OCR Text |
Show "When I have heard the statements made that we were cruel in the conduct con-duct of that war, I have thought, perhaps, per-haps, the partisan was speaking. But when I have read, as I have within the past forty-eight hours, that a general wearing the uniform of the army of the United States, one who stands under the shadow of our army, issues orders not to conciliate a province, but to leave it a howling wilderness and to kill all above 10 years old, then it seems to me that humanity must have marchey backward for eighteen centuries cen-turies and that Herod again appears. "I have read of Timour the Tartar, I have read of Achilles, I have read of the Saracen scourge, but I thank God that since the tragic scene on Calvary it has taken eighteen centuries to produce a Smith. "I have read of the water cure. Can any man whose blood bounds in his pulses, any man who has read his Bible or who has been reared at the knee of a Christian woman, justify the perpetration perpe-tration of such cruelties upon another man who wears the e-iiIsp nnrt ih age of his Creator? And yet we heard this man attempting to justify acts by which men are pumped so full of water as nearly to drown them and then brought back to life by thumping them over the stomach with the butts of muskets. That is not civilization, that is not Christianizing the world. I am thankful that these are sporadic cases. Against that, as a man who belongs, I hope, not alone to the Republican ranks, but to the whole brotherhood of man the wide world around, I want the members of this house, on this side of the chamber and that, to voice their protest against all such measures." (Applause.) Representative Sibley (Rep.) of Pennsylvania. Athough England' has pursued the policy of coercion in Ireland for several sev-eral hundred years and it has proved a miserable failure the majority of the upper and middle class of Englishmen still believe that the only wise course to pursue towards Ireland is oppression. oppres-sion. If the Jrish meet together and talk about their abuses at the hands of the English landlords and the English government the middle class Englishman English-man says "break up their meetings;" if the Irish newspaper encourages boycotting, boy-cotting, the Englishman says, "suppress "sup-press it;" if the imprisonment of an Irishman for political offense makes hfs cause the more popular, the Englishman Eng-lishman says, "Keep him in Jail longer." long-er." Never by any chance can it occur to the Englishman that the abuses which have kept Ireland in a chronic state of rebellion, passive or active, should be corrected, is the way the Chicago Tribune puts it. The London Times is a typical exponent ex-ponent of the views of the great ma jority of Englishmen on the Irish question. It is today urging remedies I identical In spirit with those which it suggested 100 years ago. The spirit of the remedies is force. It 5s a thing to marvel at that the Times and its readers read-ers still believe they are right on the Irish question, although events have given the lie to the creed they profess even since the days of Queen Elizabeth. Eliza-beth. In a recent edition of the Times appeared ap-peared a six column article on the United Irish Land league, and from this article the Tribune today makes quotations. |