APPEAL TO THE BY THE UNION FOR PARLIAMENTARY REFORM, PART I. INTRODUCTION. Motives of the Union. Origin, object, and definition of the Constitution. Distinction between the Constitution and the Law. Section 1. DESPAIR NOT OF THE COMMONWEALTH. 2. This maxim of the wise and the brave we adopt. Gloomy as may now be the aspect of public affairs, we hold that the state may not only be saved, but by a right course, raised to a higher pitch of prosperity than in any former period it ever attained. 3. A People, who have knowledge, and tongues, and pens, and a press, must be themselves in fault, if they suffer their Country to be ruined, either by error or misgovernment, by ignorance or by evil design. The causes of national calamity are to be discovered by investigation, and to be removed by reason and resolution. Error or imposture must equally fall before the active omnipotence of truth; fraud, force, or usurpation must alike yield to public opinion and national unanimity. 4. For consulting together, for meditating on the right course to be pursued, and the right means of salvation and future prosperity to our country, we unite. That by efforts to the extent of our humble ability those means may, ere long, become commensurate to the end in view, we address the nation; and more particularly those who, by the influence of station, of property, of knowledge, talent or public virtue, can cause the truths we may unfold forcibly to impress the public mind. 5. By the severest tests of morality and constitutional principle, let our motives be scrutinized; by the solidity alone of our arguments, let them claim attention. To no party can we pay court but to the party of those who have too much integrity to sacrifice the public weal to private gain; too much high-mindedness to barter indepen dence for tawdry honors or servile power; too much wisdom to look for public good in the violation of public right, or the neglect of public duty; and too much feeling for their much injured country, longer to remain unmoved spectators of her wrongs and her calamities. B 6. The means of public salvation, speaking of human means, are like Nature's laws, extremely simple. To that end there is but ONE course to pursue. The Constitution must be RESTORED. Reform must be RADICAL. In these expressions it is assumed, and we presume none will deny, that, in important particulars, that Constitution is not now possessed and enjoyed; that in place of benefiting from its soundness, we are suffering through its decay; in place of experiencing national security from a faithful adherence to this criterion of right government, unfaithful deviations have brought us into the extremity of danger. 7. But to discover the way out of this danger, we must know what the Constitution in reality is. We must know more. We must know why it is; why Constitutions have any where existed, or do exist; and how Constitutions are to be distinguished from mere statutes. Without having furnished ourselves with this knowledge, we should be but little entitled to respect as a UNION for Parliamentary Reform according to the Constitution; that reform being the means, of which a complete recovery of the Constitution, in the reinstatement of our Rights, Laws, and Liberties, is the end. 8. A free people agree upon a Constitution, by which, as a criterion of political rectitude, as a law to the legislature, as a limit which that legislature is never to pass, and as on all occasions an indispensable rule of government, they consent their affairs shall be managed. The end and object of a Constitution therefore is, that liberty, general and individual, of the community and of the citizen, shall ever be held sacred. This is the vital principle, this is the true, the proper, and (abstractedly considered) the sole cause of national security, the basis of prosperity; for individual freedom is the material of which alone the general freedom is composed; and consequently national freedom is that aggregate, that whole, of which the separate freedom of each citizen is a part. How sacred, then, is personal freedom! 9. Prosperity without freedom is a nonentity. Its counterfeit, mere wealth, held of a master who at his will can take it away, only the more enslaves, by chaining the mind. Of all slaves, rich ones are the most abject, and the most servile instruments of a master's tyranny. 10. Having premised this much on Constitutions in the general, we come now to inquire into the English Constitution in particular. With humility, but with a confidence of rectitude, we hold that the English Constitution may be thus defined and explained; namely, 11. A Constitution whereof the spirit consists of all those principles on which political liberty depends; and the body or material form whereof consists of the four institutions which for the state's self-preservation, for the means of necessary legislation, for the purposes of magistracy, and for the security of personal freedom, are equally indispensable; those four institutions being as follows; namely; 12. 1st. A Natural Militia that consists of the whole physical 1 strength of the community," from the Duke to the peasant," suit 1 Sir W. Jones's legal mode of suppressing riots, 14. ably organized; the same being from its ubiquity and resistless forcé invasion. 15. 2d. A LEGISLATURE of King, Lords, and Representatives of the Commons; the authority of the latter being incapable of a duration beyond one year; such legislature, for securing a right management of public affairs, being intrusted with a control over all magistracy, and the guardianship of the public purse; and with au thority also, as circumstances may require, of enacting such statutelaw, and such only, as shall not have the nature of a felo de se, by violating any fundamental principle of the Constitution, the conserv ation of which Constitution is the sum of the duties of the legislature. 14. 3d. AN EXECUTIVE MAGISTRACY IN THE KING, his person being inviolable, his ministers responsible. 15. 