Great Britain, it is true, is the last
power which should complain on this account, with her own example in
the case of the Enterprise before her eyes; but we do not, we
confess, like this feature of the law. We have no doubt, however,
that this fact being brought to the notice of the executive, he will
interfere promptly to release the individual in the present case,
provided the party petitions for the purpose, and engages at once to
leave the State. But we shall see nothing of this. Mr. Manuel
Pereira, like another John Wilkes, is to have settled in his person
great questions of constitutional liberty. The posterity which in
after times shall read of his voluntary martyrdom and heroic self-
sacrifice in the cause of suffering humanity, must be somewhat
better informed than Mr. Pereira himself; for we observe that his
clerkly skill did not reach the point of enabling him to subscribe
his name to the petition for habeas corpus, which is to figure so
conspicuously in future history, it being more primitively witnessed
by his 'mark.'"
An appeal was taken from this refusal, and carried before the appeal
court, sitting at Columbia, the capital of the State. How was this
treated? Without enlisting common respect, it sustained the opinion
of Judge Withers, who was one of its constituted members. Under such
a state of things, where all the avenues to right and justice were
clogged by a popular will that set itself above law or justice,
where is the unprejudiced mind that will charge improper motives in
asking justice of the highest judicial tribunal in the country.
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