The Sun.
London, England, 1865-01-14 00:00:00

Union which they prize beyond liberty, has been
wonderful, though not admirable. And not only
the quiet patience of the many but the lou I applause
of the few who ought to be the guides and instruc-
tors of the multitude, whenever the Ad ministration
overrode the law and the Constituti )n for the pre-
vention or the punishment of adverse action on the
part of political opponents, has been of a nature to
astonish the world. The progress of the war has
abundantly shown that there was no constitutional
or personal right of which a large majority were not
willing to divest themselves, provided they could
preserve what it is the fashion to call the " life of
the nation." The life of a nation is liberty, the sense
of right, the supremacy of law, the spirit of honour,
the elevation of opinion, without which a nation is
but a vile body, upon which tyrants may experi-
ment, and not a living soul to act a noble part in
the great drama of humanity. And perhaps worse
than the assumption of unconstitutional power
on the part of the Administration and its obe-
dient and too willing generals, and the tame, if
not grateful acquiescence of the people, has been
the subserviency of the bench of justice, when-
ever the civil and the military power came, or
seemed to come, into collision. When Mr. Vallan-
digham was arrested without the shadow of a rea-
sonable pretext, when he was condemned by a mili-
tary tribunal without the shadow of a proved offence,
and when he was banished to the South without the
shadow of a justification for such punishment,
either in the law of his State or in the Constitution
of the Republic, but in open defiance of both, a
judge was found to declare that he had no jurisdic-
tion. In like manner when the New York World
and Journal of Commerce were suppressed for an
act of inadvertency committed without malice or
arrgre pensie, and explained by voluntary action
long before the military authorities had any cogni-
sance of the circumstances, it was impossible for
those journals to obtain redress, or to induce a court
of law to declare that in the State of New York the
law was the law, and that no military interloper, by
whomsoever appointed or maintained in power,
should set it at defiance. These are but two in-
stances out of hundreds, but they are sufficient to
show, in the absence of all proof of any stand made
by a judge in any part of the Union in defence of
the law of which he is the representative—except in
the case of Judge Carmichael in Maryland, who was
arrested on the bench for his pains—that the judges
as a body have either been smitten with the passion
of their countrymen for Union a tout prix, or that
they have been weak, time-serving, corrupt politi-
cians, more anxious to curry favour with the dis-
pensers of power and patronage than to do their
duty to their consciences, or to the noble profession
of which they are members. It is therefore pleasant
to see, though at the eleventh hour, that the mind
of at least one judge is cast in a nobler mould, and
that neither fear nor favour can blind him to the
great and palpable duty before him of doing jus-
tice as the law prescribes. Judge Wayne, of the
district of Columbia, is the magistrate in question—
the rara avis in terra, the grain of salt, the leaven
in the lump, the faithful among the faithless, the
one swallow that makes the summer. A person
named Baker! a detective in the employ of Mr.
Seward or of Mr. Stanton, or of both—an illiterate
and vulgar policeman, though calling himself a co-
lonel—the same person who made himself infamous
a year and a half ago in the case of Mrs. Brinsmeade,
whom, to use his own hideous slang, he " piped"
from Washington to New York—arrested a certain
Dr. Gwynne, whom he suspected, or at all events
accused, of disloyal practices or sympathies, and
committed him to the old Capitol prison at Wash-
ington. He afterwards took possession in the post-
office of all the letters addressed to Dr. Gwynne, cut.
them open or broke their seals, in the search (which
proved futile) of evidence that might fasten upon
the doctor a guilty knowledge of or complicity in
some plot against the Government, and continued
this gross invasion of personal rights for many weeks,
if not months. Ultimately, as there was no tenable
or colourable charge against him, Dr. Gwynne suc-
ceeded in obtaining his release and forthwith com-
menced an action against Baker for false imprison-
ment. Baker pleaded that in arresting Gwynne he
was authorised by the President ; and Judge Wayne
ruled in his address to the jury that the plea was in-
valid, that the President was not the creator but the
creature of the law, that his authority could not
justify Baker or anybody else in the commission of
wrong, and that consequently there must be a ver-
dict for the plaintiff. The jury found accordingly.
This case is but the first of a multitude that may
yet come before the courts, and in which the defen-
dants will not be obscure constables, but such high
personages as Mr. Seward, Mr. Stanton, Mr.
Simon Cameron, General M'Clellan; and per-
haps Mr. Lincoln. No doubt the case of Dr.
Gwynne against Colonel Baker will be carried
by appeal before the Supreme Court of the United
States, the highest tribunal in the land, and of
which Mr. Salmon P. Chase is, by the grace and
favour if not by the 'gratitude of Mr. Lincoln, the
Chief Justice. As Mr. Chase is a sound lawyer, as
he is independent for the future of Mr. Lincoln's
goodwill, as he is well known to entertain a very
low opinion of the intellectual status of the Presi-
dent, and as, moreover, though Chief Justice, he
still aspires to the Presidency, after Mr. Lincoln
shall have served his second term, it is possible that
the Supreme Court, led by Mr. Chase, may ratify
the law of Judge Wayne, and that there may be con-
fusion generally among the pimps and panders of
arbitrary power, unless a special Act of Indemnity
shall be passed to save them from the grip of the
law which they have outraged. Such an Act, how-
ever, will be powerless to shield them and their acts
from the hostile verdict of succeeding generations.
Passion rages but for awhile. Reason, though
silenced in one generation, resumes her voice in the
next and gives their true place in history to all
minions and wrong-doers, all parasites and flat-
erers, and all oppressors with brains or without.