Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 65707-h.htm or 65707-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/65707/65707-h/65707-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/65707/65707-h.zip) Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/crimeofcasteinou00dave [Illustration: ABRAHAM LINCOLN. A Man of the People, who Loved and Served the People.] THE CRIME OF CASTE IN OUR COUNTRY Americans Enforce Equality No Sham Aristocracy of Wealth Permitted by the People Lesson of 1892 Taught Imitators of English Aristocracy History of the Power of People Re-Told Records for Three Thousand Years Searched for Examples Bullets, 1861--Ballots, 1892 by BENJAMIN R. DAVENPORT Philadelphia: Keystone Publishing Co. 1893 Copyright by Joseph W. Morton, Jr. 1892 THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO ALL AMERICAN CITIZENS, WHO BELIEVE THAT PATRIOTISM, HONESTY, VIRTUE, AND MERIT ALONE CONSTITUTE INEQUALITY IN MANKIND; WHO OBJECT TO AND RESENT ARROGANCE AND PRESUMPTION UPON THE PART OF THE POSSESSORS OF WEALTH AND TO THOSE TO WHOM “CASTE” AND FOREIGN MANNERISMS ARE OBNOXIOUS. THE AUTHOR. _DEFINITION OF “CASTE.”_ _The word “Caste,” we derive from a Portuguese word, which means “a race;” the Portuguese being the early voyagers to the East Indies, where they found the distinction of classes of society established under the Brahminical regime of India. Thence it came to be applied as a term of distinction of society in other countries. There were four castes in India: 1, the Priests; 2, military; 3, merchants; 4, the servile classes._ _Members of the lowest caste were forbidden to marry those of the upper. Children of such unions were outcasts and irredeemably base; they could not accumulate property, nor change or improve their conditions. Along with many other senseless and inconvenient rules for the conduct of the different castes, were such as those forbidding members of different castes from using the same springs or running streams, sitting at the same table, eating with the same utensils, or preparing food in the same vessels. It was contamination for those of the first class to even mingle in the public highway with those who were of the lower castes. For convenience, and in the interest of the commercial prosperity of India, the British, after much exertion, have been able to eradicate many of these absurd distinctions, and the habits that resulted therefrom._ _The attempt to create class distinctions in Free America, upon the basis of wealth or assumed social superiority, is a crime, and as such will be punished by the Common People._ INDEX. PAGE. INTRODUCTION 11 CHAPTER I. Vox Populi, Vox Dei 33 CHAPTER II.