the present hour, must be sought for in other lands than our own,
where the iron hand of the tyrant, seated upon a throne, cemented with
a thousand years of usurpation and the blood of millions of innocent
victims, presses hard upon the necks of the high and the backs of the
low; we must turn to the dynastic villanies of the house of Orleans or
of Stuart, or that prototype of all that is tyrannical, sordid and
inhuman, the Czar of all the Russias. The "Invisible Empire," with its
"Knights of the White Camelia," was as terrible as the "Empire" which
Marat, Danton and Robespierre made for themselves, with this
difference: the "Knights of the White Camelia" were assassins and
marauders who murdered and terrorized in defiance of all laws, human
or divine, though claiming allegiance to both; while the Frenchmen
regarded themselves as the lawful authority of the land and rejected
utterly the Divine or "higher law." The one murdered men as highwaymen
do, while the other murdered them under the cover of law and in the
name of _Liberty_, in whose name, as Madame Roland exclaimed on the
scaffold of revolutionary vengeance, so many crimes are perpetrated!
The one murdered kings and aristocrats to unshackle the limbs of the
proletariat of France; the other murdered the proletariat of the South
to re-rivet their chains upon the wretched survivors. And each class
of murders proclaimed that it was actuated by the motive of _justice
and humanity_. Liberty was the grand inspiration that steeled the arm
and hardened the heart of each of the avengers!

And thus it has been in all the history of murder and plunder.
Liberty! the People! these are the sacred objects with which tyrants
cloak their usurpations, and which assassins plead in extenuation of
their brazen disregard of life, of virtue, of all that is dear and
sacred to the race. The dagger of Brutus and the sword of Cromwell,
were they not drawn in the name of Liberty--the People? The guillotine