Clarksville Weekly Chronicle

Since the late decision of the Supreme Court, there seems to be a growing confidence that the uplifted arm of Congressional usurpation may be arrested ere the fatal blow falls upon the liberties of the people. We do not fully share this confidence, but a hope is inspired by those decisions, and is none the less cheering because it comes from a source whence the people least expected it; and that confidence is strengthened by the fact, that there is no appeal from the decisions, except to the sword.

In times past, when even handed justice was unobstructed by the intervention of martial law and military commissions; when Congress recognized the constitution as the supreme law of the land, and usurpation was an imaginary danger, the people were prone to look upon the Executive and Legislative Departments as the sole agencies through which the government was administered, and upon the Judiciary, as occupying an unimportant place in a system of which it should be the central and controlling power when ambition is defying the constitution and the laws. It may be that the Supreme Court, backed by the Executive, is impotent to defeat the designs of the Radicals, and to save the government from ruin; but its power is ample to warn the country of the impending danger, to unmask the traitors and fasten upon them, in advance, the guilt of overstepping the limits of Congressional authority, as mapped out by the constitution.

But whatever may be the powers of the Judiciary, State and Federal it never before occupied so prominent a position before the public, and never had so fair an opportunity to display its authority and to win admiration and gratitude as the great conservator of constitutional liberty. The advocates of republican government and the victims of oppression are all looking anxiously to it for security to the one, and relief to the other. If this hope fail them, the people must prepare themselves for a quiet submission to despotism, or an appeal to arms. Will the Courts stand firm in defense of the constitution and the rights it confers? or will they, like Congress, obey the promptings of an unholy ambition, and join in the cry-down with the constitution! The earnestness with which these questions are propounded proves the depth of popular solicitude, and that the Judiciary is looked to as the last stay and hope of liberty.

The President, with his veto, slightly retarded the march of the traitors, but he has been flanked and his position carried by storm. In their first encounter with the Judiciary, the traitors were repulsed, but they are not defeated, and how and when the conflict will terminate, the wisest cannot foresee. But should it end in the overthrow of the government, we hope the Courts will be able to say they discharged their whole duty in the effort to save it.

On the first page, is a letter from the Washington correspondent of the Baltimore Gazette, and is one of the many proofs, that the northern democrats are beginning to realize that the war upon the South was not for the Union, or the Constitution, but for the destruction of both, and the erection of a despotism upon their ruins. If they had not been carried away by a whirlwind of passion, they would have seen, from the beginning, that the cause of the South was the cause of liberty, and that upon its success depended the existence of republicanism on this continent. But the Radical traitors were too shrewd for the democrats, and not only cheated them, as to the objects of the war, but are cheating them still, by pretending that their sole object is to punish the South, when, in reality, they are forging chains for democratic limbs.

It will look like retributive justice, should the wrongs which were, seemingly, intended only for the South, recoil upon those who savagely overran our territory, and shamefully robbed our homes. Then, if not before, will they see the enormity of their crimes and feel the punishment that will not fail to overtake those who committed them.

Sumner, in a late speech, spoke of President Johnson as the successor of Jeff. Davis. This is a compliment of which the President may well be proud, and it is, at the same time, a severe, but unintentional, rebuke to all who are trying to overthrow the constitution which the President upholds, and the liberties for which Mr. Davis fought.

It is suspected that the Radicals would prefer a universal smash of the government to such a change as may lead to a full expose of their villainy during their reign.