of the individual party before the actual outbreak; or it may be derived from the proceedings of meetings, in which he took part openly; or which he either prompted, or made effective by his countenance or sanction,—­commending, counselling and instigating forcible resistance to the law.  I speak, of course, of a conspiring to resist a law, not the more limited purpose to violate it, or to prevent its application and enforcement in a particular case, or against a particular individual.  The combination must be directed against the law itself.  But such direct proof of this element of the offence is not legally necessary to establish its existence.  The concert of purpose may be deduced from the concerted action itself, or it may be inferred from facts occurring at the time, or afterwards, as well as before.  Besides this, there must be some act of violence, as the result or consequence of the combining.

But here again, it is not necessary to prove that the individual accused was a direct, personal actor in the violence.  If he was present, directing, aiding, abetting, counselling, or countenancing it, he is in law guilty of the forcible act.  Nor is even his personal presence indispensable.  Though he be absent at the time of its actual perpetration, yet, if he directed the act, devised, or knowingly furnished the means for carrying it into effect, instigated others to perform it, he shares their guilt.

In treason there are no accessories.  There has been, I fear, an erroneous impression on this subject, among a portion of our people.  If it has been thought safe, to counsel and instigate others to acts of forcible oppugnation to the provisions of a statute, to inflame the minds of the ignorant by appeals to passion, and denunciations of the law as oppressive, unjust, revolting to the conscience, and not binding on the actions of men, to represent the constitution of the land as a compact of iniquity, which it were meritorious to violate or subvert, the mistake has been a grievous one; and they who have fallen into it may rejoice, if peradventure their appeals and their counsels have been hitherto without effect.  The supremacy of the constitution, in all its provisions, is at the very basis of our existence as a nation.  He, whose conscience, or whose theories of political or individual right, forbid him to support and maintain it in its fullest integrity, may relieve himself from the duties of citizenship, by divesting himself of its rights.  But while he remains within our borders, he is to remember, that successfully to instigate treason, is to commit it.  I shall not be supposed to imply in these remarks, that I have doubts of the law-abiding character of our people.  No one can know them well, without the most entire reliance on their fidelity to the constitution.  Some of them may differ from the mass, as to the rightfulness or the wisdom of this or the other provision that is found in the federal compact, they may be divided