Colonization and Christianity: A popular history of the treatment of the natives by the; Europeans in all their coloniesHowitt, William
History
Colonization and Christianity: A popular history of the treatment of the natives by the; Europeans in all their colonies
Howitt, William
Indians, Treatment of; Indigenous peoples
The barbarities and desperate outrages of the so-called Christian
race, throughout every region of the world, and upon every people
that they have been able to subdue, are not to be paralleled by those
of any other race, however fierce, however untaught, and however
reckless of mercy and of shame, in any age of the earth. Is it fit
that this horrible blending of the names of Christianity and outrage
should continue? Yet it does continue, and must continue, till the
genuine spirit of Christianity in this kingdom shall arouse itself,
and determine that these villanies shall cease, or they who perpetrate
them shall be stripped of the honoured name of—Christian! If foul
deeds are to be done, let them be done in their own foul name; and
let robbery of lands, seizure of cattle, violence committed on the
liberties or the lives of men, be branded as the deeds of devils
and not of Christians. The spirit of Christianity, in the shape of
missions, and in the teaching and beneficent acts of the missionaries,
is now sensibly, in many countries, undoing the evil which wolves in
the sheep’s clothing of the Christian name had before done. And of
late another glorious symptom of the growth of this divine spirit has
shown itself, in the strong feeling exhibited in this country towards
the natives of our colonies. To fan that genuine flame of love, is the
object of this work. To comprehend the full extent of atrocities done
in the Christian name, we must look the whole wide evil sternly in the
face. We must not suffer ourselves to aim merely at the redress of this
or that grievance; but, gathering all the scattered rays of aboriginal
oppression into one burning focus, and thus enabling ourselves to feel
its entire force, we shall be less than Englishmen and Christians if we
do not stamp the whole system of colonial usage towards the natives,
with that general and indignant odium which must demolish it at once
and for ever.
CHAPTER II.
THE DISCOVERY OF THE NEW WORLD.
The spoilers are come upon all high places through the
wilderness.—_Jeremiah_ xii. 12.
Forth rush the fiends as with the torrent’s sweep,
And deeds are done that make the angels weep.—_Rogers._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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