The American Revolution

and

The Boer War

An Open Letter toMr. Charles Francis Adamson his Pamphlet"The Confederacy and the Transvaal"

By

SYDNEY G. FISHER

Author of "Men, Women and Manners in Colonial Times" "The Evolution of the Constitution" "The True Benjamin Franklin, " etc. 

(Reprinted from the _Philadelphia Sunday Times_of January 19, 1902)

 PHILADELPHIA, January 14, 1902. 

CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS, ESQ. , Boston, Massachusetts. 

_Dear Sir:_

I have been handed a pamphlet written by you entitled "The Confederacyand the Transvaal, " the burden of which is, that the Boers ought not tocontinue their irregular guerilla struggle against England, because itis destructive of themselves and wasteful of England's resources; or touse your own words "the contest drags wearily along, to the probabledestruction of one of the combatants, to the great loss of the other, and, so far as can be seen, in utter disregard of the best interests ofboth. "

You argue that the Boers, when their regular armies were defeated someconsiderable time ago, should have surrendered, given up the struggle, and not have resorted to a prolongation of the contest by guerillamethods. In support of this you cite the action of General Lee at theclose of our civil war, when, his regularly organized army beingcompletely defeated, he surrendered it, went quietly to his home and setan example, followed by the other southern leaders, of not prolongingthe strife by those irregular methods which, as is well known, can be sovery effective for a long period in a mountainous country likeSwitzerland or in a country of vast distances like the United States orSouth Africa. 

In other words, you go so far as to say that when a people are fightingfor their political integrity and independence, a hopeless struggle forit ought not to be prolonged beyond what may be called the point ofscientific defeat. Rather than prolong it to desperation and death inthe last ditch it is much better and more sensible to accept a dependentposition of some sort, the position of a crown colony, or a chartercolony with more or less varying degrees of colonial control, all ofwhich your very unwise and altogether reckless great grandfather JohnAdams, and some of his friends used to describe as "political slavery. "

This doctrine of the wrongfulness of a struggle for independence againstoverwhelming odds has appeared at times of late in the newspapers. Inoticed that Mr. Bourke Cockran in his speech at the recent pro-Boermeeting in Chicago said, that the doctrine did not apply to the Boersbecause their heroism had now placed them in a position to win. He didnot say positively whether or not he approved of such a doctrine. I ammyself willing to pass by a great deal of approval of it. But when theattempt is made to render such an infamous doctrine respectable byaffixing to it the honored name of Adams, a protest is in order from allthose who are at all familiar with our own history. 

I do not believe that our American people when their attention is reallybrought to the matter believe in any such doctrine. But their attentionis not usually brought to it. We have been by our stupendous power farremoved for a long time from the possibility of such a struggle. We areaccustomed to the business method of settling serious disputes byyielding at once to overwhelming power; by acquiescing in the vote ofthe majority or the will of the richer man or clique that has bought upall the stock. When the political boss informs our corporation that thelegislation we want passed must be paid for we pay without resorting toguerilla or any other tactics. When one holds the cards that will takeall the remaining tricks he usually shows his hand saying, "the rest aremine, " and everybody assents. 

But circumstances alter cases and all cases are not alike. If yourdoctrine is of universal application the ravisher who presents himselfwith overwhelming force must always be gently accepted withoutresistance to save time and avoid danger and expense. If the Europeanpowers, disgusted with the success of our protective tariff and risingcommercial supremacy, should unite to abolish our lynch law, burning ofnegroes at the stake, municipal corruption and some other matters, theirarmies and fleets would outnumber us even more than the Englishoutnumber the Boers; and I suppose if you are really as much of a"quitter" as you profess to be you would then still preach your doctrineof submission. 

When you look closely at the matter and try to fix the point ofscientific defeat in the Boer war I do not know why you should place itat the fall of Pretoria or whatever moment you decide upon for thedefeat of the regularly organized armies. I should say it was just aswell placed before the fighting began when England showed her cards; apopulation of 30, 000, 000, without counting the population of thecolonies, against a population that does not number 2, 000, 000 countingthe Cape Colony rebels; an army of 250, 000 regulars against 40, 000militia. 

If your doctrine is sound political morality, it applied then, and inthe face of such stupendous odds, I should say, rather more than it doesnow. 

