The Ocala banner. (Ocala, Marion County, Fla.) 1883-194?, 1912-12-20
cease with the cessation of actual
hoStilitieS of war

HOSIllltloS Oh war.
Under the text that "the heathens
are given for an Inheritance and the
uttermost parts of the earth for a pos
session." how Jared the aboriginees
of the New World?
Reputable historians tell us that ii
was one unspeakable outrage, one un
utterable ruin, without discrimination
of age or sex. Those who died not
under the lash in a tropical sun died
in the darkness of the mines. Wher
ever an European had set his foot III
his lust for gold, there went up from
all over this land a cry of desolation
and hopelessness.
Draper says: From seQuestered
sand-banks, where the red fiamingc
fishes in the gray of the morning
from fever-stricken mangrove thick
cts, and the gloom of impenetrabl9
forests; from hiding places in the
clefts of rocks, and the solitude OF
invisible caves; from the eternal
SHOWS of the Andes, where there
were no witness but the all-seeing
Sun, there went up to God vail OF
despair"
Millions upon millions, whole races
and nations were remOrselessly cut
off the same as the billions of wild
pigeons that formerly darkened the
earth have been in our day so rutl-
lessly exterminated.
Draper says that the bishop of Chi
apa affirmed that more than fifteen
millions were exterminated in his
time.
How was justice administered?
Men were hanged, Quartered and
burned for their political and relig-
ious opinions. Our readers are famil-
lar with the career of Lord Jeffreys,
made chief justice because he had
made a saturnalia of crime. He woc-
shipped at the shrine of the gallows,
and filled the sections of England Wis
tied by him with terror. carnage and
mourning. Women, for mere idle
words, were sentenced to be whipped
1T the carts tail through the market
towns; lad named Tutching, for a
mere trivial offense. was sentenced
o be flogged once a fortnight for sew
en- years. IN single term Of court
eight hundred and forty-one human
beings were judicially condemned to
transportation to the West India Is
lands, suffering all the horrible pains
of a slave ship, and One-fifth were
thrown overheard to the sharks be.
fore their destination was reached.
What was the state of literature?
More than half the books, songs
and ballads that composed the litera-
cure of the seventeenth and eigh-
teenth centuries would now be eX-
Guided from the mails as indecent and
improper to be read in the family
circle.
Even in our recollection, works
such as Decameron's pronounced
classics, were permitted the freedom
of the mails, but are now rigidly ex-
GUIDED
We have seen slavery abolished,
dueling abolished, Imprisonment for
debt abolished, flogging as punish
ment for crime abolished, prisons
made more healthful and sanitary,
sectionalism largely abolished, and q
more tolerant and better feeling ex-
listing between political parties and
religious denominations.
Indeed, there never was such a
time in the history of the world when
there was greater good feeling and
fellowship existing between the
churches, when there were more char
ity and benevOlence, when there was
such studious care for the sick, aged
time when our rich men and women
gave so abundantly of their riches to
alleviate restitution and suffering.
We live in a philanthropic age.
There never was a time when so
many of the population, compared to
the whole, enjoyed SO many comforts
and when absolute restitution was so
little, as compared with other ages.
In the centuries Immediately pre-.
ceding ours, the family was fortu-
nate that Toasted on meat once 4
week, and their homes and furnish
ings, compared with ours, were mere
novels of Wretchedness.
We can say with Macaulay that
the more we study the annals of the
past, the more we rejoice that We
live in a merciful age, in an age in
which cruelty is abhorred, and in
which pain, even when deserved, is
inflicted reluctantly, and from a sense
of duty only, and the class which has