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of Columbia. It is situated on the Potomac, and contains the City of Washington. Then the ninth section of the same article declares what Congress shall not do. Certain immigration shall not be prohibited; THE PRIVILEGE OF THE WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS SHALL NOT BE SUSPENDED, except under certain circumstances; no ex post facto law shall be passed; no direct tax shall be laid unless in proportion to the census; no tax shall be laid on exports; no money shall be drawn from the treasury but by legal appropriation; no title of nobility shall be granted. The above are lists or catalogues of the powers which Congress has, and of the powers which Congress has not--of what Congress may do, and of what Congress may not do; and having given them thus seriatim, I may here perhaps be best enabled to say a few words as to the suspension of the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus in the United States. It is generally known that this privilege has been suspended during the existence of the present rebellion very many times; that this has been done by the Executive, and not by Congress; and that it is maintained by the Executive and by those who defend the conduct of the now acting Executive of the United States that the power of suspending the writ has been given by the Constitution to the President and not to Congress. I confess that I cannot understand how any man familiar either with the wording or with the spirit of the Constitution should hold such an argument. To me it appears manifest that the Executive, in suspending the privilege of the writ without the authority of Congress, has committed a breach of the Constitution. Were the case one referring to our British Constitution, a plain man, knowing little of parliamentary usage and nothing of law lore, would probably feel some hesitation in expressing any decided opinion on such a subject, seeing that our constitution is unwritten. But the intention has been that every citizen of the United States should know and understand the rules under which he is to live, and that he that runs may read. As this matter has been argued by Mr. Horace Binney, a lawyer of Philadelphia--much trusted, of very great and of deserved eminence throughout the States--in a pamphlet in which he defends the suspension of the privilege of the writ by the President, I will take the position of the question as summed up by him in his last page, and compare it with that clause in the Constitution by which the suspension of the privilege under certain circumstances is decreed; and to enable me to do this I will, in the first place, quote the words of the clause in question:-- "The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended unless when, in case of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it." It is the second clause of that section which states what Congress shall not do. Mr. Binney argues as follows: "The conclusion of the whole matter is this--that the Constitution itself is the law of the privilege and of the exception to it; that the exception is expressed in the Constitution, and that the Constitution gives effect to the act of suspension when the conditions occur; that the conditions consist of two matters of fact--one a naked matter of fact; and the other a matter-of-fact conclusion from facts: that is to say, rebellion and the public danger, or the requirement of public safety." By these words Mr. Binney intends to imply that the Constitution itself gave the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, and itself prescribes the taking away of that privilege under certain circumstances. But this is not so. The Constitution does not prescribe the suspension of the privilege of the writ under any circumstances. It says that it shall not be suspended except under certain circumstances. Mr. Binney's argument, if I understand it, then goes on as follows: As the Constitution prescribes the circumstances under which the privilege of the writ shall be suspended--the one circumstance being the naked matter of fact rebellion, and the other circumstance the public safety supposed