The fact is that any Bill of Rights depends for its efficacy on the determination of the people that it shall be maintained. It is just as strong, and no more, than the popular will to freedom. No one now doubts that the Espionage Acts were strained so as to destroy almost all that the first Amendment was intended to cover; that most of the charges preferred under it were, on their face, ludicrous. Yet you will remember that, in _Abrams_ v. _United States_,[17] two judges stood alone in their insistence that the first Amendment really meant something; the judgment of the others was caught in the meshes of war hysteria. No principle is better established than the right of the citizen, under proper circumstances, to a writ of _habeas corpus_; that is, perhaps, the ark of the covenant in the Anglo-American conception of freedom. But who can ever forget the noble and pathetic words of Chief Justice Taney, in _ex parte Merryman_,[18] where he insists that the applicant is entitled to the writ and that, in view of President Lincoln’s suspension of it--a suspension entirely illegal in character--he could not secure to Mr Merryman his due rights? And let us remember, also, that even where the judge is prepared to do his duty, he cannot, in a period of excitement, count upon public opinion. Nothing is clearer than the fact that those who hanged Mr Gordon during the Jamaica riots were guilty of murder. The opinion of Chief Justice Cockburn could not have made the issue more clear; it is a landmark in the judicial history of freedom. Yet the jury at once, in its despite, acquitted the accused. There have been, further, many occasions when breaches of fundamental principles of freedom, breaches which, on any showing, have been quite indefensible, have been followed at once by Acts of Indemnity. I know only of one case in England in the last hundred years in which such an Act has been refused. Yet it is, I think, obvious that unless such breaches are definitely and deliberately punished, they will always occur on critical occasions. At such times, it is impossible to trust those who are charged with the exercise of power; and only the knowledge that swift and certain punishment will follow its abuse will make our rulers attentive to the needs of freedom.