law, which he so earnestly pressed upon their immediate consideration, as vitally important to the righteous determination of his case!

The result of this trial, which your sentence is about to proclaim, is the perpetual imprisonment of the defendant, and his seclusion from the face of society, and from all communication with his fellow-men.

Is it too much to say that the object of his political opponents is the gratification of an insatiable spirit of revenge, rather than the attainment of legal justice? They are also bent upon his political destruction, which results from the sentence of the court, in the deprivation of his political and civil rights. They aim also at a social annihilation, by his commitment to that tomb of the living, from which, in ordinary cases, those who emerge are looked upon as marked and doomed men, to be excluded from the reputable walks of life. But there my opponents and persecutors are destined to disappointment. The court may, through the consequences of their sentence, abridge the term of his existence here; they can annihilate his political rights; but more than this they cannot accomplish. The honest judgment of his friends and fellow-citizens, resting upon the truth of his cause, and faithful to the dictates of humanity and justice, will not so much regard the place to which he is consigned, as the causes which have led to his incarceration within its walls.

Better men have been worse treated than I have been, though not often in a better cause. In the service of that cause I have no right to complain that I am called upon to suffer hardships, whatever may be the estimate of the injustice which inflicts them.

All these proceedings will be reconsidered by that ultimate tribunal of public opinion, whose righteous decision will reverse all the wrongs which may be now committed, and place that estimate upon my actions to which they may be fairly entitled.

The process of this court does not reach the man within. The court cannot shake the convictions of the mind, nor the fixed purpose which is sustained by integrity of heart.

Claiming no exemptions from the infirmities which beset us all, and which may attend us in the prosecution of the most important enterprises, and, at the same time, conscious of the rectitude of my intentions, and of having acted from good motives in an attempt to promote the equality, and to establish the just freedom and interest of my fellow-citizens, I can regard with equanimity this last infliction of the court; nor would I, even at this extremity of the law, in view of the opinions which you entertain, and of the sentiments by which you are animated, exchange the place of a prisoner at the bar for a seat by your side upon the bench.

The sentence which you will pronounce, to the extent of the power and influence which this court can exert, is a condemnation of the doctrines of "76, and a reversal of the great principles which sustain and give vitality to our democratic republic, and which are regarded by the great body of our fellow-citizens as a portion of the birthright of a free people.

From this sentence of the court I appeal to the people of our state and of our country. They shall decide between us. I commit myself, without distrust, to their final award. I have nothing more to say.

When Mr. Dorr had finished his remarks, Chief Justice Durfee arose, and pronounced his sentence in the following words:

Listen, Thomas Wilson Dorr, to the sentence of the court; which is, that the said Thomas W. Dorr be imprisoned in the state prison at Providence, in the

county of Providence, for the term of his natural life, and there kept at hard labor in separate confine

ment.

The court had now gone to the extent of their province, and hurled their last bolt against their defenceless victim; and on the 27th of June, 1844, just two years after Mr. Dorr dismissed his forces at Chepatchet, he was removed to the state prison in Providence, and incarcerated in a cell, where, according to the sentence of the court, he was to remain during his natural life.

So far as we are acquainted with the history of criminal treason, it has been contrived and conducted with more or less secrecy - it has consisted of clandestine attempts to surprise and overthrow the government by force. Mr. Dorr's case was the very reverse of this. Every thing had been done in the most public manner possible, and the whole proceedings consisted of a series of steps which followed each other at intervals which gave all parties ample time to consider them. If Mr. Dorr was guilty of the highest crime known to any law because he labored to sustain a democratic government which the people had ordained, then hundreds of others were guilty of the same crime; and why should he be made a scapegoat for the sins of the whole party? Why pursue him alone with such unrelenting hostility, when there were so many others who had with him actually taken up arms?

CHAPTER XIV.

REFLECTIONS.

THE history of treason shows that it has been chiefly confined to arbitrary and unjust governments, and that far the largest number of those who have suffered for that crime have been good men, who sought to relieve their own people from the oppressive measures of their rulers. If Great Britain had succeeded in overcoming the rebellion, as she called it, in her American colonies, in 1776, then George Washington and Nathaniel Greene, with all their compatriots, would have been held guilty of treason. The essential characteristics of this crime are said to consist in levying war against the sovereign power of the state to which the offender owes allegiance. In a monarchical government the sovereign power is supposed to belong to a single individual. In Russia the will of the czar is the sovereign power; therefore to resist that will is treason, because that people suppose that by divine appointment the right to rule runs forever in the blood of a certain family; and similar sentiments prevail in all countries governed by hereditary monarchs. The government of Great Britain, from which we have obtained many of our ideas of jurisprudence, is a mixture of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy;

but the supreme or highest power is supposed to be vested forever in the crown. Therefore treason in Great Britain does not consist in levying war against Parliament, or any other special department of the government, but in levying war against the crown itself. But our government is the very reverse of monarchy; in theory it is a democracy. We hold that in the United States absolute sovereignty is vested in the people, and in them alone; and that state constitutions are the acts of the people in their absolute sovereign capacity, and at all times under their immediate control; and if this theory of our government be correct, then the will of the people is the sovereign power, and it follows, of course, that to levy war against that declared will is virtual if not legal treason. The American governments are supposed to exist by the consent of a majority of the people until the contrary is shown; but. when that majority freely and publicly declare their dissent to it, and withdraw their support from it, then it cannot be treason to levy war against such minority government; but to levy war against the known and expressed will of a decided majority of the people can be nothing better than treason. It is highly important that every American citizen should fully understand the genius and principles of his own government, and know for a certainty where the sovereign power is vested. Is the question of political sovereignty yet to to be settled in this country? Have not the people of the United States yet ascertained where the supreme power may ultimately be found? Then we say that it is high time that the inquiry was made, and the ques