The Arkansas advocate., 1835-10-02

glio5 Lato.-!t has been asked Of us, why should we, living as we do in Arkansas, apart and afar from the excesses of mobs in the North, meddle in this matter! Why should we interfere with that which does not concern us? We answer, because, although we are out of the pale of the United States set apart to live under Territorial Govern ment, We have not yet forgotten that we were once citizens of the United States; and look ing forward to the time when VIC shall throw off our garb of Territorial yassalage, we feel an interest in all that concerns our mother country We answer, too, that if 1t Is the fate of our common country to be merged in the terrors and eonvulsions of anarchy, we, at least, wish to have it in our power to remem- Der that we, for our humble selves, had no hand in tho ruin which may be wrought among us. If, which God forbid, our life is to be prolonged until we see the downfall of all law and all good order, and, of course, of all Liberty, we desire to be able to stand amid the ruins, and say, ''We, at least, are guiltless of this sin." If our common coun- try is to become the prey of its own insatiate and ungoverned passions, we, in this corner of 1t, may at least preserve among us, by our precepts, and still more by our example, due observance of law, that only safeguard of true liberty.
 From the time when the English Barons wrested from their weak tyrant, John, the famous Bill of Rights, the .Hagna Charta, which is to them, the Declaration of I'ade- peadence, down to the present day, 1t has been the aim of every enlightened people and every patriotic lawgiver, to give to every man in the community the right of TRIAL BY JURY. All patriots and men of intelligence have perceived that in order to secure to one man this right 1t was necessary to secure it to another-and to every other. They have ever understood, that unless this dear and unalienable right was extended to every man, to the humblest, and to the ,oorst man i1 the they themselves were not safe. That right of which one man may be deprived, is never secure to another. Itneeds no argument to convince each and every one of us, that if we once part with that right, toe are sIares. The commonest malefactor, who is brought before the bar of his country to De tried-the most wretched and abandon ed murderer, has right to be tried by jury Of twelve men-has his right of peremptory challenge to the number of twenty, and may challenge for cause to an indefinite extent Ii it IS not so--if that right is not made as unrestricted and general as the air of heaven, then 1t is secure and guaranteed to no one of us-for what may be wrested from one may be wrested from another.
 We say, then, that every man who aids in any way in taking from one, no matter how base, how vile, or how criminal, his richt to trial by a jury of his country, is paving a road for his own destruction-iS ro5bino him seg of his oica rig,hts--and his dearest ones.
 We say, further, that every man who en- oourages, in the slightest degree, the overset- ting and putting down of the laws, no matter under tohat psctert, is abrogating, annullinp, and making void his own rights and his own