Write Here, Right Now (Flirt, #1)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1868 edition. Excerpt: ... A Century has elapsed since a person in the position of a magistrate, or any high functionary of Government, was prosecuted on a criminal charge for his acts in endeavouring to repress riot or insurrection, and the results of that prosecution--though it failed--were most mischievous and most instructive. There can be little doubt that it tended to produce the feeling of hesitation and insecurity among magistrates, which produced such fatal results a few years later in London, and, in our time, at Bristol, Birmingham, and other places; and, moreover, the cases on this subject have an indirect bearing upon the present subject--of martial law. For the law upon the subject--that is, as to the right to employ the military in aid of the civil power in the suppression of riot or actual insurrection--is clear and plain, though, as it takes place under ordinary law, it is liable to be entangled with strict legal difficulties; and it is obvious that it assumes and requires the presence of such an adequate military power (aided by an overwhelming moral power on the side of loyalty), that its action, merely in aid of the civil power, will be sufficient. And martial law is only the development and extension and application of the principles of the common law. Take a case B where the circumstances are so different and the danger so much greater, and the disproportion between the forces on the side of loyalty and rebellion so enormous that there is no time to await the slower process of ordinary law, and it will not do to let the exercise of the measures necessary to restore peace be hampered by the rigid rules and strict liabilities of ordinary law (a). The prosecution referred to as having taken place just a century ago, was a prosecution of a...