of the felon, or the convict? Or is it the con-
vict himself? the man who commits the
crime? Whatever consequences may come
upon the wife and children from the applica-
tion of the present law, who is guilty of
these consequences? The State, which de-
clares that treason shall be punished by for-
feiture of the whole estate? Is it the State
which is guilty of the consequences which
must tall upon the wife and children of trai
tors? Assuredly not. It is the man who
commits the treason, who alone is respon-
sible.
If the law is certain and fixed in this mat-
ter, I take it that it may have the most
wholesome consequences in this; that before
a man takes it upon himself to commit trea-
son, he will think of his wife and children
at home, who may be not only disgraced but
beggared by his treason.
Look at the consequences of treason to-
day. Do we or do we not believe that all
the calamities which are falling upon our na-
tion have resulted from the crime of treason?
Yon can count your widows by hundreds of
thousands and your orphans by millions. Is
it because men have been true liege men,
paying the respect and rendering the allegiance
due to the constituted authorities of the
government? Is that why you have whole
divisions, and corps, and armies of widows
and orphans? No such thing, sir. It is
simply because treason is in the land. I
want to keep treason for the future out of
the land. I want the man to know, when
he commits this crime of treason, that he not
only involves his wife and children in its
direful consequences, but enwraps the nation
in them. I think I am quite as humanitarian
in my feelings as my friend, although I am
sure he is so from his manner. All I desire
is that we shall so legislate here that men
may take note of the fact that not only are
the destinies of the State and nation involved
when treason is committed, but that their
own wives and children share the destinies
of the State and the nation.
Is there anything wrong in this, looking
at it in its practical application? A rich
man has an estate, and lie commits treason
against the Government, Treason necessa-
rily involves armies. Levying war involves
armies. How does that operate upon his
poor neighbor, and upon his poor neighbor's
wife and children? The first thing you
know you have what we are now having
daily, a draft upon the population of the
State. You take the poor man from his
house and home, from his wife and children,
and you send him out to perish either from
disease or from violence upon the battle-field,
What is the consequence to that wife and
to those children? They are robbed of pro-
tection. They are robbed of support, beg-
gared, and cast loose with nothing to shelter
them from the inhumanities of a cold and |
heartless world. Are we not to consider
this? If we are to avoid the suffering of
the people en masse, or of a single suffering
widow and child, this is the way to do it,
Make treason almost impossible, make it
entirely impossible if you can. Teach the
lesson of obedience to the law of the land.
Tell the man who does not obey that law,
that he forfeits all. When you make him
understand this, he will be less likely to
put his hand sacrilegiously upon that ark
which carries the covenant of the Union,
Mr. BELT. If my friend from Howard
will allow me, I will suggest one practical
difficulty in his argument, which is this:
suppose we change the law so that a man
about to commit treason shall know that his
wife and children cannot succeed to his prop-
perty, what is there to prevent his selling
that property and investing the proceeds
with a trustee for their benefit ?
Mr. SANDS. When we get the trustee, I
am in favor of taking it from him.
Mr. BELT. I do not suppose that any one
would propose to forfeit a man's property
before he has committed treason.
Mr. SANDS. Certainly not.
Mr. BELT. It is perfectly competent then
for a man who intends to wage war
against the Government, before he commits
any overt act, to dispose of his property in
such a manner that all the laws on the face
of the earth cannot interfere with the trans-
fer. I merely mention this as practically in-
terfering with the operation of the change
the gentleman proposes to make in this
clause.
Mr. SANDS resumed. I am obliged to the
gentleman for his suggestion. I will meet
it in this way. I would force every man
who intended to commit treason to place his
property in the hands of a trustee; and then
I would provide that any such conveyance
should be ab initio, null and void. That is
the way I would avoid that in the future.
But that is not the way to meet any case in
the past; because I am opposed to the pas-
sage of any ex post facto laws. I am look-
ing to the future, to the permanence of peace
and security. I do not want that it shall be
in the experience of the youngest child that
lives to-day, or the child yet unborn; no,
sir, not for generations to come, to see what
I have seen. I do not want this nation, so
long as God suffers it to be a nation, to be
again in the condition it is this day. I want
to provide against that, if I can. One of my
means of doing so, is to make treason next
to impossible; to make men know that when
they go in that direction they go in the di-
rection of wrong. Can I not show how to
do that ?
So long as laws are ambiguous, the pro-
verb has something in it, that they are cob-
webs through which the larger bodies break
away, while they entangle and destroy the |
