Then As To Security Under Their
Laws And From Their Laws!
Those laws and the system of their
management have been taken almost entirely from us, and have so been
administered that life and property have been safe, and the subject
also has been free, under the law.
I think that this may be taken
for granted, seeing that they who have been most opposed to American
forms of government have never asserted the reverse. I may be told
of a man being lynched in one State, or tarred and feathered in
another, or of a duel in a third being "fought at sight." So I may
be told also of men garroted in London, and of tithe proctors buried
in a bog without their ears in Ireland. Neither will seventy years
of continuance, nor will seven hundred, secure such an observance of
laws as will prevent temporary ebullition of popular feeling, or
save a people from the chance disgrace of occasional outrage.
Taking the general, life and limb and property have been as safe in
the States as in other civilized countries with which we are
acquainted.
As to their personal liberty under their laws, I know it will be
said that they have surrendered all claim to any such precious
possession by the facility with which they have now surrendered the
privilege of the writ of habeas corpus. It has been taken from
them, as I have endeavored to show, illegally, and they have
submitted to the loss and to the illegality without a murmur! But
in such a matter I do not think it fair to judge them by their
conduct in such a moment as the present. That this is the very
moment in which to judge of the efficiency of their institutions
generally, of the aptitude of those institutions for the security of
the nation, I readily acknowledge; but when a ship is at sea in a
storm, riding out through all that the winds and waves can do to
her, one does not condemn her because a yard-arm gives way, nor even
though the mainmast should go by the board. If she can make her
port, saving life and cargo, she is a good ship, let her losses in
spars and rigging be what they may. In this affair of the habeas
corpus we will wait awhile before we come to any final judgment. If
it be that the people, when the war is over, shall consent to live
under a military or other dictatorship, that they shall quietly
continue their course as a nation without recovery of their rights
of freedom, then we shall have to say that their institutions were
not founded in a soil of sufficient depth, and that they gave way
before the first high wind that blew on them. I myself do not
expect such a result.
I think we must admit that the Americans have received from their
government, or rather from their system of policy, that aid and
furtherance which they required from it; and, moreover, such aid and
furtherance as we expect from our system of government.
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