly to the City
of Refuge, then raze the City, and sow salt
m its ashes!
Now, ]et us get down to brass tacks:
(1.) Does the Constitution give to Con
gress. the power to raise an army by com
pulsion?
(2.) Dees the Constitution give Congress
the authority to make war-appropriations ex
tending over a period of 30 years?
Our forefathers were so well informed
as to the baleful consequences of stand
ing armies, so keenly alive to the fatal
results of standing armies upon personal
liberty and civil rights, that any proposal, in
the Constitutional Convention, to clothe the
Federal Government with the royal preroga
tive of maintaining troops, would have been
rejected with universal horror and indigna
tion.
Every student of the long struggle of Eng
lishmen! to assert the rights of man, against
the tyrannical abuses of One-man power,
knows, that the last reliance of arbitrary
Lings was the blind obedience of professional
soldiers, kept in the king's pay, and educated
to scorn the civilian population.
The military caste, like the hierarchal
priestly caste, was always undemocratic, was
always ready to massacre the people, and was
therefore always the surest prop of a des
potic thronA
Therefore, the Sages who met at Philadel
phia, in 1787, to frame the written contract
which was to fix the relations between the
States and the proposed Federal Government,
were most careful to safeguard the newly
won American independence against the old
foe of human liberty, to-wit — the standing
army in time of peace.
States were to raise and control the
1 *he Federal .Government was em-
THE JEFFERSONIAN
powered to call for and use this militia in
three cases, only; to repel invasion, to sup
press insurrection, and to execute the laws. ;
To render it doubly certain that a standing
army should not be established under some
subterfuge, the Fathers put a provision in
the Constitution limiting war appropriations
to two years. !
An army requires much money to support
it, and therefore the makers of the Federal
Government expressly denied to Congress the
power to furnish money enough to maintain
an army for more than two years! ,
Think of that a moment, and you will be*
gin to realize its tremendous significance. 1
Congress has to give an account of its
stewardship, every two years: all members of
the House, and one-third of the Senate, have
to go home and face the people. ;
Every two years, the people were to have
the power to discharge the unfaithful public
servant, who had gone to Washington and be
trayed the democracy of his district. !
With such a biennial power put into the
keeping of a vigilant people, can you not see
how impossible it was—as our Fathers
thought—for an aristocracy, or a
or an autocracy, or an oligarchy to get money
enough, for the maintenance of a permanent
standing army?
V
V
If they had to ask Congrecc for it, every 2
years, and Congress had to answer to the
people every 2 years, there was no chance to.
sneak a standing army on to the national pay
roll, in defiance of the people.
Every two years, the people could apply the
remedy, by defeating the Congressmen who
had voted money to the standing army.
But if Congress raises, by huge issues of
bonds, enough money to support the standing
army 10 years, or 20 years, what remedy can
the people apply?
There is the plain letter of the Constitution
limiting the power of Congress to 2-ycar ap
propriations; yet the whole country is being
canvassed, by the most extraordinary methods,
in the interest of a war loan of two thousand
million dollars, extending over a period of
30 years!
Is it lawful to violate the law?
Is it treason to ask the question?
As to the forcible seizure of men for mili
tary service, it is abhorrent to the funda
mental principles—of democracy, and repug
nant to the Constitution of the Union.
Democracy and compulsion are not com
patible. the one with the other. ’Where one
exists, the other must expire. Where one
dwells, the other must vacate.
The very essence and spirit of democracy
is, volunteer action. It is the voluntary adop
tion of a system in which a minority agree
voluntarily to submit, even to what they do
not approve, when a majority adopt it, fry
those free and voluntary methods of voting
which they originally agreed on, and within
the limits of the constitution.
In construing a treaty between nations, or
a constitution made for a government, com
mon sense dictates that words and phrases
should be given the meaning which they bore
at that time.
For example, if we were construing a feudal
compact in which the word “villein” occurred,
we would not be authorized to say that it
meant a scoundrel, as the word now does: we
would have to say it meant, a peasant, bound
to his lord and to the land of his lord, by
feudal law.
So, when we come upon the brief sentence
in the U. S. Constitution which gives to
Congress the authority “to raise armies,” we
must seek for its meaning by the light of the
English custom, and common understanding,
standing.
How had English armies been “raised,”
pver since the era of Feudalism?
= • ’ ’•* ' . ■
What has been the universal custom, for!
centuries? What had been the only meaning
attached to the words, “to raise armies?”
The answer deals a stunning blow to those
who contend that General Washington. Ben-i
jamin Franklin. James Madison, Richard
■ Henry Lee, Edmund Randolph, Luther Mar
tin and the other makers of the Constitution
meant conscription.
The invariable and immemorial custom of
England had been to “raise armies,” by hir
ing volunteers. This custom was not con
fined to England, but was common to all
Europe.
Prussia was the first State which adopted
forced service in the army; and Prussia did
not begin the infernal system until the 18th
century, when the half-crazy father of
Frederick the Great became the Father of
Prussian Militarism.
Therefore, by the rational and customary*
rules of construction, the words “to raise
armies,” must be held to mean the same as if
the sentence read —
“To raise armies in the same manner that*
armies have been raised in the Mother Coun<
try for the last several hundred years;” that
is, 6y securing voluntary enlistments.
Every one who is familiar with the literal
ture of the 18th and 19th centuries, remembers
the recruiting sergeant and the King’s ship
ling. The sergeant sought out idle fellows at
taverns and other places, wheedled them with
blarney, plied them with drink, prevailed
upon them to accept the King’s shilling, and
the recruit was hooked. Os course, this
does not apply to the great bulk of the army,
for it was made up of patriots wdio had rushed
to the colors, at the tap of the drum, when the
needs of the country called.
If Congress can forcibly take a million men'
for military service, for one year, it can as
legally take ten millions, for ten years.
If Congress can legally deprive your boy of
his liberty for one yearly can legally condemn
him to the army, for life.
A volunteer recruit is bound by the terms;
of enlistment; and he may be sent to Canada;
Mexico, the Philippines, or to Terra del
Fuego; but no citizen can be legally con*
scripted, and forced to bear arms, outside the
United States.
Such a thing is foreign to the very spirit of
'democracy, and to the nature of our Govern*
ment. ?
If Congress is supreme in the matter, then
Congress is vested with a sovereignty the
States never had. and which the King of Eng
land never had.
If Congress possesses this supreme despotic
power, where did Congress get it?
The States never possessed despotic pow
ers, because the States were democracies, not
despotisms. *
In each State, the people limited the power
of government by written instrument; and
the power to annul this instrument and make
a new one, still remains with the people of
each State.
The States, in their turn, limited the power
of the Central Government which they volun-i
tarily created; and the power to annul the
written instrument, which creates it and
limits its authority, was expressly reserved to
the States.
As all men know, this reserved power of
revising the written instrument, and adding
to it, for the purpose of making it plainer,
or of extending its scope, has been exercised,
again and again.
Consequently, all the fads and all the reas
oning go to show, that the makers of the
Government never intended to give Congress
the terrible power to destroy our republican
form of government by means of a standing
army, raised by compulsion, maintained by
enormous appropriations extending over a
period of more than two years, and so revo-i
Thursday, June 7, 191?<