The Express.
London, England, 1865-05-25 00:00:00

1001111183, THUBSDA.S,IMW4II 18652

TEE

quit the Wesley, &odd ha mowed in doing so,
with the rank and humours of a persecuted man.
Moreover, it is said, can it be expected that
foreign nations shonkl attach mach weight or
importance to the Presidential proslamation iambi
on Wednesday, declaring the war at an end, and
pronouncing the Confederate cruiser" pirates, whena
prisoners are being tried at Washington before
secret tribunal established in virtue of powers which
everybody acknowledges the gevernmea4 OM only
derive from the actual existence of a state
of war 1 If the war be not ova, why
should foreign powers be expected to axatode' the
Shenandoah from their ports now more thaw emu
If it be over, where is the warrant for the trill of
prisoners in secret before a military commiseiou 1
The dilemma is a disagreeable one. The answer
model by the friends of the government is, that it
has the required proofs ; that it will produce them
whenever it can do so without risking the escape of
accomplices who are stall at large ; that the exist-
ence of a great conspiracy against the lives of the
high officers of the republic has been discovered,
but that at this stage of the proceedings the publi-
cation of particulars is impossible. The prisoners
are being tried before a military commis-
sion because it would be very difdoult
in the existing state of the law, which
makes the formation of an opinion as to
the prisoner's guilt or innocence cause of challenge,
if not impossible, to get a jury empanelled at
Washington to try such a case, and because it
would, in • civil court, be impossible to convict
Paine of anything but an assault with intent to kill,
the punishment for which would be vary inade-
quate. They add, that under these eizonmstancee,
with a gigantic war only closing, and with a tre-
mendous combination to murder its principal
functionaries opened out before it, the government
is entitled, for a short time longer, to a continuance
of the confidence which the public has hitherto
reposed in its honesty, and which it has net, so far,
kand reason to regret

Still opinion is much divided about the matter.
The press, as I have said, is in this city strongly
opposed to any further prolongation of military
law, and articles appeared in all the journals on
Thursday morning reprobating the secret
The Union League Club thought itself bound to
express a strong counter opinion in support of the
government, and resolutions deprecating the line
of criticism pursued by the papers, and approving
of the course of the President, were introduced at
a crowded meeting on Thursday evening, and passed
after a stormy and acrimonious discussion. Some
of the speakers on the government side ad-
vanced some very singular doctrines. One gentle-
man laid it down that all offences committed on
persons actually or constructively in the military
service were " military offences," and therefore
triable by court martial ; so that under this ruling i
if I knocked down a quartermaster or provost-
marshal
in New York, I might be sent before a
military commission, and shot if it thought proper.
The same speaker held that the desire of depriving'
the conspirators of what they doubtless highly enjoy,
the Eclat and notoriety of proceedings in open
court, constituted a sufficient excuse for secresy,
and that Mr. Stanton's well-known legal erudition
made any criticism on his mode of trying anybody
improper. The motives of the press, too, in taking
ground against the government were very freely
assailed ; the general impression seemed to be that
they were nothing higher than chagrin at the loss
of the chance of reporting the trial.
I must confess that although I see very clearly
the force of some of 4e arguments which are used
in defence of what is taking place at Washington,
I was a good deal astonished by the nature of the
general propositions which some of the speakers
on this occasion put forth. Many of them
would justify the establishment of naked abeo-
infix= ; and although I do not believe they met
with anything like general assent, the mere ut-
terance of them by even a few individuals before
such a body as this club, seemed to me to reveal
pretty clearly the great mischief which has been
wrought, and the confusion which has been intro-
duced into popular ideas, by the absence during the
the last tour years of an honest and capable oppo-
sition. The party which has undertaken the task
of criticising the acts of the administration ever
since the beginning of the war has been so
notoriously in sympathy with the public
enemy, so well known to differ from the
body of the nation, not only as to means, but
as to ends, that its fault-finding prophecies and
warnings have passed by the public as the idle
wind. In fact, its denunciations of arbitrary arrests
have only had the effect of making the country
more and more indifferent to them, and its attempts
to keep alive greater reverence for the forms of law
have only lowered them in the popular estimation.
The more they have raved about civil liberty and
the danger of precedents, the more satisfied the
rest of the community, because of the necessity of
not being for the present too particular about
liberty, and of supporting the government in what-
ever measures it thought necessary for the safety of I
the State ; until at last all criticism on its acts has I
come, as was evident at the Union League Club
the other nigh; to be considered by a vast number
of people as a form of attack on national existence.
This feeling will, of course, now gradually die out,
and Iwo every day signs of greater impatience of mar-
tial law. When outbursts of indignation about it are
heard even in the Union League Club, it is a pretty
sure sign that the public is largely infected with
the same feeling, even if we bad no notes of warning
from the press. At the same time there will be
great unwillingness on the part of the govern-
ment to relinquish the power of arbitrary
arrest until the basis of re-construction at the South
has been finally settled, and the State machinery
has been set at work again. To do so would be to
leave it in the power of the Vances, and Toombsee,
and Bonham', and, in fact, all the old set of Seces-
sionists, to come back, drive the Union men from the
polls, retain or re-establish slavery, and treat the
whole war as non avenue; in other words torelinquish
all share in the task of re-organising Southern society;
so that I do not expect to see the habeas corpus re-
stored as long as there remains a trace of armed re.
siatance to the government to furnish the necessary
constitutional justification of itasuspension. But the
power of arbitrary arrest and trial by court-martial
will, I think, hereafter have to be exercised at the
North with great caution, or there will be a Soros
reaction against the government, immense as is the
confidence which is now reposed in it, and which it
must be confessed it has fairly earned. I doubt if
powers so extensive as it has wielded during the
last four
years wen ever, all things men-
dated, wielded with more prudence, discretion,
and respect for individual rights. Neither
freedom of the press, nor freedom of speech has
dace 1861, been interfered with anywhere outside
of the border States, where the presence of a large
amount of disaffection amongst the population, and
the near neighbourhood of the enemy's forests, have
rendered military rule absolutely necessary. The
Confederacy, astonishing as it may aeon to you, has
hed an " organ" of its own in this city ever since