But I prefer to be guided somewhat in these matters by your greatgrandfather, John Adams, for whom I have always had a great fancy. Ifyou will pardon me for saying so I think that his attention was moreclosely and intensely directed to these matters than yours has everbeen. His neck was at stake as well as your own valuable existence andreputation. The British statute of that time provided a terriblepunishment for what he was doing. Possibly you have never read it. 

 "That the offender be drawn to the gallows, and not be carried or walk; that he be hanged by the neck, and then cut down alive; that his entrails be taken and burnt while he is yet alive; that his head be cut off; that his body be divided into four parts; that his head and quarters be at the king's disposal. "

The disposal the king was accustomed to make of the heads and quartersof such people was to have the quarters hung about in conspicuous partsof London like quarters of beef; and the heads were set up on poles onTemple Bar or London Bridge to rot as a ghastly warning. 

I am inclined to think that the opinion of a man who from 1765 to 1780worked with that enactment hanging over his head is worth considering. Ifind on picking up the first life of him that comes to hand, that he wasanything but blind to the consequences. England had shown her hand. Sheoutnumbered the colonists four to one; and, in the same proportion, shecould send a disciplined army against their undisciplined militia andguerilla forces. 

It was even worse than that. The colonists were not united in resistingEngland; not nearly so unanimous as the Boers are. It was by no meanscertain that our colonial rebel party had a bare majority. The loyalistsinsisted and believed that they themselves had the majority. So if wecut off from the supposed 3, 000, 000 population of the colonies the blackslaves who numbered about 800, 000 and the loyalists who were even morenumerous, we had at the utmost only about 1, 400, 000 whites who wereprepared to resist the army, fleet, and 8, 000, 000 population of Englandwithout counting nearly a million loyalists in their own midst. 

In fact on the showing of hands it was an utterly hopeless contest, andwithin a few years proved itself to be such. All that saved yourancestor's party from complete annihilation was the assistance after1778 of the French army, fleet, provisions, clothes and loans of moneyfollowed by assistance from Spain, and at the last moment by thealliance of Holland. And even with all this assistance your ancestor'scause was even as late as the year 1780 generally believed to be ahopeless one. 

Your ancestor did not like the prospect. He was fully prepared formisery, beggary and his family blood attainted and rendered infamous tothe last generation by the English law. Death was the least thing hedreaded. 

 "I go mourning in my heart all the day long, " he writes to his wife, "though I say nothing. I am melancholy for the public and anxious for my family. As for myself a frock and trousers, a hoe and a spade would do for my remaining days. "

 "I feel unutterable anxiety, " he writes again. "God grant us wisdom and fortitude! Should the opposition be suppressed, should this country submit, what infamy, what ruin, God forbid! Death in any form is less terrible. "

 "There is one ugly reflection, " he says in a letter to Joseph Warren. "Brutus and Cassius were conquered and slain, Hampden died in the field, Sidney on the scaffold, Harrington in jail. This is cold comfort. " (Morse's Adams, pp. 54, 60. )

Your ancestor had still other difficulties to face of which it may bewell to remind you. Long before actual fighting began in our revolutionthe rebel party, or perhaps I should say, the rougher elements of it, created by means of tar and feathers and other methods, a reign ofterror throughout the whole country. They went about in parties takingweapons of all kinds out of loyalists' houses, although they have sinceput a clause in the National and all state constitutions that "the rightto keep and bear arms shall never be infringed. " Those documents alsowithout exception, I believe, contain a clause guaranteeing freedom ofspeech and of the press; but the rebel party of your ancestorextinguished completely and utterly both of these rights; so completelythat Rivington, the principal publisher of loyalist pamphlets, fled forhis life to a British man-of-war; and loyalists scarcely dared refer topolitics even indirectly in private letters. 

If the loyalists were really a majority, as they professed to be, therebels were determined to break them up. Loyalists were ridden andtossed on fence rails, gagged and bound for days at a time, stoned, fastened in rooms with a fire and the chimney stopped on top, advertisedas public enemies so that they would be cut off from all dealings withtheir neighbors; they had bullets shot into their bedrooms, their horsespoisoned or mutilated; money or valuable plate extorted from them tosave them from violence and on pretence of taking security for theirgood behavior; their houses and ships were burnt; they were compelled topay the guards who watched them in their houses; and when carted aboutfor the mob to stare at and abuse they were compelled to pay somethingat every town. For the three months of July, August and September of theyear 1774, one can find in the American Archives alone, over thirtydescriptions of outrages of this kind. 

