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PAGE TWO
Will the U. S. Judiciary Permit,
and the People Ratify, the
Congressional Overthrow
of Our Constitutional
System of Govern
ment?
Mr. Watson’s Argument Against the
Conscription Acts
Before Judge Emory speer, at Mt.
Airy, Ausust 18, 1917
(continued from page one.)
to fuse the militia with the Regular Army
and order it beyond seas for service in for
eign lands?
Has Congress the power to disintegrate the
States, by abolishing the essential principles
of the States’ Bills of Right, thus depriving
the States of the sovereign power to protect
their citizens in the exercise of immemorial
rights?
If the Constitution itself forbids a State
to deprive the citizen of liberty, save as a
punishment for crime, and if the State is
forbidden by its own Bill of Rights to do
this, from what source docs Congress draw
the power to do it ?
If Congress can assume any one power
which was never delegated, but which was,
on the contrary, expressly withheld, what
would become of Constitutional government?
If Congress can legally make such a law
as Section 6 of the Act of May 18, 1917,
which places every State officer—from Gov
ernor down to Constable—under the orders
of the President, with no definite limits to
the President’s control of those State officers,
and with a penal threat suspended like the
sword of Damocles over the heads of those
State officers, what becomes of State rights,
sovereignty, and independent authority ?
Under Section 6, of the Act, the entire civil
administration of the State is subjected to
military control and placed under the com
mands of the President: how can it be con
tended that such an innovation does not ef
fect a revolution, reversing the relative posi
-1 ion of the civil and military power, and over
t brewing the State’s control of its own in
ternal civil administration?
These questions are respectfully suggested
in the ease at bar; and there is no other
tribunal which can authoritatively answer
them.
Tn the very nature of things, Power is
grasping. Its innate tendency is, to grow.
The Constitutional monarch humanly in
clines to personal absolutism. Every town
council is tempted to become a local Czar.
Our sage forefathers, knowing the weakness
and the vices of human nature, fixed the
bounds of the habitation of the Federal Gov
ernment and of the States; and to each system
the Constitution says, in a spirit of paternal
admonition. “Be content with the orbit as
signed you!''
But because no person can be trusted to
act as judge in his own case, and no estab
lished authority can be allowed to define its
own limits, our forefathers created the Ju
diciary.
Holding office for life, removed from the
accidents of polities, elevated above the
clamor of the hour, the Federal Judge is put
on guard to protect the Constitutional rights
of all—the Federal Government, the States,
and the humblest citizen who comes in the
hour of bis extremity and lays his hand upon
the sacred altar of the Law.
In this case, your Honor, hvo poor negroes
are the applicants for protection; and in their
behalf Ave say, that Congress has adopted a
method of raising armies which not only vio
lates express provisions of the organic law,
THE JEFFERSONIAN
but w hich destroys the immemorial rights of
the citizen, and revolutionizes the Constitu
tional scheme of mixed Federal and National
government.
We will not now discuss—for it is unneces
sary—the various methods by which Congress
might legally raise armies, whether by boun
ties, by employment of mercenaries, by offer
ing inducements to volunteers, by recourse
upon the States for the full number of their
militia, or other mode: the sole issue here is,
Did Congress, in May, 1917, adopt a method
which the Constitution will not tolerate.
The complainants in this case -would
have no standing in court, Avere it not for
fact that our system of government is differ
ent from any other, and that such questions
as are raised in this application for relief,
hinge upon those very peculiarities and com
plexities which distinguish our Republic f ront
any hitherto known.
Our illustrious statesmen have exhausted
the resources of language in describing this
novel, this marvellous, this intricately com
plex system—the One composed of Many, the
wheels within wheels, the indissoluble union
of indestructible States.
At the very outset of the discussion, we
must endeavor to realize fully the controlling
poAver of the fact, that no reasoning based
upon analogy, parallel, or precedent will be
worth the breath Avhich gives it utterance,
if that reasoning does not conform to the Con
stitution of tin United States.
Nothing that any other nation has done, in
ancient times or modern, authorizes our Gov
ernment to adopt the policy of imitation, if
this adopted policy conflicts with our Su
preme LaAV, and Avith the perfect integrity of
the peculiar system of mixed Federal and
National sovereignty, created by the Consti
tution.
The bare fact of this case being here, illus
trates the distinctive nature of our Govern
ment.
The vital fact that your Honor has taken
jurisdiction, to Aveigh and determine the va
lidity of an Act of Congress approved by
the Chief Executive, advertises the tremen
dous fact, that our Federal Union not only
depends upon the separate existence of the
three sovereign attributes of government, but
that the life-tenure Judiciary is the final ar
biter, in cases where the citizen alleges that
Congress and the President have encroached
upon his Constitutional rights.
