, 1862-12-06
Civil Liberty Menaced--an Embryo South =
ern AriStocracy.

civil Liberty Menaced---an embryo South
ern Aristocracy.
The struggle for civil liberty never ends. In
peace it periodically convulses the community
In war the contest continues with redoubled inten-
sity. If the South had been as watchful of her
liberties as all human experience counseled her
to be, this continent never would have undergone
second revolution such as that which is now
drenching it in blood. Our people paid no at
tention to the warning voices that were so often
raised against the threatened usurpation. So pro-
found was their sleep that one half of them were
yet unaware of the revolution after it had already
burst over their heads.
BUTT is pecuiarity Of the present times that
many of the Southern men who were among the
foremost in exhorting the people to prepare for
the coming evil and most efficient in rousing them
to resistance, are now themselves somnolent in re-
gard to the dangers which beset the public !iber-
ties at home. They are the foremost in under
mining the liberty of the press, they are Jealous
itudinous in respect to the execution of martial
law. Before the war they ridgid construct
ionists, and the most refined abstraetionsts to be
found in the land. Now they are the advocates
in all cases of power, and treat the Constitution
with apparent disdaiu.
Heretofore the golden maxim, obsta principIs,
has been their favorite rule of conduct Now
they can see no danger in the beginnings of evil,
and the establishment of precedents, which with
out some such revolution as that which Jefferson
and his republican supporters effected in the pc
riod from 1898 to 1903, must destroy the Confed-
crate system of Southern policy, and plant con-
soliGated power on its ruins. 1t is even now
whispered that scheme of consolidation is on
foot and that views precisely such as those which
Alexander Hamilton succeeded in disseminating
so widely, and rendering so potential in the Old
Union, are extensively he'd in the South; that
our government is to be assimilated to that of
Great Britain; that aristocracy is to be estab-
lshed, and wealth made in the beginning the
passport to place and power.
The scheme has seemed so stupid and so wild
that we have paid little attention to these surmses
but it must be confessed that the conduct of many
leading men of the country, heretofore conspic-
uous for their zeal in upholding constitutional
rights, and now as conspicuous by their silence on
these subjects is inexplicable on any other theory
than the truth of these surmises. We can well
imagine how necessary to their schemes may be
the enforcement of martial law in unnecessary
modes and improper localities, the ndscriminate
suspension of habeas corpus, and the extermina-
ton of the press but how men having the pres
ervation of public liberties at heart cen become
the advoestes 10 these and kindred measures is
not easily understood.
The Southern people have been schooled to
jealousy for their political rights for two genera
tions. What has been popular with them hereto
fore as mere system of abstract politics will now
be cherished by them as political religion
They will be stern and unyielding to the last de-
gree in requiring a strict conformity to their cher
ished tenets from all who seek their suffrages
and their statesmen now in the public councils
who are making records that will trouble them
infinitely to the end of their days.
The whole body of the Southern people are an
aristocracy, and no community is more jealous for
an absolute equality of rights and privileges than
a community of aristocrats. The attempt to de-
grade such community, and to establish privi-
legged class over its head, will be certain ruin to
those who make it. 1t is scheme which will
suddenly and ANONYMOUSLY fall as soon as dis
covered, and which will involve its foolish proiec-
tors in utter ruin. 1t could not succeed in the
South, even if the Judiciary were sienced by mar
tia law, the press overthrown, and every safe
guard of civil liberty broken down. The people
impelled by that same spirit in which they have
met and overthrown the power of the public enc
my, would turn upon the pigmies at home and an
initiate them with breath.
But while there is no doubt of the ultimate re-
suit, we see, by the experience of the present
conflict what the recovery of liberties, voluntarily
surrendered, may cost in the end. Better TO hold
the ship of State firmly on the right track than to
allow her to drift into dangerous waters, and at
tempt its rescue amid the pers of storms and
breakers.
One of the recruiting tents in Boston has tho
motto "Come in out Of The Draft"