Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVI., December, 1880.Various
History
Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVI., December, 1880.
Various
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Science -- Periodicals
The anomalous condition of a people legally ranking as animals, and not
human beings, would naturally produce unpleasant consequences when they
are criminally the aggressors. When they steal or kill they cannot be
tried, sent to jail or hung as if they were human in the eye of the law.
The ruler of each enclosure is granted arbitrary power in such cases to
punish at his discretion. He is judge, jury, and often executioner. He
has a control over the lives of these people more absolute than that of
any Christian monarch over his subjects. If he thinks proper to shoot
the offender, he can call upon the regular army of the country to
sustain him. If the individual offender escapes, the whole of the
inmates of the enclosure are held responsible, and men, women and
children are slaughtered by wholesale and without mercy.
My readers understand my little fable by this time. It is no fable, but
a disgraceful truth.
The government under which a people--many of whom are educated,
enlightened Christian gentlemen--are denied the legal rights of human
beings and all protection of law is not the absolute despotism of Siara
or Russia, but the United States, the republic which proclaims itself
the refuge for the oppressed of all nations--the one spot on earth where
every man is entitled alike to life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness. The only people in the world to whom it denies these rights
are not its quondam slaves, not pagans, not runaway convicts, not the
offscourings of any nation however degraded, but the original owners of
the country.
The legal disability under which the Indian is held is as much of an
outrage on human rights, and as bald a contradiction of the doctrines on
which our republic is based, as negro slavery was.
R.H.D.
A LITTLE IRELAND IN AMERICA.
The humorous side of life was never more vividly brought before me than
while living a few years ago in the vicinity of an Irish settlement in
one of the suburbs of New York. What we call "characters" were to be
found in every cottage--the commonplace was the exception. Indeed, I do
not remember that it existed at all in "The Lane," as this locality was
called.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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