CONGRESS, U. S. 



305 



in this great conflict how nobly and freely given ! 

 You can raise an army of seven hundred thou- 

 sand men ; you can give them all the best ap- 

 pliances of War ; you can cover your bays and 

 rivers and seas with your navy ; you can block- 

 ade a coast of three thousand miles ; you may 

 cut down the last rebel on the field of battle. 

 Such is the power of war. But, Mr. Speaker, 

 when you shall have used all these powers, 

 when peace shall have been restored, or when 

 the rebels shall come and lay themselves at 

 your feet, or be taken captive by your arms, 

 then, also, will the power of that Constitution 

 be made manifest ; then, also, will this Govern- 

 ment be shown to be the most powerful and 

 the noblest on the earth, not because the cap- 

 tured rebel is at your mercy, bnt because he is 

 not. Because, under the shield of the Consti- 

 tution, the rebel at your feet is stronger than 

 armies, stronger than navies. You cannot 

 touch a hair of his head or take from him a 

 dollar of his property until you shall have tried 

 and condemned him by the judgment of his 

 peers and by the law of the land. Does this 

 show the weakness of the Constitution, or does 

 it show its transcendent strength? Are these 

 written constitutions established to give to 

 Government power, without limit, over the 

 property, liberty, and life of the citizen, or are 

 they made to define and limit the power of the 

 Government, and to shield and .protect the 

 rights of the subject? 



" I have always been taught that the people 

 is the sovereign ; that these constitutions are 

 carefully defined grants from the sovereign 

 power, so framed as to establish justice, and at 

 the same time secure the blessings of liberty 

 and the protection of law even to the humblest 

 and meanest citizen. I know, Mr. Speaker, 

 that these are getting to be old-fashioned sen- 

 timents. Magna Charta is soiled and worm- 

 eaten. The Bill of Rights, the muniments of 

 personal freedom, habeas corpus, trial by jury, 

 what are they all worth in comparison with 

 this new safeguard of liberty, the proceeding 

 in rem ? 



' Was you ever at Runnymede, Mr. Speaker? 

 I remember going down, on a beautiful day in 

 July, from Windsor Castle to the plain, and 

 crossing the narrow channel of the Thames to 

 that little island on which, more than six cen- 

 turies ago, in, the early gray of morning, those 

 sturdy barons wrested from an unwilling king 

 the first great charter of English freedom the 



ferm of life of the civil liberty we have to-day, 

 could hardly have been more moved had I 

 stood in the village and by the manger in which 

 was cradled ' the Son of Mary and the Son of 

 God.' From the gray of that morning streamed 

 the rays which, uplifting -with the hours, 

 coursing with the years, and keeping pace with 

 the centuries, have encircled the whole earth 

 with the glorious light of English liberty the 

 liberty for which our fathers planted these 

 commonwealths in the wilderness ; for which 

 they went through the baptism of fire and blood 



in the Revolution ; which they imbedded and 

 hoped to make immortal in the Constitution; 

 without which the Constitution would not be 

 worth the parchment on which it was written. 



"But I must not linger by the way, Mr. 

 Speaker. What do these bills propose ? The 

 immediate object is to confiscate the property 

 of the rebels. For what end ? For punishment, 

 is it not ? If you strip these men of their prop- 

 erty, it is not because they are innocent, al- 

 though this bill does, in fact, confiscate the 

 property of persons who may be guiltless of 

 any offence. But the theory of the bill is to 

 punish men for the crime of rebellion, or trea- 

 son, or give it what name you will. The bill, 

 indeed, recites, as an ulterior purpose, the pay- 

 ment of the expenses of the rebellion. But 

 there is no man on this floor so verdant as to 

 suppose this means much. If the courts en- 

 force the statute (I believe they will not), how 

 much treasure can you wring from those States, 

 poor at the best, but whom the close of this 

 war will leave impoverished, seared, and swept, 

 as by fire? You might as well pasture your 

 cattle on the desert of Sahara. The land will 

 indeed be left, but who will be your purchasers, 

 when they know they must take at the best a 

 doubtful title, bnt a sure, bitter, and lasting 

 feud. The strife and hate growing out of the 

 confiscations of the Revolution are scarcely yet 

 appeased, and it was with these confiscations 

 fresh in the memories of the framers of the 

 Constitution that the limitation of the power 

 of forfeiture was adopted. There never was a 

 wilder dream than that of paying the expenses 

 of the rebellion with the fruits of confiscation. 



" The real object of the bill is punishment, the 

 punishment of an offence clearly defined in the 

 Constitution, of the highest offence known to 

 the laws. The punishment is the forfeiture of 

 the property of the offender. The forfeiture 

 is to be established before judicial tribunals, and 

 upon proof of the guilt of the owner. Yon 

 have, then, these three elements : punishment 

 upon proof of the commission of crimes be- 

 fore a judicial tribunal. One element is want- 

 ing. One has been diligently excluded trial 

 by jury- Human ingenuity has been exhausted 

 to shut the door against it, and your bill is like 

 Hamlet with the Prince of Denmark omitted 

 by particular request. Here is the plain imper- 

 ative mandate of the Constitution, which he 

 who runs may read : 



The trial of all crimes except in cases of impeach- 

 ment, shall be by jury. Constitution, art. 3, sec. -2. 



" The property to which the bill applies is 

 not, nndei 1 the law of nations, prize, it is not 

 booty, it is not contraband of war. It is not 

 enforced military contribution. It is not prop- 

 erty used or employed in the war or in resist- 

 ance to the laws, and, therefore, clearly to be 

 distinguished from that covered by the statute 

 of August 6, 1861. It is private property out- 

 side of the conflict of arms, forfeited not because 

 it is the instrument of offence, but as a penalty 



