tial law, did by a new Proclamation entirely annul and abrogate the Constitution by emancipating (on paper) the slaves of all persons who held property in the Seceding States and had taken part against the government.

Again. The President's prime minister, William H. Seward, Secretary of State, once boasted that, by merely touching a "little bell" he could have any person arrested in any part of the Union, and detained in custody wheresoever and for so long a period as he chose. That this boast was not an idle one is shown by the arbitrary arrest of hundreds of persons, not legally accused of any statutable offence, but on the mere decree of Mr. Seward, the Secretary of State, and Mr. Stanton, the Secretary of War, and their incarceration, for indefinite periods, at Fort Lafayette, in the Bay of New York; at Fort Warren, in the Harbour of Boston; at Fort McHenry, near Baltimore; and at the Old Capitol Prison, at Washington, in the District of Columbia. These persons were denied bail or mainprise; they were refused communication with their friends, their relations, and even their legal advisers ; they were fed on coarse and repulsive rations-one, a British officer who had unwittingly conveyed some Confederate correspondence from Baltimore, was confined for many weeks in Fort Lafayette before permission was granted him to receive the not very luxurious gift of a chair, and was during that period compelled to clean out his own cell and perform other loathsome offices; and often they were turned out of prison as arbitrarily as they had been immured therein without trial, without enquiry, and without explanation. All this was done, not under the declared pressure of martial law, but in

the Sovereign States of New York and New England; States living in the peace of the Republic, and in which the Habeas Corpus Act had never been suspended, and the ordinary course of the civil tribunals never interrupted. Again, the President, or the Secretary of War, or both, did, by a simple firman, order General Dix, the military officer commanding at New York, to arrest the proprietors of two newspapers, called the World and the Journal of Commerce, and imprison them in Fort Lafayette, for the offence of having inserted in those papers a proclamation which was subsequently found to be forged. More than this: the publication of the World and the Journal of Commerce was forcibly suppressed; the clerks and compositors were expelled from the premises, and the offices held by an armed guard. It was notorious that the proprietors of the World and the Journal of Commerce had been in this matter the innocent dupes of an impudent swindler, and so strong was the feeling of indignation excited by their imprisonment that they were released from custody on the very night of their arrest; but the sequestration of their property, to their great pecuniary damage, continued for some days longer; and, when they sought for redress before the courts of justice of their State, the judges, in refusing it, explicitly stated that they did not consider it expedient to interfere with the action of the Central Government at Washington :-in other words, with the despotic power of Mr. Lincoln. Let it be noted that the author of the forged proclamation in question, one Joseph Howard, although on discovery arrested for common decency's sake, was treated with much consideration, and dismissed after a very brief

VOL. I.

detention, avowedly because he was a member of the Black Republican party, and had considerable personal influence at the White House. The lenity shown him may very forcibly be contrasted with the extreme and inhuman rigour which was experienced by two citizens of New York, named Donohue and Ferry, who were accused, during the Presidential Election, of fabricating soldiers' votes, and who, although they might have been tried and punished for that offence by the regular courts of their State, were arraigned before a military commission sitting at Baltimore, and, being convicted on evidence which even their adversaries admitted to be flimsy and unsatisfactory, were sentenced to imprisonment for life.

I do not conceive, dear sir, that it is germane to this argument to enumerate-if they could all be enumerated-the various acts of tyranny and oppression committed by the Government of the United States, by their civil and their military servants in the States where martial law had been proclaimed, or where their authority was disturbed or imperilled. À la guerre comme à la guerre; or, if you like an older aphorism, "Amidst the clash of arms the laws are silent." I will not, therefore, in this place say one word of the atrocities wreaked on defenceless people by the Federal commanders in the States of Maryland, Western Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, and Louisiana a; of the reign of Terror inaugurated by Payne at Paducah, and by Washburne at Memphis; of the devastation of the Shenandoah Valley by Sheridan, by Custer, and by Merritt; of the murders committed by Federal soldiers

and the robberies committed by Federal officers; of the standing crops that have been burnt, the fruit trees that have been grubbed up, the cattle and horses that have been carried off; the whole cities and villages that have been destroyed; of women ravished, children maltreated, aged people turned out of doors, churches gutted, negroes stolen, and smiling farms laid waste. The consideration of matters such as these will more appropriately enter into a chapter entitled the "Horrors of War." Nor need I more than cursorily allude to the charges brought against the Federal Government of having systematically interfered with the freedom of election in the North-notably in the States of Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Kentucky,-of having hedged round the ballot-boxes with soldiers with fixed bayonets, and caused those who cast their votes against the Government to be insulted and outraged ;—of having summarily dismissed from office all clerks suspected of ill feeling towards the present order of things,—of having largely and shamefully bribed those who could serve its interests;-of having tampered with the United States mails, and opened or stolen the correspondence of persons supposed to hold opposition views, and of having exercised a general system of intimidation, corruption, and violence. Charges such as these have been openly made during the past year; but I cannot speak of my own knowledge of their truth or their falsehood. So far as I can tell, my letters were never opened; and the only voting I have seen has been in the States of New York and Massachusetts, where everything appeared to be conducted in a most fair and straightforward manner. I will conclude, however, that

which I have to say regarding the "despotism" which I impute to have replaced the formerly free institutions of the United States by the narrative of a case which appears to have attracted but little attention in Europe, but which I cannot help regarding as a pivot on which much of this controversy regarding despotism and liberty must turn. I mean the case of Don José de Arguelles.

Napoleon Bonaparte, first of his line, and called the Great," I wrote on the 18th of May, 1864, "was for a long series. of years permitted, by a complaisant and conquered continent, to act unrestrictedly according to his own will and pleasure. He did what he liked with his own, and with that which was not his own. He rarely hesitated to abuse the vast power he had seized, and to show himself what is called on this side the water a 'kinder despot.' He ravaged continents, overran whole countries, revolutionised States, demolished dynasties, and gave away crowns as though they had been candies. He tore the Pope from his palace, and made a French general master at the Vatican. He seized upon British subjects, and made inoffensive travellers prisoners of war by thousands. He burnt our merchandise wherever he found it. He violated the territory of Baden, arrested, tried, and executed the Duke d'Enghien. He shut up Toussaint l'Ouverture in a damp dungeon, and allowed that brave and intelligent black man to die of the chills and a broken heart. He caused Hofer, the Tell of the Tyrol, to be slain. He banished Mme. de Stael, and guillotined Georges Cadoudal. In short, he was a terrible Bashaw. On le laissa faire. People murmured; but they obeyed. They shrugged their shoulders,