In short, lynch law prevailed for many years during the revolution, andthe habit became so fixed that we have never given it up. As has beenrecently shown the term lynch law originated during the revolution andwas taken from the name of the brother of the man who founded Lynchburghin Virginia. 

The revolution was not by any means the pretty social event that theladies of the so-called patriotic societies suppose it to have been. Itwas on the contrary a rank and riotous rebellion against the longestablished authority of a nation which had saved us from France, builtus up into prosperity and if she were ruling us to-day would, I amentirely willing to admit, abolish lynch law, negro burning, municipaland state legislative corruption and all the other evils about whichreformers fret. 

But feeling that we were a naturally separated people, the rebel partyamong us insisted that we had the inalienable right to rule ourselves. We were seized with the spirit of independence, or as the people of yourway of thinking at that time called it "a chimera of patriotism. "Against this natural and inalienable right no authority, we declared, nomatter how meritorious and venerable need be respected. 

The Boers, though receiving far greater provocation than we received, have behaved much better. They have not tarred and feathered Englishmenas we did or ridden them on rails, or suffocated them with smoke, orburnt their houses or hazed or tortured them in any way. Their conductin the whole war has been most fair, honorable and meritorious, showingthe high character of their intelligence and morals and theirsuperiority to the British. 

In our revolution, wherever the rebel party were most successful withtheir reign of terror they drove all the judges from the bench andabolished the courts; and for a long time there were no courts or publicadministration of the law in many of the colonies, notably in NewEngland. 

To people of the loyalist turn of mind all these lynching proceedingswere an irrefragable proof, not only that the rebel party were wicked, but that their ideas of independence, of a country free from Britishcontrol and British law, were ridiculous, silly delusions, dangerous toall good order and civilization. That such people could ever govern acountry of their own and have in it that thing they were howling so muchabout, "liberty, " was in their opinion beyond the bounds of intelligentbelief. 

These lynching proceedings, the loyalists said, increased the loyalistparty very fast and made them sure of a majority. I shall not discussthat question. But there is no doubt that many rebels went over to theloyalist side; and many others who did not actually go over were shakenin their faith and hardly knew what to think. Your ancestor belonged tothe party who did all this lynching and inaugurated the reign of terrorand he has himself told us how it staggered him. The prospect of raisingsuch men as the lynchers to power by a revolution was a serious matter. A man one day congratulated him on the anarchy, the mob violence, theinsults to judges, the closing of the courts and the tar and featherswhich the patriots and their congress were producing. 

 "Oh Mr. Adams, what great things have you and your colleagues done for us! We can never be grateful enough to you. There are no courts of justice now in this province, and I hope there never will be another. "

For once in his life your ancestor could not reply. 

 "Is this the object for which I have been contending, said I to myself; for I rode along without any answer to this wretch. Are these the sentiments of such people, and how many of them are there in the country? Half the nation for what I know; for half the nation are debtors, if not more; and these have been in all countries the sentiments of debtors. If the power of the country should get into such hands, and there is great danger that it will, to what purpose have we sacrificed our time, health and everything else?" (Works of John Adams, Vol. II, p. 420. )

I have made these lengthy statements and quotations for the sake ofreminding you that the man who was responsible for your existence andalso very largely for the existence of the revolution, faced with hiseyes open the very state of affairs which you say should in conscienceand good morals compel a man to surrender and give up. He faced a farworse state of affairs than the Boers face, and he had less excuse forhis conduct. 

He, however, did not follow your advice; and one reason may have beenthat his wife, whose blood is also in your veins, would have despisedhim if he had. I need not quote those beautiful letters of hers whichare in print, in which she declares not only her own unalterableaffection, but her willingness, to go down with him to disaster andpoverty and labor with her hands. Among all the men of that time I donot know of one who was more uncompromising, more obstinate, moredetermined as President Kruger put it, to make Great Britain "pay aprice that would stagger humanity, " or according to your own theory, more immoral, than your own great grandfather and his wife. 

During the seven years fighting of the revolution Great Britain sent outpeace commissioners and kept offering terms which steadily increased inliberality, entire freedom from taxation, in fact almost everything therebel colonists had demanded, up even to a sort of semi-independence. Your great grandfather voted down everyone of them. He attended withFranklin the famous peace meeting with Lord Howe on Staten Island andrejected Lord Howe's terms. And why? Because none of them contained theone essential condition, absolute independence. Your great grandfatherwas a Kruger. 