4th. TRIAL BY JURY, that public liberty may not be stabbed through the sides of the private citizen, by any injustice which might endanger his property, his personal freedom, his life or reputation; and that the individual, equally with the aggregate of the community, may repose in tranquillity, protected by the constitution and the law. 16. It being vital to the Constitution that law, for the use and benefit of the nation, be MADE by representatives; and, for the protection of the individual citizen, be ADMINISTERED by representatives; an Englishman, charged with a crime, cannot be even put on his trial but by one Jury to be indifferently drawn by the Sheriff from the People; nor tried but by another Jury, to be again indifferently drawn by the Sheriff from the People, and therefore called the accused's" country. 17. "This was the trial wherein the people of this nation were "made happy above all other people, and whereby the freemen, as "they had the legislative power, so likewise had the juridical, and "thereby, next under God, an absolute dominion over themselves " and their estates ;* and " the Sheriff was chosen in the County court "called Folkmole, by the votes of the freeholders."* 18. Among the most remarkable of the Saxon laws, Blackstone mentions, as of prime importance, "The election of their Magis"trates by the People, their Heretochs, their Sheriffs," &c. and here we see the necessity of this Officer being so elected; namely, that Juries, who were to be in a representative sense the true "country" of the accused, might be faithfully impannelled; for 2 3 2 The statute laws of a free nation, like the bye laws of an incorporated body, can supply what is expedient, but cannot take away what is fundamental. 3 Selden's Histor. and Polit. Disco. by Bacon, 1. 58. 4 Ib. 41. which there can be no proper constitutional security, while those magistrates are appointed by the great officers and chief justices of the Crown.*. 19. Although, after the pure fountain of Saxon justice had been poisoned by Norman maxims, the English Justinian, Edward I. restored to the people the lost elections of their Sheriffs, they retained them not long; for in the very next reign, by the Statute of 9 Edward II. they were tranferred to the Crown; a violation which greatly affects the administration of justice. In a future page we shall notice what, as a duty, is incumbent on juries, towards the preservation of the Constitution, of which they are so vital a part, 20. Such we define, and explain to be the ENGLISH CONSTITUTION, by which our Nation has consented to be governed. Here is the definition, but where is the thing defined! Here is the title-deed, but where is the estate! Here is the soul, but where, alas, is the existing body! Let us, however, proceed. 21. The prominent features of our definition kept in mind, there will ever be seen a clear distinction between the constitution and all such law as the legislature agreeably to its trust, hath authority to make. Between the Constitution and the common law there cannot be any clashing; for that which is "the perfection of reason" must ever have a strict identity with the principles on which political liberty depends. 22. By the same definition, the means are afforded of distinguishing, not only between such statutes also, as, in the first place, are declaratory, or in support of the rights and liberties of the people; such as, in the second place, are within a justifiable exercise of legislative authority; and, thirdly, such as, being inconsistent with the principles of the Constitution, and against justice, and violating those rights and liberties, are consequently nullities and void. 23. Respecting such pretended laws, so attempted to be made against justice and principle, we have maxims by which judges, and by which juries too, if they regard their duty, or respect the sacred fountain of jurisprudence, the law of nature, will ever as matter of conscience regulate their, conduct. The books say, that such pretended laws be not statutes, but corruptions:'* that whatever ' is destructive of law, cannot itself be law, for then the law would be felo de se :' that whatever is contrary to the rights of nature, " or the principles of the Constitution, is in its own nature void, and shall be holden for nought;'* with many other maxims of like import. 24. Blackstone, although great and eloquent as a commentator on 5 Com. IV. 413. 6 Ib. 428. 7 Doct. et Stud. c. 2. p. 5 & 6. mere law, appears not to have perceived the essential distinction between the law and the Constitution. Hence, on the subject of par liamentary power, the commentaries are in the highest degree inconsistent with the Constitution, extravagant and dangerous.* PART II. 10 Proper Militia of England. Freeman and Slave. Saxon and Despotism and Free Go vernment. Perfections of our proper Militia. Standing Army. "Detestable Policy." Perversion of Law. Encomium on the military branch of the Constitution. 25. In defining the English Constitution we began, as most fit, with its spirit and principles; and when proceeding to its body or material form, we spoke of its institutions, our natural and proper Militia was named, first in order, as it was first in existence. A Militia, which consisted of the whole physical strength of the nation itself, necessarily preceded, as an institution, any other part of its Constitution; and this institution, as the state's power of self-defence against invasion, as its security against rebellion or insurrection, or as its means against a mere interruption of the public peace, has in all times been, and to this day is, recognized and appealed to in our law books and courts of law, as a part of our Constitution, as indeed it was coeval with the Saxon settlement in this island. 26. Those fathers of our freedom, unlettered as they were, strongly felt, and nobly asserted, the rights of nature. They saw, and they felt, the characteristic distinction between a slave and a freeman; the slave is denied the means of self defence, the freeman is armed. Their ceremony therefore of emancipating a bondman was as significant as it was simple. He was presented with a sword and a spear.* 27. When those Saxons, as a colony from the continent and an army of freemen, spread themselves as settlers and an incipient na 11 10 Com. I. 160, 161. 11 Histor. Dissert. on Antiq. of Eng. Con. 185. Appeal civ. and mil. on Eng. Con. 129. For another distinction between the slave and the freeman, see Sect. 150. |