who will keep the original carefully filed away in his own well-stocked department.  The sheriff will bid his prisoner good morning! having reminded the gaoler what good care it was desirable to take of his guest; and, extending his hand and shaking that of Marston warmly, takes his departure, whilst our gaoler leads Marston into an almost empty cell, where he hopes he will find things comfortable, and leaves him to contemplate upon the fallen fruit of poverty.  “Come to this, at last!” said Marston, entering the cavern-like place.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

VENDERS OF HUMAN PROPERTY ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ITS MENTAL

CAPRICES.

Reader! be patient with us, for our task is complex and tedious.  We have but one great object in view-that of showing a large number of persons in the south, now held as slaves, who are by the laws of the land, as well as the laws of nature, entitled to their freedom.  These people, for whom, in the name of justice and every offspring of human right, we plead, were consigned to the bondage they now endure through the unrighteous act of one whose name (instead of being execrated by a nation jealous of its honour), a singular species of southern historian has attempted to enshrine with fame.  Posterity, ignorant of his character, will find his name clothed with a paragon’s armour, while respecting the writer who so cleverly with a pen obliterated his crimes.  We have only feelings of pity for the historian who discards truth thus to pollute paper with his kindness; such debts due to friendship are badly paid at the shrine of falsehood.  No such debts do we owe; we shall perform our duty fearlessly, avoiding dramatic effect, or aught else that may tend to improperly excite the feelings of the benevolent.  No one better knows the defects of our social system-no one feels more forcibly that much to be lamented fact of there being no human law extant not liable to be evaded or weakened by the intrigues of designing men;—­we know of no power reposed in man the administration of which is not susceptible of abuse, or being turned to means of oppression:  how much more exposed, then, must all these functions be where slavery in its popular sway rides triumphant over the common law of the land.  Divine laws are with impunity disregarded and abused by anointed teachers of divinity.  Peculation, in sumptuous garb, and with modern appliances, finds itself modestly-perhaps unconsciously-gathering dross at the sacred altar.  How saint-like in semblance, and how unconscious of wrong, are ye bishops (holy ones, scarce of earth, in holy lawn) in that land of freedom where the slave’s chains fall ere his foot pads its soil! how calmly resigned the freemen who yield to the necessity of making strong the altar with the sword of state!  How, in the fulness of an expansive soul, these little ones, in lawn so white,