Mr. JO HNSON. The bill itself I have no doubt will commend itself to the approval of the Senate, and I only rise for the purpose of inquiring of the chairman of the committee what will be his construction of the bill or his opinion of the law in the particular which I am about tomention. In my own view, under the law as it now is, any judge of the SCOTUS has a right to issue a writ of habeascorpus to be executed any where within the limits of the U.S. This bill professes, according to its terms, to recognize that right, and to make it the duty of the court where it does not appear affirma tively or to the satisfaction of the court that the arrest is not in violation of the Constitution or laws of the U.S. to issue the writ. A difficulty has arisen in the construction of the present power, and the difficulty will arise if we pass this bill, if it be well founded now. The former Chief Justice of the U.S. held that this kind of process issued by any judge of the SCOTUS could be sent anywhere within the limits of the U.S., and would of course be compulsory upon the party to whom it was directed; but an application was made to the present Chief Justice for a writ of pus habeas cor to bring before him the case of one of the prisoners at the Tortugas who was charged and convicted of being concerned directly or indirectly with the assassination of the President, by a military commission, upon the ground that military commissions for the trial of citizens, he being a citizen, were unconstitutional, that question having been decided affirmatively by a recent decision of the Supreme Court. The Chief Justice simply denied the applica.tion; but, as Iunderstand, he denied it, not upon the ground that the prisoner was there under any proper authority, but because he had no power himself to issue such a writ to be executed outside of his own circuit. This bill does not cure that defect, if it be a defect; and I suggest to my friend, the chair man of the committee; that perhaps he had better lay it on the table and let us examine the question of law, so as to place it beyond all doubt. There is a practical inconvenience, as we can all see, in authorizing a writ of habeascorpus to be issued by any judge of the U.S. This bill gives it to the district judges as well as to the Supreme Court judges; and an application might be made to a district judge in Florida to bring before him some men convicted and sentenced and held under imprisonment in the State of Vermont or in any of the further States. Perhaps it would be as well to limit the authority to the circuit over which the judge's jurisdiction in other respects extended. I rose merely for the purpose of suggesting to the honorable chairman the doubt which is evidently in the mind of the present Chief Justice of the U.S., and the advisa bility of so framing the law as to remove that doubt. The bill was reported to the Senate without amendment.