Wheeling Sunday register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1882-1934, 1898-07-17

Written for the Sunday Register.
The remote ancestors Of civilization
were not kings, knights and fair ladies.
They were naked and skin-clothed bar
barians-save cannibals great barefoot
ed. hairy men and naked, bare-headed.
sun-tanned women.
All the elegance we see now in broad
cloth or silk shirt waist, Is the descendant
of the barbaian combination. Savagery
is our common ancestry. From this pri-
NAL beginning our blood has drifted
through ages races, nations and climates.
Accurate knowledge of this intermediate
period is buried in oblivion. Then comes
a later period of partial light, in which
racial and tribal difference is barely Wis
ible.
Out of this interminable confusion two
savage tribes are selected to father all OF
the human race that wears pants and
who have acquired the English tongue
and they are named Anglo-Saxons.
The Britons were barbarianS who
smeared themselves with a blue dye call
ed woad. In their religious rites they
chopped off the head Of the sacrfhcial
victim with a bronze axe, In grove OF
oak. opon which the mistletoe had COM
menced to grow-a poetic death. In all,
the British barbarians were as decent ana
as worthy of relationship as any other set
of rbarians. Yet no one claims rela-
tionship with the proud and god-like Ca
ractucus, who was carried into Rome. nor
with the fearless queen Boadicea, who In
her scythed chariot led her savage hosts
in an unequal struggle against the IN
vaders of her country.
Caesar as a pastime conquered the bar
barians, and for over four hundred years
Rome guarded them as mother does a
nurseling. She taught them agriculture
and protected them from other barbar-
ians of the north. She planted the first
seeds of progress-then Rome, beset by
dangers of her own, left them.
After the departure of the Romans, the
northern hosts of Picts and Scots COM
menced their brigandage again, the sax
ons under the robber chiefs Hengest and
Horsa came over, then the Angles and
the Jutes and a lot more, to engage IN
the amiabe sport of pillage and murder.
The Saxons, being the strongest, gained
supremacy. The savage butchery OF their
conquest is revolting-the butchery or
people whom their chroniclers tell US, IN
vited them over as protectors Many
criminal invasions of the past have been
cloaked under falsehood.
Those whom the Saxons could not sub
due or destroy fled westward and into
Wales The descendants of the Briton
who battled In the surf against the in
yasion of Caesar live there-it Is the home
of the Briton of the past
The Saxons set up several little king
doms and spent the time fighting among
themselves. Then the Danes came down
from the north in their warship and sub
iugated the Saxon-who had long PAID
them tribute money-and planted Dan
ish dynasty upon the throne, which reign
ed through three successive soverelgns'
The Saxons again secured the throne,
the Danish line failing for want of issue,
and held it for a brief period-then came
the cataclysm of blood that annihilated
everything Saxon and Danish.
William. a son of Robert of Normandy
and a tanners daughter, crossed the
channel and at Hastings, after a STUB
born battle destroyed Anglo-Saxon dom
nation forever. 1t was not change OF
government forced upon a subjugated ma
ton but it was the annihilation OF
people All existing institutions were de-
stroyed, the lands were confiscated, and
the people reduced to a state of abJect
| senilitr, their very name being held in
detestation They were only suffered 10
| exist. in the words of William. 'as cloth
! ing of the soil.
The condition of the Saxon, this,
| coarse, voracious and brutal race" as
| Macauley mentions them, was worse than
| that of the Russian serf in his worst deg
| radiation He occupied an intermediate
position between our slaves a half century
ago and the Indian of the present era.
| Over a hundred years after the Con-
| oueror had landed, the barons of England
| forced King John to sign the magma
| charta In this first document that gave
| the people of England anything like in
| diyidual liberty, some historians profess
to see a victory and uplifting of the Sax
| on. The twenty-six barons who forced
| John to sign the charter and themselves
/ signed it, were not Saxons, but held their
! dignities and office through laws of des-
| cent from the Normans 1t may be re-
| marked here that three of the barons
| signed the charter, the other twenty
! three being unable TO write, made their
| marks.
| These barons had vassals who were
| Saxons, and the effect of the charter up
| on their condition was similar to that OF
| the Emancipation Proclamation upon the
| slaves of this country-and not so far
| reaching in effect as the Fifteenth Amend
ment.
| Previous to the effacement of the Sax
| ons by the Norman, the illustrious names
| of that race could be counted on one
hand-what names have they given US
| since?
| The Angles came nearer being nothing
| than any other people that have page
| in history-they aided and abetted the
| Saxons in their butchery and gave Eng
| land her name-a corruption of Angleand.
! This is almost the complete history of
| the Angles.
| What has the remnant or diffusion OF
| the Saxons and Angles done? Nothing.
! Their achievements? They have none
| In history?-They do not exist. England
| has relegated them, kings and all, TO a
| nominal place in the annals of her past.
| They are obliterated from the book OF
| peerage They have been wiped off the