The record-union., 1896-07-05

| he sees a stately city riSe-her avenues
and streets bordered by imposing edi-
| fees and luxurious homes-her lofty
| spires, like giant hands pointing the
| way toward heaven-the smoke of a
| thousand chimneys, staining the con-
| tinuous blue of Sacramento's cloudless
skies, and evidencing the restless hum
| of industries that busy laboring thou
sands. He sees schools imparting to
| poor and rich alike that training so
necessary to useful citizenship.
| He sees the glistening dome and the
| magnificent proportions of that Capt.
| tol stading there, the pride of Sacra-
| mento, in unspeaking, yet eloquent,
| grandeur-within whose walls the
! drama of a States history for glory or
| Tor shame shall be enacted. He sees
| the steady flood of commerce come and
| go by river and by rail- He glolies in
that great conception, that mighty ac-
/ coTnpliShment, that unites hill with
plain in seXtuple bonds of thrilling,
| quiveiing wire, pulsing with electric
power, transmitted from eternal floods,
| pent up to mans needs in ice-bound
reservoirs, created by the hand of God.
/ And yet again and more than that.
He sees the Indian and the Spaniard
| give way before the advancing flood of
Anglo-Saxons, and our magnificent
Union extend its beneficent sway of
| justice and equality throughout the
| land, crowning this queen of all lands
with the rare diadem of liberty, and
/ vesting in us the same rights, the same
| powers, the same independence that
| Henry, Otis, Adams, Hancock, Jefferson
and Washington sought, and for which
so many of our progenitors died.
And now l answer you the question
/ that | asked. Why do we love to recall
the deeds of heroes in places thousands
of miles away and more than a century
ago. 1t is because of this liberty of ours
-'ours to enjoy, ours to protect, ours to
transmit unimpaired to our posterity.'
That it's luster may not become dimmed
or its original purity debased, we teach
| it to the nurslings on our knee, tell it to
| the youths in our schools, teach them to
love and revere the splendid emblem of
| our country and on each anniversary of
our independence gladly repeat the
I'story of our cOuntry's birth as l do to-
day.
In order that we may understand some
| of the reasons that impelled the earlier
settlers in America to leave their homes
and the homes of their ancestors for a
new and unknown land, it may be use
| full to examine into the conditions of
affairs in Europe even as late as the
seventeenth century. The people be-
yond the Trent in England were in a
state of barbarism. Near the sources
of the Tyne there were people hardly
less savage than the American Indians
/ their half naked women chanting wild
songs, while the men with brandished
| knives danced a war-measure.
The only printing press north of the
Trent in 100 was at York. The houses
of the rural population were huts COW
cred with straw thatch; the inmates, if
able to have fresh meat once week,
We're considered very prosperous. One
half the families in England could not
do that. Hospitality was displayed
among the ruling classes by immoder-
ate eating and the drinking of beer-the
guest not having done justice to the oc-
casion unless he rolled under the table
drunk
In London the houses were mostly
wood and plaster, and the streets filthy
beyond expression. Hardly any person
Of Importance died without suspicion of
poison a certain index of the character
of the better classes. The University
of Oxford ordered the works of Buchan-
an, Milton and Baxter to be publicly
burned. Bunyan, who wrote Pilgrim
Progress had been committed to jail
for preaching the way Of salvation tc
common people, and had remained there
for twelve years because he refused to
promise not to SO offend again.
/ In administering the so-called law
whether in relation to political or relig-
ious offenses, there was an incredible
atrocity. In London the bridge over
the Thames was decorated with grin
ming, moldering heads of the executed
The intolerance of the times may be un-
derstood from a law enacted by the
Scotch Parliament May s, 1855, that
whoever preached or heard in a con-
yenticle should be punished with death
and confiscation of goods.
Scotch covenanters were submitted tc
tortures by crushing their knees fiat in
the boot Women were mercifully tied
4 to stakes on the sea sand, to be drowned
by the slowly advancing tide, or were
/ branded on the cheek and then shipped
to America as slaves.
Wounded soldiers were hung in
Scotland for fear they would die before
reaching England. During Mon
mouths rising in 1856 in one county
alone 233 We're hanged, drawn and
ouartered. to say nothing of military
executions The soldiers amused them
selves by hanging a victim with each
toast they drank, making the fife and
drum play as they said to his dancing.
Kinks lambs with their inhumani
ties. and Tom Boilman, so called be-
cause compelled by these lambs tO
seethe the remains of his quartered
friends in boiling pitch, are historical
Women for idle words were whipped at
the cart's-tail A boy named Tutching
was sentenced to be fiogged once fort
night for seven years. Eight hundred
and forty-one men and women were ju-
idcially condemned to transportation
to the West Indies, and while being
transported thither in a slave ship were
never permitted to go once on deck. In
the hold. where they were all kept, was
darkness, stencil. lamentation, disease
and death. One-fifth died and were
thrown to the sharks. The court ladies
and even the Queen of England Joined
in this forrid traffic. The Queen was
given 100 of the unfortunate wretches,
and her profit therefrom was estimated
at FL 900.
The darkest and most atrocious of all
the horrible prosecutions that occurred
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centu-
ries were practiced on those, who, in
spired by natures laws, discovered and
taught that the sun instead Of the earth
was the center of our immediate system
of heavenly bodies, the prosecutors
II holding that to assert that the earth