Anti-slavery bugle. [volume] (New-Lisbon, Ohio) 1845-1861, 1856-08-02
From the A. s. Standard.
AN IRISHMAN'S PREFERENCE.


MEssRs. EDIroRs Everybody here asks every
Sody else whether Summer will ever come to us.
TO be sure, the grass is green, the hawthorn is
fading. the cuckoo is gone, the thrush, the black.
bird and the linnet may be heard in the fields, and
those who can buy them may have plenty of goose
berries and cream-which, with sugar, when well
boiled, makes tho delicious dish that my country
man compared himself to when, in his Retaliation,
he said,
"Magnanimous Goldsmith IS a gooseberry fool"
But the weather is cold, the skies are gray, W.
have moro of the North wind than the South wind
and npprehensive people begin to fear that the sea-
sons are about to turn a somersault, that before
long we shall have snow at midsummer and straw
berries at Christmas. "A friend OF mine, who has
lately returned from Australia, declares that we
don't know what fine weather is in this ''cold and
cloudy cline" where the air is never warm, end
where, whenever the skies are particularly clear,
we may regard the phenomenon us a sure sign oil
q tremendous down-pour for several days alter
Then rags are abundant in ireland, poverty is no
rarity, and about once every three or four months
we hear Of an agrarian murder in some part OF The
country, following a dispute about land. We don't
find it easy to make money. If you get 1t, you
must hold it fast; for if it slips from you, it is ten
to one that you never get it back again. Then
you may travel of by sea and land thousands OF
miles, for months or years, with the comfortable
assurance that you have only to fall to when you
return, and make up for lost time. l have been
over and over invited across the Herring Pond by
my hospitable American friends-much as a
neighLOr might ask me TO step in next door. They
little knew how rich and Independent a man must
be here before he can go meandering IN your free
and easy style over the Universe.
Still, with all these disadvantages, | have made
up my mind that, however much l would rejoice
to drop in upon you some day, and read a Standard
wet from the press, | had rather stay here for "A
permanence. don't auy longer envy the position
of a free and Independent American rs such. The
members of our House Of Commons don't stab
Irish waters in the London hotels. If they did,
they would surely be hanged or transported. Nor
d, they walk into the House Of Lords and make
'murderous, brutal, cowardly and treacherous"
onslaughts on Lord Shaftesbury or Lord Brougham.
The recent conduct of tho Southern ruihans at
Washington affords the most satisfactory vindlca-
ton of all that the AbOlitionists have been doing
and saying ever since Mr.. Garrison joined their
ranks. To be sure, the predictions OF the Abc!.'
tionists have had no better luck than most other
prophecies. They have been rejected or despised
until their fuliilment attestcd the truth OF the WIS
dom or the inspiration that dictated them. Ever
since the commencement of their enterprise they
have been regarded rs croakers and birds OF i'll
omen. Swallowed up by selfish interests, and en-
gagged in the blind pursuit of material wealth, the
conduct of the great mass OF the American people.
with all their proud boasts of liberty and intelll-
gence, resembles the cows in a fat pasture, who
care for nothing that goes on around them, proyi-
ded they are undisturbed in their feed. The Abo-
litionists have often been accused of exaggerat:on.
both on your side of the water and ours, and their
statements have been fatty denied or received with
a kind of compassionate, scornful incredulity.-
Since the late events in Washington and Kansas
this accusation can be no longer made, for the viO-
lencc, lawlessness ard cruelty Of the shareholders
lies patent before the world, and they glory in
their shame. Surely, what they have done in the
sight of all they will not abstain from in the pri-
vacy of their plantations.
had n letter lntaly from a friend IF yours and
mine-not one hundred miles from Philadelphia.
lie banters me about STEADY, ~plCddinG, retrogres-
sive Dublin" and tells me that we don't know what
it is to go ahead or to live fast; that in order to
have an idea of progress, | should como oyer to
this sde-that is, your side-and put myself into
the whirl. He gives me this further comfortable
assurance, in case | comply with his invitation -
at (the whirl) would take your breath and lit
YOU off your feet-some of you, | mean, who might
como without previous pre- paratiOn. This is n fast
age and the Yankees are among the fastest OF the
fast Anglo, Saxon race, and this is emphatically
and prominently a fast country" Nut a doubt
of it, my friend, amazingly fast. So fast, that, in
morals, manners, exegesis and philolo,Iy, you arc
leaving the rest of the world in the lurcb. | dom
think I'll go. l would not understand your Ian,
guage. l don't like chivairy IN your sense Of the
word. | might be taken for an Irish waiter by
some member Of Congress, or Mr.. Brooks might
knock me down and call it "a collision" and then
take offence if | called him cowardly. Besides, ]
am told | have small hope" and 1t takes Il huge
development of that organ to make n man worth
anything as an Abolitionist in the United States
Indecd, it is not a sanguine temperament that sus
tains me here but a reliance, that | cannot LEI go,
on the ultimate triumph OF justice and mercy ovei
that thick cloud of sel6shness and prejudice that
obscures the greatness Of the United States, and
delivers them over a prey to the meanest, wicked
est and vilest of mankind. Is there really any
other country in which so much moral and politi
cal p~rofigacy are openly protested and gloried in
without shame? If things 90 on thus unchecked
for a very few years more, where between Canada
and the Gulf Of Mexico, shall an honest man &C
to hi4e us head?
But | have run away from my friends talk, Of
how fast u people you are. 1t reminds me of q
book you may not have seeu-Mrs. Austin's Ger
many from l7G0 to 1Sl4-in which that accom-
plished writer gives, from various German authors
pictures of Social life in Germany fifty or sixty
years ago. so StOp that even we are going at rail
way speed in comparison. l copied a few of them
for your edifcation; and if you like them, they car
go into your fourth page. l confess, when / think
of the Californian members bowie-knife and the
South Carolinian assassin's cane, | feel there il
something soothing, comfortable, kindly and kind
hearted in this old fashioned, pntriarchal, German
still life, that | prefer it to American whirl, ever
with the advantage of being carried off my leg:
and having my breath knocked out by it.
Yours ever truly, RICHARD D.. WEBB.