Gloucester County Democrat. (Woodbury, N.J.) 1878-1932, 1902-03-27
WASHINGTON LETTER.
From our Regular Correspondent.
WASHINGTON March % 1000

w ASdlN0IONs NlttICu ~, lSUS.
On Friday the Senate passed the bill for
the protection of the President by vote of
50 to Is with 81 senators not voting. The
grounds on which number of Democratic
senators opposed this bill are interestingly
set forth in the following statement made
to your correspondent by Senator Bacon, of
George:
Existing circumstances naturally pre-
disposed the Senate to enact law so severe
and so drastic as to completely obviate such
another attack upon our governments, and
if such could have been framed, not OBJ
jectionable in some very important par
ticulars, it would have had my heartiest
support; but so general and so possible of
misapplication are certain sections of this
bill that was compelled to oppose them
as capable of perverting justice and fur
nishing great possibilities of political perse-
cution.
Without dwelling upon the constitu-
tiOnal right of Congress to extend what, in
my Judgment, is the law of treason, there
are serious objections in certain sections OF
the measure They provide that any per-
son who shall investigate, advise or counsel
the killing of the President or of any of
the heads of the departments by spoken or
by written or by printed words \ shall
be punished by imprisonment not exceeding
twenty years In addition to the secre-
taries, the law includes the sovereigns and
chief magistrates OF foreign countries who
may be upon United States soil. Any one
who will study that portion of the history
of the United States which deals with the
old sedition law enacted in 1898 and the
prosecutions conducted Hereunder, will
| 10 oh Oh
provisions may be used to curtail the liberty
of the press, the freedom Of speech and i'm
peril the liberty of every individual citizen.
No crime need be committed to render this
law applicable. The allegation of an
enemy under oath can place in prison for
twenty years any citizen who, in partizan
speech or in private conversation, may have
arraigned the conduct of any of the above
named officials. With such law on the
statute books no editor dare charge the
Executive, or any member of his cabinet,
with malfeasance lest some misguided in
dividual claim that the charges instgated
him to kill the offending official. My
whispered statement to colleague, that
the Secretary Of the Treasury, for instance,
is improperly administering his Office, over
heard by an enemy, may found the basis of
twenty years imprisonment on the same
ground. Just such instances occurred
under the old sedition law and are liable to
occur again under this law
son still another ground, among others,
| oppose this law 1t has been our boast
that, in this free country, all citizens were
equal before the law. Can this be said
when we have singled out class-the
President, the Secretary Of State and all
IL
made crime punishable with death, while
a similar assault on the governor of State
or on anybody else, is punishable only by
imprisonment? And if we are to so make
one class, why not more? Why not have
included the judiciary, senators and repre-
sentatives and so on and make it punishable
with death to assault any of them, while to
assault any other people in the United
States merits only imprisonment Such a
distinction is contrary to every tenet of
liberty and equality, contrary to every
tradition of American freedom and, the
fever which attends existing circumstances
having subsidized, will be condemned by
every thoughtful American citizen. Aside
from the fundamental objection to the in
equality of different people before the law
which this bill establishes, a grave objection
is that under this law an innocent man is
liable to be convicted. 1t is all right to
make it easy to convict an anarchist, but it
is all wrong to make it easy to convict an
innocent man for some harmless or thought
less words spoken by him. Whether this
bill becomes a law or not, the man who
kills President will be executed, but that
will not bring the President back to life.
The important thing to do is to drive the
anarchists out of the country and prevent
the killing of Presidents y