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PAGE TWO
The Supreme Court of the United
States Should be Asked in the
Regular Legal Way, to Decide
the Constitulionality of the
Recent Acts ot Congress, on
Conscription and Espionage
(continued from page one.)
because the old Confederation was restricted
to calling upon the States for troops, whereas
the new government was to be unfettered, and
could directly raise armies, by reason of the
authority vested in itself.
A transfer of power does not necessarily
imply an enlargement thereof.
A parental power, for instance, may be
transferred from the father, who is unfit, to a
guardian, who is lit —but the parental power
’remains the same.
When the control of commerce and of
money, etc., were taken away from the States,
and transferred to the Federal Government,
no essential change was made in the powers
themselves.
It must be apparent to everybody who has
studied the Constitution, that it did not set
out to create any new powers at all. Its
great purpose was to divide the existing pow
ers between flic States and the Federal. Gov
ernment, in such away as to make the
Federal Government independent and self
supporting, and at the same time, leave the
separate States in full possession of all those
sovereign powers which they had not volun
tarily ceded to the Federal Government.
Judge Jenkins quoted, from Elliott's De
bates, the language by Alexander Hamilton,
James Madison. John Marshal, Oliver Ells
worth, and others, to prove that the Federal
Government was not restricted as to the
means io be employed to raise armies.
If those quotations authorize conscription
at all, they contemplate that measure as the
last resort to repel the invader,-who-has ac
tually attacked us upon our own soil.
Judge Jenkins alludes to the fact that
James Monroe, when Secretary of War in
1841, recommended a plan for the increase of
the Army, involving compulsory enrollment;
I have searched in vain, in Benton’s Abridge
ment of the debates, for the arguments pro
and con, but the fact remains that Congress
(refused to adopt the recommendation, al
though the friends of Mr. Monroe, had an
overwhelming majority in both Houses.
So much for the Georgia decision.
Now let us see what the new law actually
is. and whether it can be reconciled to that
Supreme Law which Congress has no au
thority to infringe, and wdiich cannot be
changed, unless three-fourths of the States
act favorably upon the proposed alteration.
In the first place, I submit to the legal fra
ternity, and to the country, that the new laws
of conscription absolutely nullify the Thir
teenth Amendment.
By the Conscription Act, the government
is given power to seize the free citizen, black
or white, and put him to work, on the farm,
in the mine, in the mill, or on the railroad.
Under that law, a system of involuntary
servitude is provided for; the government is
given authority to seize the black man and
put him back into virtual slavery.
Under that law, the President is given
power to seize the free white man, and to re
duce him to a state of serfage.
It would be possible for arbitrary officials
to compel poor white men to work for rich
negroes: it would be possible to seize upon
the Southern “white trash,’’ as our poor folks
are contemptuously called by certain aristo
crats of the North, and to make those white
men of the South, labor in the coal fields of
John D. Rockefeller, or slave their lives
away, amid the furnaces of our remorseless
Steel Trust.
THE JEFFERSONIAN
By the provisions of that new law—Ameri
can citizens from twenty-one years of age to
thirty, inclusive, are entirely stripped of the
protection of the Thirteenth Amendment
which, as everybody knows, provides that
“neither slavery nor involuntary servitude
shall exist in these United States, except as a
punishment for crime,” of which the person
shall have been duly convicted, after indict
ment by the grand jury, and conviction by
the unanimous verdict of twelve traverse
jurors, whom he himself partly selects.
This broad question has never been before
the Supreme Court of the United States.
How can any man say that this serene and
final bench of judges —lifted high above
manufactured sentiment, Morganized hys
teria, and emotional insanity, would put the
last word of approval upon an Act of Con
gress which so manifestly nullifies an inte
gral part of the Constitution?
It should be remembered that this Thir
teenth Amendment, adopted in 1865. was not
a part of the constitution, when the Republi
can Congress of 1862, adopted conscription.
Those Acts of Conscription were recognized
by the Lincoln administration as necessary
war measures. No te t cases were ever made;
therefore the Supreme Court did not have the
opportunity of saying whether they violated
the Supreme Law.
It is well known that the Supreme Court
did decide, on test cases brought, that the
Lincoln administration had violated the Con
stitution in suspending the law of habeas
corpus.
It might easily be argued that the suspen
sion of habeas corpus in a few individual
cases, was less vide a breach of the consti
tution. than the conscription law, which struck
down personal liberty by wholesale.
If the question should come before rhe Su
preme tribunal now 7 , the court would take
judicial cognizance of the fact that no in
vading army and no hovering fleet menaces
the integrity of our Republic.
