--Tyranny, Past and Present.' All the doleful stories of
prisoners of earlier or later ages, in the Bastile, including much
sentimental balderdash, are drawled out by a very stupid and would-be
effective writer, for the purpose of proving that the imprisonment of
political offenders and captives by the North is precisely on a par with
that of 'Bastiling' them, and that Abraham Lincoln is only a revival of
the worst kings of France in an American form. We of the North have,
according to this writer, 'reached the goal of despotism at a single
leap. In a few months the government has achieved ETERNAL INFAMY.' We
commend to the reader the following superbly Southern conclusion:

'With all these evils comes the inevitable Bastile. It is an
inseparable part of the system. A philosophical Cuvier, from one
act or condition of tyranny, will supply the rest of the organism.
Wherever despotism exists, we look for the Bastile as naturally as
we do for the character of a robber in an Italian story. Like the
ponderous step of the statue of the commander in the _Don Juan_ of
Moliere, its approach is audible above civil commotion, above the
shrieks of frenzied orators, the howlings of a demoralized clergy,
and the sound of battle. It brings with it the destruction of civil
liberty, and darkens all the perspective.'

To us, to whom the approach of despotism with all its horrors is not
quite so apparent as the heavy footfall 'in the _Don Juan_ of Moliere,'
this all sounds as if Dixie would very much like to have the little
privilege of keeping all the prisoners to itself. Nothing is said, by
the way, of Southern Bastiles--of tobacco-factories, in which mere boys
are allowed to die of wounds in utter solitude, to which officers come
for the purpose of spitting upon and kicking the 'Yanks,' and where
sentinels in wanton fiendishness were allowed to daily shoot through the
windows at those within. No word is spoken of officers thrown into a
common dungeon with negroes and thieves, nor is there any allusion to
the ingenious system of keeping Northern prisoners as long as possible,
so that they may die and thereby diminish the numbers of the enemy, in
accordance with the Southern plan of Fitzhugh, already cited, as 'our
defensive policy of exhausting _in detail_ the superior numbers of the
invading North.'

'Article III.' gives us a rehash of the views of Dr. Cartwright on 'The
Serpent, the