ice, and was cheerfully made. I thought myself allied to
the army of martyrs and confessors; I applauded my fortitude and
self-denial; and I pleased myself with the idea, that I had the power,
though I hoped never to employ it, by an unrelenting display of my
resources, to put an end at once to my sufferings and persecutions.

And this at last was the justice of mankind! A man, under certain
circumstances, shall not be heard in the detection of a crime, because
he has not been a participator of it! The story of a flagitious murder
shall be listened to with indifference, while an innocent man is hunted,
like a wild beast, to the furthest corners of the earth! Six thousand a
year shall protect a man from accusation; and the validity of an
impeachment shall be superseded, because the author of it is a servant!

I was conducted back to the very prison from which a few months before I
had made my escape. With a bursting heart I entered those walls,
compelled to feel that all my more than Herculean labours served for my
own torture, and for no other end. Since my escape from prison I had
acquired some knowledge of the world; I had learned by bitter
experience, by how many links society had a hold upon me, and how
closely the snares of despotism beset me. I no longer beheld the world,
as my youthful fancy had once induced me to do, as a scene in which to
hide or to appear, and to exhibit the freaks of a wanton vivacity. I saw
my whole species as ready, in one mode or other, to be made the
instruments of the tyrant. Hope died away in the bottom of my heart.
Shut up for the first night in my dungeon, I was seized at intervals
with temporary frenzy. From time to time, I rent the universal silence
with the roarings of unsupportable despair. But this was a transient
distraction. I soon returned to the sober recollection of myself and my
miseries.

My prospects were more gloomy, and my situation apparently more
irremediable, than ever. I was exposed again, if that were of any
account, to the insolence and tyranny that are uniformly exercised
within those walls. Why should I repeat the loathsome tale of all that
was endured by me, and is endured by every man who is unhappy enough to
fall under the government of these consecrated ministers of national
jurisprudence? The sufferings I had already experienced, my anxieties,
my flight, the perpetual expectation of being discovered, worse than the
discovery itself, would perhaps have bee