Columbia democrat and star of the north. [volume] (Bloomsburg, Pa.) 1866-1867, 1866-04-25
NEW SERIES. VOL. L. NO. g..

ken counsel by words without knowledge"
and, therefore, like Job, he can only lay his
hand upon his mouth and keep silence.
The power exercised through these militia
ry commissions is not only unregulated by
law but 1t is incapable of being so regulated.
What is it that you claim, Mr. Attorney? I
will give you definition, the correctness Of
which you will not attempt to gainsay You
assert the right of the executive
government, without the intervention
Of the judiciary, to capture, imprison, and
kill any person to whom that government or
its paid dependents may choose to impute
an offense. This, in its very essence, is des-
potic and lawless. 1t is never claimed or
tolerated except by those governments which
deny the restraints of all law 1t has been
exercised by the great and small oppressors
Of mankind ever since the days of Nimrod.
1t operates in different ways; the tools it
uses are not always the same, it hides It's
hideous features under many disguises; it
assumes every variety of form;
"It change shape with rroteus for advantages.
And set the murderous Macbiavel to school,
But IN all its mutations of outward appear
ance it is still identical in principle, object,
and origin 1t is always the same great en-
CINE of despotism which Hamilton described
it to be.
Under the old French hmonarchy the favor
ite fashion of it was lettre de cacbet. sign
ed by the king, and this would consign the
party to loathsome dungeon until be died
forgotten by all the world An imperial
| uIcGse will answer the same purpose In Rus
sia. The most faithful subject of that ami
able autocracy may lie down in the evening
to dream Of his future prosperity, and be-
fore daybreak he viii find himself between
two dragons on his way to the mines of
Siberia. In Turkey the verbal order of the
Sultan or any of his powerful favorites viii
cause a man to be tied up in sack and cast
into the Bosphorus. Nero accused Peter
and Paul Of spreading ''pestilent snper-
| stition, which they called the Gospel He
heard their defense in person and sent them
to the cross. Afterwads he tried the whole
| Christian church in one body on a charge of
setting fire to the city, and he convicted
them, though he knew not only that they
were innocent, but that he himself had
committed the crime The judgement was
| followed by instant execution; he let loose
the PrSetorian guards upon men, women and
children, to drown butcher and burn them.
Herod saw fit, for good political reasons,
closely affecting the permanence of his reign
IN Judea, to punish certain possible traitors
IN Bethlehem by anticipation This reouir-
ed the death of all the children in that city
under two yearsof age He issued his gen.
eral order, and his provost marshall carried
1t out with so much alacrity and zeal that in
one day the whole land was filed with
mourning and lamentation.
Macbeth understood the whole philoso-
ply cf the sui ject He was an un-
limited monarch. His power to punish for
any ofense or for no offense at all was as
broad as that which the Attorney General
claims for himself and his brother officers
under the United States. But he. was more
| cautious how he used it. He had a danger
Gus rival from whom he apprepended the
most serious peril to TO the life of his gov
ernment. The necessity 20 get rid of him
was plain enough, but he could not afford to
shock the moral sense of the world by
pleading political necessity for murder
He must
Mask the blsiness {, ON the common eye"
Accordingly he sent for two enterprising
gentlemen, whom he took into his service
upon liberal pay-''made love to their assis-
tance, and got themto deal with the accus-
ed party. He acted as his own Judge advo-
cate BE made a most elegant and stirring
speech to persuade his agents that Banoiio
was their oppressor, and had ''held them so
under fortune" that he ought to die for
that alone. When they agreed that he was
their enemy, then said the king
so i. he mine and though ] could
Win barefaced power sweep him from nv siRht
Aud bid my will avouch il, vet must not
For certain friends, who both his and mine.
hose loves may not Drop
For these, and many weighty reasons
besides, he thought it best to comnait the
execution Of his design to a subordinate
agency. The commission thus organized in
Banquo's case sat upon him that very night
at convenient place beside the road where
1t was known he would be travelling; and
they did precisely what the Attorney Gen
eral says the military officers may do in this
country-they took and killed him, because
their employer at the head of the govern
ment wanted it done, and paid them for do
ing it out of the public treasury
But of all the persons that ever welded
this kind of power, the one who went most
directly to the purpose and object of it was
Lola Montez. She reduced it to the ele-
mentary principle. In lS4s, when she was
minister and mistress to the King of BaTa-
eba Jintatod oil tba or,4-ae &c t1,o 49,