The Ocala banner. (Ocala, Marion County, Fla.) 1883-194?, 1917-08-03

CIT L4C dlA OAlC VI @hN NSAA-
batants lost an eye or was otherwise
mutilated or dismembered Prisons
were dark and foul, reeking in filth
and were seminaries of crime and dis
ease. And on all this misery and in
humanity society, without discrimina-
ton, looked on with profound indii
ference.
How was it in matters OF religion?
The churches were so intolerant to-
wards one another, as we'll as towards
the benighted sinner, that finally the
world was convulsed in furious war
fare which for righteousness had left
a fouler blot on the world escutch-
con than all the other tragedies com
bined. The most bar5aric crueltieS
were committed Burning at the
stake were merciful deeds compared
with others. Men were put to death
by red hot irons forced UP their ex-
tremeties. Their eyes were burned
to their sockets, their tongues were
cut out and young matrons soon to
become mothers were disemboweled,
and the most cruel torture that could
be conceived by dends were inflicted
upon thousands and thousands of in
nocent and unfortunate culprits.
But the spirit OF intolerance did not
cease with the cessation of actual hos
tilities of 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 ab0rigines of
the new world?
Reputable historians tell Us that II
was one unspeaka bic outrage, one I'M
utterable ruin, without discrimination
OF age or sex. Those who died not
under the lash in tropical sun died
in the darkness of the mines Wher-
ever an European had set his foot in
his lust for gold, there went up from
all over this land a cry of desolatiOn
and hopelessness.
Draper says: From sequester sand
banks, where the red f1amingO fishes
in the gray of the morning; from fe-
ver-stricken mangrove thickets. and
the gloom of the impenetrable for
ests; from hiding places in the clefts
of rocks, and the solitude of invisi-
BILE caves; from the eternal SHOWS of
the Andes, where there were no wit
nesses but the all-seeing Sun. there
went up to God a wall of despair"
Millions upon millions, whole races
and nations were remorsely cut off
the same as the billions of wild pig
cons that formerly darkened the earth
have been in our day so ruthlessly ex-
terminated.
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 saturnalia of crime. He wor-
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
at the carts tail through the market
towns; a lad named Tutching, for a
mere trivial offense, was sentenced to
be logged once fortnight for seven
years. In single term of court eight
hundred and fOrty-One human beings
were judicially condemned to trans
portation to the West India islands,
suffering all the horrible pains of a
slave ship. and one-ffth were thrown
overheard to the sharks before their
destination was reached.
What was the state or literature?
More than half the books, songs and
ballads that composed the literature
Of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries would now be excluded 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 excluded.
We have seen slavery abolished. du-
cling abolished, Imprisonment for
debt abolished. fogging as spunish-
ment for crime abolished prisons
made more healthful and sanitary.
sectionalism largely abolished, and a
more tolerant and better feeling ex-
listing between political parties and re-
ligiOus denominations