Trial of the Officers and Crew of the Privateer Savannah, on the Charge of Piracy, in the United States Circuit Court for the Southern District of New YorkWarburton, A. F. (Adolphus Frederick)
History
Trial of the Officers and Crew of the Privateer Savannah, on the Charge of Piracy, in the United States Circuit Court for the Southern District of New York
Warburton, A. F. (Adolphus Frederick)
Piracy -- United States; Privateering -- United States; United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865
"Sec. XVI. It is a groundless suggestion, that a right of
resistance in the people will occasion treason and rebellion, and
that it will weaken the authority of civil government, and will
render the office of those who are invested with it precarious and
unsafe, even though they administer it with the utmost prudence and
with all due regard to the common benefit.
"The right of resistance will indeed render the general notion of
rebellion less extensive in its application to particular facts.
"All use of force against such persons as are invested with supreme
power, would come under the notion of rebellion, if the people have
no right of this sort; whereas, if they have such a right, the use
of force to repel tyranical and unsocial oppression, when it cannot
be removed by any other means, must have some other name given to
it. So that, however true it may be that, in consequence of this
right of resistance, supreme government will be liable, of right,
to some external checks, arising out of the law of nature, to which
they would otherwise not be liable, yet it cannot properly be said
to expose them to rebellion."
I beg, in the next place, to read to your honors, from the opinion of
Mr. Justice Johnson, a short paragraph. It is to be found in 1st
Wheaton, 363, in the case of _Martin_ vs. _Hunter's Lessee_. I believe
a paragraph from that has been already read, on the other side, and I
wish to give you, in connection with it, what he says, speaking of the
power of the judiciary, and the consequences that would result in any
case to which that power did not reach. He says:
"On the other hand, so firmly am I persuaded that the American
people no longer can enjoy the blessings of a free Government,
whenever the State sovereignties shall be prostrated at the feet of
the General Government, nor the proud consciousness of equality and
security, any longer than the independence of judicial power shall
be maintained consecrated and intangible, that I could borrow the
language of a celebrated orator, and exclaim, 'I rejoice that
Virginia has resisted.'"
I also wish to read a sentence from the case of _Moore_ vs. _The
State of Illinois_, in 14 Howard, p. 20--the opinion by Mr. Justice
Grier. He says:
"Every citizen of the United States is also a citizen of a State or
Territory. He may be said to owe allegiance to two sovereigns, and
may be liable to punishment for an infraction of the laws of
either."
And Mr. Justice McLean, in speaking of the same subject, in the same
case, at page 22, says:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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