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PAGE TWO
An Appeal to Common Sense
(continued from page one.)
things, what’s the use of going to Europe to
fight “autocracy ?”
When President John Adams put men in
Jail for publicly denouncing him and the
measures of his administration, the country
was soon in an uproar. Adams was denied a
second term, and his Federalist party was
buried.
The old Federalist party now lives again,
in Woodrow Wilson, and in the Congres
sional flunkeys who, at his dictation, trample
upon the Constitution they swore to support.
What are some of the things which tbe Su
preme Law forbids Congress to do?
Read these prohibitions, and bear in mind
that no power on earth' can legally change
them, excepting the co-operative action of
three-fourths of the States:
The plain words of prohibition, contained
in the Constitution, read as follows:
“Congress shall make no law*’ on several
named subjects.
Congress is absolutely forbidden to make
any law on those subjects: the very language
used proves, that it was the intention of the
makers of the Government to remove those
subjects from the jurisdiction of Congress.
The intent was, that Congress should not
touch those subjects, at all.
No living man can put any other meaning
into the first Amendment of the Constitution
of the United States.
For the sake of clearness, I will separate
those forbidden subjects, so that the un
educated reader may get the full benefit,
without confusing one subject with another:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an
establishment of religion, or prohibiting the
free exercise thereof.’’
“Congress shall make no law abridging the
freedom of speech :”
“Congress shall make no law abridging the
freedom ... of the press.”
“Congress shall make no law abridging .• . .
the right of the people peaceably to assemble
and to petition the government for a redress
of grievances.”
Then comes the 13th Amendment saying, in
effect, that neither Congress nor the States
shall abridge the natural freedom of the
citizen, by creating a system of unwilling
servitude, except as a punishment for crime.
In addition to these prohibitions, Congress
is forbidden to make anything treasonable,
except acts of war, or actual co-operation, by
deeds, with the enemy in time of war.
Congress and the President are for
bidden to suspend the writ of Habeas
Corpus, “unless when, in cases of rebellion or
invasion, the public safety may require it.”
When Mr. Li neon’s government arbitrarily
suspended the Writ, during the Civil War,
the U. S. Supreme Court decided the facts
did not justify the suspension.
Furthermore, Congress is forbidden to
make any law which holds the citizen to
answer for any crime involving moral
turpitude, except on indictment by the grand
jury of the State and District in which his
criminal act is done:
Again, Congress is forbidden to make any
law whose operation will deprive the citizen
of life, liberty, or property without due pro
cess of law; and the highest courts have uni
formly held that “due process of law” means,
a legal procedure in the civil courts and a
trial before a judge and jury having legal
jurisdiction.
The makers of your Supreme Law were so
jealous of the historic right of trial by jury,
and so apprehensive of what the Federal
Government might some day be usurpatory
enough to do, that those long-headed States-
THE JEFFERSONIAN
men put it into the Constitution, that, in
every civil suit involving as much as twenty
dollars, “the right of tiial by jury shall be
PRESERVED.”
In other words, Congress was forbidden to
make any law T which would deprive you and
me of a trial by jury, when the issue at stake
amounted to the value of S2O!
Read those prohibitions, again and again,
until you have learned by heart what Con
gress is forbidden to do.
Learn, as you would your A B C’s, what
it is that the Supreme Law meant to preserve
to you and to me, sb that the Federal Govern
ment should never encroach upon our re
served rights, and should never revolutionize
our free institutions.
Congress shall make no law abridging the
freedom of speech and of the press; and yet
Congress, under recent Presidents, have gone
ruthlessly ahead, doing that very thing,
although each Congressman and each Presi
dent swore on Holy Writ not to do it.
What does it mean, when Congress legis
lates on the subjects which the Supreme Law
withdraws from Congressional jurisdiction?
What does it mean, when Congress makes
a law authorizing a grand jury of California
to indict a Georgian, for something he wrote
and mailed in Georgia?
What does it mean, when Congress makes
a law which authorizes the Post Office De
partment to confiscate a man's property,
worth many thousands of dollars, without a
trial by jury, and without any redress in the
courts?
What does it mean, wdien the President’s
personal representative in the U. S. Senate
virtually repeats wdiat General Bell said to
the Colorado laborers —
“7’o hell with the Constitution!"
If means, of course, that resurrected
Federalism is changing the spirit and the
form of your Republic; and that, in lieu of a
government of constitutional legislation, we
have drifted into a rule of autocratic Bureaus,
presided over by a President who is more
despotic than the Kaiser.
