'They are anxious,' says the _Tribune_ correspondent,
'that Louisiana shall take the lead in this matter, and there is no
doubt but Mississippi and the other States will, in due time,
follow.' So far, the patriotic reader will search in vain for any
objection to a plan which promises so much good for the Union, and
will be at a loss to know upon what grounds the _Tribune_ can
oppose it with any show of loyalty.'
It is no part of the object of this writing to discuss the legality or
the constitutionality of any course of proceeding in the premises. What
can be done and what cannot be done under the law, as it stands, is a
question for lawyers and judges. How far, if at all, the exigency has
annulled or modified the law; how far the axiom, _inter arma silent
leges_ ('in war the laws are silent'), shall be stretched to cover the
case, is a question for statesmen and military commanders. The writer of
these strictures speaks from none of those points of view, but as a
social philosopher, viewing the drifts of inevitable consequence from
one or the other grand policy in respect to the national
destiny--irrespective of the minor measures by which it may be executed.
A course utterly suicidal, viewed from this higher platform of
observation, may proceed with the most unimpeachable subserviency to all
the forms of the law; or, contrariwise, a policy replete with the
highest prosperity and happiness of the coming ages, may chance to have
its foundations laid in some startling deviation from all considerations
of precedent and routine.
Pages:
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247