The Ocala banner. (Ocala, Marion County, Fla.) 1883-194?, 1920-02-27
THE ENGLISH
SPEAKING RACES
JOHN SHARP WILLIAMS AT HIS BEST

issippi by offering or Withholding help
to do anything with regard to the edu-
cation of her children or the children
within her boundaries of school age,
and deny it upon the general prin-
ciple that this it a government of del
egated powers as unpopular as that
doctrine may be right now-and that
the federal government has no right
under the sun, except such right as it
delegated to it by the states, either
under the original constitution or IN
der the amendments later adopted.
Another thing: You in this bill
talk to me about compelling a man to
study English! Leaving aside the
power and the right of the federal
government, suppose it were state
question alone: I say that to require
any man who is 81 years of age, and
the captain of his own soul, and the
master of his own destiny, to study
any language is tyranny. / say that.
Mr.. President, in full possession of the
idea, which is fact, that no human
being upon the surface of this earth
can be in full sympathy with Ameri-
can institutions, American traditions,
and American ideals unless he can
read and write and think English, be-
cause our institutions come from Eng
land They come from the Magma
Charta. They come from the Bill and
the Petition of Rights. They come
from the Act Of Settlement They
come from Charles II. They come all
the way down, not as a sudden thing
all at once adopted in America by a
constitutional convention, but as the
growth and development and final
eighteenth century best matured
thought of America as a part of the
mother country in its birth and rails
ing-constituting up to the date Of
our independence part of its law,
constituting a part of its traditions,
constituting a part of its old religion,
and constituting part of its then
daily habit of thought.
"These men, English-born, or Amer.
ican-born of English and Scotch and
Welsh and Irish parents, met in Phila-
delphia. They struck out no sudden,
great, new principle. They merely
communicated to the world the finish
ed political and civil-rights product
of English-speaking civilization, and
they were themselves the finished in
dividual product of English-speaking
civilization George Washington, Eng
lish all over, Virginia planter, at the
head of it: Witherspoon, Scotch In
thought and prejudice, from Prince
ton; Hamilton, the son of Scottish
woman, from the West indies original
ly; Jefferson, of Welsh parentage;
Madison, of English parentage; all the
balance of them Americans, yes, but
Americans as the finished product of
British development and growth in
law, in literature, in language, in com
merce, and in everything else that
goes to the making of people homo
geneous then nobody from south
eastern Europe at that time to teach
bolshevism and anarchy; English
speaking, though some Of them were
from Ireland. but still even they spoke
English and had spoken it so long
that Irish. had become with them a
dead language. They read Dean
Swift, and they read William Shakes
peare, and they read John Milton, and
they read Blackstone, and they read
Sir Matthew Hale, and they read the
Magma Charta, and they read the Bill
of Rights. and all that was part Of
their very thought and their very soul
There was nothing else in them Hol
landers, Welshmen, Irishmen, English
men, Scotchmen, but all of the same
literature. all Of the same traditions,
all of the same law, and all virtually
sects. but the old English-speaking
as far as sects go. They had various
Of the same religion. | do not mean
religion meant only this-that every
man is individually responsible to God
for his own worship and for his own
opinion, and that is today the religion
Of the English-speaking race. whether
the particular man be a Roman Cath
ole or Presbyterian or an Episco
palian or a Campbellite or Seventh
Day Adventist"
FOR SAI.E-1R acres. 2acre farm and