But let us pass from him. Let us see what others thought and what wasthe general situation during the revolution. 

At the very beginning of that contest our forces were of an irregularand guerilla character. The farmers, who attacked the British regularsat Lexington and followed them back to Boston picking them off frombehind stone fences and trees, were the most irregular fighters it ispossible to imagine. They were not acting under the authority of anylegitimate or even a _de facto_ government. They were not evenofficered, directed or authorized by the rebel Continental Congress, which had met the year before in Philadelphia. They were acting in apurely voluntary manner in obedience to a mere sentiment of that factionof the colonists who resented an invasion from Great Britain and wantedthis country for their own. They were acting in the same manner and onthe same sentiment by which the Boers now act and which you say is acrime. 

It is very important to remember that the moral position of the Boers isvastly stronger than was ours. Before the present Boer war began theBoers were two independent nations whose independence had beenacknowledged by England on two or three different occasions and in twoor three different documents. We were not independent and never hadbeen. We were colonies and some of our communities were not evencharter colonies; they were crown colonies; and one of the chartercolonies, Pennsylvania, had a clause in its charter acknowledging theright of parliament to tax as it pleased. Our revolution was an out andout rebellion against legitimate control because we wanted to governourselves; because we did not want to be governed by people who livedthree thousand miles away in another and far separated country; becausewe did not want to be taxed by the outsider; because we did not want himto maintain an army amongst us to keep us in order, because we did notwant him to regulate our commerce or our manufacturing industries;because in short, we wanted to keep house for ourselves and believedthat the colonial position was at its best essentially a degradation tomanhood or as we called it at that time "political slavery. " If theBoers are wrong in defending against England by guerilla methods anindependence long since acknowledged, then we were ten thousand timeswrong in supporting by the same methods a rebellion for independenceagainst that same country which it is said can rule any people betterthan those people can rule themselves. 

The Boers at the beginning of the present war had the regularlyorganized armies of an independent nation. With the money obtained fromthe gold mines they had bought the most modern artillery, small arms andammunition. We on the other hand being mere rebels had none of thesethings. Our guns were at first antiquated or blacksmith-made muskets andshot guns; and we were the ridicule of the British regulars because wehad no bayonets. Whenever we had a chance we used the superior weaponstaken from British prisoners just as the Boers now use the Lee-Metfordrifles taken from their prisoners. We never were decently armed untilFrance sent us shiploads of guns and ammunition. Many of the straps andcartouche boxes worn by our people had the British army letters G. R. Stamped on them. Graydon relates in his memoirs how when he was takenprisoner a cartouche box with those letters on it was instantly wrenchedwith violence off his person. 

As our first meeting in arms with the British was irregular so was oursecond. Bunker Hill was so much of a guerilla battle so far as we wereconcerned that it is disputed to this day whether Putnam or Prescott wasin command. As a matter of fact there was nobody in particular incommand. It was a voluntary sort of affair; and the description of itreads exactly like a Boer battle. 

About fifteen hundred men, mostly farmers like the Boers, suddenlyseized an important hill or kopje dangerously close to the Britishlines. They fortified themselves with breast works made of fence railsand hay in such a bucolic manner that all the regulars in Bostonlaughed. They could have been defeated very easily by sending a force ontheir flank and rear. But General Gage thought that would be ridiculousand unnecessary. A force of three thousand regulars could easily by afront attack sweep off these farmers, show them the uselessness of theirmethods, and possibly end the rebellion at once. 

You know the rest. But it must be very shocking to a person of yourviews to remember that the old Queen Anne muskets, shot guns and duckguns which your forefathers in such bad taste and contrary to allmilitary science, levelled over those fence rails and hay at yourfriends the British in beautiful uniforms, were loaded with buckshot, slugs, old nails, and bits of iron from the blacksmith shops. That wasour Majuba Hill, our Spion Kop. 

Let us move along still farther. The New England farmers for all therest of the summer, autumn and following winter formed themselves into amost vulgar and absurd army and surrounded Boston, shutting in theBritish. The minds of those farmers were full almost to fanaticism ofthe principle of equality and the rights of man, "the levellingprinciples" as they were then called which now form the foundation ofour American life. The officers among them were merely leaders andpersuaders. It was not an uncommon sight to see a colonel shaving one ofhis own men. The men served a few weeks and then went home to get in thehay or see how their wives were getting on, and others came from thefarms to take their places. In this way the army was kept up. Those whowent home were very apt to take their powder and musket with them toshoot squirrels on the farm. 

