“There were sometimes bitter reflections cast upon the proceedings of the major-generals by the lawyers and country gentlemen, who accused them to have done many things oppressive to the people, in interrupting the course of the law, _and threatening such as would not submit to their arbitrary orders with transportation beyond the seas_.”[180] At last, even Cromwell, at the height of his power, found it necessary to abandon the policy of military governors. He authorized his son-in-law, Mr. Claypole, to announce in Parliament, “that he had formerly thought it necessary, in respect to the condition in which the nation had been, that the major-generals should be intrusted with the authority which they had exercised; but, in the present state of affairs, he conceived it inconsistent with the laws of England and liberties of the people to continue their power any longer.”[181] The conduct of at least one of our military magistrates seems to have been a counterpart to that of these “bashaws” of Cromwell; and there is no argument against that early military despotism which may not be urged against any attempt to revive it in our day. Some of the acts of Governor Stanly in North Carolina are in themselves an argument against the whole system. It is clear that these military magistrates are without direct sanction in the Constitution or existing laws. They are not even “major-generals,” or other military officers, charged with the duty of enforcing martial law, but special creations of the Secretary of War, acting under the President, and charged with universal powers. As governors within the limits of a State, they obviously assume the extinction of the old State governments for which they are substituted, and the President, in appointing them, assumes a power over these States kindred to his acknowledged power over Territories of the Union; but, in appointing governors for Territories, he acts in pursuance of the Constitution and laws, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate. That the President should assume the vacation of the State governments is of itself no argument against the creation of military governors, for it is simply the assumption of an unquestionable fact; but if it be true that the State governments have ceased to exist, then the way is prepared for the establishment of provisional governments by Congress. In short, if a new government is to be supplied, it should be by Congress rather than by the President, and it should be according to established law rather than according to the mere will of any functionary, to the end that ours may be “a government of laws, and not of men.”