“And, apparently to demonstrate the proposition, the resolutions proceed: ‘They were secured substantially to the English people _after_ years of protracted civil war, and were adopted into our Constitution at the _close_ of the Revolution. Would not the demonstration have been better if it could have been truly said that these safeguards had been adopted and applied _during_ the civil wars and _during_ our Revolution, instead of _after_ the one and at the _close_ of the other? I, too, am devotedly for them _after_ civil war, and _before_ civil war, and at all times, ‘except when, in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require’ their suspension. The resolutions proceed to tell us that these safeguards ‘have stood the test of seventy-six years of trial, under our republican system, under circumstances which show that, while they constitute the foundation of all free government, they are the elements of the enduring stability of the Republic.’ No one denies that they have so stood the test up to the beginning of the present rebellion, if we except a certain occurrence at New Orleans; nor does any one question that they will stand the same test much longer after the rebellion closes. But these provisions of the Constitution have no application to the case we have in hand, because the arrests complained of were not made for treason--that is, not for _the_ treason defined in the Constitution, and upon conviction of which the punishment is death--nor yet were they made to hold persons to answer for any capital or otherwise infamous crimes; nor were the proceedings following, in any constitutional or legal sense, ‘criminal prosecutions.’ The arrests were made on totally different grounds, and the proceedings following accorded with the grounds of the arrest. Let us consider the real case with which we are dealing, and apply to it the parts of the Constitution plainly made for such cases.