A year later at New York our army was the same guerilla force and Ishall let Captain Graydon describe it:

 "The appearance of things was not much calculated to excite sanguine expectations in the mind of a sober observer. Great numbers of people were indeed to be seen and those who are not accustomed to the sight of bodies under arms are always prone to exaggerate them. But the propensity to swell the mass, has not an equal tendency to convert it into soldiery; and the irregularity, want of discipline, bad arms, and defective equipment in all respects, of this multitudinous assemblage, gave no favorable impression of its prowess. The materials of which the eastern battalions were composed, were apparently the same as those of which I had seen so unpromising a specimen at Lake George. I speak particularly of the officers who were in no single respect distinguishable from the men, other than in the colored cockades, which for this very purpose had been prescribed in general orders; a different color being assigned to the officers of each grade. So far from aiming at a deportment which might raise them above their privates and thence prompt them to due respect and obedience to their commands, the object was, by humility, to preserve the existing blessing of equality, an illustrious instance of which was given by Colonel Putnam, the chief engineer of the army, and no less a personage than the nephew of the major-general of that name. 'What, ' says a person meeting him one day with a piece of meat in his hand, 'carrying home your rations yourself, colonel! 'Yes, ' says he, 'and I do it to set the officers a good example. '"

 (Graydon's Memoirs, edition of 1846, p. 147. )

We have grown into a habit of depicting all our revolutionaryforefathers, both privates and officers, in beautiful buff and blueuniform as if we were from the start a regularly organized, independentnation, fighting regular battles with another independent nation. Therewere, I believe, at times a select few, more usually officers, whosucceeded in having such a uniform. But the great mass of our rebeltroops had no uniforms at all. They wore a hunting shirt or smock frockwhich was merely a cheap cotton shirt belted round the waist and withthe ends hanging outside over the hips instead of being tucked into thetrousers. Into the loose bosom of this garment above the belt could bestuffed bread, pork, and all sorts of articles including a frying pan. 

We of course do not like to have a picture of one of our ancestorspainted in such a garment. It would not look well. It is better to havesome theoretical uniform, the uniform that our fathers would have had ifthey had had the money and time to get one, painted on top of a pictureof our ancestor. 

Lafayette has described in his memoirs the rebel army he found in thiscountry on his arrival in the summer of 1777:

 "Eleven thousand men, but tolerably armed and still worse clad, presented a singular spectacle in their parti-colored and often naked state; the best dresses were hunting shirts of brown linen. Their tactics were equally irregular. They were arranged without regard to size except that the smallest men were the front rank. "

When the French officers appeared among us after the alliance, ourofficers were often unable to entertain them for lack of decent clothesand food. Washington in an order of July 24, 1776, said:

 "The general, sensible of the difficulty and expense of providing clothes of almost any kind for the troops, feels an unwillingness to recommend, much more to order any kind of uniform; but as it is absolutely necessary that men should have clothes and appear decent and tight, he earnestly encourages the use of hunting shirts with long breeches made of the same cloth, gaiter fashion about the legs to all those yet unprovided. " (Force 5th Series, Vol I, pp. 676, 677. )

That was the sort of army Washington commanded; an army to which hecould seldom give orders but only recommendations and suggestions. Itoften melted away before his eyes without any power on his part to stopdesertion. At New York in 1776 he collected as you know by the utmostexertion about 18, 000 men, but so afflicted with camp fevers and diseasethat only 14, 000 of them were effective, and these were more of a rabblethan an army. At the battle of Long Island and other engagements roundNew York they were easily beaten by General Howe's huge army of 34, 000, and as is generally believed could have been annihilated or exterminatedif that general had chosen to do so. As it was they were so broken upand scattered that they disappeared to their homes, and Washington fledacross New Jersey and crossed the Delaware with only 3, 300 men. 

The Continental Congress fled from Philadelphia. It was a migratingcongress for many a day afterwards; travelling from one place of refugeto another with its little printing press and papers carried in a wagon. 

If you had been living in those days you would have said that therebellion had now certainly reached the point of scientific defeat andshould be abandoned and all hope of independence given up. Thousands ofpeople at that time said so. The loyalists of course said so; and manywho had been rebels, or had been watching to see if the rebellion hadany chance at all, now turned against it and took the British oath ofallegiance. That is unquestionably what you would have done if you hadbeen living at that time with your present opinions. Your greatgrandfather however was not of that mind, nor was Washington. 