A Republican President could not have
accomplished this revolutionary change: it
required a President who wore the name
“Democrat.”
Our own flag had to be used, to deceive the
sentinels and the army.
The enemy's flag would have been fired on
by the sentinels, and the army would have
sprung up, ready for action.
What McKinley and Roosevelt could not
do, for the Prussian Militarists and the Aris
tocracy of Privilege, Professor Wilson has
done.
What Taft vainly strove to deliver, Wilson
easily delivered.
If Taft had rejected the Roosevelt
volunteers, and refused to give the
people a referendum vote on conscrip
tion, this country would have been
plunged into a bloody turmoil; and the very
papers and magazines and Congressmen and
preachers, who are now cuckooing and me
tooing and poll-parotting for J. P, Morgan’s
International Banking and Bond-dealing
War Trust, would have damned Taft, in all
the amplitude of objurgatory vocabulation.
You know that, don’t you?
Poor little cuckoos! Poor little witless,
spineless, sightless, Godless parrots! How
they will sneak to cover, in less than two
years, and deny that they ever said what they
are now saying!
“To make the world safe for democracy,”
by murdering the father and mother of de
mocracy, namely, free speech and free
press!
Doesn’t your common sense tell you that
democracy cannot live, where free men are
not free to talk?
Do you have to read law-books to learri
that? ?
The club with which criminal Popes beat
down opposition and reform, inside the hor-t
rible Catholic church of the Dark and Mid
dle Ages, was, the suppression of honest critic
cism. U
An immoral Pope, living openly with his
concubines and his bastards, did not relisli
criticism: hence Pope Alexander VI. causec|
the Catholic monk, Savonarola, to be burnt*
because the fearless monk criticised thb
criminal Pope. !
A tyrannical King, like Louis XIV., o 4
Charles 1., did not like to be criticised; hence
they imprisoned, and even murdered citizens
who condemned their measures.
It was against such abominable oppression,
that John Milton wrote his immortal “Speech
in favor of unlicensed Printing.”
It was against such tyrannical attempts t$
choke off free speech and printing, that
Charles <Fox, Thomas Erskine, and RicharcJ.
Brinsley Sheridan thundered in the British'
Parliament, during the lives of George Illy
and George IV.
Are we to go backwards, in our campaign
for “democracy?”
Are we to adopt the infamous Censorchi p
of Pope Alexander VI., and seek victims, a£
he did?
Are we to revive the press-gag laws which/
made a reign of terror in England, w hen th?
Tories ruled the administration of William
Pitt ? • * w
Are we—like the sow returning ‘to het?
wallow, and the dog to his vomit’—to gd
back to the medievalism of personal rule—-J
Pope’s word ruling the church and a king’s
word ruling the State ? \ ?
Why not call Woodrow Wilson by thri
name of King, or Kaiser, or Czar, if the Cori?
stitution is to be treated as the Kaiser treated
the Belgian treaty?
The Kaiser did not sivear to support the(
Belgian treaty. J
Woodrow Wilson did swear to support
Constitution.
And now, wuthin 6 months after taking
that solemn and public oath, the Congressmen
and President who did so, are treating thi
Constitution exactly as the Kaiser treated thj
Belgian treaty. t
Hug yourself, Mr. Congressman, and pubV
lish, in one of J. P. Morgan’s daily toots, a
jaunty letter setting forth the beauties of th|
Conscript Act, which forfeits the freedonf
and the lives of millions of our bravest an<|
best, condemning them, against their wilk
to serve and die on the other side of thf
ocean, in order that the International Wai*
Trust may continue to pile Pelion upon Ossaj
in blood-money profits.
Hug yourself, my son, and publish just as
many flippant letters as you please; but don’t
entirely forget that the people here at homs
are thinking for themselves, and that when
you face them, a few months from now, you’ll
be sternly asked—
“ Why did you condemn my boy to lose hit,
liberty and his life?
Why did you sacrifice him to the sordid
greed of the International Banking Trust,
Munition Trust, Packing Trust, Oil Trust*
Copper Trust, and Powder Trust?”
Fix up a good answer, my son: you’ll need
it.
Be certain to make it plain, wfliy
had to go to Europe, to fight for American
rights. |
Be certain to demonstrate that President
Washington was an idiot, for advising and
warning us never to do that.
Take lots of pains with your speech, my f
son, so that you can show to the people how!
silly Thomas Jefferson, Daniel Webster,
Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun were, when
they warned us to keep our hands off Euro*
pean entanglements, mind our own business*
ffliufScky, July 2®,"lSfli