ill in
all particulars will be accomplished. And history has proved that the
presumption is well founded.

This, may it please your honors, is the view I take of what I have
called the American system. These are the methods of bringing about
changes in government.

Now, it is proper to look into this record, and see what the questions
are that are presented by it, and consider,--

1. Whether the case is one for judicial investigation at all; that is,
whether this court can try the matters which the plaintiff has offered
to prove in the court below; and,

2. In the second place, whether many things which he did offer to prove,
if they could have been and had been proved, were not acts of
criminality, and therefore no justification; and,

3. Whether all that was offered to be proved would show that, in point
of fact, there had been established and put in operation any new
constitution, displacing the old charter government of Rhode Island.

The declaration is in trespass. The writ was issued on the 8th of
October, 1842, in which Martin Luther complains that Luther M. Borden
and others broke into his house in Warren, Rhode Island, on the 29th of
June, 1842, and disturbed his family and committed other illegal acts.

The defendant answers, that large numbers of men were in arms, in Rhode
Island, for the purpose of overthrowing the government of the State, and
making war upon it; and that, for the preservation of the government and
people, martial law had been proclaimed by the Governor, under an act of
the legislature, on the 25th of June, 1842. The plea goes on to aver,
that the plaintiff was aiding and abetting this attempt to overthrow the
government, and that the defendant was under the military authority of
John T. Child, and was ordered by him to arrest the plaintiff; for which
purpose he applied at the door of his house, and being refused entrance
he forced the door.

The action is thus for an alleged trespass, and the plea is
justification under the law of Rhode Island. The plea and replications
are as usual in such cases in point of form. The plea was filed at the
November term of 1842, and the case was tried at the November term of
1843, in the Circuit Court in Rhode Island. In order to make out a
defence, the defendant offered the charter of Rhode Island, the
participation of the State in the Declaration of Independence, its
uniting with the Confederation in 1778, its admission into the Union in
1790, i