The Daily Dispatch: July 19, 1861., [Electronic resource]

---

---

Civil war and strong Government.
[from the London Saturday Revise]

At last we have got a Government was the delighted exclamation of a Northern journalist, when the Washington Cabinet, having ascertained the will of its many-headed master, began to exchange its attitude of le wavering for one of warlike preparation. The remark aptly expresses the ineffective sympathy of ultra-democracy with high handed displays of power, and it is not, perhaps, without a sinister significance as regards the ulterior results of the struggle into which the model Republic has plunged. According to present appearance, there is every probability that, if the war lasts any length of time, the American people may find, before it is over, that they really have got a Government in a sense little dreamed of by the founders of their constitutional liberties. A vigorous Executive, unembarrassed by over-nice notions of legality, seems to be the present ideal of Transatlantic aspirations; end it in an ideal which, under favorable circumstances, is wonderfully apt to realise itself. Laws are proverbially silent in the midst of arms; and a civil war, in which the Central Executive constitutes itself the organ of the fiercest passions of a democracy, is admirably calumniated to generate what European politicians call ‘"strong government."’

Some progress has already been made towards this consummation. Considering that it is barely two months since President Lincoln's Cabinet received its instructions from popular opinion, it must be admitted that it has not been idle Mr. Bright ‘"never saw"’ the British Constitution, and he would perhaps be equally at a loss to detect the traces of an American Constitution in the recent history of Transatlantic politics. In what respect the existing Washington Government differs from a military dictatorship it might take some time to explain. We see the President assuming and actively exercising powers which might almost content the Executive of the most absolute European monarchy. He invites and accepts unlimited offers of men and money from all quarters, and apparently disposes of both at his own unfettered discretion. His Generals take military possessions of towns and districts where the jurisdiction of the regular civil authorities has never been formally superseded, and arrest suspected traitors entirely at their own pleasure.

As for Congress, nobody appears to remember its existence. The institution still survives in contemplation of law, but it seems, practically speaking, quite a superfluity.-- The President, and his Cabinet, and his Generals, and the Governors of States, and the volunteers, evidently consider themselves fully equal to all the demands of the crisis; and when Congress does assemble — which will be just ten weeks after the first proclamation of war — it is not very clear what it will be wanted to do, beyond the routine business of providing supplies for a struggle on which it has never been consulted Louis Napoleon's Senate and Legislative body are respectable and influential constitutional authorities compared with the democratic assemblies which the head of the American Government has not yet thought it necessary to take into his confidence. As it is certain that, in the present temper of the Northern mind, Mr. Lincoln would have found no difficulty in obtaining from the Federal Legislature any extra legal powers that he might be inclined to demand, this ostentations contempt for constitutional proprieties is the more marked because it is altogether gratuitous.

More than one recent occurrence has given standing proof of the superiority of the Washington Executive to legal restraints. Two or three weeks ago, the President ordered a razzia to be made, at a given day and hour, on the telegraph offices in all the principal towns of the Northern States, on the chance of finding evidence against ‘"traitors"’ His officers took forcible possession of the manuscript originals of all telegrams sent to the South, during the preceding twelve months, and carried them off for inspection by the Government. This arbitrary and violent, but unquestionably smart, proceeding — which may perhaps afford a useful hint to European despotisms — appears to have been decidedly popular. American editors recorded it with undisguised complacency, and evidently admired the sagacity with which the little coup d'etat was planned, and the dexterity with which it was executed.

The Times' New York correspondent speaks of it with much satisfaction as ‘"a bold stroke,"’ and is pleased to think that ‘"the possession of such a mass of material gives the Government a guarantee for the qute behavior of suspected and disaffected persons."’ It is unnecessary to remark that the possession of the bodies of suspected and disaffected persons would furnish a still better guarantee for their quiet behavior; and, in fact, as we shall presently see, this obvious reflection has already suggested itself to some of President Lincoln's Generals. Judging from the general approbation which has attended the raid on the telegraphic offices there can be little doubt that Northern opinion would be equally ready to sanction the ‘"administrative seizure"’ of the types and presses of an obnoxious Secessionist newspaper — if, at least, it were possible that such a journal could exist with in reach of a New York mob.

The last mall brings us word of a still bolder stroke of military usurpation. The collision between General Cadwallader and Chief Justice Taney is somewhat absurdly called in the newspapers ‘"a conflict of law."’ but it was, in truth, simply a conflict between law and illegal violence, in which law suffered a total defeat. It just amounts to this — that the commander of the Northern troops now in occupation of Baltimore has taken it upon him, without so much as the preliminary formality of a proclamation of martial law, to arrest and imprison at his discretion civilians accused or suspected of political offences, and that the authority of the Supreme Court of the United States is summarily set asides by order of President Lincoln. Without any sanction from Congress, and by the simple flat of he President and his General the writ of habeas corpus is treated as so much waste paper — and this, too, in a State which still adheres to the Union, and in which the civil authorities have never been superseded.

It is an ominous fact that this daring assumption of military despotism does not appear to excite the smallest objection in any quarter. The Northern newspapers, we are told, are mostly silent on the subject, while some of them urge Gen. Cadwallader to arrest a Judge, self convicted of treasonable sympathies. The New York correspondent of the Times severely blames Chief Justice Taney for having ‘"put the case in a way to excite the already on bittered feelings of the people of Baltimore,"’ and remarked that the General's lawless violence ‘"in a country which has just been subdued, and which sympathizes actively with the rebels, ought not to be measured by the same criticism that would be applied to such an act in time of peace."’--If we are justified in assuming this writer to be a not unfavorable specimen of average Northern opinion, it is clear that the American Democracy is fast learning to make a present of its liberties to any Government that will find the means of gratifying its political passions.