The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1864-1923, 1870-08-19
THE HGIS. 4
Bel .air, Md. .augusf 10. 1870.
The Sacred Right of Personal Liberty.

lawful Imprisonment of innocent citizens,
to approve of the substitution of martial
for civil law, when the courts are open with
all their machinery in active operation, to
excuse total disregard of the rights of
the people to the protection granted by the
writ of habeas corpus. The recorded facts
are sufficient to show that Governor Hold
EN- has been acting the part of an arbitrary
despot, and that he has been sustained in
his outrageous conduct by the President
of the United States.
The special correspondent of the New
York Tribune unhesitatingly declares that
that no man can believe the men, whom
he saw in the military prison, prepared by
the cut thoat, Kirk, to be guilty ofany of the
crimes charged against them. Yet they have
been rudely seized and are still held in du-
ance vile. Is this little thing, as Republi-
can newspapers would have us believer Is it
a small matter for innocent citizens to be
torn from their homes by armed men,
to be thrust into prison to be kept for
days and weeks under the guard of a
brutal soldiery in time of profound peace,
to be deprived of the protection of the
law, to be refused their rights guaranteed
to them by the Constitution of the United
States and of the State in which they live,
to be denied the sacred privileges accorded
to all by habeas corpus? If these things,
done by the Governor of State with the
sanction of the President of the United
States be not acts of despotism pure and
unadulterated, then we know not where or
when the thing called despotism has ever
had an existence on the face of the earth
The right of the subject to be secure from
rl,if nd fal -
right as valuable and as sacred as that of
life itself. So our English forefathers
thought when they forced tyrannical
king to give the most solemn pledges that
the personal liberty of no man in the king
dom should ever be assailed or abridged
except by due process of law. The Eng
lishmen who lived in the year 1915 did not
deem the arbitrary arrest and the unlaw-
full Imprisonment of the citizens a little
thing 1t was left for the base tools
of corrupt party in this country to
advance that idea at the close of the
nineteenth century. What a wonderful
advance we have made in what is called a
Republican Government, under a political
organization which styles itself the Repub-
lican' party. England's greatest law com
mentator, Sir William Blackstone, had no
sympathy with Democratic form of gov
eminent. He believed in the divine right
ofkings to rule, and he has been accused
of bowling too deterentially at the footstool
of power. But, he held no such sentiments
as we now find paraded in the Republican
press OF this country. In speaking of the
sacredness OF the person of the subject he
uses the following strong and truthful
language:
"Of great Importance to the public is the
preservation of this personal liberty for if
it were once left in the power of any, the
highest magistrate to imprison arbitrarily
whatsoever he or his officers thought pro-
per Gas in France it is daily practiced by
the Crown there would soon be an end of
all other rights and immunities. Some
have thought that unjust attacks upon life
or property at the arbitrary will of the
magistrate are less dangerous to the Com
monwealth than such as are made upon the
personal liberty of the subjects. To be-
reave man of life, or by violence to con-
fscate his estate, without accusation or
trial, would be so gross and notorious an
act of despotism, as must at once convey
the alarm of tyranny throughout the whole
kingdom; but confinement of the person by
secretly hurying him to jail, where his
sutferings are unknown or forgotten, is a
less public, a less striking, and, therefore a
more dangerous engine of arbitrary gov
eminent"
That was written more than hundred
years ago, but the doctrine advanced was
no new thing in England. Five centuries
before it was laid down in Magma Charta,
and from Johns time down to the present
day, no King of England has ever dared to
violate the right of personal liberty as
Governor Holden, of North Carolina, has
done with the approval and sanction OF
President Grant.
We are gravely told by the correspon-
dent of the New York Tribune that the
innocent citizens whom he found in the
prisons erected by Kirk were allowed to
see their wives and children occasionally Y,
and that some of them are permitted to
walk about. under the conduct of armed
guards. And trucking apologists of des-
potism like the Express, profess to believe
that there should be no complaint about
such treatment 1t is simply tyranny as
gross and outrageous as anything perpetra-
ted in France during the days of Black
stone, under cover of lettres de cachet. In
LhSlahu no SUCH unlnS could nave nap
pened within the last six hundred years
without producing revolution. There is
no country in Europe to-day where ru-
Ter would dare attempt such thing, and
no newspaper editor there base enough to
defend it. 1t is only in the Republic Of
the United States that innocent citizens
can be seized by military force, thrown in,
to prison, and denied the profession of the
courts. 1t is only the chief Executive Of
what we are pleased to call "the freest gov
eminent on earth" that dares to bid def
ance to all law, to trample upon Constitu.
tions, and to disregard such sacred guaran
tees of personal liberty as the writ of habeas
corpus Acts much more excusable, and
infinitely less dangerous to public liberty
than those committed by Grant and Hol-
den, cost one king of England his head
The tyrannical Governor and his hacker
both deserved to be impeached and deposed
and if the Legislature just elected in North
Carolina does not call Governor Holder
to account for his crimes, it will prove re-
creant to its duty.-Lan. Iatelligencer