That a Copperhead, who from his own account richly deserves the halter, should have the impudence to publish a complaint of being simply _imprisoned_, is indeed amusing. But could the mass of vindictiveness, sophistry, and vulgarity which these pages contain be simply submitted to impartial and intelligent men, we should have little dread of any great harm resulting from them. Unfortunately this Copperhead poison, with its subtle falsehoods and detestable special pleading, its habeas corpus side-issues and Golden-Circle slanders, is industriously circulated among many who are still frightened by the old bugbear of 'Abolition,' and who, like the majority in all wars whatever, have accustomed themselves to grumble at those who conduct hostilities. Such persons do not reflect that a great crisis requires great measures, and that in a war involving such a tremendous issue as the preservation of the Federal Union and the development of the grandest phase which human progress has ever assumed, we are not to give up everything to our foes because Mr. Mahoney and a few congenial traitors have, justly or unjustly, been kept on crackers and tough beef. When a city burns and it is necessary to blow up houses with gunpowder, it is no time to be talking of actions for trespass. If we had ever had a doubt of the rightfulness of the course which Government has taken in imprisoning Copperheads, it would have been removed on reading this miserable book. A man who holds on one page that every private soldier is to be guided by his own will as regards obeying orders, and on another sneers at our army as demoralized,--who calls himself a friend of the Union, and is yet a sympathizer with the enemies of the Union,--who abuses in the vilest manner our Government and its officers in a crisis like the present, is one who, according to all precedents of justice, should be richly punished under military law, if the civil arm be too weak to grasp him. It was such Democrats as Mahoney, who yelled out indignantly in the beginning at every measure which was taken to protect us against the enemy, who, when they had nearly ruined our cause by their efforts, attributed the results of their treason to the Administration, and who now, changing their cry, instead of clamoring for more vigor against the rebels, boldly hurrah for the rebellion itself. It is strange that they cannot see that they are now bringing themselves out distinctly as tories, and men to be branded in history. Do they suppose that such a revolution as this--a revolution of human rights and free labor against the last great form of tyranny--is going _backward_? Do the events of the last thirty years indicate that Southern aristocracy and Copperhead ignorance and evil are to achieve a final victory over republicanism? Yet it is in this faith, that demagoguism will be stronger than a great principle, that such men as Mahoney write and live.