Thus
do we thoughtlessly strengthen the hands of our masters. The nostrum
which they manufactured to govern us withal, and which at first had to
be administered to us willy-nilly, has now become like that notorious
patent medicine for which the children cry. We kiss the rod--as long as
it is laid across our fellows' backs and not our own. And the rule of
Law, by lawyers, for lawyers, shows no signs of vanishing from our
earth. Only convicts and ex-convicts dissent; for they know what they
dissent from. As an unidentified friend wrote to me of late, "No thief
ere felt the halter draw, With good opinion of the law"; but the thief
had reason on his side. And it may yet come to pass that his reasons may
be listened to.
Darkness set in as we entered the sacred soil of Virginia; night lay
before us--our next night would be spent inside penitentiary walls. Was
it a dream, or would some cosmic cataclysm occur in season to prevent
it? No: the ancient routine of one fact after another, of cause and
effect, would keep on with no regard for our sensibilities; however
important we might appear to ourselves, we were but specks infinitesimal
in the vast scheme of things. Miracles and special providences are for
story books; if you are the victim of abuses, be sure that the remedy
will come not through averting them, but by carrying them out to the
finish.
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