The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
History
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
The danger is now over, and we find it hard to make real to our
imagination the terrors of a mob such as swarms out of the dens of
Liverpool and London. We know well enough in this country what Irish
mobs are: the Old Country exports them to us in pieces, ready to put
together on arriving, as we send houses to California. Ireland is the
country of shillalahs and broken crowns, of Donnybrook fairs, where men
with whiskey in their heads settle their feuds or work off their
sprightliness with the arms of Nature, sometimes aided by the least
dangerous of weapons. But England is the land of prize-fights, of
scientific brutality, which has flourished under the patronage of her
hereditary legislators and other "Corinthian" supporters. The pugilistic
dynasty came in with the House of Brunswick, and has held divided empire
with it ever since. The Briton who claims Chatham's language as his
mother-tongue may appropriate the dialect of the ring as far more truly
indigenous than the German-French of his every-day discourse. Of the
three Burkes whose names are historical, the orator is known to but a
few hundred thousands. The prize-fighter, with his interesting personal
infirmity, is the common property of the millions, and would have headed
the list in celebrity, but for that other of the name who added a new
invention to the arts of industry and enriched the English language with
a term which bids fair to outlive the reputation of his illustrious
namesake. Around the professors and heroes of the art of personal
violence are collected the practitioners of various callings less
dignified by the manly qualities they demand. The Gangs of Three that
waylay the solitary pedestrian,--the Choker in the middle, next the
victim who is to be strangled and cleaned out,--the larger guilds of
Hustlers who bonnet a man and beat his breath out of him and empty his
pockets before he knows what is the matter with him,--the Burglars, with
their "jimmies" in their pockets,--the fighting robbers, with their
brass knuckles,--the whole set in a vast thief-constituency, thick as
rats in sewers,--these were the disputants whom the emissaries of the
Slave Power called upon to refute the arguments of the Brooklyn
clergyman.
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