Los Angeles daily herald., 1889-08-24
SATURDAY, AUGUST ga, 1859.

is infiexible. AYERS & LYNCH.
SATURDAY, AUGUST "a, 1859.
A Great Controverted Question-An
Amusing Misrepresentation.
A great question OF jurisdiction is
pending iust now between the Federal
Courts and those of the State of Cali
fornia as to which tribunals should
adjudicate on the cese of David Nagle,
arraigned as having committed an
offense against tbs peace and dignity of
Cali tornia III San joaquin county. We
scarcely care to refer to Justice Field in
this connection, oecapse We think that
every title of the evidence disclosed
shows that accomplished gentleman and
high dignitary to have been the
victim Of an unprovoked and in
defensible assault at the hands
of David S. Terry. AS respects Judge
Nel d and Judge Terry, there is not, and
there could not be, any question as to
who was in the right. The distinguished
Federal Judge, who is also a distin-
guished citizen, irrespective of his Off
cial dignities, was eating his breakfast at
Lsthrop, as he had a right to do, there
or anywhere, and he was assaulted while
80 doing, and it seems to us that it would
have been a specially proper act on his
part to have gone before San Joaquin
county court, to have received there the
specially deferential treatment which
would have been accorded to him, and
to have gone forth therefrom acquitted
in'the eyes of all men, of all shades of
opinion, of any shadow or taint of wrong
doing.
To have taken this action would have
been in exact line with number of the
admirable and luminous opinions which
Mr.. Justice Field has rendered from his
place on the Supreme bench of the
United States, many of them dissenting
opinions, but not whit the less able, in
teresting and authoritative on that ac-
count.
The case of Deputy United States
Marshal Nagle is an entirely different
one. The utmost right which this man
possessed, and in the days in which Mr..
Justice Field delivered his most luminous
opinions as Federal Judge he would
have taken the came ground, was to
have preserved the peace, and to have
placed Judge Terry under arrest. In
previous issues of the HERALD we have
shown that even in Europe, with the high
monarchical privilege claimed in many
of the despotic countries of that geo.
graphical division of the world, it is not
thought necessary to execute on the spot
men who have tried to murder the SOW
ereign or his closest advisers. Certainly
we should not claim in the United States
q more imm mediate right divine than is
even put forth in the "effete" nations Of
the old world. If Emperor Wilhelm was
content to have DIR. Modelling arrested
and tried, if Prince Bismarck was willing
to sllow the courts to dispose of tine son
of Karl Blind, surely Deputy Marshal
OF the United States, with the dead drop
on him, should have arrested and not
killed David s. Terry! The result
showed that the latter was without arms,
there had been no attempt to produce
q weapon. and there is no law of a
State or of the United States which
makes United States Deputy Marshal
Judge, jury and -executioner, all in one
The HERALD freely comedies that it is
very unlikely that David Nagle would
undergo any severe judgment even if
tried by jury on San Joaquin county.
But that the compliment to just and
not exaggerated idea of State sovereignty
should be paid by his trial in a Califor.
MIA court we unhesitatingly assert.
Now comes the funny part of the busi-
ness, which is involved in the comments
Of many of the Eastern newspapers on
Judge Terry. They hold him up as a |
'uffian ab initiO, and instance his stab
oing of one Hopkins, An emissary of the
of San Francisco, as a case in
point; and certainly, never in the his
ory of mundane affairs, was there ever
! more ridiculous non sequitur. Waving
he question of the merits of
he organization of the Wig
lance Committee of San Francisco, and
doubtless it was productive of substan-
ial good, it was essentially an unlawful
'ody. 1t sent Hopkins, one of its myr-
nidons, to arrest citizen in the COM
any Of Judge Terry, who was at that
ime Chief Justice Of the State of Cali
,rnia, and to bring him before its commit
De. With the courage that always char
cterized him, Terry resisted the arrest ,
4 his friend, which was really an at
smpted abduction in the presence of the
ighest judicial officer of the State;
,uffie enstled and Terry plunged q !
nife into the neck of the leader of his 7
ssailants. '
This was distinctively lawful act. r
His duel with Broderick, in which the t
feat leader of the Free Soil element of il
10 Democratic party was killed, was not d
cording to law, but was in strict ac- n
rdsnce with the so-called code of honor r