are of no legal validity; this is true of a similar proclamation by the President of the United States, though it was frequently done by Abraham Lincoln.  The act of Mayor Ruef of San Francisco, even at the time of the earthquake, declaring martial law, or giving troops or vigilance committees summary powers of punishment, was a mere “bluff.”  Such an order, though in practice obeyed by all good citizens, would in no way protect those acting under it from prosecution in the criminal or civil courts.

On the other hand, the right to bear arms is inherent under English ideas, and this alone, with the corresponding right of political assembly, has served largely to maintain English liberty; while the absence of these two important rights has relieved countries like Russia from all fear of revolution.  One has only to read Mr. George Trevelyan’s vivid account of the difficulties of the Garibaldi movement to free Italy in 1860, to realize the enormous difficulties under which the great patriot labored from the absence of these underlying principles.  Indeed, but for the connivance of the Piedmontese government in allowing somebody to sell a thousand condemned rifles, it is probable that there would have been no revolution in Sicily.

Now this Anglo-Saxon right to arms goes back to times before the very dawn of the English Constitution, and the fyrd or local militia was in Saxon times, as it was declared to be by our American State constitutions of the eighteenth century, “the natural and only defence of a free country.”  This principle was very soon re-established after the Conquest.  We find, as early as 1181, the Assize of Arms, which revives the ancient fyrd or militia.  Twenty-two years before scutage had been substituted for military service; but this was merely a matter of feudal tenure.  Yet so early was a direct call for troops forbidden to the crown.  The contest of English ideals against Norman ideas was one of the principal causes of Magna Charta itself (it is significant that the Great Charter was never published in French); the barons were required to support the king in war, but complained against being led out of the kingdom; and King John’s insistence upon this led to the assembly at Runnymede.  Thus the militia and the maintenance of arms other than of feudal retainers—­and this exception led to the statutes against maintainors—­passed out of the executive power and became the province of the legislative branch; a principle carried out in all our constitutions; they make the executive the commander-in-chief of the army, navy, or militia, but the governor may usually not command in the field, nor order troops out of a State; and the president cannot employ Federal troops in a State, except when requested by its legislature; save only where necessary to maintain the functions of the Federal government itself, or when a State government ceases to be republican in form—­but of that last who is to be the judge?