Page:Julian Niemcewicz - Notes of my Captivity in Russia.djvu/214

186 vengeance, and deprived man of liberty, his most valuable blessing, should he still tyrannize over him, and destroy him in his prison slowly inch by inch? Has he not sufficiently punished by confinement, and by being deprived of the means of disturbing the community, or provoking the vengeance of the tyrant? Has he not done enough for his own security? If the prisoner is guilty, is it by torment that he can be corrected? Ah! how little these despots know human nature! It is not by exasperating man that he can be reformed. The tenderness of compassion, the voice of friendship and mildness; these are the means to bring man back to the path of virtue, from which he has had the misfortune to be led astray. But how much more odious those cruelties become when he who exercises them can appeal neither to civil nor international law in the indictment of his victim. Those famous state reasons, the argument so powerful by which Samoilow and his like cut short all the remonstances that were made to them, could neither justify the oppression that we experienced, nor even, considering