Free right of Petition.
We published a few days ago an account of the seizure of a petition, in the hands of Mr. Gulon, by the police of New York. This in famous attack upon the dearest rights of freemen, in the principal city of the free States, is arousing the people of New York to a sense of the degradation which is in store for them, and of the fatal consequences of the military despotism which has now supplanted the Constitutional Government of the United States. The Journal of Commerce, of July 1 in a leader, says:‘ An extraordinary proceeding was chronicled in the city news department of the New York papers on Saturday morning, in which copies of a petition numerously signed by citizens of New York, and addressed to the President of the United States, were seized, taken from the possession of those to whom they had been confided, and conveyed to the headquarters of the police, where they are detained for public exhibition. It is not shown that any proceedings have been had to authorize the police to interfere with the sacred right of petition, a right as dear to every American citizen at the present day as it was to the people of the Colonies when they complained that the British Government spurned their prayers for relief, and denied the right which the humblest citizen has, to approach the ruling powers with requests touching the administration of the Government. It is difficult, as one after another of the dearest rights of freemen are violated, and article after article of the Constitution trampled under foot, by those who have solemnly sworn to support it, to realize that we live under a free Government, or that we can lay claim to any privileges which are not liable to be invaded by official pretension and assumed power. ********
We doubt whether any considerable number of signers will be frightened into withdrawing their names, but think it more likely that it will receive large accessions from the independent men of the city, who dare exercise their constitutional rights under threatened intimidation. There is no power short of absolute tyranny which can interfere with the right of petition, especially when that right is exercised in a mode so void of offensive or treasonable language as in the present instance.
’ The New York Evening Express, which thinks that Superintendent Kennedy is stretching his prerogatives very far, quotes the following from the Post:
‘ As many as twenty persons have erased their names from the Compromise Petition since it has been in the hands of the Police Superintendent. One or two persons have called at headquarters to erase their names, and after a diligent search on the two lists have failed to find their own names and some others which were on the paper they signed. There is, therefore, at least one more numerously signed petition for compromise, "or a peaceful separation," which the detectives have failed to discover. Superintendent Kennedy continues his days of grace to signers who wish to erase, and will not publish the list at present. This is simply a threat! This is mere dragooning! If such things are necessary — and they may be, as everything seems necessary in civil war — give us at once the government of Brigadier-General Hall--The moment we pass, or begin to pass from the civil law, the military is the best of all. A soldier is almost always a responsibility.--When we deal with epadfettes, we all understand "what is what!".
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