measures of peace, the Colony might have been retained. In the letter of Governor Trumbull, the elder, to W. J. Johnson, he says substantially that the connection with England could be preserved by 'gentle and insensible methods,' rather than by 'power and force.' But Parliament was disposed to adopt extreme measures of force to execute the laws, and crush the rebellion, as it was called.

But Connecticut, from the first, was disposed to resist all unconstitutional encroachments on her Colony rights and her practical sovereignty, whether by King Charles, King James, King William, Queen Anne, or King George, whether from Massachusetts or NewYork, whether by the Federal Govern ment under the first Federal Constitution, or by the Federal Government under the second Federal Constitution. When under the first Constitution, the people in several towns were so apprehensive that Congress was encroaching on the sovereignty of the State, that meetings were held to investigate the subject. On the sixteenth of October, 1783, the town of Hartford gave instructions to their representatives in the General Assembly, Thomas Seymour and George Pitkin. 'In these instructions the representatives were expressly directed strenuously to oppose all encroachments of the American Congress on the sovereignty and jurisdiction of the separate States, and every assumption of power not expressly vested in them by the confederation. A convention of more than half the towns in the State assembled in Middletown on the same subject. The same feeling of jealousy in respect to State sovereignty pervaded the commonwealth during the war of 1812.

The general opinion in Connecticut for a long period in regard to Colony rights is correctly stated by Dr. Johnson in the passage from his address to the King, already quoted. The Colony claimed the right to grant to his Majesty such aid as they should judge

proper. The King, on the other hand' claimed the right to take what he judged proper. The word grant was felicitously chosen by a master of language; it shows the true relation between the Colony and the Crown. The Colony insisted on the complete subordination of the militia to the civil power of the State. The Assembly claimed the entire right over the militia, as to its enrolment and exempts, its officers and its movements, and remuneration. When Governor Fletcher, of New-York, under the King's authority, virtually claimed the entire right over the militia of Connecticut, the Assembly refused to admit the claim. And when this military man insisted offensively on that right, Captain Wadsworth replied: 'If I am interrupted again, I will make the sun shine through you in a moment.' This was the spirit of the men of Connecticut. They knew their rights and dared to maintain them. The military minion of kingly power retired from the contest, defeated. But the Assembly were willing to grant to his Majesty men and money. This they did do, putting the money into the hands of Fletcher and the men at his disposal. They knew how to refuse an unconstitutional demand; but they also knew how to grant what was in accordance with their charter. As to what was constitutional and what was not constitutional under the charter, the Colony, as a party to the compact, claimed the right to judge.

So, in the war of 1812, Connecticut did not refuse to perform any constitutional obligations as such, but only what she deemed unconstitutional demands. As a member of the confederation, and as a party to the compact, she claimed the right to judge as to what were constitutional obligations, and what were unconstitutional demands. She had the independence to judge as to her political obligations under the Constitution. She had the discrimination to understand what were her reserved rights, and the courage to maintain them. The Gover

nor and the Assembly were not willing to place the entire disposal of the militia at the mercy of the Federal Government, which might usurp power and forget right. Especially were the people of the State opposed to the threatened conscription bill, which their ablest men pronounced unconstitutional.

Another 'principle' mentioned by Dr. Johnson in his address to the King, on which the colonists insisted, was 'trial by their peers.' This was equivalent to a demand that they should enjoy the right guaranteed by Magna Charta, expressed in these words: 'No freeman shall be seized or imprisoned, or dispossessed, or outlawed, or in any way destroyed; nor will we condemn him, nor will we commit him to prison excepting by the legal judgment of his peers, or by the laws of the land.' This was regarded as a Colony right that the people insisted on, first by argument and then by arms.

When the Federal Constitution was adopted, it was known to contain no provision by which this principle of Magna Charta could be violated by the Federal Government. But to make assurance doubly sure on this point, of such vital importance to the liberty, life, and property of the people, an amendment was added which provides that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.' Will the Governor and Assembly insist on this right as one of the reserved rights of Connecticut and of all the States, or will they surrender it to executive power?

Before the adoption of the present Federal Constitution, there was in Connecticut a general sentiment in opposition to the emission of bills of credit, especially when made a legal tender for the payment of debts already contracted. From an able article written in 1786, by one of the ablest writers that Connecticut has produced, the following is a quotation: 'But remember that past contracts are sacred things, that legislatures have no right to interfere

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with them; they have no right to say a debt shall be paid at a discount, or in any manner which the parties never intended. It is the business of justice to fulfil the intention of the parties in contracts, not to defeat them.' The States surrendered the right to emit bills of credit,' but they did not grant that power to the Federal Government. course the Federal Government have not got the power to issue bills of credit and make them a legal tender. The remark of Mr. Ellsworth and the vote of Connecticut is satisfactory evidence on this point. If the Federal Government has issued bills of credit, and made them a legal tender for past contracts, it is a usurpation of power not granted by the Constitution. Such a usurpation the State authorities might examine, and resist in some appropriate manner. Will they do it?