Even an Act of Congress cannot create an
actual invasion, although intoxicated politi
cians, endowed with vivid imaginations, can
conjure up myraids of phanton warriors, who
are about to overturn ov.r government, and
slaughter our people.
The court would have to face the plain
question: has Congress the power to seize mil
lions of free men, of a certain age, subject
those men to unwilling service, banish them to
a foreign soil, and condemn them to die, in a
quarrel which was not ours?
The old Common Law of Rugland says it
cannot be done.
That law has never been repealed, does not
conflict with a single principle of American
jurisprudence, harmonizes with the laws of
the land, and applies to this case.
That ancient principle of the Common Law.
strictly accords with the law of nature, and
with the law of nations, both of which arc
supreme.
The very highest authorities that can be
cited, have laid it down in the great text
books of the legal profession, that the statutes
arc of no avail, if they conflict with the laws
of nature and of nations.
(First, Blackstone’s Commentaries 41 : Vet
tel's Law of Nations, preliminary section 7,
page 51.)
In considering any law of Congress, the
courts will inquire whether the upholding of
that particular statute would nullify any por
tion of the constitution, or would become a
precedent for other statutes which might in
course of time, demolish the republican
fabric of government.
Apprehensive on this very score, the makers
of the constitution of 1787 provided that the
Federal Government should guarantee to
every State, a republican form of govern
ment.
the Congress Can abridge the freedtftfi
of the press; can abridge the freedom oj
peaceable assemblage; can abridge the freq'
dom of speech; can abridge the right to petfe
tiqn for redress of wrongs; can arbitrarily det
prive millions of men of their freedom, anti
can arbitrarily nullify the Thirteenth Amend*
ment —it can just as legally nullify the repubt
lican form of government in one State, or i$
all the States.
With the standing army of halt a. milling
men, separated from their fellow citizens*
taught to despise the civil power, and drilled
into the blind obedience of the Prussian sol*
clier, the republican form of govermmnt can
be gradually stamped out in ecery State of
this Union.
But you may say: that is a wild conception*
I answer you by asking: whether or not, if I
had predicted, a year ago, the very things that
have come upon you, within a few short
weeks after President Wilson was re
inaugurated, would you not have accused
of wild extravagance and intemperate pre
judice?
A regular army of half a million men. in
time of peace, is not intended for any foreign
enemy—it is meant to keep the masses in 4
dustrlally enslaved, by the privileged classes.
Again:.the Supreme Court, in passing upon
the new law, would-have to take into con
sideration the practical possibilities of such
a law: not only could the poor be forced into
servitude to the rich, the blacks to the whites,
Protestants to Catholics, but, if million of
free men can be sent abroad t</tak;, part in
foreign wars, what check would there be upon
a President who might be willing to com*
nu rcialize the conscripted laborers ami sol
fl iers ?
Power always fattens on its diet; enthroned
individuals, slavishly obeyed by con tiers and
by have always gone further than
they first seemed to intend.
Tiberius was not a despot when he first
took the sceptre of Augustus Cmsar.
Nero was a wise ruler for the first eight
years of his reign.
As all men know, Louis Napoleon took an
oath as President, swearing to support the
Constitution of the French Republic. He
broke his oath., and by criminal usurpation
made himself Emperor.
Tn the great struggle between popular
rights and autocratic executives, can we be
certain that wo will never have a President
who will be as unscrupulous an exploiter of
humanity, as was King Leopold of Bel
gium, the good Catholic who maimed and
massacred so many negroes in his Congo Free
State, and who was so devoutly prayed for,
after lie died, by the very Catholics who are
now secretly pulling the wires of policy, in
Washington City'?
It is- a dreadful thought, that in this con
scription law—if allowed to stand by the Su
preme Court —the President of the United
States cannot be controlled, if he should ever
be a sufficiently bad man to hire out our sol
diers, as mercenaries, to fight the battles of
any country that needed the help of Hessians.
Again, the Supreme Court, in passing upon
tlie conscript acts, would doubtless take into
consideration the fact, that if Congress has
the unlimited power to take and forcibly use.
free citizens of one age, it can take those ot
all ages.
If it can take men for two years, it can
take them for twenty.
If it can send them to one part of Europe,
it can send them to every part of Europe,
to every part of Asia, and to every part of
China.
Moreover, if Congress can take the men,
upon a mere congressional declaration that a
State of War exists, it can take the women.
The right to raise armies is not restricted to
the male sex; it can be argued that women are
' (Thursday, July IS,