. I might have defended myself in a calmer, more
dignified and more effectual manner. As it is, however, I shall make no
apology and I still think, that a month's imprisonment in the Tombs or a
severe castigation of a tangible description last winter would have
conferred a lasting moral benefit on certain persons in that
institution. In making this remark, I by no means intend to throw out
any menace, nor would I myself like the office of Knout-master-general
either to his imperial majesty at St. Petersburgh, or to his excellency
the Governor, or to the President of the United States; but I refer
simply to the moral good that would undoubtedly have accrued to the
souls of certain students and professors at the University during the
last winter from a dose or two of the "good old English discipline." As
to the infamous and unearthly noises that worried and distracted me for
at least six months, the ruin of my health and the entire suspension of
my studies were too grave a result to be easily overlooked or forgotten,
and the ignoble and bigoted clique at the bottom of that brutal
terrorism have certainly not failed to leave a lasting impression of
their power on my mind. No denial or assurance to the contrary will ever
invalidate the evidence of my senses. What I saw with my own eyes, and
heard with my own ears at the time I complained, is as true as are the
phenomena of my present experience. The guillotine alone was wanting to
cap the climax of those high-handed proceedings. It was a repetition of
the same narrow vandalism which in 1848 exiled me out of the city, and
in 1849 made me leave America in disgust. While I therefore disclaim
cherishing or ever having cherished the remotest desire to molest the
peace or safety of any member of the faculty--the fear of corporal
punishment betrays a bad conscience on the part of my adversaries and is
a virtual admission of their guilt, or else it is a fiction invented to
patch up a hopeless case;--I would at the same time assure all those
concerned in this business, that I am not an advocate of nonresistance
or of tame submission to such a gross injustice, and that in case of
need I can wield a pen to defend my rights before an intelligent public,
the opinion of which in matters of this kind, in America particularly,
is after all the last and highest instance of appeal.

The case is therefore perfectly plain. I deny having ever given any just
cause of apprehension to any man in th