In fact, Washington prepared to become the worst kind of a guerilla; andyou will find his letter on the subject in the second volume of Irving'slife of him, chapter XLI. In case of being further pressed he said, "Wemust then retire to Augusta county, in Virginia. Numbers will repair tous for safety and we will then try a predatory war. If overpowered wemust cross the Allegheny mountains. "

What do you think of that? What a wicked man he must have been. Heintended to abandon the seaboard colonies, taking with him all therebels who would follow him; and a great many including your ancestorwould have to follow him, for if they remained behind they would behung. He proposed a "grand trek" to get away from those British who aresaid to govern so well, just as the Boers "treked" away from them intothe deserts of South Africa nearly a hundred years ago, because they didnot fancy what they had experienced of that supposed excellentgovernment. 

Having secured a refuge for the rebel congress and his followers on theedge of what was then the Western Wilderness, Washington proposes tomaintain himself there by what he calls "predatory war, " and I supposeyou know what that is. If unsuccessful in that, he intended to cross theAllegheny mountains and plunge into that vast unknown region with theIndians and the buffaloes, which stretched away 3, 000 miles to thePacific ocean. There, assisted by the great distances he could playhavoc with an invading British force; cut their slender communicationsand their cordons of blockhouses as the Boers are doing to-day in SouthAfrica. 

This last resort of the rebel colonists was so obvious that it was oftendiscussed not only in the colonies but in England. It was greatly fearedby the tory ministry, because it might indefinitely prolong the war. Thewhigs prophesied disaster from it; and Burke in one of his speechesrefers to it in an eloquent passage in which he describes the rebelcolonists retreating to that vast interior of fertile plains where theywould grow into marvels of hardihood and desperation; how they wouldbecome myriads of American Tartars and pour down a fierce andirresistible cavalry upon the narrow strip of sea coast, sweeping beforethem "your governors, your councillors, your collectors and comptrollersand all the slaves that adhere to them. "

In other words the tories dreaded what not so very long afterwards theyaccomplished in South Africa. They forced the Boers out of Cape Colonyand they went by the grand trek into the interior plains where theyfounded two fierce and free republics, such as Washington might veryreadily have founded west of the Alleghenies. A turn of the hand, thefailure of the French Alliance might have placed the United States in aposition somewhat similar to that of South Africa or to that of Irelandif you like. The effect of British brutal and stupid violence on a highstrung and independence-loving people will always be very much the sameeverywhere. 

But to return to Washington's letter. You very likely read it when as ayoung man you read Irving's life of him; but it never occurred to you tothink that his "predatory" and guerilla war was wicked. It was on yourside; you believed that his desire for the independence of the countrywas just and right, and being so, could be rightfully supported bypredatory as well as regular warfare. Your youthful instinct was sound. You had not then learned to worship mere financeering. You had not thenimbibed a passion for that part of the British constitution whichdeclares that any resistance whether in support of independence, homeor anything else which interferes with the operations of a financialclique in London is a crime. 

But when you see the principles and tactics of Washington and your owngreat grandfather repeated in a country far off they seem different, andwhen you see them turned against a country which gradually has come toembody in your mind fashionable society, you think them very dreadful. From your great grandfather's time to yours is a very short distance inhistory but a long distance, it seems, in political morals. 

The proposition for which you contend, or for which you profess tocontend, for I decline to believe that anyone of your name reallyaccepts such stuff, is nothing but the old principle of the bully andbrute. The little man must yield where his case is shown to be hopelessand save the brute's time and money. After every battle of therevolution the British and the loyalists thought that your ancestor andhis friends ought to give it up, and this went on for over seven yearsin spite of the assistance of France. 

I am inclined to think that if you were really put to the test you wouldnot live up to your own principles. I am inclined to think that if I andseveral others, outnumbering you in the proportion of the English to theBoers, should present revolvers and say that being men of betterbusiness capacity we would now kindly take charge of your privateaffairs and manage them for you to your great advantage, you would notact quite as piously as you preach. The one or two drops of the blood ofold John, which are still hidden in your veins, somewhere down in yourboots, would suddenly rush to your heart and inflame it. You would duckunder those revolver muzzles and come at our stomachs in a way thatwould keep us moving. We should undoubtedly very soon have your deadbody with which to conduct some sort of brutal and stupid Britishtriumph; but we should never be able to say that we had made a politicalslave of a living Adams. 

