We Give The Government The Credit Of Believing That It Is
Not Its Wish We Should Be Treated With Such
Apparent malignity
and apparent malice; and also believe that if you, sir,
the representative of government in this department, had
Been previously made acquainted with this mode of treatment,
you would have caused it to be altered. But we have hitherto
refrained from troubling the government on the subject,
in expectation of a speedy trial, which now appears to be
postponed sine die.
We, each of us, can look back with laudable pride upon
our lives, and not a page in the record of the past can
unfold a single transgression which would degrade us before
man, or for which we would be condemned before our Maker.
And we naturally ask why we should be treated as if our
lives had been one succession of crime, or as if society
breathed freely once more at being rid of our dangerous
and demoralising presence. Even the Sunday, that to all
men in Christendom is a day of relaxation and comparative
enjoyment, to us is one of gloom and weariness, being locked
up in a dreary cell from three o'clock Saturday evening
till seven on Monday morning (except for about an hour
and a half on Sunday); thus locked up in a narrow dungeon
for forty consecutive hours! We appeal to you, and ask,
was there ever worse treatment, in the worst days of the
Roman inquisition, for men whose reputation had never
been sullied with crime?
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