Newspaper Page Text
Obe 3effersonum
z II
Vol. 14, No. 25
WHY AKE WE CONDEMNING 64 MILLIONS 95 OF AMERICAN
SOLDIERS 45 TO DIE ON FAR AWAY FIELDS OF BLOOD ? ”
IM’ Act of Congress, and without hearing
from the people on the subject, we arc
to deprive millions of our best young
inen—the flower of American manhood —of
their liberty, and their lives.
The Supreme Law of their Country, and
of their God, guaranteed to these young men
their liberties, their lives, and their own
choice in the pursuit of happiness.
At one stroke, the Government struck
down this Supreme Law, and condemned
those young men to foreign service.
Guaranteed against involuntary servitude,
they are to be forced into it.
Why ?
What is the urgent and imperative neces
sity which justifies the overthrow of the Con
stitution, and the bloody sacrifice of millions
of our strongest youth?
Surely, we are entitled to know the reason
for all this —the reason for these colossal ap
propriations and bond issues, the reasons for
forcibly sending our millions of boys to die
in far away fields of blood.
Ts hat is the inexorable necessity which re
quires it?
That’s a fair question: it is a timely ques
tion: it is an insistent question: and it will
not be answered, to the satisfaction of the
Synopsis of Mr. Watson’s Argiimeiit Against tlie Conscription Act
and the Proposal to Send Soldiers to Europe -
TN response to hand-bill notices, circulated
* 1 'ally by private citizens, a large crowd
packed and overflowed the Court House in
Thomson, June 23.
Short talks were made by Rev. James Pen
nington, Capt. John M. Barnes, Hon. Win.
Walden, Maj. C. E. McGregor, and Messrs.
?)ixon, McDermott and Rogers. Mr. James
j. Cartledge introduced the Resolutions which
condemn the recent Acts of Congress and de
mand their repeal.
Mr. Watson spoke for nearly two hours on
the following propositions:
(1.) That the Common Law of England
is a part of our inheritance from the Mother
Country; that the Revolutionary War success
fully maintained that contention, as stated
in the famous Resolutions adopted by the
Virginia legislature, upon motion of Patrick
{Henry; and that the. individual, in this coun
try, is entitled to those personal rights and
privileges which were the native, original
liberties of the race, under the Common Law,
Whose leading principles were merely re
asserted in the Great Charter of 1215.
(See Cooley's “Constitutional Limitations, 1 ’
Chapter 111. paragraphs 21 to 29, and notes
0n margin. See also, Kent’s Commentaries
tinder Index references Common Law.)
(2.) That one of the Common Law privi
leges existing to this day is that of marriage,
{Without State license, religious ceremony, or
prescribed formality: the highest court in
Thomson, Ga,, Thursday, June 28, 1917
people, in mere academic declamation, no
matter how finely phrased.
Let every Congressman who voted for the
destruction of the freedom of the press, and
for these prodigious war-appropriations, and
for the Conscription Act, remember, that his
constituents will expect him to give an ac
count of his stewardship, very soon,' and that
fine phrases, eloquent periods, and vague
sentimentalities about the “democracies of
the whole world,” will not deceive those
mothers and fathers whose sons are under
ai-bitrai ■>/ sentcnce.
Ahn conscripted to go to Europe, are vir
tually condemned to death, and everybody
knows it.
President AV i Ison admitted as much, in his
Flag Day address.
Therefore, we may ashveil face the facts,
and quit trying toDiotf see them.
Ji7n/ is your boy condemned to die in
Europe?
Let me remind you of some things which
you may not have linked together, although
they are connected.
Don’t you remember how the Japanese
war-scare was worked, year in and year out,
New York has recently re-affimed this princi
ple of the original Common Law.
Another of those principles is, the right of
every person to abide in his own country, un
less condemned to transportation by some
court of competent jurisdiction.
The Congress of the United States lias no
authority to select a million citizens and send
them out of the Republic against their will.
(Blackstone’s Commentaries, Book I, para
graphs 137 and 8.)
(3.) That the 13th Amendment to the
Constitution, adopted in 1865, must be con
strued together with Section 8, which clothes
Congress with power to raise armies, limited
to two years.
Since 1865, the Federal Government has
had no more authority to force unwilling
citizens into military training, than to forci
bly put them to work on national parks, har
bors, dockyards, arsenals, and post roads.
The language of the Supreme Law is plain
and sweeping—
“ Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude
shall exist”
If Congress has the authority to bring into
existence any system of involuntary servitude,
it has an equal right to establish a system of
slavery.
(4.) As to the State Militia, the Constitu
tion expressly limits Federal control of it to
three specified cases —to repel invasion, sup
press insurrection, and enforce the laws.
to pry enormous military appropriations from
Congress ?
Don't you remember how this Jap lever
served the Steel Trust, the Powder Trust,
and the Lobby, in their patriotic campaigns
against the Treasury?
Don't you remember how such orators as
Hobson were sent over (lie country, to make
fervid harangues against Japan, and to con
vince the people that Japan was a fearful
menace to our safety?
Yon cannot have forgotten it. The Blood
pudding Trusts made millions off this hum
bug Japanese war-scare; and it was in vain,
that The Jeffersonian and similar independ
papers, assured the country that the Jap scare
was mere bosh, lies, and inordinate greed for
big appropriat ions.
After the Jap scare had been worn to
shreds, by a 10 year campaign, they adopted
a new'slogtm.
They coined the word, “Preparedness;’’ and
the same selfish Interests which had exploited
the Jap scare, capitalized thg clamor for
“Preparedness.”
The daily papers, the Morgan magazines,
the political cuckoos, the Me-too preachers,
the parrot editors of the weekly Steam-
(CONTINUED ON PAGE TWO.)
In so far as recent acts of Congress go be :
yond this, they are usurpatory, null, and
void.
(5.) It is a fundamental, original, and
invaluable right of the citizen to be secure in
his property, liberty, and life, until deprived
thereof by due process of law.
Congress has no more authority to confiscate
men’s liberties and lives, than the Norman
tyrants had.
Norman tyranny revoked the uprising
which resulted in the Great Charter —-a re
assertion of the rights of Englishmen.
What is “due process of law?”
The Supreme Court of the United States
has held repeatedly that “due process of law”
means “the due course of legal proceedings,
according to those rules and forms which have
been established for the protection of private
rights.”
Those words “due process of law” were
meant—says the U. S. Supreme Court —
secure the. individual from the arbitrary exer
cise of the powers of government, unrestrained
by the established principles of private rights
and distributive justice.”
(Cooley: Constitutional Limitations, p. 355
and notes.)
“The words ‘by the law of the land,’ as used
in the Constitution, cfo not mean a statute
passed for the purpose of working the wrong.”
The words “due process of law” do not
(continued on page four.)
Price, Five Gents