1882, which denonased the North, its govern-
ment, and its rusks, in vary much the same lan-
guage, and from almost precisely the same paint of
view, as the Richmond Bessniswr, while both in this
city an 4 in every town all over the North there
have been journal. published, which though need-
nally Northern in feeling have reviled the govern-
meat and its odium day by day with a bitterns*
and foul-mouthedness which the Morning Herald
might envy. In fact, to people here who heard
the language that was used on the platform all
over the country during the last three years of
"Lincoln and hie minions," the lamentations
which they read in English journals over
the loss of American liberty have seemed
very amusing. And there is nothing more
idle than to try to persuade people that their
liberties are in any danger from anything that has
occurred. The warnings and forebodings that are
uttered in England on this subject ought to have
tome from some country in which the Habeas
Corpus Act was never suspended, and no publisher
was ever prosecuted far seditious libeL The
opposition that is now made to arbitrary arrests
and military trials springs not from fear, but
from irritation and jealousy. And in the whole
aeries of delusions which have been spread about
this war there is none mom absurd than that which
supposes the Confederacy to have presented a more
favourable contrast to the United States in the
matter of respect for personal freedom. Ike flourish
of trumpets we have so Cara heard ever the fact
that the privilege of the habeas corpus wannever sus-
pended in the South has an odd sound in the ears of
those who rentemberthatthe whole whiteisalepopu-
"%don of the South was heldliable to militeryeervios,
and that even the farmers and mechanics remained
at home to pursue their avocations under permits
from the War-office. The boast that men in this
position were left in the enjoyment of the great
writ is very liked Mr. L Q. 0. Lower's beset in
London, that the Southern slaves enjoyed the pro-
tection of the courts as well as the white man, while
he made no mention of the fact that in no Southern
State can a white man be convicted of any offence
on the testimony of • negro. An overseer might
commit a dozen murders with perfect impunity,
in the presence of all " the hands " on the
plantation.
The Times of this morning has the following,
which seems semi-official :
We believe we me quite wren in wiz; that Mr-
Stanton has had comparatively little to do with the judicial
arrengerneets of this cams, and has not eves read the great
men of evidente which ante into his department, tending
to pore beyond all doubt that the senainatioe of Mr.
Lincoln was not the act of a fa Gray idiv bat one
in a mass of murders pleased by a gigantic sad wide-
spread conspiracy, acing in the interest of the phonies, and
aiming to repeat in this country the anarchy and carnage
which here often followed similar Imes is other lands. That
widens" together with that which had stamulated in the
State Departmeat, was handed over to the Judge-Advocate-
Geswel, the proper officer to take ispl mamas, of the
case : and it was upon the 'rifles report of Hos. Joseph
Bolt, stating his deliberate sari &a carload, formed slier
a careful examinatica of all the tenimeny, that the murder
was the result of a conspiracy, sod that this coespirecy wr
most formidable in its exteat and ia the proaliesnoe, cha-
racter, and mourns of Its leaden, that the &aka of
the government was based. It was President Jarmo, and
set Kr. Stanton, who took action epos this report. After
a avail dimension of the whole salad at a ablest
mating, the Product deeded, with the 00,110M11111011 of
every member of his calitheit, that patio pities and public
safety demanded that them sputa and tools of
the onapincy should be tried by a military tri-
bunal as for a military alms They are charged
with having aided and aecomplished the ameasination, is
time of civil war, in a city fortified and held by a pr-
elim, of the commander-in-thief of the army of the limited
States.
Dick Taylor has surrendered, but it is reported
that Kirby Smith is going to bold out. I doubt if
this is more than a bit of braggartty d la Davis ;
but if he does, Canby has force enough to dispose of
him in a few days.
The Mexican emigration is ceasing to excite much
attention, and the general impression is that it has
been got up by a few vagabonds and adventurers,
and will amount to very little. General Rose-
crane was reported to be at the bead of it, but he
disavowed it in a speech before the Massachusetts
legislature a few days ego.
Subscriptions to the " seven-thirty" loan are
pouring in on the most tremendous scale. Upwards
of 60 millions of dollars have been taken in the last
four days, and a large portion of it in small sums.