equally the enemies of every man in the State who has anything to lose. Can there be a man in Missouri willing to admit that if every soldier were to-day withdrawn from the State the people would be unable to exterminate these small parties of robbers and thieves; in other woods, to say that the people of Missouri are incapable of self government unable to execute the laws which they themselves have made, against these ridiculously small parties of outlaws and vagrants? Who does not know that the State is abundantly able to free herself from these pests if the people will only do their duty, and that duty the very first even performed by man and equally recognized by all classes and conditions of men? This seeming neglect of the duty and the privilege of American citizens, a duty by the strict performance of which alone can we maintain our freedom and our free institutions, is to be attributed mainly, I think, if not wholly, to an alarming and fatal tendency among the people, which I have been astonished and dismayed to notice elsewhere in more favored regions to surrender to the military the execution of the laws, and thus to abandon all safeguards against tyranny and oppression, and to pass unconsciously into a condition of acquiescence in the complete dominion of military authority. Once let the American people abandon themselves to this practice, which indulgence confirms into habit, and their liberties are gone from them forever. It is hardly necessary to say that under fire institutions the military as subordinate to the civil power, and that the life of a free government depends upon maintaining this relation. There are, no doubt, occasions where, in consequence of the presence of the enemy or other extraordinary cause, martial law may become necessary in certain limited sections of the country; but such violent and exceptional reversal of the true condition of things should in every case be made to terminate with the immediate necessity which justified it.

There is no doubt that for a long time after the rebellion was inaugurated military authority was necessarily and properly made to supersede the civil power in Missouri, and perhaps that necessity existed until the inauguration of a new State government at Jefferson City. It would seem, however, that such a necessity should not exist much longer. I presume we will agree that not one step should ever have been taken in the direction of military supremacy except what was essentially necessary. Yet I find that although the pressure of that necessity was far stronger in Missouri in 1861 than to-day, and although in those days the enemies of the State and of the Union occupied one-half of the State with organized armies, and the malcontents who remained at home hopeful, the extent of the military jurisdiction was trifling in comparison with what I now find it. There can be no reason for such a state of things, except that people once accustomed to yield their civil jurisdiction from the pressure of temporary necessity soon acquire the habit of acquiescence after discovering how much trouble it spares them and how much more easy it is instead of performing their civil duties themselves to devolve them upon soldiers and provost-marshals. If a man is murdered if a house is robbed, if any breach of civil law is committed, how much easier it is to write a note to the nearest provost-marshal informing him of the fact, and then remain quietly at home attending to one's business, than to be summoned on a jury, called out as one of a posse, or in any other manner put to inconvenience. According to statements made to me by many of your citizens this practice prevails to an alarming extent in this State, and unless it can be arrested and the citizens induced to resume the performance of their duties I can see no redemption for Missouri.