Arrest of children.
--When Lincolnism descrided to the arrest and imprisonment of women, we supposed it had gone as far in its imitations of Bomba as the most ultra advocate of despotism on this continent could desire.
But the arrest of two little children, five and eight years of age, in the city of
Baltimore, for wearing objectionable colors in their dress, goes a bowshot beyond our utmost expectations of the cruelties and absurdities of the new despotism.
The little innocents, unconscious of their crimes, were carried to the station-house, and we suppose discharged upon giving bonds that they would be good little children, and never go out again in any dress except the
Star and Stripes.
We would suggest to Abraham the
Great that he ought to have a special department for the punishment of little children, when they do not appear upon the screet either in a ghastly white, or a solemn blue, or in a pattern of the Stars and ‘"Stripes"’ aforesaid, which should be presided over by
Mrs. Lincoln, who should spank them soundly and put them to bed, where they could cry their little eyes out all night, and not be permitted ever to see their parents till they took the oath of allegiance, acknowledged the consolidation theory of the
American Government to be the only true one, and
Abraham Lincoln to be the most just, benignant and beautiful of human beings.
We have never heard before of any Government, however deepotic, making war upon little children.
There is no better test in the world of a man's kindliness of nature than this.
Even the Devil is said to give a wide berth to little children, and good angels to be always hovering round them.
Is it reserved for this gloomy ogre at
Washington, whose myrmidons at
Baltimore are casting infants into prison, and in
St. Louis have reenacted the Martyrdom of the Innocents, to surpass even the Devil in the hardness and malignity of his heart?
If this unheard of fiend dies in a peaceful bed, it will only be because earth has no punishment proportioned to his crimes.
