The southern aegis, and Harford County intelligencer. (Bel Air, Md.) 1862-1864, 1862-12-13
THE ILLEGAL ARRESTS TO BE MADE
VALID.

In the House of Representatives last week, Mr.
Stevens, of Pennsylvania, offered a bill which
enacts that all arrests and imprisonments by
whomsoever made, under authority of the sus-
pension of the writ of ha6eas corpus, shall be COIL
frmed and made valid, and the President and
bis Secretaries, and all persons who have been
concerned in making such arrests, shall lie ex-
empt from prosecution therefor. Then, accord
ing to Mr.. Stevens, these arrests have all been
made in violation of law; and from. the fact that
nearly all the persons so arrested have been re-
leased without tria! of any sort, we must infer
that they were causelessly arrested. How much
better it would have been if these persons had
not been arrested at all, then no law would have
been violated, and there would have been no ne
cessity for Mr.. Stevens bill.
If those in authority can deprive an individu-
al of his liberty at pleasure, we are without that
protection which we supposed was guaranteed
to us. Laws, we supposed, were made for the
purpose.of combining the actions of men within
certain specified limits, and constitutions were
formed for the purpose, among other things, of
prescribing the powers and duties of our rulers.
If these laws can be overstepped at the pleasure
of those having the control of the government,
of what value are they to the citizen? He has
no more security than if they were not on the
Statute Book. We speak of what Presidents,
Congresses and Governors can and cannot do
why so? because there is o written law prescri-
bling the duties and limiting the powers of these
;pdi o. IN Is 1aft 70
ter what position be may occupy, to provide
penalties and punishments for the wrong-doer;
the law provides these, and appoints certain Off
GERS, among whom is the President, to see that
its behests are obeyed. 1t is therefore plain, that
if thosein power can punish men in manner not
provided by law, that then the individual is en-
tirely at the mercy of his rulers and so far, at
least, as he is concerned the law is nullity.-I
If you desire an individual over whom you have
control, or with whom you associate, to mend
his ways or alter his course of life, common
sense would teach you that you should first set
him the example. So if men who administer
laws would have them obeyed, they should first
obey them themselves. The great danger to the
people lies in the disregard of law by their ru-
lers. There can be no Republican form of gov
eminent without written law to control the
action of the governors as well as the governed
but for this the individual would never be secure
in his individual rights, and minorites would
always be at the mercy of majorites. 70 avoid
this, we have written Constitution; but if that
Constitution can be laid aside whenever the tenn
porary occupant of the chair of State may think
proper, it ceases to be of use to the citizen, and
he has no more security for his safety or his lib
erty, than if it did not exist. We cannot con-
ceive of any emergency that would justify the
setting aside, even for moment, of our organic
law. We have always venerated the Conatitu-
tion, and none lament more than we do, the ter.
rible consequences which have grown out of its
violation.