It has been supposed in Connecticut that the Governor and the Assembly are, for the time, the constituted guardians of the State; that when there should be any encroachments of the King or the Parliament on the chartered rights of the Colony, or any encroachment of the President or Congress on the reserved rights of the State, that it would be the sacred duty of the Governor and of the Assembly to interpose for its protection, and resist the encroachment on Colony rights or State rights. And how faithful some of those old Governors and legislators were! They were on the watch. They snuffed tyranny in the breeze.' And how faithful were their agents abroad! such men, I mean, as Sir Henry Ashurst, John Winthrop, and William J. Johnson. On the sixteenth of May, 1769, the last was a spectator in Parliament, when Grenville, in the midst of one of his speeches, looked up into the gallery and said: 'I hope there are no American Agents present; I must hold such language as I would not have them hear.' 'I have expressly ordered the Sergeant to admit none,' said the Speaker, 'and you may be assured

there are none present.' Yet Johnson, of Connecticut, had braved the danger of an arrest, and sat in the gallery to record the incidents of the evening for the warning of his countrymen,' (Bancroft's Hist. Am. Rev. vol. iii. p. 90.)

Does any one ask, why Connecticut has taken such a deep interest for the preservation of Colony rights and State rights? It is because the rights of every individual were or are involved in those rights. Life, liberty, and property are protected by State laws based upon State rights. The sovereign State of Connecticut is bound to preserve all her reserved rights for the benefit of every individual citizen of the commonwealth. Our houses and our graves, our lands while we hold them, and the transmission of them to others, our churches, and seminaries of learning, all our most valuable interests, in our mortal pilgrimage, are protected by State laws, and the State Constitution. The Federal Constitution was not formed for the promotion of morals or religion or education. It was formed mainly for commercial purposes and defence against foreign nations. Most appropriately did Oliver Ellsworth say in the Constitutional Convention, that 'he turned his eyes, therefore, for the preservation of his rights to the State Government. From these alone he could derive the greatest happiness he expects in this life.'

If the constituted authorities of the State should turn their attention to the subject, they might inquire, first, whether the States did not reserve to themselves certain rights over the militia, and whether these rights have not been invaded by the present Federal Government.

They might inquire, secondly, whether the States delegated to the Federal Government the right to emit bills of credit and make them a legal tender; and whether the present Federal Gov

ernment have not emitted bills of credit and made them a legal tender, and in so doing violated the Constitution by exercising powers not delegated to them.

They might inquire, thirdly, whether the States delegated to the President the right to suspend the privilege of habeas corpus; and whether the President, by doing this, was not guilty of the usurpation of power delegated by the States to Congress.

They might inquire, fourthly, whether the President has not violated the Constitution in elevating the military power above the civil power, and of depriving citizens of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.

They might inquire, fifthly, whether the States have delegated to the President or to any of his officers the right to make arbitrary arrests in this State and in other States.

They might inquire, sixthly, whether the emancipation proclamation is not a tyrannical usurpation of power not delegated to him in the Constitution.

They might inquire, seventhly, whether the present Federal Government have not interfered with the freedom of elections in the States, by military power.

They might inquire, eighthly, whether the President did not violate the Constitution by increasing the army and the navy by proclamation, without the authority of law. Roger Sherman, in his letter to John Adams, says: 'The executive is not to execute its own will, but the will of the legislature declared by the laws.'

They might inquire, ninthly, whether in these and many other respects the Executive and the Congress have not evinced a disposition to change this confederated Republic into a consolidated Republic, in disparagement of the rights of the State, and in violation of the rights and liberties of every citizen in the State.

But in this great Metropolitan city, where mind and heart are both stirred to their depths, where every question and every movement have some to affirm and some to negate; some to oppose and some to defend; just here, and just when the sympathies of a better humanity were roused to a noble and tender appreciation of the sufferings of the soldier, and to a proud purpose of doing something befitting both the cause and the city, there starts up the old Knickerbocker spirit and points to the Raffle as a polluting and pestiferous thing, that must not be allowed to defile, with its slimy touch, the gauds and garlands of the beauteous Fair.

