Congress shall coin money. Congress, by one of its bodies, shall sanction treaties. Congress shall establish such law courts as are not established by the Constitution. Under no circumstances is the President to decree what shall be done. But he is to do those things which the Constitution has decreed or which Congress shall decree. It is monstrous to suppose that power over the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus would, among such a people, and under such a Constitution, be given without limit to the chief officer, the only condition being that there should be some rebellion. Such rebellion might be in Utah Territory; or some trouble in the uttermost bounds of Texas would suffice. Any invasion, such as an inroad by the savages of Old Mexico upon New Mexico, would justify an arbitrary President in robbing all the people of all the States of their liberties! A squabble on the borders of Canada would put such a power into the hands of the President for four years; or the presence of an English frigate in the St. Juan channel might be held to do so. I say that such a theory is monstrous.
And the effect of this breach of the Constitution at the present day has been very disastrous. It has taught those who have not been close observers of the American struggle to believe that, after all, the Americans are indifferent as to their liberties. Such pranks have been played before high heaven by men utterly unfitted for the use of great power, as have scared all the nations. Mr. Lincoln, the President by whom this unconstitutional act has been done, apparently delegated his assumed authority to his minister, Mr.
Seward. Mr. Seward has reveled in the privilege of unrestrained arrests, and has locked men up with reason and without. He has instituted passports and surveillance; and placed himself at the head of an omnipresent police system with all the gusto of a Fouche, though luckily without a Fouche's craft or cunning. The time will probably come when Mr. Seward must pay for this--not with his life or liberty, but with his reputation and political name. But in the mean time his lettres de cachet have run everywhere through the States. The pranks which he played were absurd, and the arrests which he made were grievous. After awhile, when it became manifest that Mr. Seward had not found a way to success, when it was seen that he had inaugurated no great mode of putting down rebellion, he apparently lost his power in the cabinet. The arrests ceased, the passports were discontinued, and the prison doors were gradually opened. Mr. Seward was deposed, not from the cabinet, but from the premiership of the cabinet. The suspension of the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus was not countermanded, but the operation of the suspension was allowed to become less and less onerous; and now, in April, 1862, within a year of the commencement of the suspension, it has, I think, nearly died out. The object in hand now is rather that of getting rid of political prisoners than of taking others.
This assumption by the government of an unconstitutional power has, as I have said, taught many lookers on to think that the Americans are indifferent to their liberties. I myself do not believe that such a conclusion would be just. During the present crisis the strong feeling of the people--that feeling which for the moment has been dominant--has been one in favor of the government as against rebellion. There has been a passionate resolution to support the nationality of the nation. Men have felt that they must make individual sacrifices, and that such sacrifices must include a temporary suspension of some of their constitutional rights. But Ithink that this temporary suspension is already regarded with jealous eyes; with an increasing jealousy which will have created a reaction against such policy as that which Mr. Seward has attemped, long before the close of Mr. Lincoln's Presidency. I know that it is wrong in a writer to commit himself to prophecies, but I find it impossible to write upon this subject without doing so. As I must express a surmise on this subject, I venture to prophesy that the Americans of the States will soon show that they are not indifferent to the suspension of the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus. On that matter of the illegality of the suspension by the President, Ifeel in my own mind that there is no doubt.
The second article of the Constitution treats of the executive, and is very short. It places the whole executive power in the hands of the President, and explains with more detail the mode in which the President shall be chosen than the manner after which the duties shall be performed. The first section states that the executive shall be vested in a President, who shall hold his office for four years. With him shall be chosen a Vice-President. I may here explain that the Vice-President, as such, has no power either political or administrative. He is, ex-officio, the Speaker of the Senate; and should the President die, or be by other cause rendered unable to act as President, the Vice-President becomes President either for the remainder of the presidential term or for the period of the President's temporary absence. Twice, since the Constitution was written, the President has died and the Vice-President has taken his place. No President has vacated his position, even for a period, through any cause other than death.
Then come the rules under which the President and Vice-President shall be elected--with reference to which there has been an amendment of the Constitution subsequent to the fourth Presidential election. This was found to be necessary by the circumstances of the contest between John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Aaron Burr.
It was then found that the complications in the method of election created by the original clause were all but unendurable, and the Constitution was amended.