Suspected persons.
As the law now stands, one of the most difficult problems of the times is to determine what to do with suspected persons.
There are constant arrests of men considered inimical to the
South and to the
State in the immediate neighborhood of our armies.
These persons are arrested by the officers in command and in some instances sent back to
Richmond to be dealt with by the legal officers of the
State and Confederate Goverments.
In general they have committed no overt act of treason; and while they are known to be inimical, no evidence can be found of positive treason or criminality.
They can be arrested on no other ground than suspicion; and yet their arrest is almost essential to the public interests.
As yet there has been no suspension of the
habeas corpus writ; not by the
Confederate President or the
State Governor, because neither has power to do so; nor by either the State Convention or the Confederate Congress when they were in session, because the necessity of doing sow as not then apparent.
The result is. that when suspicious persons are sent to
Richmond by
Gen. Beauregard or
Gen. Magruder, and they are taken before the officers of the law, it is impossible for those officers to do aught in their cases.
There is no suspension of the writ of
habeas corpus and these officers have, therefore, no power to commit to jail on suspicion; and, even if there be some evidence of abetting the enemies of the
South, the witnesses are absent and the proofs of the charges imperfect.
These officers are, therefore, either bound to discharge the prisoner for want of facts and of proofs, or, which is the utmost they can do, must stretch their powers so far as to send them to the
Governor, to be held or sent out of the
State.
lierne is a subject which evidently require some immediate legislation.
The legislator required is, a partial suspension of the provisions of the
habeas corpus act. It is competent under the
Confederate Constitution for this to be done by the Confederate Congress but the time yet to elapse before that body meets is too long for the emergency.
We suppose it is also competent for the State Convention to pass such a law, armed as that body is with plenary powers.
The conferring of this power upon the Confederate Congress does not we take it for granted, render its exercise by the State Legislature or Convention illegal.
The reason of the case seems to justify the exercise of the power by either the
State or Federal Legislature, in their discretion.
Certainly the power ought to be exercised by one or the other of these legislative bodies so far as to authorize judges,
justices, and commissioners, to commit suspected persons until the condition of the country so changes as to render their running at large not dangerous to the public safety.
There is an Ordinance of the
Convention, passed towards its close, authorizing the arresting of suspected persons and the carrying them before justices and judges; but it authorizes this to be done in order that the prisoners may be ‘"dealt with according to law."’ If dealt with merely according to law they must be discharged on failure to prove some overt act of treason; they must not be held or even tried on suspicion.
If dealt with merely according to law, some of the most dangerous characters that ever infested a country must be turned loose to do their work of secret machination, correspondence, and treason, with impunity.
There is nothing to prevent the legislative authority of the country from interposing to provide a remedy for these evils.
They have only to authorize the holding of all persons in confinement against whom there may appear reasonable cause of suspicion.
When the suspicion is light and the character of the suspected person be such as to warrant mild treatment, the officers of the army, of the
State, or of the law might he authorized, instead of sending them to the common jail, to confine them as prisoners of war in other places, or within prescribed limits on parol.--In all times and in all countries, it has been deemed expedient and legitimate to curtail the liberties of citizens for cause, or on suspicion, during the pendency of invasion.
The Constitution expressly authorizes Congress to suspend
habeas corpus during such periods, and the present exigencies of the public imperatively demand that some legal authority should be vested in public officers, civil and military, over suspected persons.
