Miscellaneous Back Matter [pp. 472A-RD06]

THE BASTILE.
commerce would be tenfold greater than ours to retaliate. We could not extricate our country from this unequal condition, with such an enemy, unless
we at once departed from our present peaceful policy and became a great
naval power. Though the naval superiority would be less, the greater extent
and more exposed condition of our widespread commerce would give any of
them a like advantage over us. The proposition to enter into engagments
to forego resort to privateers, in case this country should be forced into war
with a great naval power, is not entitled to more favorable consideration
than would be a proposition not to accept the services of volunteers for
operations on land. When the honor or the rilghts of our country compel
it to assume a hostile attitude, it confidently relies on the patriotism of its
citizens, not ordinarily devoted to the military profession, to augment tihe
army and navy so as to make them fully adequate to the emergency which
calls them into action. The proposal to surrender the rights of privateering
is professedly founded on the principle that private property of unoffending
noncombatants, though enemies, should be exempt fiom the ravages of war;
but the proposed surrender goes but little way in carrying out that principle, which equally requires that such private propl)erty should not be seized
or molested by national ships of war. Should the leading powers of Europe
concur in proposing, as a rule of international law, to exempt private property on the ocean fonio seizure by public armed cruisers as well as by privateers, the United States will readily meet them upon that broad ground."
Ilere we see that, so late as 1854, our Government, through
its three highest officials, IPresident Pierce, Mr. Buchanan, our
Minister to Engzland, and Air. Marcy, Secretary of State, all
Noortlhern men, ably maintained the propriety and policy of
privateering. In our situation, its policy is more obvious thani)
under the old Union-for we have no navy to war upon the
coiimmerce of otlhers, and no merchant marine to be warred on
by them.
ART. II.-THE BASTILE.-TYRANNY, PAST AND PRESENT.
"En goneral, en France toutes les places fortes penvent a volont~' devenir autant
de bastilles; il ii'y a pas unde ces remnparts dleves en apparence contre les ennemis
de l1ietat, dolt un caprice ininist6riel ne puisse at chaque instant faire le tombeau de
ses enfants."-LI-cGIET, sJlcoircs sur la lJistille.
Since the arrest of suspected persons in the United States,
and their imprisonment in Fortress Monroe, Fort Lafayette.
and elsewhere has become an every-day event, the mind nalurally reverts to the Bastile. Its name is now of frequent
recurrence. Perhaps there is none other which is so odious to
freemen; none which is so full of sorrowful memories; none
which recalls so vividly the ideas of bodily and mental suffering.
It wras built in the reign of Charles V, who was surnamed
the Wise. hlis contemporaries do not inform us whether the
erection of the Bastile contributed in any manner to confer on
him this appellation. But he was indebted for it, most likely,
for his taste for reading-a thing very unusual in a king then, if'
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