CHAPTER IV.

MILITARY USURPERS.

HE is a silly fellow who dreams that such a debt as that which throws its dark shadow over our destiny, can be collected, without a standing army of mercenaries, of great magnitude and widely diffused.

The first installment is a yoke now galling the necks of the Southern people, quite as much intended for the North; and a quiet resignation to the unreasoning behests of military usurpation, will be neither misinterpreted or misappropriated. Just as soon as the military authority is fully established over the civil power of the Southern States, it will then feel its way for the permanent establishment of military power in all of the Northern States, for the double purpose of overawing the people, and giving employment to an increased standing army, officered by the sons, brothers, nephews, relatives, and friends of members of Congress.

Immense standing armies have not only destroyed the liberties of every free people where they have been allowed a foothold, but they have as certainly bankrupted every monarchy or despotism where they have been employed to enforce the laws of the kingdom, or edicts of the emperor.

The Paine Military Bill is the consummation of the military government of the United States. When once in operation, soldiers will be placed in the neighborhood of every large manufactory, mine and furnace, to keep down strikes among the operatives. They will soon be a necessary appendage of every revenue collector's office, to seize for sale such property as may be necessary to pay the current taxes; and act as spies upon the little remaining liberty of the poor, and detectives upon the property of the people.

These hirelings will grind out the last remaining substance of the people, who are each year growing poorer under the crushing weight of oppression, and still they endure it.

"Smitten stones will talk with fiery tongue;
And the worm, when trodden will turn;
But cowards, ye cringe to the cruelest wrongs,
And answer with never a spurn.

Then torture, oh tyrants, the spiritless drove,
Old England's Helots will bear;

There's no hell in their hatred, no God in their love,
Nor shame in their dearth's despair.

For our fathers are praying for pauper pay,
Our mothers with death's kiss are white,
Our sons are the rich man's serfs by day,
And our daughters his slaves by night.

"The tearless are drunk with our tears; have they driven
The God of the poor man mad?

For we weary of waiting the help of Heaven,

And the battle goes still with the bad.

Oh, but death for death, and life for life;

It were better to take and give,

With hand to throat, and knife to knife,

Than die out as thousands live!

For our fathers are praying for pauper pay,
Our mothers with death's kiss are white;
Our sons are the rich man's serfs by day,
And our daughters his slaves by night.

"Fearless and few were the heroes of old,
Who played the peerless part;

We are fifty-fold, but the gangrene gold
Hath eaten out Hampden's heart.

With their faces to danger, like freemen they fought,
With their daring, all heart and hand;

And the thunder deed followed the lightning thought,
When they stood for their own good land.

For our fathers are praying, &c.

"When the heart of one-half the world doth beat,
Akin to the brave and true;

And the tramp of Democracy's earthquake feet,
Goes thrilling the wide world through,

We should not be living in darkness and dust,
And dying like slaves in the night;

But, big with the might of the inward 'must,'
We should battle for freedom and right.

For our fathers are praying," &c.

To this extremity are the bondholders driving the people, unwilling to risk the payment of the hateful debt, in the ordinary chances of business. The bondholders, through their instru

ments in Congress, have invoked the military power, ostensibly to restore the Southern States to the "Union," but really to organize a monstrous standing army, to establish the English funding system, and collect the taxes, and pay the interest in all time to come, to abolish the forms, as they have already destroyed, the spirit of liberty.

"War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight,
The lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade.

And to those royal murderers whose mean thrones
Are bought by crimes of treachery and gore,
The bread they eat, the staff on which they lean,
Guards, garbed in blood-red livery, surround
Their palaces, participate the crimes

That force defends, and from a nation's rage
Secures the crown, which all the curses reach
That famine, frenzy, woe and penury breathe.
These are the hired bravoes who defend
The tyrant's throne - the bullies of his fear;
These are the sinks and channels of worst vice,
The refuse of society, the dregs

Of all that is most vile; their cold hearts blend
Deceit with sternness, ignorance with pride,
All that is mean and villainous with rage,
Which hopelessness of good, and self-contempt
Alone might kindle. They are decked in wealth,
Honor and power, then are sent abroad

To do their work. The pestilence that stalks
In gloomy triumph through some eastern land
Is less destroying. They cajole with gold
And promises of fame, the thoughtless youth
Already crushed with servitude; he knows
His wretchedness too late, and cherishes
Repentance for his ruin, when his doom
Is sealed in gold and blood."

The day of our degradation is here. Never before in our brief, but glorious history, could any soldier, proud of his fame, have been bribed or forced or persuaded to hold military power, to crush out civil law. Anthony Wayne, Ethan Allen, Israel Putnam, or Daniel Morgan, Francis Marion, old Wade Hampton, Starke, or Sumpter, would rather have perished at the stake, in imitation of the heroic Crawford. Philip Schuyler, Nathanael Greene, Alexander Hamilton, or George Washington, scorned the money and despised the power of kings in such a demand. Benedict Arnold did do it, and the very jewels which glitter on their crowns of glory, are the more brilliant, when sparkling through the cloud that overhangs that other nameless name.

These were more than soldiers. They loved liberty, and understood the cause in which they fought.

Washington, John Adams, his son, Jefferson, or any of the fathers of liberty, would have perished, rather than promulgate this crime infernal. The military reconstruction law is a bid for anarchy and civil war. The country, by its lawgivers, is placed beyond the reach of law.

"When Nero

High over flaming Rome, with savage joy,
Lowered like a fiend, drank with enraptured ear
The shrieks of agonizing death, beheld
The frightful desolation spread, and felt
A new created sense within his soul

Thrill to the sight, and vibrate to the sound:
Thinkest thou his grandeur had not overcome
The force of human kindness? And when Rome,
With one stern blow hurled not the tyrant down,
Crushed not the arm, red with her dearest blood,
Had not submissive abjectness destroyed
Nature's suggestions."

—QUEEN MAB.

THE END.

CHAPTER V.

The Christian justly ascribes his inalienable rights to the gift of God. The Citizen fondly traces the assertion of his liberty down through ages of conflict and scenes of violence. A brave and persistent ancestry are not the less endeared to us for the tenacity with which they held fast those privileges, secured even by kingly Governments, and the boldness with which they contended with Kings for the surrender of prerogatives which had been assumed at the expense of right.

Among the Archives of Europe there is no paper so dear to Freemen as the GREAT CHARTER extorted from John by the Barons. This foundation stone of British liberty saved to her people the rivers of blood which drained the heart of France in the Revolution of 1789. It gave to the people of England an immunity from the long continued oppressions which brought Louis the XVI. to the block, and the horrors which have culminated in the expulsion of Isabella from Spain.

Had the Liberties of all Europe been even thus guaranteed the field of Waterloo and the ages of war, the oppression of the poor, and the Riot of Kings could never have been interwoven into the history of Christian Civilization in the heart of the most refined ages of the most eminently cultivated spot of the earth.

John Lackland forgot that he was the creature of the people whose rights he trampled down.

This monster had murdered his nephew Arthur as the only means of reaching the throne of his Father. A Libertine, a tyrant, and a murderer. He was divested of his possession in France, excommunicated by the Pope of Rome and abandoned by the subjects of his own Kingdom for the