Cleveland daily leader. [volume] ([Cleveland, Ohio]) 1865-1873, 1865-12-04
English Theory Versus English Prae.
tice-ExecutiOn of Two Thousand
British Subjects.

GHSAAsA A4eeEy eerau9 EmEAl8n RfNcs
tice-ExecutiOn of Two Thousand
British Subjects.
Since the termination of the ~slavohold-
ers rebellion, the English press and Eng
fish orators, with a few exceptions, have
devoted themselves to an expression of
sympathy for the leading characters to the
overthrowof the government ofthe United
States. Forgetful of the Sepoys blown
from the mouths of British cannon for the
crime of attempting to extricate them
selves and their country from the control
usurped by the British government, these
suddenly manufactured philanthrophists
have devoted themselves with an energy
and assiduity worthy of a better cause, to
pleadings in behalf of Davis, Lee and
others ofthe principal actors in the Amer
lean rebellion. They have argued that it
would be a piece of cruelty utterly un-
worthy a great nation to infict the death
penalty upon even the most prominent of
the men who had instigated, sustained and
participated in a causeless rebellion against
the rightful authority of the mildest gov
eminent in the world, by which hundreds
of thousands of lives were sacrificed to
mad ambition and a desise to found a
slavehOlding nationality. True, England
had helped to prolong that war by giving
the free use of her ship-yards for the pur-
pose of fitting out rebel cruisers to prey
upon American commercially manning
and equipping the piratical ships of the
rebellion-by surreptitiously earring mu-
nitions of war and other contraband
goods to the insurgents-by subscribing to
the Confederate loan, and by the constant
utterance of words of comfort and en-
courasAnaant; hut THE ~as-1AnA-far-4ha
very satisfactory reason that the potent
pound sterling doomed up in the fore
ground, appealing to the proverbial rapa-
city of John Bull; and as no merce-
nary motive for an excessive ex-
hibition of philanthrophy, after the
close of the struggle. was apparent,
many were constrained to believe that for
once the English government, press and
people were moved by an unselfsh i'm
pulse. Numbers of honest, simple-heart-
ed persons were suffering themselves to
be thus deceived, when, 10, a little speck
of rebellion against the British rule-more
properly denominated a riot-dispelled
the beautiful illusion. The unfortunate,
ignorant and oppressed blacks of the
island of Jamaica, wherein one hundred
and sixty thousand laborers were depend
ent for the bread wherewith to keepthem-
selves and families from starvation, upon
the employment offered by three hundred
sugar plantations under the control of
avaricious Englishnen, failing to obtain
from the British authorities even a re-
spectful hearing for their statement of
real grievances, Yentured, under the lead
of a few ill-advised agitators, to attempt
by force of arms the expulsion ofthe DOM
inant race. The insurgents, ignorant,
rudely armed and ineficiently command
ed, were Immediately overpowered by the
garrison of regular British troops. Then
followed such a scene of deliberate, cold
blOOded, systematic butehery as never be-
fore furnished the fame of any govern
ment claiming the possession of the slight
est degree of civilization. For this fool
ish eneute three thousand persons per-
ished, two thousand of whom were exc
cutedupon the gallows. Not content with
this wholesale destruction of human life,
the most revolving fortunes were inflicted.
One man was subjected to forty-seven
lashes, and, because he CRASHED his teeth
during the infection, was then hanged.
Mr.. Gordon, the leader, was compelled to
witness the execution of eighteen of his
companions, and was then hanged upon
the same gallows. One British paper, the
London NeaCs, condemns those cold-blooded
atrocities, and declares that "the
dominant race has utterly lost
sense, and courage, and self command, in
the frenzy of fear which has fallen upon
them" The Times, which of late plead
so eRersetieally for JEFF. DaFis, justiies all
this British brutality, declaring that sim
mediate justice is the best mercy in the
long rum The Times idea of 'immedi-
ate Justice will be shown by the follow
ing, which, we copy from the statement of
Col. Hobbs, commanding a British regi-
ment, in which the writer boasts his inten-
ton to shoot "a gang of prisoners witk.
out trial:
81 must not forgot to tell you that 1
have got Paul Bogle's valet for my guide
"a little fellow of extraordinary intelli-
gence. A light rope tied to the stirrup,
and a revolver now and then to his head,
cause US TO understand each other and he
knows every single rebel in the Island by
name and face, and has Just been selecting
the Colonies, Captains and Secretaries out
of an immense gang of prisoners just come
in here, whom L shall have to shoot to-
morrow morning"
Had we space, we could go on to an in
definite length in particularizing acts of
refined cruelty, but the plain fact that two
thousand Ignorant, infatuated, down-trod-
den human beings were hanged for their
connection with "a rebellion ofone day,"i
sufficient to call down upon the British
government the condemnation of christen-
dom.
Terrible Death of Tight Rope Per