The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921Various
History
The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921
Various
African Americans -- Periodicals
In 1844, there was established a rival newspaper, _l'Esprit Public_,
to combat the policies of Remy Ollier. It was edited by Mr. Bruils,
who had been educated in Europe as a lawyer. He began by finding fault
with the style and grammatical form of Ollier's writing, but it is
said that the subject-matter of his editorials could be rarely
attacked. Ollier's writings were always hasty and he rarely took the
time to polish them, while Bruil's style was more smooth and uniform.
Ollier's style, however, was easy and original. He replied
effectively to the invective of his enemies in prose and in verse. He
seems to have had no difficulty in the composition of his sentences
nor did he take the pains which would seem to be necessary for the
average man to acquire the finished journalistic style. His motto was
as he wrote a page "une feuille lue aujourd'hui, oubliee demain."
Therefore, he gave his copies to the compositors without rereading
them. Concerning the correctness of his writings, his biographer
writes: "Like Carlyle, Shelly, Bossuet, Mirabeau and Moliere, the
editor of _La Sentinelle_ perpetrated many a small sin against the
rules of grammar and certainly paid but a halting attention to the
nice distinctions of punctuation. He very often did not know where to
end a paragraph and begin another. On the whole, he is happily not
obscure." His main effort was to state his idea and when he had made
his statement, he was not as careful as he should have been regarding
the construction of the statement. He consoled himself with the words,
"Grammar is of man; the idea is of God."
His enemies, however, could not say that he was trying to overthrow
the empire, for he was merely struggling for the liberty guaranteed by
the empire. "In all the British Empire," said he, "there are no
subjects more loyal than we. We are English today, we are not a
conquered people, we are English people." He was convinced that if
England would give the rights of Englishmen to the Mauritians, she
would find them "as devoted as any children she could count in her
bosom." He added, however, "We belong to England. Why do we not
possess the institutions of England? If she wishes to make us love our
nationality, to endow our island with that which makes for the glory
of our mother-country; this, we shall not be able to know or
appreciate if we are strangers to all that which makes it cherish its
children and respect its people! At the sight of our institutions, in
the presence of the happenings in Mauritius, advancements ruined,
individual liberty violated, human life despised, one cannot believe
that we belong to an English administration, and that we are a part
of the most democratic people in the world."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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