The Charleston daily news. [volume] (Charleston, S.C.) 1865-1873, 1868-02-12
CHARLES TON
WEDNESDAY MORNING, FEBRUARY19, 1868
Libel Argued and illustrated.

The chairman of the Club House Conven-
ton has fairly laid himself out in his speech
ON the law of libel. 1t was intended to be
a great effort, legal, learned, loyal, sensa-
tional. 1t is in fact failure, because
wanting in moderation of judgment and
temper, and having no historic ground for
many of its assertions. DR.. MAcKEf has
had some reputation for learning and Claims
to be o Conservative. A few more speeches
like that of last Friday will efectually
wither his laurels. We call attention to
some of it's misstatements.
The speaker misrepresented the historic
status of the judiciary. He warned the
convention against submitting to the decis-
ion of judges-'judges," he said, "sOh0,
from time immemorial, with few exceptions,
have always been on the side of oppression
and tyranny" We might reply that it can
be established only in those cases where
the judiciary was dependent upon the
throne, as in the days of the STuARTs,
when the monarch might, at will, displace
the Judge But even in the dark days of
tyranny, there were noble exceptions; as
when the English courts remonutrated
against illegal imprisonments; when they
boldly disregarded the Kings letters, and
when, on other important occasions, they
displayed exemplary independence and de-
yotion in the discharge of their official
duties. (Hallam Constitutional History, PIP.
l39, 1919, 242). And in later years, as even
foreign and hostile writers attest, when the
ermine was independent of the crown, the
Judges were the very bulwark Of English
liberty, preserving in their administration,
wbether of civil or criminal affairs, the
confidence, esteem and attachment Of the
public.
So far as our own judiciary is concerned,
there is no lawyer at the bar who, having
good case, would not rather bring it into a
court of equity, where q judge alone has to
decide upon it, than subject it to the uncer-
tain decision of jury. This notorious
fact is a sufficient refutation of DR.. MACK
EY's charge against the judiciary.
That DR.. MAcKEY's acquaintance with
the judiciary is not very intimate, appears
further from his reference to the Star
Chamber, whose establishment he assigns
to the age of HENRY VII, and of whose re-
establishment, in our day, he seems pain
fully apprehensive. The fact is that the
Star Chamber is named as being already
in existence in the reign of EDWARD Ill.
Its powers wero defined and enlarged,
simply, under HENRY VII. TWAS formerly
the privy council of the King, deriving its
name from the star ornaments on the cell
ing of one of the royal apartments where
it sat. This court was dissolved by l6 Car
l. 10, about two hundred and twenty-seven
years ago. One is simply amused at Dr.
MAcKEy's apprehension that this court will
be renewed after such lapse Of time, OF
will be established in country where it
never has existed. The military courts are
the only tribunals which have the Star
Chamber irresponsibility, the two-fold pre-
rogative of arbitrary monarchy--the right
to Judge and the right to command armies.
But against these courts our modern patriot
says never word
Again, DR.. MAoKEY misreprssents the
Supreme Court and the late Chief Justice
TANEY, "whose name," he says, els en-
balmed in eternal infamy." OF him it is
said that he rendered the decision in the
Dred Scot Ase declaring that "the black
man had no rights that white men were
bound to respect" 1t has been proved, over
and over again, that Chief Justice TANRY
said no suoh thing. The malicious and
cruel scandal was invented for political
effect, and is still used for that purpose.
Notwithstanding the exposure Of the false
hood, it is persistently repeated by the enc
mics of that great jurist and Of the South
ern people, whose views he in some sort is
supposed to have expressed, as if the mere
persistent repetition OF libel Will 1orce
men to accept it as truth. Justice TANEY
simply said, as any one can learn who will
take the trouble to read the Dred Scott
decision, that at the time when the Africans
were seized in their own country end
brought to ours both by Americans and Eu-
ropeans, and when they were sold as slaves
by their captors, the opinion prevailed
that they had no rights tina: white men
were bound to respect. This was notori-
GUS historic fact, not judicial decree at
ALL And the infamy of its PRONUNCIATION,
as decree, must therefore rest upon those
who represent it as such, now. 1t does not
adhere to the Supreme Court, nor to that
venerable and illustrious man upon whom
the mantle of Chief Justice MARSHALL fell.
DIR. MAcKEY also misrepresents the char
acter and administration of JOHN ADAMS,
which he designates as corrupt and oppres-
sive. He charges the Judges of the Su-
preme Court of that day with being the
willing tools of tyrant, as applying un-
constitutional laws upon the people" In
| s,ob tarme does he describe the early cham