The Ocala banner. (Ocala, Marion County, Fla.) 1883-194?, 1921-09-23


Of the New World?
Reputable historians tell us that it
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 in
his lust for gold, there went UP from
all over this land a cry Of des0lation
and hopelessness.
& Draper says From sequestered
sand-banks, where the red f1amingo
fishes in the gray Of the morning;
from fever-stricken mangrove thick
cts, and the gloom of impenetrable
forests; from hiding places in the
cIefts 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 wall of
despair
Millions upon millions, whole races
and nations were remorselessly cut
of the same as the billions of wild
pigeons that formerly darkened the
earth have been in our day so ruth.
lessly exterminated.
Draper says that the bishop Of Chi
apa affirmed that more than fifteen
millions we're exterminated in his
time
How was justice administered?
Men were hanged, quartered and
burned for their political and reIig-
ious opinions Our readers are famil-
| lar with the career of Lord Jeffreys,
made chief justice because he had
made a saturnaiia of crime. He wor-
shipped at the shrine of the gallows,
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 lad named Tutching, for a
mere trivial offense, was sentenced
to be fiogged once a fortnight for sew
en- years. In a 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-
1 fore their destination was reached.
What was the state of literature?
More than half the books, songs
and ballards that composed the litera-
ture of the seventeenth and eigh-
teenth centuries would now be ex-
cluded from the mails as indecent and
improper to he read in the family
circle.
such as Decameron's pronounced
classics, were permitted the freedom
of the mails, but are now rigidly ex:
cluded.
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
more tolerant and better feeling ex-
listing between political parties and
religious denominations.
Indeed, there never was such
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
and unfortunate. There never was
time when our rich men and women
gave SO abundantly to their riches to
alleviate restitution and suffering.
We live in philianthropic 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 woth other ages.
In the centuries Immediately pre-
ceding ours, the family was fortu-
nate that Toasted on meat once
week, and their homes and furnish
ings, compared with ours, were mere
novels Of Indebtedness.
We can say with Macaulay that the
more we study the annals of the past,
the more we rejoice that we live
IN merciful age, in an age in which
cruelty is abhorred, and in which
pain, even when deserved, is inflicted
reluctantly, and from sense Of duty
only and the class which has gained
most by this moral and intellectual
change is the class which is the poor