The Pennsylvania decision on the conscript act.
--The recent decision of Judges Lowrie, Thompson, and Woodard, of Philadelphia, that the U. S. draft is unconstitutional, has been published. The decision will amount in effect to nothing nor will any other legal decision do more, it is adverse to the Government now ruling with a rod of iron the free and glorious Yankee nation. The New York News says:‘ However much the opinions of Administration organs may be at variance with those of our constituted tribunals, we trust that all parties will accept the law as interpreted by its legitimate expounders. There may be no penalty for insult, but there is for violation of the law, and that penalty will attach to the highest in authority as well as to the humblest citizen. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania has declared that certain citizens of that State have been deprived of liberty, placed under military restraint, and subjected to great privation, suffering and danger, by a process which the Constitution forbids. If the Administration have erred through ignorance, now let them rectify the error. They have no claim upon the Pennsylvanian conscripts in the field; it is not we that say so, but the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. If the predicament is perplexing, it gives our rulers occasion to reflect upon the advisability of adhering closely to those principles which have heretofore governed in the Republic, and of enforcing no harsh measures of doubtful legality without due investigation by competent tribunals.
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