Holmes County farmer. [volume] (Millersburg, Ohio) 1857-1926, 1864-02-18

freemen, have been conscripted and driven
into the army, as bullocks arc driven into
the slaughter pen--so says MIR. Lincon--to
peril life and liberty in a cause to which
they were opposed or felt indifferent, No
tyranny could go much farther than nfict
such an outrage; no humility do much more
than bear it, In other countries with other
governments, such acts might not seem
strange or wrong; and the victim of such an
outrage might go to meet his fate sorrow
fully enough, perhaps, but upborne by the
convection that he was performing his duty.
But the intelligent free born citizen of the
United States knows that it is not bis duty
to submit to unjnst usurpaton Of power over
nm, and, therefore, he will feel the more
keenly the outrage.
Such an unjust exercise of power would
not be borne by any free people in this pc
riod of the world but for pernicious ideas
of government which they had imbibed
from preccdents under rulers who did not
profess to derive their authority from the
Just consent of the goyerened 1t is difficult
to see how government like ours could cv-
er be justified i'll enforcing a conscription.
We could not confer such authority on any
set Of men without risking the continuation
Of n war, though five-sixths of the people
were opposed to it. We could not permit
the exercise Of such power, with the acts
deemed necessary to enforce it, without be
ing deprived Of that liberty and self owner
ship, which is the best fnot the only secur-
ity we have of remaining free people, and
maintaining a free government. Neither
President nor Congress could assume such
power without IL ,urping the highest privi-
lege claimed by royalty; and in effect, redu-
eng the people to a condition of subjects, -
That would be revolution backward from
a Republic to a Despotism. 10.
There is no necessity for such measures
The citizens of the United States are too much
inclined to war; they need restraint rather
than compusion a cause which they think
ouQh and more than enough volunteers
for the case in hand That there is not
that rush of volunteers for the service now
that there was at the commencement of the
war, and for some time after, is to be attri-
buted solely to the fact that the object of
the war has been changed. A Republican
army organized on something better than
monarchical principles is what the country
ueeds more than one raised by CONSUMPTION.
! Those who have had control of the Gov
ernment have been the champions par er-
cclIence of freedom, and have professcd to
| look upon involuntary servitude as the great
est outrage that could be inflicted upon any
race, viewing those who would be guilty of
the crime as deserving the execration of the
world. One would suppose that such men,
with such principles, would shudder at
conscript acts 1t looks two inconsistent to
force freedom on the slave, and force invol-
untary servitude on the fieemen. 1t would
not look well while deploring slavoy in the
cotton, rice and sugar fields, to enforce a
worse condition on the battlefield They
could not well insist on the negro having the
right to freedom, and at the same time in
sist on depriving the white man of hie. Yet
we live to witness all these inconsistencies
and to deplore the rapid strides the Repub
licis making toward adespotSm. Cn Eng.