far-away tyrannies--the horrors of Neapolitan dungeons--the abridgment
of personal freedom in continental countries--the exercise of arbitrary
power by irresponsible authority in other lands--they would turn their
eyes homeward and examine the treatment and the sufferings of their own
political prisoners. I would in all sincerity suggest that humane and
well-meaning men who exert themselves for the remission of the
death-penalty as a mercy would rather implore that the doom of solitary
and silent captivity should be remitted to the more merciful doom of an
immediate relief from suffering by immediate execution--the opportunity
of an immediate appeal from man's cruelty to God's justice. STEPHEN
JOSEPH MEANY.

From "Legality of Arrest."

* * * * *

Do you ask me our duty as scholars? Gentlemen, thought, which the
scholar represents, is life and liberty. There is no intellectual or
moral life without liberty. Therefore, as a man must breathe and see
before he can study, the scholar must have liberty first of all; and as
the American scholar is a man and has a voice in his own government, so
his interest in political affairs must precede all others. He must build
his house before he can live in it. He must be a perpetual inspiration
of freedom in politics. He must recognize that the intelligent exercise
of political rights, which is a privilege in a monarchy, is a duty in a
republic If it clash with his case, his retirement, his taste, his
study, let it clash, but let him do his duty. The course of events is
incessant, and when the good deed is slighted, the bad deed is done.
GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS.