hout
any fixed rules of law or evidence. The rules on which
offenses are to be 'heard and determined' by the numerous
agents, are such rules and regulations as the President,
through the War Department, shall prescribe. No previous
presentment is required, nor any indictment charging the
commission of a crime against the laws; but the trial must
proceed on charges and specifications. The punishment will
be, not what the law declares, but such as a court-martial
may think proper; and from these arbitrary tribunals there
lies no appeal, no writ of error to any of the courts in
which the Constitution of the United States vests
exclusively the judicial power of the country.

"While the territory and the classes of actions and offenses
that are made subject to this measure are so extensive, the
bill itself, should it become a law, will have no limitation
in point of time, but will form a part of the permanent
legislation of the country. I can not reconcile a system of
military jurisdiction of this kind with the words of the
Constitution, which declare that 'no person shall be held to
answer for a capital or otherwise infamous crime unless upon
a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases
arising in the land and naval forces, or in the militia when
in actual service in time of war or public danger;' and that
'in all criminal prosecutions the accused shall enjoy the
right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of
the State or district wherein the crime shall have been
committed.' The safeguards which the experience and wisdom
of ages taught our fathers to establish as securities for
the protection of the innocent, the punishment of the
guilty, and the equal administration of justice, are to be
set aside, and for the sake of a more vigorous interposition
in behalf of justice, we are to take the risk of the many
acts of injustice that would necessarily follow from an
almost countless number of agents established in every
parish or county in nearly a third of the States of the
Union, over whose decisions there is to be no supervision or
control by the Federal courts. The power that would be thus
placed in the hands of the President is such as in time of
peace certainly ought never to be intrusted to any one