In no other country, does one department
of the government thus check and balance the
others.
In th is country, there is no such doctrine
as Parliamentary omnipotence. In our Re
public, the desires, the ambitions, the preju
dices, the passions of the majority—no mat
ter hoAv numerous, rich, and powerful—can
never overbear and override the minority, de
priving it of time-honored privileges, im
munities and rights, unless the Judiciary
prove recreant to its high and sacred trust.
Your Honor! The place you fill today
toAvers in noble importance above that occu
pied by any monarch on this troubled sphere.
You are humbly asked to uphold ami pre
serve the Ark of the Covenant of our
Fathers. We come reverently to the Tables
of the LaAv, and seek to have you tell us what
is there written.
No greater issue of life or death, of Con
stitutional liberty or legalized servitude, has
ever been presented to your Honor, or to
any other Judge, since Moses came down from
Sinai.
The lives and fortunes of millions of men
are at stake. The inherited liberties of our
English forefathers are at stake.
In countless thousands of homes, your
Honor, strong men are suffering more than
words can tell, and good women go down
on their knees in prayer, Avhile Ave are here
today presenting the case of two poor ne-
groes, whose fate involves that of millions of
blacks and whites. j
In a general way, we all understand that
Anglo-Saxon liberties and institutions origin
nated before there Avere such things as writ*
ten Charters and Constitutions. We all un
derstand that our Colonial forefathers
claimed these immemorial rights, as a portion
of their heritage. We are all more or less
familiar with the historic tragedy which
caused the British-Saxon lairs to be overlaid
and smothered by the feudal tyrannies of
the Norman Conquest; and we yet drink in
spiration from th< glorious revolt of 1215,
Avhich re-asserted the ancient liberties of the
realm.
It is, or has In en, our boast and pride, that
these immemorial rights of free men came
down to ourselves, unimpaired, inalienable,
imperishable.
Addressing a District Judge of the United
States Court in Atlanta in 1873, the late mag
nificent lawyer and orator, Benj. H. Hill, re
ferred reverently to ‘‘the sacred civil jewels,
. . . from an English ancestry. halloived by
the blood of a thousand struggles. ’’
Said Mr. Hill—
“It is infidelity to forget them. It is sac
rilege to disregard them. It is despotism to
trample upon them.’’
I congratulate myself and the country th.it
my appeal for the Constitution is addressed
to one who learned law in part from the great
Georgia Senator, and who, like the Federal
Judge whom he addressed in 1873, amid the
turbulence and passions of Reconstruction,
“possesses the ability to discern, and the cour
age to declare the law, as it is.”
What are those “sacred civil jewels” to
Avhich Mr. Hill referred, and which are treat
ed with such profound respect by English his
torians, advocates, judges, and standard au
thorities on Constitutional
They form the very Primer of Democracy.
They are the Holy Scripture of Patriotism.
No intelligent person denies that these ele
mentary principles embrace Life, liberty,
and property carrying protection as avcll
as security to one’s person, to one’s free
choice of vocation, to one’s freedom from re
straint, to one’s acquirement and enjoyment
of property and the fruits of one’s toil, unless
deprived thereof in some manner prescribed
by the established law of the land.
Necessarily incident to personal security, is
the sanctity of one’s home, which is inviolate,
unless a warrant be sworn out against it:
Fair trial by jury, in the vicinity of one’s
residence, Avhen accused of crime, is also an
immemorial right:
Freedom to speak one’s opinions, and to
publish them to the world, with a view’ to
winning to their support the opinions of one’s
felloAV-citizens:
Freedom of religious belief and worship:
Freedom to keep and bear arms, for the pro
tection of one’s life or property:
The right to representation in the laying
of taxes, and the making of laws.
Underneath the whole elaborate, and* pow
erful structure of our system of government
lies the principle Avhich is the exact opposite
and irreconcilable enemy of the ancient royal
dogma of Absolutism, or the Divine Right
of Kings.
That fundamental democratic-republican
principle is, that the People are sovereign;
the People are the source of honor, privilege,
and power; and all just government rests upon
the consent of the People.
Under our system, no Bourbon can say, “I
am the State,” and act upon that monstrous
theory.
The State is the people, and the people are
the State; and it necessarily follows that in
such a system there must be freedom of as
semblage, freedom of discussion, and freedom
of petition.
In his elaborate work, “The State,” pub-
' Thursday, August 23, 1917<
