On a previous
occasion, the distinguished senator from Kentucky made a similar remark:
'An ungracious task, but the nation demands it!' Sir, this demand of the
nation,--this plea of STATE NECESSITY,--let me tell you, gentlemen, is as
old as the history of wrong and oppression. It has been the standing
plea, the never-failing resort of despotism.
"The great Julius found it a convenient plea when he restored the dignity
of the Roman Senate, but destroyed its independence. It gave countenance
to and justified all the atrocities of the Inquisition in Spain. It
forced out the stifled groans that issued from the Black Hole of
Calcutta. It was written in tears upon the Bridge of Sighs in Venice,
and pointed to those dark recesses upon whose gloomy thresholds there was
never seen a returning footprint.
"It was the plea of the austere and ambitious Strafford, in the days of
Charles I. It filled the Bastile of France, and lent its sanction to the
terrible atrocities perpetrated there. It was this plea that snatched
the mild, eloquent, and patriotic Camillo Desmoulins from his young and
beautiful wife, and hurried him to the guillotine with thousands of
others equally unoffending and innocent.
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