The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1864-1923, 1870-06-17

sald Curran In F'lnney's case, "of assassina-
ton by sword, by pistol and by dagger
but here is wretch who would dip the
evangelists in blood if he thinks he has not
sworn his victim to death, without mercy
and without end )" and then bursting into
an indignant flame of invective he makes
this picture of the hateful dyumatis persong
OF this bill !; it is familiar to the school-boy
IN his declarations, but it is fit to be here
reproduced
but the learned gentleman is further
pleased to say that the traverser has charg
ed the government with the encouragement
OF informers. This, gentlemen, is another
small fact that you are to deny at the haz-
ard OF your souls, and upon the solemnity
OF your oaths. You are upon your oaths
to say to the sister country, that the Gov
eminent of Ireland uses no such abominable
instruments Of destruction as informers.
Let me ask you honestly, what do you feel,
when IN my hearing, when in the face of
this audience, you are called upon to give
a verdict that every man of you know by
the testimony of your own eyes to be utter
ly and absolutely false? speak not now
| OF the public proclamation of informers
with promise of secrecy and of extrava-
CANT reward; | speak not of the fate of
those horrid wretches who have been so
often transferred from the table to the dock,
and from the dock to the pillory / speak
OF what your own eyes have seen day after
day, during the course of this commission
from the box where you are now sitting:
the number of horrid miscreants who avoW-
ed upon their oaths that they had come
from the very seat Of government-fromt the
castle, where they had been worked upon
by fear OF death and the hopes of compen-
satlon to give evidence against their fellows,
that the mild and wholesome councils of
this government are holden over these cat
acombs of living death, where the wretch
that is buried man lies till his heart has
time to tester and dissolve, and is then
dug up for witness.
as this fancy, or is it fact? Have you
not seen him, after his resurrection from
that tomb, after having been dug out of the
region of death and corruption, make his
appearance upon the table the living image
of life and death, and the supreme arbiter
of both Have you not marked when he
entered how the stormy wave of the multi
tude retired at his approach9 Have you
not marked how the human heart bowed to
the supremacy of his power in the undis-
sembled homage of deferential horror
How his glance, like the lightning of
heaven, seemed to rive the body of the ac-
cused, and mark it for the grave, while his
voice warned the devoted wretch of woe
and death; death which no innocence can
escape, no art elude, no force resist, no an
tidote prevent; there was an antidote-a
jurors oath-but even that adamantine
chain that bound the integrity of man to
the throne of eternal justice is solved and
melted in the breath that issues from the
informers mouth; conscience swings from
her moorings, and the appalled, and alright
ed juror consults his own safety in the sur
render of the victim
SET qua sbi quisque timebat-
Unius in miseri eXtium converse tulere.'
And yet, Mr.. Speaker, in the face of this
picture and history, this bill is full of this
most atrocious Internal system of inform
ing. The bill in very fact, is the product
Of lawyer craft
Mr.. Davis. If my colleague will allow
me, would ask him in what section of this
bill there is any provision for informers2
Mr. Cox. If the gentleman will give me
time 1 will show him. True, there is no
such word as "informers." Certainly it is
not used but
Mr.. Davis. And assert that there is no
provision for intormers in this bill
Mr.. Cox. | will show the gentlemen
where it is. The second, third and fourth
sections make such provisions. Those sec
tions do not call them "informers," but
they are in effect informers, because money
is given to all who prosecute. In the sec
ond section there is a forfeit of $500 to the
aggrieved; is there not? There is an ac-
ton on the case; is there not? Full costs
and counsel fees are there not If thisis
not payment to the prosecutor and as in
ducement to prosecute, what is =?
What does the learned gentlemen from
New York Mr. Davis mean by an inform
err Does he mean what i mean? The
man who gives information and prosecutes
for money, for filthy lucre-that man, say,
is an informer, That is what is meant by
an informer under our revenue laws; is it
not That is the definition given by the
courts; is it not But the intormers under
the internal revenue law are saints in hea-
ven compared with the horde of hungry
office-seekers and interested parties who,
inhamed by zealotry, avarice and rancor,
will be enabled by this bill to go South and
North, and play the part of Federal police
spies and informers, to stifie the free voice
of the people in their elections
Will the gentleman from New York Mr..
Davis fstill unbelieving, read the third
section? There, too, is penalty of $500
to the aggrieved and an action and costs
and counsel fees So in the fourth section
l could also'show that by lawyer craft or
some other craft no provision is made in
this bill to punish the informer for bearing
false witness, which this bill instigates and
pays for, against his neighbor. Is this an
oversight? If so, it is too late to correct
it. We must take the whole bill or none.
/ might show also here the odious pro
vison of the twentieth section as to pre-
sumptivc evidence; the presumption ofguilt
and then the heaping, in cowardly way,
of the Onus prObandi on the defendant to
show that he is innocent.
pass that and other enormities and de-
formities to speak of the last point.
BY this bin, as have shown, you pro-
pose to call in the army and the militia as a
posse comitatas to assist in carrying out
your plans of conquering the free ballot
perceive in these plans a conflict of juris-
diction that will inevitably come between
the Federal government ana the States if
this bill becomes law. Sir, | mean by
this no threat. But when gentlemen talk
so glibly about going to New York and us
inv the power of Federal government to