It cannot have escaped the notice of any one who has seen the treatment of the sick, that the keepers consider them no better than dogs, and are determined that they shall have no peace, sick or well. The iron-hearted discipline of the place is enough to rive the stoutest soul, and crush a heart as hard as marble; and in not a single instance has a prisoner escaped from it, if he has been there three or four years, without a ruinous impression that will go with him to his grave. But by a refinement of torture, which would be patented in the Court of the Inquisition, this mountain of uncalled-for oppression is rolled over, with double weight, on the sinking frame, and fainting heart, and trembling soul of the sick and dying. And to cover all this unearthly and inhuman conduct with a mantle, starred with _mercy_, and serene with _kindness_, the By-Laws are sent up every year to the Legislature, breathing the spirit of heaven, and written with tears of heart-bleeding compassion. Heaven-daring hypocrisy! I appeal to the keepers themselves--to the angels who have hovered over the sick--to the ghosts of Ellis and Burnham, whether there is a single drop of human feeling in the treatment of the sick. Away with the By-Laws as evidence against the declarations I have just made. How often has liberty triumphed in the Statutes of an unhappy country, long after tyranny had fettered every hand and every tongue in the empire. How often has piety remained in the letter of the prayer book and liturgy, years and centuries after the _spirit_ had gone up to heaven, and the snows of human guilt had extinguished the last spark of the altar.