It is _man_—but a handful of his mother earth—that wrongs her kind bosom, and says to his brother, stand aside, the heritage is mine—we are not equals in birth-right. I claim by pre-emption a supremacy which makes me thy master. The very purple I wear, when contrasted with the faded russet of thy poor garb, makes me thy lord. The jeweled rings of these fingers clasp thy neck, and make thee bondsman. Thou shalt go at my bidding and come at my call. Thou shalt toil until thy weary bones crack, to pamper to my luxurious desires! Thou shalt not even _think_ but at thy peril! By the high authority of what is called LAW, thou art enslaved! By this right of _law_, how many wrongs are done, which the cold eye of day gazes on in silence, whilst hearts wrung with anguish weep on unpitied. This strong arm, when its fist clutches dollars, how terrible is it in its willingness to crush and overwhelm the unsheltered, the unbefriended, the poor, unpitied victim. But if a breast sparkling with diamonds interposes, how palsied and feeble becomes the blow—_the justice, the equity of the law_, how considerate and kind! Yet law, according to the lawgiver, “is the perfection of reason,” which must account, I suppose, for the difficulty which the learned counsel experiences in expounding it to an “intelligent jury.” The poor thief therefore remains in profound ignorance of the equity of the decision, by which he is consigned to three years of penitence is solitary confinement, while his gayer brother in crime dashes through the streets with his carriage and scarlet housings, basking in the worship of wondering and approving eyes, _his_ penalty for having started a bank, _and stopped it_, by which thousands of poor men lost the dollars which paid for the equipage, and furnished the viands for his pampered appetite, the meanest of which would have driven starvation from their doors. He is beyond the law. Let an hundred operatives agree in thinking that the wretched pittance for their daily labor will not suffice to feed the mouths of a half dozen famishing children, the law has its kind and protecting eye upon them at once—and if they _dare_ express so infamous a sentiment, it immediately takes care of them as conspirators. But the masters of an hundred mills may openly avow their determination to close their doors and send starvation into a whole village, the law instantly closes its watchful eye, and dozes over the scene, deeming it right and proper that capital should be indulged in its absurdities.