The representative. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1893-1901, 1894-12-26
IRISH OPPRESSORS.
THE NABOB USURERS OF ROSE.
MOUNT.
Furnishing Man For Doing Good

| A friend of ours in ST. Paul asked a
citizen of Rcsemount. Dakota county,
the other day, why it was that our
vote fell off, in that township, from
i53 in 1890 to 96 in 1894. He stated,
in reply, that there were number OF
Irish farmers, in that section. who
had grown rich when wheat was $l.00
and $l.25 a bushel, and now had mon
cy loaned out among their neighbors,
and they were opposed to us because
wc'had favored, in the State Senate.
the reduction of the rate of interest
on money from 10 to per cent; and
| they were determined we should not
| be reelected lest we might again
| agitate for reduced rates and for the
| punishment of uSurers. And there is,
| in ROsemount, as there is in every
| community, a lot of base and seryile
creatures, cringing towards, who wOr-
ship man if he has few hundred or
a few thousand dollars loaned out at
interest, without any regard to the
| quality of his heart or brain or soul.
With dastardly servility they accept his
opinions as law and gospel; they cling
| to his coat-tails while he despises
them.
We had favored reduction Of in
tercst to s per cent. In doing so we
had been very moderate, for there is
no industry in Minnesota, and has not
been for years, that can afford to pay
one-half that rate. Money is loaned
every week in Dakota county, on farm
| mortgages, at seven and eight per
cent, some as low as six: eight is the
bank rate in the great cities.
We thought our constituents would
appreciate the fact that, in an era of
universal selfishness and corruption,
we had refused to make money out of
our legislative position, and had la
bored to improve the condition Of the
whole people. But no. II we had
stolen half million through our Off
cial opportunities, and had rendered
our constituents poorer and more
wretched, they would have returned
us to the Senate with whoop and a
hurrah. There would have been no
candidates against us-Democratic or
Republican. The corporations would
have seen to that.
But we were slaughtered for trying
to do good; and because we would not.
do evil. And worse than all religion
was dragged into the contest and the
very Irish assisted in our defeat.
No people have been more horribly
prosecuted, plundercd and oppressed
than the Irish. For centuries they
could not own real estate, or, until
very recently, hold land under lease
of moro than thirty-two years: if they
rented a farm and the crops amounted
to more than one-third of the rent,
any one of the dominant race could
disposscss them and take the farm; if
an Irishman owned horse worth
more than $25, any Englishman could
seize the horse. on the highway, and
pay him the $25, even though the
horse was worth hundreds of dollars
more; they could not own a knife to
cut their bread unless it was chained
to the table;-lest they might use it
as weapon; no Irish Catholic could
sit on a jury; all marriages between
Catholics and ProtestantS were null
and void, even though there might be
numerous progeny: every priest who
married a Catholic to a non-Catholic
was hanged (See Cobbett's Hist. Re-
form, Vol. l. p. 235), At an earlier date
it was no crime to kill an Irishman,
and the sport was extensively engaged
in They hunted them as we hunt
rabbits nowadays. Sir George Carew
published book called "Pacolo Hiber-
No." C'Ireland Pacited'), and he
shows how he paciiicd them: ''In the
bogs we pursued them, in the thickcts
we followed them, in the plains we
butchcred them. and in their castles
we besieged them and put them to the
sword" Some days he tells of killing
POO, whom he caught working in the
fields: other days the number hunted
down and slaughtered amounted to
only a hundred and twenty, and on
such occasions there is usually a
memorandum stating that sit was a
poor days hunt"
And out of this llell-house of slaugll-
ter, bearing the impress of the horrors
Of centuries upon their poor faces, the
Irish have escaped into this vast arena
Of fertility and liberty. These Irish
money-lcnders of Rosemount are un-
doubtedly the prostcrity of ancestors
who endured these terrible persecu-
! tions: but they have hardly grown
warm on the land benevolent gov
crnment literally gave them, they
have hardly gotten the wrinkles
off their brows and the fat on their
ribs, before they reach out to oppress
their fellow men, and to join with the
| posterity Of their oppressors to bring
this vast population of America to
such wretchedness as they have them
selves just escaped from. Torn. lacer-
ated, starved, wrctched beyond ex-
preston, once become rich, they erect
| themselves, as on pedestal. upon the
largess of a great government, to slay
all within reach, and help destroy the
very institutions that have fed and
sheltered them. They conspire to
| crush man Of their own race whose