Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1859-11-12
OUR AMERICAN AUT0CRACY.


extended over the whole world, and that every
part of it was safe and dreary prison for their
enemies. The slave of imperial despotism,
writes the historian, whether he was compelled
to drag his gilded chain in Rome and the SEN
ate, or to wear out life of exile on the barren
rock of Seriphus, or the frozen banks OF the
Danube, expected his fate in silent despair.
"Whereyer you are" said Cicero to the exiled
Blarcellus, remember that you are equally
within the power of the conqueror" Let us
not dignity our American slaye-autocracy by
suggesting comparison with the imperial. 1t
is only in its matchess arrogance, and pur-
pose to control, that it bears any likeness to
the despotism of the Caesars. Fortunately for
us, the moral Judgment of mankind has sur
rounded it with wall of fire, and in the ap-
pointed and the appropriate season will seal
the article of its ruin.
But while it lives, and is conscious of the
swift mortality which belongs to all wrong
and unjust things, it has the desperate inge-
nuity to disguise itself under forms of law, and
the infinite audacity to prescribe terms and
conditions under which other institutions may
live, if the gracious privilege of living is allow
ed at ALL 1t makes contracts and breaks them
with equal impunity. 1t exacts equal subser-
viency in the Senate and on the plantation. 1t
dictates humiliating and disgraceful offices to
communities which hate and disown it. 1t
makes meanness and treachery duty, and
kindness to Gods poor crime, punishable be-
fore tribunals of its own making and control.
For offences slighter than those which placed
Mrs. Gaunt and Lady Isle among the mar
tyrs, every man and woman of us is to-day
exposed to ignomnous punishment under laws
made and administered by the agents of that
defiant autocracy which has lifted itself above
the Constitution and commanded special legis-
lation in its behalf.
One would suppose this was enough to graf
ify reasonable ambition. For an institution,
whose only justification is the fact that it ex-
lists, to have achieved such supremacy that
the greatest men pay to it Difference and hon.
age, is fortune seldom awarded to the most
useful and benefcent. But this arrogant au-
tocracy, having fattened itself for the last
month on the unhappy adventure Of John
Brown and his followers, has the audacity to
claim, partly by knavish insinuation, and part
ly by direct avowa that the love of freedom
itself is something criminal, and that the cause,
in some way, owes its champions as a sacrifice
to the offended majesty of slavery. 1t is not
enough that the leader in that sad adventure,
though he is conscious of no wrong, willingly
offers them his life. Filled with kind of reli-
gious fanaticism, summoned by mysterious
voice to give liberty to the captive, possess
ed" in some sense, with the idea which inspir-
ed Cato. to exelaim,
'Whed y Jtsst.an aeance impous mortals perish
The gods behold their punishment with pleasure
And lay the uplifted thunderbolt aside"
he undertook the crusade against slavery upon
his own responsibility, and, with a heroism
which never deserts the honest crusader, well
comes his fate almost upon the field of his
disaster. Honest, truthful brave old knight
But it was mad enterprise, which reason can
not justify. He did not consider how strongly
fortified in the social civil, and military organ
izations OF the country, was that system,
against which he unwisely armed himself
He did not consider that great wrongs could
not be remedied by bayonet thrust, nor
great enterprises accomplished by the ma
chinery of piratical and lawless adventure
But slavery, blind, reckless, revengeful in its
pursuit of victims, tempts us to forget his
faults. If all the hairs of his head were lives,
its great revenge has stomach for them all.
Impatient of delay, insolent in the posses
sion of an imaginary advantage, dissatisfied
with the measure of blood which the law al
lows it to shed, it is already seeking, in the
elegant language of the Attorney of Virginia,
" for higher and wickeder game p One of
its intended victims, whose kind and genial
benefcence has found him friends wherever
his name has been carried, has too soon expe-
rienced the sorrowful fulfilment of his destiny
Whether the valiant officers of the law in Vir-
ginia have any means in their power, as they
take especial pains to insnuate from day to
day, for inflicting penalties upon him, or upon
others as pure and as conscientious as he, is
not explicitly stated. 1t is not probable. But
the assumption that any public man is account
able for his opinions upon the subject of slave
nv to the courts, or the tribunals which it
controls, and is liable to requisition or arrest
by any hotspur who happens to have the
power, is an exhibition OF arrogance which
may as well be defied and resisted in one form
as another. The day is not remote, however,
when, through the agency of just laws and
efficient government, the autocracy of slavery
will be deprived of its political prestige and
its capacity to do mischief.
New YORK ELEcTIoN.-The returns are