The Struggle for Imperial Unity: Recollections & ExperiencesDenison, George T. (George Taylor)
History
The Struggle for Imperial Unity: Recollections & Experiences
Denison, George T. (George Taylor)
Canada -- History -- 1867-1914
The remarks about the copyright law are really too funny. The professor
says that the anti-British feeling in the States is dying out, "and
its death will be hastened by the International Copyright Law, because
hitherto the unfair competition to which American writers were exposed
with pirated English works has helped to embitter them against
England." Their hatred is not against their own countrymen, who, with
the consent of the nation, have pirated English books, and sold them
in competition against their native writings, but it is vented against
the poor, innocent English author, whose property has been taken from
him, much against his will and to his great loss. There is not a man in
all the United States who would imagine so mean an idea. Space will not
admit of answering one-half the misrepresentations and false arguments
in this lecture on "Jingoism." The utter indifference to facts and
to the teachings of history, when they do not aid his arguments,
gives this lecturer an advantage from which a more scrupulous writer
is debarred. Take for instance his reference to the calmness and
freedom in the States during the civil war. His statement that "civil
law prevailed, personal liberty was enjoyed, the press was free, and
criticised without reserve the acts of the Government and the conduct
of the war" seems strange to any who remember the history of the time
when Seward's "little bell" could put any citizen in the northern
states in prison without warrant or trial; when Fort Lafayette in New
York harbour, the old capitol at Washington, Fort McHenry at Baltimore,
and Fort Warren at Boston were filled to overflowing with political
prisoners; when newspapers were suspended and editors imprisoned, when
Clement Vallandigham, one of the foremost men in the United States,
was imprisoned and then banished for criticising the policy of the
Government.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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