§ 1895. This provision seems indispensable to the full enjoyment of the rights of personal security, personal liberty, and private property. It is little more. than the affirmance of a great constitutional doctrine of the common law. And its introduction into the amendments was doubtless occasioned by the strong sensibility excited, both in England and America, upon the subject of general warrants almost upon the eve of the American Revolution. Although special warrants upon complaints under oath, stating the crime, and the party by name, against whom the accusation is made, are the only legal warrants, upon which an arrest can be made according to the law of England; yet a practice had obtained in the secretaries' office ever since the restoration, (grounded on some clauses in the acts for regulating the press,) of issuing general warrants to take up, without naming any persons in particular, the authors, printers, and publishers of such obscene, or seditious libels, as were particularly specified in the warrant. When these acts expired, in 1694, the same practice was continued in every reign, and under every administration, except the four last years of Queen Anne's reign, down to the year 1763. The general warrants, so issued, in general terms authorized the officers to apprehend all persons suspected, without naming, or describing any person in special. In the year 1763, the legality of these general warrants was brought before the King's Bench for solemn decision; and they were adjudged to be illegal, and void for uncertainty.
Money v. Leach, 3 Burr, 1743; 4 Black. Comm. 291, 292, and note ibid. See also 15 Hansard's Pad. Hist. 1398 to 1418, (1764); Bell v. Clapp, 10 John. R. 263; Sailly v. Smith, 11 John. R. 500; 1 Tucker's Black. Comm. App. 301; Rawle on Const. ch. 10, p. 127. -- It was on account of a supposed repugnance to this article, that a vehement opposition was made to the alien act of 1798, which authorized the president to order all such aliens, as he should judge dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States, or have reasonable grounds to suspect of any treasonable, or secret machinations against the government to depart out of the United States; and in case of disobedience, punished the refusal with imprisonment. That law having long since passed away, it is not my design to enter upon the grounds, upon which its constitutionality was asserted or denied. But the learned reader will find ample information on the subject in the report of a committee of congress, on the petitions for the repeal of the alien and sedition laws, 25th of February, 1799; the report and resolutions of the Virginia legislature of 7th of January, 1800; Judge Addison's charges to the grand jury in the Appendix to his reports; and Tucker's Black. Comm. App. 301 to 304; Id. 306. See also Vol. III. § 1288, 1289, and note.
A warrant, and the complaint, on which the same is founded, to be legal, must not only state the name of the party, but also the time, and place, and nature of the offence with reasonable certainty.
The loss of these freedoms are no small matter.
Randolph to GW, 5 Aug. 1794, and Hamilton to GW, 2 Aug. 1794, DLG:GW; Wilson to GW, 4 Aug. 1794, DNA: RG 46, President's Messages. [Associate Justice James ] Wilson was consulted in compliance with Section 2 of "An Act to provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections, and repel invasions" (1 STAT. 264--65 [ 2 May 1792 ]). This section provided "that whenever the laws of the United States shall be opposed, or the execution thereof obstructed, in any state, by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, or by the powers vested in the marshals by this act, the same being notified to the President of the United States, by an associate justice or the district judge, it shall be lawful for the President of the United States to call forth the militia of such state to suppress such combinations, and to cause the laws to be duly executed." See also Randolph to GW, 5 Aug. 1794, DLC:GW.
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