Minnesota weekly times. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1854-1859, 1855-09-25

How does the Supreme Court know all this? It
has denied the prisoner a hearing-it has shut
and barricaded its doors against the case in every
fOrm-and yet it now volunteers to describe its
character and merits, and to utter demagogical
dctum, that the prisoner ''can come out when
he will, by making terms ,rith the Court that sent
him there" What does that mean? What is
"making terms" with a court? Buying or beg
ging its mercy instead of its Justice? The next
sentence clears up the mystery. "But if he
chooses to struggle for triumph-if nothing
will content him but clean victory or clean
defeat-he cannot expect us to aid him." The
plain English of this is, that federal court in
obedience to the wishes of the federal admnis-
tration, has usurped the power of incarcerating a
citizen of Pennsylvania without cause, and that
citizen is vanly appealing to the courts of his ma
tive and sovereign state, for protection and re-
lief. But the prestige of the federal court and the
federal administration, and the political interests
involved in the issue, seems to have over-awed
our courts, extinguished the sovereignty of the
state, and trampled upon the liberties Of its citi
zen. This is the only ''struggle'' going on and
and it is because the prisoner does insist upon a
"clean victory or clean defeat" that he had a
"right to expect" the Supreme Court to said
hIn." If he is right, he cannot honestly 'smake
terms" with the federal court; if he is ,Orong,
that court dare not accept them. In one way or
other he must have 'sa clean victory clean
defeat" And it was to decide this to him mo-
mentous question, that he prayed the Supreme
Court of his native state to bring him before it.,
hear his case, ard then, upon the facts and ev-
idence, decide his fate.
But that high tribunal has discovered, either
through the newspapers, or by visiting reading
rooms, that there is sturggle' going on between
this man and the federal admin stratiOn that all
that is demanded of him is to make terms -
with its cOurt-in other words, confess himself
in the wrong, when he believes himself in the
r1rhf :< s,,ko
tells the prisoner that he has only to "make
terms'' with his conscience, and that s'he car
ries the key of his prison in his own pocket"
Are these the precepts of paltering, hypocrisy,
crlnging to wrong, and immOlation of con-
science, which it becomes the Supreme Court
of the state of Pennsylvania to teach her citi-
zens in his public decisions?
Before dismssing this subject, we will add, in
passing, that in political point of view, the con-
sequences of this decision will be intellectually
disastrous. Nothing has ever heretofore tran
spired calculated to unite all the people of
the North in an uncOmprOmising attitude of
opposition to the 'encroachments Of the federal
government as this open and patent dictation,
by the administration in Washington, to the
subservient courts of our sovereign state. 1t will
arouse spirit that will extinguish every senti-
ment but that of Indignation, and will sweep
away everv barrier which still remains to the
deepening current that is separating. every hour
more widely, the North from the South. If the
administration and the South were trying their
best to build up the abolition faction and
strengthen the disunion tendency of the anti-s.a-
very sentiment of the North, they could have en-
gagged no ADLER or more effective assistant than
the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. A few such
decisions, such instances of destruction of inali-
enable rights, and such trucking to the dctation
of the federal government, would make the whole
North unite to a man.