But let us see. Certain noble ladies decide that raffles will give glee to the Fair, and gladness to the soldier, and so they must be admitted. Certain clergymen declare that raffles are forbidden of GOD and of the State, adverse to the judgment of the civilized world, and corrupting to the general morals. There is a controversy and a conflict, but the ladies will conquer. They have a sort of bewitching way, and throw a kind of spell about the hearts of the lords of creation, so that, with all their lordli

ness, they usually bow submissively at the feet of the Fair.

The clergy take high and rigorous views of morals, and look deep into mysteries, and are, doubtless, pure conservators of the public health, yet the crowd will, after all, run with the ladies. It by no means follows that either they or the women are right. The right, scripturally and socially, may be in the other direction.

The ladies say, on the one hand, that it will raise more money for the suffering soldier; that it is a harmless thing on their plan and for their object, far different from throwing of dice and raffling for the gaining of money; that the lot and raffling have been resorted to for building and adorning churches, for aiding asylums, etc., etc.; and that it is no worse than gambling in stocks by Wall-street brokers, no worse than many other things done by those, who are now loudest in their denunciation of raffling in the great Metropolitan Fair.

The clergy, on the other hand, pronounce it wrong because contrary to Scripture, to State law, and to the judgment of the Christian world.

The arguments of the ladies, it must be confessed, are not very logical, and are especially lame in resting on the fact that raffling has been resorted to for other good ends, and that other things as bad have been done and are done by the objectors themselves. Now it is here very evident that the tender hearts and good feelings of the ladies clouded their intellects, and they have reasoned badly; for, that wrong means have been heretofore used in order to good ends, is no valid reason why they should continue to be so used; else should we justify much at which the world now shudders, once done coolly and piously, in view of the supposed resulting good.

And though Wall-street were but a magnificent gambling-hell, and many who daily throng it were adverse to the raffles; though these parties might be doing and had been doing things, there and elsewhere, quite as objectionable, on the score of morals, it would not, logically nor ethically, follow that they should add another wrong to those existent in their lives; that because they were great sinners in a certain line of life, therefore they should be in others. This were equivalent to contending that the woman, who had once yielded her virtue to temptation, might as well not be very squeamish about doing it again. It may be said, perhaps, that this is taking for granted that the raffling is wrong. No, it is not. It is only taking the two things placed in comparison by the ladies, and asserting that even monstrous wrong-doing in the one is no license for any wrong doing in the other. The ladies, too, in justifying their action in the matter of raffles, have gone out of their way to set themselves up as judges over Wall-street, and condemn its splendid operators as the most magnificent of gamblers. All this may be so; yet it ill becomes them to cast the first stone, in conjunction with the implicit confession that they are in the same boat, and under the same ban.

And then the poor clergy are assailed, too, as well as Wall-street, because, forsooth, whilst they denounce the rafflers, they do not also thunder from the pulpit at the heads and hearts of the sinning brokers. It seems not to be perceived, or confessed at least, that there is some difference between the position of the clergy in respect to the Fair and that in respect to the brokers. In the one case they are left outside, the brokers not thinking it even worth the while to ask them into their clique or within their circle; whilst the ladies, on the contrary, deem it of the first importance to gain their favor and their presence. So the clergy may well say that in the one case they take an outside view, and deal with that broker-sin as they do with

others; but in the other they abstain from becoming actual partakers in the sin of the ladies. Unsolicited to participate, they are in one position; solicited, they are in another, and beg to decline, giving reasons for their seeming unknightly and unpatriotic refusals.

But, seriously, 't is a pity, pity 't is, that the noble enterprise of aid to the soldiery of the North should have been thus blocked up by any action, known to be adverse to the conscientious convictions of large numbers, no matter whether precisely virtuous in all other regards or not. This great Fair, national in its object, and almost national even in its locality, ought not to have been subjected to any such tests. Religious convictions are the strongest, and not easily overcome; nor are tender consciences to be forced. The use of the lot for purposes of mere amusement, excitement, and money-making, is honestly, by many, thought to be contrary to the Divine will; nor is it any valid argument against this belief to quote instances of its use recorded in the Scriptures, as one mode of settlement in serious and difficult cases.

There was law, too, State statute against it; and, although that law may have been violated in various minor ways, even by churches, that were no reason why this great Metropolitan Fair should win its way to popular favor by flinging out on its flag: 'Raffles in violation of Law.'

There is a class of people, too, who, although not very strenuous advocates or abettors of piety, nor much inclined to consort with the church, are yet noble examples of obedience to statute-law, as constituting the chief ground of moral obligation; men of high worldly morality and untarnished patriotism. These are offended.

The Managers of the Fair ought not to have relied so much on the enthusiastic patriotism of the people, as to presume that all conscientious and moral conviction of wrong in lotteries and raffles would readily yield to it. Nor