Now, how is it?  What is the regimen of this jail-prison and how is it provided?  We will say nothing of that arduous duty which the jailer performs for his small sum; nor the report that the sheriff’s office is worth fourteen thousand dollars a year:  these things are too well established.  But the law provides thirty cents a day for the prisoner’s maintenance, which shall be received by the sheriff, who is to procure one pound of good bread, and one pound of good beef per day for each man.  Now this provision is capable of a very elastic construction.  The poor criminal is given a loaf of bad bread, costing about three cents, and a pound of meat, the most unwholesome and sickly in its appearance, costing five cents.  Allowing a margin, however, and we may say the incumbent has a very nice profit of from eighteen to twenty cents per day on each prisoner.  But, as no provision is made against the possibility of the criminal eating his meat raw, he is very delicately forced to an alternative which has another profitable issue for the sheriff; that of taking a pint of diluted water, very improperly called soup.  Thus is carried out that ancient law of England which even she is now ashamed to own.  Our feelings are naturally roused against the perpetration of such abuses upon suffering humanity.  We struggle between a wish to speak well of her whose power it is to practise them, and an imperative duty that commands us to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves.

These things could not exist if the public mind was properly enlightened.  It is unnecessary to spend many words in exposing such palpable abuses, or to trace the cause of their existence and continuance.  One cause of this is the wilful blindness and silly gasconade of some of those who lead and form public opinion.  With South Carolinians, nothing is done in South Carolina that is not greater than ever was done in the United States-no battles were ever fought that South Carolina did not win-no statesman was ever equal to Mr. Calhoun-no confederacy would be equal to the Southern, with South Carolina at its head-no political doctrines contain so much vital element as secession, and no society in the Union is equal to South Carolina for caste and elegance-not excepting the worthy and learned aristocracy of Boston.

A will to do as it pleases and act as it pleases, without national restraint, is the great drawback under which South Carolina sends forth her groaning tale of political distress.  Let her look upon her dubious glory in its proper light-let her observe the rights of others, and found her acts in justice!—­annihilate her grasping spirit, and she will find a power adequate to her own preservation.  She can then show to the world that she gives encouragement to the masses, and is determined to persevere in that moderate and forbearing policy which creates its own protection, merits admiration abroad, instead of rebuke, and which needs no gorgeous military display to marshal peace at the point of the bayonet.