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The fifth section empowers the
commissioners so to be selected by the courts to appoint in writing,
under their hands, one or more suitable persons from time to time to
execute warrants and other processes described by the bill. These
numerous official agents are made to constitute a sort of police,
in addition to the military, and are authorized to summon a _posse
comitatus_, and even to call to their aid such portion of the land
and naval forces of the United States, or of the militia, "as may be
necessary to the performance of the duty with which they are charged."
This extraordinary power is to be conferred upon agents irresponsible to
the Government and to the people, to whose number the discretion of the
commissioners is the only limit, and in whose hands such authority might
be made a terrible engine of wrong, oppression, and fraud. The general
statutes regulating the land and naval forces of the United States, the
militia, and the execution of the laws are believed to be adequate for
every emergency which can occur in time of peace.


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