'Tis better these should die as foes to laws,
Than those who fight in freedom's righteous cause.
The foes of man the laws, at least, should bind ;---
And friends (80) to kings, are foes to all mankind;
Nay, friends to kings, are traitors to the state,
And well deserve a nation's utmost hate.

The ills of anarchy are small to those,
Which stupid kings on abject slaves impose.
Though in the first some few perhaps may fall,
The last extends its dreadful woes to all. s
With anarchs, struggling till our latest breath,
Hope gently bears us to a single death :

But thraldom brings a thousand deaths to man,
Without one hope to cheer life's gloomy span.
In this, our woes are not so quickly pass'd ;
We live to suffer, yet must die at fast
More men are lost within a monarch's reign,
Than what the vilest anarchies (81) have slain.
Poisons and dungeons, fire and torturing steel.
Racks, saws and gibbits, and the groaning wheel,
Are all employ'd, when kings and princes reign,
Till mountains rise with heaps of mangl'd slain.
This list, though large, is still the smaller part
Of engines us'd to please the tyrant's heart;
And, by the most abhor'd, inhuman skill,
Inflict death's pangs, and yet refuse to kill
Until the fiends, who yawn on golden thrones,
Have heard their music in long sighs and groans,
Have laugh'd at agony's convulsive throes;
And rack'd the mind, by sporting with its woes;

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Till torture, led through ev'ry nerve by art,
Is forc'd, at last, to tear the vital part:
Then souls, unfetter'd, quit their mortal clay;
And kings suspend it near the public way.
O shameful sight! but kings delight to see
Men falling peacemeal (82) from the pale or tree
For thus insatiate, they pursue t
their
game;
And wreak their malice on the lifeless frame.
But then their arts, and brutal rage are vain,
In spite of monarchs death will limit pain.
Torture !!!

The virtuous madden even at the name!

And rise and sink with sorrow, rage and shame!
But at the view, all feeling men would rave,
Weep, swell, and stamp, and curse the royal knave
For who could calmly view the horrid deed,
And on the sight like royal despots feed!
He is not man! for men within the view
Of torture, weep, and curse its authors too.
To think that man will make himself a beast!
And, like a fiend, on human torments feast!
'Tis so disgustful, men of human sense
Invoke their God to send such monsters hence.
When men shall forfeit their existence here
Then let them die, but not by means severe :
For that's presumption in the eyes of God;
A base attempt to seize his mighty rod.
As God knows best what men's offences are,
Let death arrest, and send for trial there,
Where stricter justice will to all be giv'n,

And those, now tortur'd, plac'd perhaps in heav'n.
If God, who sees and knows the human heart,
Can equal pains to equal crimes, impart,
Then how unjust for erring man to try

To torture those, whom they have doom'd to die.
Where pain is useless, there at least, be kind :
Revenge is mean, and shows a brutal mind.

No man returns when once depriv’d of breath,
Why torture, therefore, at the hour of death?
By monarchs robb'd of all their gain and wealth,
The poor are forc'd to live by crimes or stealth:
And to suppress them, kings, although the cause,
Make use of racks in spite of reason's laws,

But milder death would crimes and wrongs suppress
If useless kings did not augment distress.

But torture us'd some secret plots to find,

Is most degrading to the human kind.
Tis then humanity grows sick of life,
Condemns the world, and longs to leave its strife.
What! torture men to ascertain offence,

O where was pity, where was common sense?
To hang a man before his guilt is known,
Is quite unjust, all men of sense must own.
But first to rack, and then enquire for crimes,

Is worse than death; 'tis death ten thousand times.
A man is punish'd till deprived of sense;

And then is ask'd now what is your offence?

The guiltless man, through pain, would scream O yes Without reflection, or to end distress.

And what must follow? why the royal pest.

Condemns the man because his tongue confess'd!
And not because his guilt or crimes were prov'd:
For guilty men are not so quickly mov'd.

The nicer sense of honest men can feel
The smallest inroads of the dreadful steel.
Their tender nerves are form'd of finer mould;
Too fine to wrong for titles, fame or gold.
But nerves, too nice to hurt one human sense,
Feel more acutely, when their pains commence :
Hence hardy rogues, with nerves as hard as steel,
May bear the rack, and yet no crimes reveal :
While blameless men, who never thought of wrong
Could not endure such dreadful tortures long;
Nor bear those racks, which rend the nerves apart,
And force confessions from the honest heart.
And, therefore, none except the worst survive,
when try'd by means, which cruel kings contrive.
And where kings rule, (83) the rack becomes the lot
Of men accus'd of any crime or plot.

There, man fears man, and daily dreads the worst
Of all the pains with which the world is curs'd :
A breath destroys; for there, accuse the just,
And racks will tear, and grind their limbs to dust:
Until they own what none perhaps had done :
And if they should, new tortures are begun.
For thus the men, whom monarchs doom to die
Must twice at least, in dreadful tortures lie.
'Tis there a crime to have a nerve of sense,
Which can't bear torture, nor commit offence :
But such perhaps are in the tyrant's way,

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And yet withhold some mean excuse to slay : 'Till racks, by tearing all the joints apart,

Wring false confessions (84) from the aching heart.
Thus are the woes, which plague this painful life
Increas'd by monarchs, and by regal strife.

These fools forget that they have forms of clay;
And that such forms will quickly pass away :
And that renascent bodies rise again,
Through endless changes sharing equal pain.
For matter here for ever fluctuates

Through all conditions, places, forms and states.
And hence of ills which animation bears,
Each lump of clay an equal portion shares.
And men have surely very senseless brains,
Whose wrongful deeds increase the sum of pains.
Reduce the ills of this terrestrial state,

No atom's share will thenceforth be so great.
The savage loon, who tortures man to-day,
May die to-morrow in a semblant way.

And those who waste through wicked, wanton lust,
May yet be beggars, crawling through the dust.
Our clay through life must always ebb and flow;
Yet savage blockheads add to human woe.
But if our bodies rise to life again,

The wise will surely not augment our pair..

And, whether souls are punish'd there or here,
He is a fool, who renders life severe.

The smallest reptile, which pervades the dirt
The meanest earthborn thing should not be hurt;
Unless necessity compels to slay,