The "habeas corpus" has been suspended
by the word of one man.
Arrests have been made on men who have
been hardly suspected of more than secession principles. Arrests
have, I believe, been made in cases which have been destitute even
of any fair ground for such suspicion. Newspapers have been
stopped for advocating views opposed to the feelings of the North,
as freely as newspapers were ever stopped in France for opposing
the Emperor. A man has not been safe in the streets who was known
to be a secessionist. It must be at once admitted that opinion in
the Northern States was not free when I was there. But has opinion
ever been free anywhere on all subjects? In the best built
strongholds of freedom, have there not always been questions on
which opinion has not been free; and must it not always be so?
When the decision of a people on any matter has become, so to say,
unanimous - when it has shown itself to be so general as to be
clearly the expression of the nation's voice as a single chorus,
that decision becomes holy, and may not be touched. Could any
newspaper be produced in England which advocated the overthrow of
the Queen? And why may not the passion for the Union be as strong
with the Northern States, as the passion for the Crown is strong
with us? The Crown with us is in no danger, and therefore the
matter is at rest. But I think we must admit that in any nation,
let it be ever so free, there may be points on which opinion must
be held under restraint. And as to those summary arrests, and the
suspension of the "habeas corpus," is there not something to be
said for the States government on that head also? Military arrests
are very dreadful, and the soul of a nation's liberty is that
personal freedom from arbitrary interference which is signified to
the world by those two unintelligible Latin words. A man's body
shalt not be kept in duress at any man's will, but shall be brought
up into open court, with uttermost speed, in order that the law may
say whether or no it should be kept in duress. That I take it is
the meaning of "habeas corpus," and it is easy to see that the
suspension of that privilege destroys all freedom, and places the
liberty of every individual at the mercy of him who has the power
to suspend it. Nothing can be worse than this: and such
suspension, if extended over any long period of years, will
certainly make a nation weak, mean spirited, and poor. But in a
period of civil war, or even of a widely-extended civil commotion,
things cannot work in their accustomed grooves. A lady does not
willingly get out of her bedroom-window with nothing on but her
nightgown; but when her house is on fire she is very thankful for
an opportunity of doing so.
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