trols more power than he ought to control, if
it is true, as the gentleman from Somerset
says, that there is no law but martial law,
what is the reason? Is it because this gov-
ernment has gone on with a progressive ten-
dency to consolidation? No, sir; it is be-
cause the nation is divided, the government
weakened, and the people are disposed, in
their sense of fear, from their weakness, to
confer more power upon their rulers than
when united, powerful and strong, they
would ever have submitted to. I admit that
President Lincoln has exercised powers such
as no President in time of peace would have
attempted to exercise; and he has exercised
those powers because the people, divided and
weakened, were willing for their own protec-
tion rather to trust everything they had tem-
porarily, to give him power to defend the
nation, than that he should fail to defend it.
With this same consciousness of human na-
ture, the States' Rights politicians of the
South have swept away every Constitution
and every law, and subjected the whole South
to a severe martial law, under the necessity
of defending their own cause; and I should
have thought Jefferson Davis a fool if he had
acted upon any other principle. If he was
right in his rebellion, he is right in what he
is doing.
A few words upon paramount allegiance,
and this theory of coercion. This doctrine
of coercion is no new doctrine. Did anybody
ever deny that if a hundred men undertook
to defy the authority of the State, the civil
power would call for the aid of the military
power? But gentlemen say yon cannot co-
erce a State. I do not care whether you can
coerce a State or not. The process of separa-
tion always ends in resistance to the law of
the United States, and that resistance is made
by individuals. If they claim to act under
an authority under which they have no right
to act, the government of the United States
can only deal with them as individuals It
can make no difference whether there are
enough of them to take possession of the gov-
ernment of the State or not. Their taking
possession of the government of the State is
void unless you admit the right of constitu-
tional secession. The Constitution of the
United States declares that the President shall
enforce the laws. What does "enforce"
mean? It means to make people obey by
force if they do not obey willingly. He is to
take care that the laws shall be faithfully ex-
ecuted; peaceably if he can, forcibly if he
must. What difference does it make whether
one State, two States, or three States, one
man. two men, or a thousand men interfere
with the laws?—in point of law I mean, for
of course in point of fact it makes a great dif-
ference. A man may have a right to shear a
wolf; if he cannot shear him, of course it
illakes a difference in the actual fact. We
are talking about law and constitutional |
rights. And I say, is there any limit to the
power of the government to enforce its laws,
unless yon admit the abstract right of seces-
sion, except so far as that right is limited in
point of fact. My friend from Prince George's,
furthest from me, (Mr. Marbury,) made the
very sensible remark that this matter was
submitted to the arbitrament of armies, and
he was prepared to leave it there. Of course
it is. Whether the States have a right to se-
cede or not, whether any number of people
have a right to secede or not, yet if they hap-
pen to be strong enough to keep the govern-
ment from whipping them, they have estab-
lished as a practical fact their right to be in-
dependent. No doubt about that,
But gentlemen say that while the Supreme
Court of the United States is the arbiter under
the Constitution, in the first place that arbi-
trament is different from the arbitrament in
other governments, because a man is not
bound to obey and then try the question
afterwards. I must confess that I listened
with some surprise to the remark made by the
gentleman from Kent, (Mr. Chambers,) upon
that subject; because I always supposed that
the same right existed in any government for
a man to try the question how far the actual
thing required to do was in conformity with
the power of the government, no matter how
paramount or absolute might be his allegi-
ance, unless the government was despotic.
If the government is unregulated or unlim-
ited, of course no man has a right to try any-
thing. But if the government is regulated
or limited, no matter how strenuous may be
the law of the king, the subject has the right
to try whether the' king or the government
has transcended its power. He has two al-
ternatives, to appeal to the natural law or
to the law of the courts. If the act which he
is required to do trespasses so closely upon
his personal right and actual safety, that as
in the case of danger to human life he cannot
retreat, if it exceeds the risk which as a man
he is bound to incur, he has a right to resist.
Is there any doubt about that? Is there any
doubt that a man may resist under the gov-
ernment of Great Britain? If a sheriff is il-
legally appointed, or if he arrests the man for
debt on Sunday, and the man kills him in de-
fence of his liberty, you cannot hang that
man for murder. Yet no man denies that
under the English government there is a
common arbiter. Still I do not go so far as
the gentleman from Kent when he says that
under all circumstances a man not only has
the right, but it is his duty to resist. That
would depend altogether upon what the com-
mand is. No man has a right to become a
shedder of blood, or to revolutionize, in oppo-
sition to illegal demands, if those demands are
of an altogether disproportionate character
to the violence used to repel them,
Mr. CHAMBERS. I stated expressly, in fla-
grant cases of violation. |
