natural right of the people to change the govern ment, regardless of Constitutions. For be it borne in mind, the Constitution is an agreement made among the people that the government formed by it is to be just such a government as it prescribes ; that when it recognizes a right to exist, it must protect the person in the enjoyment of that right, and when it imposes a reciprocal duty upon a portion of the people, as the condition of union with the other portion, the performance of that duty it will have enforced. When a government fails in any of these essential respects, it is not the government the people intended it to be, and it is their right to modify or abolish it. So, if the rights of the people of the United States, as recognized by the Constitution, are not secured to them by the government, and the people of any State have no other means to redress their grievances, except by separating themselves from their oppressors, it is their undoubted natural right to do so."

These sentiments became the subject of violent vituperation in the Abolition and Republican press of the North-west, and led to the conclusion, rashly and unjustly drawn by my revilers, that I was a secessionist. In reply to an attack of one of the lowa Abolition papers on my position and sentiments, as set forth in the foregoing extract, I endeavored to illustrate my sentiments by the following argument, which appeared in an article in the Dubuque Herald, of the date of December 22nd, 1860:

"When one section asserts a right, and the other denies its existence, and opposes its exercise, there

must be some way to settle the dispute. If the South cannot decide for itself what are its rights under the Constitution, and the North has no right to decide for it, and the South undertakes to exercise rights which it thinks belongs to it, and the North resists the exercise of such rights, a conflict of some kind must ensue; and it will depend on circumstances whether it be one of litigation or of blood. If both sections followed our advice, the question at issue would be submitted to the adjudication of the supreme judicial tribunal of the country; but if the North act upon the principles enunciated by the Republican party, that there is an irrepressible conflict between the sentiment of the North, and the domestic institutions of the South, the contest which is about to ensue will be one of blood; and not upon us who counsel that the just rights of the South be conceded to them, be the respons bility, but upon those who refuse to recognize these rights, and who, after admitting their existence, refuse to permit them to be exercised."

Such are some of the sentiments which the ruling powers at Washington regard as so treasonable as to influence them to assume and exercise arbitrary power for the arrest and incarceration in one of the Lincoln Bastiles of him who uttered them.

I might quote whole columns from the Dubuque Herald to prove that I had, from the beginning of the unfortunate contest between the North and the South, besought both parties to forbearance; implored the North to concede the Constitutional rights of the South, and the South to maintain its

political relations inviolate with the North. And after it became inevitable, from the refusal of the Senators and Representatives in Congress of the dominant party to meet the South in a spirit of Constitutional compromise, that war would be re sorted to as the means to settle the question at issue, I repeatedly enunciated the principle that though my judgment condemned the course of the dominant party and its representatives at the head of the government, yet that in the contest as it stood, it was the duty of citizens in allegiance with the government to give it their aid and services. Such was, I believe, the position of the Democratic party, both as an organization and in the individuality of its members, with rare exception.

But were it even otherwise, and that I or any one else had violated any law, did not the law which we may have violated prescribe the mode and manner of arrest, trial, and if any one were found guilty, of punishment. And did not the Constitution of the United States, under whose authority alone the President has any right whatever to be what he is, declare most positively and emphatically that "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, shall not be violated"? and it is a remarkable fact, worthy of special notice, that this provision of the Constitution was added to it as an amendment after the Constitution, as originally drafted, was adopted. This fact is proof demonstrative that our ancestors who laid the foundation of the government were not satisfied with leaving it to the inference of courts, founded upon

the provisions of the Constitution as it was originally framed, what their personal rights were. They went so far as to have the Constitution amended in several particulars, and of the twelve amendments to the Constitution, it is significant of the jealousy with which our patriot fathers regarded their personal rights, and of their vigilance in protecting and securing them by Constitutional restraints upon arbitrary power, that ten of these twelve amendments are restraints upon the power of the Federal Government, and reservation of rights to the people. It is far more significant of the design and object of those who have gone before us that they amended the Constitution for the greater security of their personal rights, than if this security had been incorporated into the Constitution originally. One would suppose that the Constitution as it came from the hands of Washington, Hamilton, Madison, Franklin, Livingston and Pinckney, and the other patriots, statesmen and sages who participated in its formation, needed no immediate modification or amendment to secure the freemen of America their rights of person and property, and the means, unrestrained by arbitrary power, of enjoying those rights, but our fathers had just experienced to what an extent the prerogatives of power could be used for purposes of State, and they therefore were not satisfied with even the Constitution given them by George Washington and his compatriots. They insisted upon further guarantees of their rights, upon more definite restrictions on the power of the Federal government, and on a Constitutional declaration

which leaves no room for doubt as to where that power belonged which was not given by the Constitution to the Federal government.

But say some casuists, the law, the Constitution, is silent in war; and to sustain this absurd assumption they quote and pervert what was used as an indignant exclamation by a Roman orator, Silent legis inter arma. This expression, it is well known, was not laid down as a maxim of law, but, on the contrary, as a lament for the absence of law. We too in our day may well utter the same exclamation. The law is indeed silent and powerless. Were it not so, its flagrant violation by those who are its sworn guardians would not, as it has, go unpunished.

Admitting however for argument sake the soundness of the maxim, that the law is silent in war, whence, it might be enquired with propriety, comes the right in a constitutional government to commence and prosecute a war? If there be no law in time of war, by what authority, if not of law, does the President, aided by Congress, raise armies, appropriate money for their support, and hurl them upon the batteries and bayonets of the so-called rebels? If there be no law for this, may not every one take his own way in relation to the rebellion; nay, may not a citizen, if there be no law in time of war, resist any attempt to force him into being a combatant?

The assumption is an absurdity, that the law in time of war is silent. It is then, more than in time of peace, that the authority and power of the law