Sir, the Constitution is guilty of no such absurdity. It was made by practical men, familiar with public law, who, seeing clearly the difference between peace and war, established powers accordingly. While circumscribing the Peace Powers with constitutional checks, they left untouched the War Powers. They declared, that, in the administration of the Peace Powers, all should be able to invoke the Constitution as a constant safeguard. But in bestowing upon the Government War Powers without limitation, they embodied in the Constitution all the Rights of War as completely as if those rights had been severally set down and enumerated; and among the first of these is the right to disregard the Rights of Peace. In saying this I fail in no sympathy with peace, which I seek and reverence always, but simply exhibit war in some of its essential conditions. Sir, an alien enemy is not admitted even to sue in your courts. There is a saying of Antiquity, already quoted in this debate, _Silent leges inter arma_,--“The laws are silent in the midst of arms.”[88] Handed down from distant ages, and repeated by successive generations, this saying may be accepted as the embodied result and very essence of human experience. Had it not been true, it would have been forgotten, or at least ceased to be repeated. But it declares a truth to which every war practically testifies, while it is founded in reason and the nature of things, confirmed by centuries as attesting witnesses. The Constitution itself is only a human law; nor can it claim to speak in time of war, and within the sphere of war, more than any other human law. How vain, then, to adduce against confiscation and liberation, as war measures, an objection derived from the Constitution! and how vain, also, to offer a penal statute, under the Peace Powers of the Constitution, as a war measure! War is war. Better arrest it at once, if it is to be war on the one side and peace on the other,--if our enemies are to employ against us all the Rights of War, while we employ against them only the Rights of Peace. Penal statutes are good for peace, when laws prevail; but in the midst of war, and against enemies, when laws are proverbially silent, they are absurd. What enemy now arrayed in arms can be indicted, or, if indicted, convicted, under the most stringent of penal statutes? Not Jefferson Davis himself. Why, then, painfully construct legislative verbiage? Why new penalties for treason, which, from the nature of the case, cannot be enforced in this hour of need? Why not see things as they are, and do what the moment requires? The War Powers of Congress are ample; but in time of war a mere penal statute against a public enemy is not so much as a pop-gun. * * * * *