course of our legislative proceedings. They were perfectly accessible to Mr. Lincoln at the time when, if Mr. Hickman truly represents him, he thought it better to arrest the members of the Legislature and put them in jail,' merely because he thought it 'not unlikely' the facts were otherwise. If what I have stated is not true, its untruth can be shown. If, as Mr. Fessenden suggests, the President has 'evidence' upon which his alleged belief to the contrary can be justified, such evidence' can be easily produced. I assert to you that there is no such evidence, and that there can be none, because the fact which it is supposed to establish it did not exist. I am willing to stake my veracity and integrity upon the issue, and I challenge the public production of any proof to the contrary of what I have asserted. Doing so, I leave it to your candor and sense of right, to give to gentlemen whom you have been instrumental in injuring, an opportunity of being heard in their own vindication, through you, in the same public way in which the injury has been done."

But admitting that it was the design of the Legislature of Maryland to pass an ordinance of secession, or any other unconstitutional act, did that justify the President in preventing the meeting of the State Legislature? Such an act would be either unconstitutional or valid constitutionally. If unconstitutional, it would be void ab initio without any intervention. If constitutional, what right had the President of the United States to prevent its enactment? Void or not, what right in law, or by authority had he to interfere with the acts of a Sovereign State?

In relation to States, he is a mere individual as other citizens are; no more. The fact of Mr. Abraham Lincoln being President of the United States does not change his relation as an individual to

other individuals, much less to the States of the Union. As President he is invested with certain authority in law, but beyond this investment of authority, he has no more rightful power to interfere with the acts of individuals, much less of States, than has any of the victims whom he subjected by arbitrary power to the constraints of his will. He is President by the Constitution, and as such has authority conferred on him by the Constitution, no more, and when he disregards the Constitution, he disregards the only source of his authority and power, and subjects himself not only to impeachment in his official character, but to such personal consequences as both the laws contemplate and as those who may be outraged and injured in person and property by his despotic assumptions and arbitrary exercise of power choose to inflict; for surely those who have been made the victims of Lincoln's despotism without a shadow of a warrrant on his part in law, have some right to be avenged on him for the wrongs, and outrages, and injuries to which they have been subjected.

MARYLAND, it was necessary for the designs of the Administration, should be placed under the heel of the dominant power. To effect this object, the first step was to seize and imprison the prominent and influential members of the State Legislature, under the assumed pretext, (assumed, for there was no foundation in fact for it,) that the Legislature, if allowed to assemble, would take the State out of the Union. Mr. Wallis shows conclusively that the Legislature not only favored no such design but were decidedly opposed to it, and did not believe they had the right to pass an ordinance of secession. The first step being taken, and most of the prominent public men of the State being kidnapped and immured in the loathsome Bastiles provided by the Administration for the punishment of freemen who

dared to love their country more than they did the despots, and tyrants, and officers who had obtained control of the government, the next step was to prevent a free election by the people of Maryland. To this end Federal troops were quartered in all the principal cities and towns of the State, and, in fact, at almost every election precinct, and those only were permitted to vote at the fall election who gave good evidence of what the Administration calls "loyalty," which is synonymous for a servile acquiescence, base submission to and hearty approval of the despotic and tyrannical course of the Administration, and an approval of the villainous conduct of the leading members of the party in power, from Members of the Cabinet, aye, from the President's household down to the meanest pimp of the Administration. Whoever in Maryland could not measure his conduct as a citizen by this standard of loyalty, would be thrust from the polls by Federal bayonets, and may consider himself fortunate if he escaped being kidnapped and sent to one of the Bastiles.Yet, it is claimed that the American people are not only living under the constitutional government which they adopted, but are enjoying and exercising their rights as the Constitution professed to guarantee them and protect the people in their enjoyment.

Maryland, since September, 1861, is as much under the subjection of arbitrary power, exercised over it by the Executive Department of the Federal Government, as any subjugated portion of Russia is under the despotism of the Czar; much more so than Hungary is subjected to Austria, and infinitely more so than any dependency or colony of Great Britain is subject to the British Crown. There has been no free election in Maryland since the spring of 1861, and the freedom enjoyed by the cit izeus of that State is simply to live and act as it is

desired they should by the Lincoln Administration. That the people of Maryland submit to such subjection is neither creditable to their courage, their honor, or their patriotism. They should either cast away the forms of constitutional government entirely, or live, aye, and if need be, die, freemen in accordance with the form and system of government established for them by their ancestors when they shook off the yoke and burden of a foreign tyrant. Domestic tyranny, it would seem, is more tolerable or less odious than that of Great Britain was to the sturdy patriots of old Maryland; although, as a matter of fact, the despotism of British tyranny was mild in its form and light in its burden, compared to the relentless grasp, the remorseless rigor, and the callous heartlessness of the despotism to which Maryland is subjected by Abraham Lincoln and his minions and satellites.

USURPATION OF LEGISLATIVE POWERS BY THE PRESIDENT-CREATION OF A JUDICIAL TRIBUNAL WITH CIVIL JURISDICTION IN NEW ORLEANS.

ANOTHER of the flagrant acts of the President violative of the Constitution of the United States . and usurpative of the authority and powers of Congress, was his creation, by an order dated at the Executive Mansion, of a provisional court invested by him with civil jurisdiction, at New Orleans. It would be difficult to believe that so flagrant and daring an act of usurpation, as this is unquestionably, had been committed were not the evidence of it existing, both in the order itself and in the fact that the court created by it is exercising the functions with which it was invested by the Executive decree.

It is needless to say that the Constitution of the United States invests Congress alone with the power to constitute judicial tribunals other than that of the Supreme Court, which is created by the Constitution itself, but both to prevent cavil and to enlighten the uninformed the provision of the Constitution is referred to. The ninth clause of Sec. VIII. of the Constitution says the Congress shall have power "To constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court." It does not anywhere say that the President shall have this power, but that Congress only shall have it. Yet the President assumed