I have not space here to take you all through the revolution and remindyou of every scene in which your ancestor figured. But I shall finishwhat I was saying about Washington when his army was reduced to 3, 300and he was prepared for a grand trek to the Alleghenies. He did not haveto resort to that because General Howe did not press him any further. For political reasons, which we cannot go into here, Howe preferred thatWashington should raise another army if he could. 

Howe retired to New York and spent the winter there with his large forceof 30, 000; but at Trenton and Bordentown on the Delaware River somefifty miles away he placed two isolated outposts of about 1, 500 Hessianseach. Washington collected more men until his 3, 300 had become 6, 000 andwith these raw militia he gobbled up those Hessian outposts just as theBoers have been gobbling up similarly placed British outposts. When aforce of 8, 000 British came out from New York to reoccupy Trenton, Washington cut in behind them, and at Princeton, finding some moreBritish coming up widely separated and unable to support one another, hebeat them in detail. 

This was brilliant, irregular Boer warfare on outposts and weakdetachments. Washington was able to do it because his whole system waslike that of the Boers, an irregular one. If he had had a regularlyorganized army and it had been reduced down to 3, 300 it would never havebeen brought together again. He would have been done for. But his armywas always one of the come and go kind. He had a small nucleus thatcould be relied upon to stay; but most of his force was composed of menwho came from all parts of the colonies to serve three weeks, threemonths or six months then return home and have others come in theirplaces. It was by this Boer method that all the armies of the rebelparty during the revolution were kept going. When seriously defeated orwhen they had accomplished an object they would scatter as the Boers doand make it very difficult to destroy that which did not exist. 

Now that we have settled down and become a great nation all this seemslike very foolish business to some of us who cut off coupons or sit atroll top desks endorsing the backs of documents until we have lost thenatural feeling of vigorous manhood so characteristic of the Boers andthe followers of Washington. We have forgotten our revolution. Our ownacts in it now seem too heroic for our stomachs when we see otherspracticing them. Ireland has been practicing similar methods againstEngland for hundreds of years. It may be a foolish game, but it can bemade a very long one. It has lasted some seven hundred years in Irelandwithout success on either side. It lasted some thirty years in Cuba andwas successful and we have set the seal of our approval on that success. 

I shall now restore to your recollection the famous Duché letter whichwas written in the autumn of 1777. Duché was a brilliant young clergymanof the Church of England and was settled in Philadelphia. He wasinclined to take sides with the rebel colonists, and would have beenvery glad to see them attain what they wished if it could have been donepeaceably and in the manner of ordinary business negotiations; and hewas even willing to go a little farther than this and have the rebelcolonists make a certain amount of armed resistance up to a certainpoint, not beyond the bounds of good taste. In short he was very much ofyour professed way of thinking, and he represented a large class ofpeople who were of that way of thinking. At the meeting of the firstContinental Congress he opened the session with a prayer so eloquent andsuitable that it attracted universal attention, and gave him at once apolitical standing of some little importance. 

But after three years of Boer tactics, irregular methods, hopelessness, evident failure, the rise into power of men who were not gentlemen, petty peculation and fraud in the rebel army, apparent deterioration incharacter of the men in the rebel congress, the undignified runaway, wandering habit of that congress with its papers hauled from one refugeto another in a wagon, and similar things which make a deep impressionon men of a certain kind of education and refinement, he saw so clearlythe unutterable folly and wickedness of the attempt at independence thathe could stand it no longer. 

There were many others who thought just as he did; but they usuallyeither went to live in England or Canada or kept quiet insemi-concealment waiting until the power of Britain should restore orderand good government to the colonies. But Duché, feeling that he was insomewhat of a public position, argued out the whole subject in a longletter to General Washington, calling on him in the name of God andhumanity to put an end to the frightful state of affairs so mutuallydestructive to the best interests of both the colonies and England. 

He was horrified he said to find that rather than give up the idolindependence the rebels "would deluge this country in blood. " In shorthe was horrified at the Krugerism of Washington who intended to makeEngland "pay a price that would stagger humanity. " As to the rebel armyits existence depended on one man. Most of its officers were from "thelowest of the people. " "Take away those who surround your person, howfew are there that you can ask to sit at your table. " The rebels hadhoped for aid from France: but after three years of waiting it had notcome and there were no signs of it. The whig party in England wasgrowing smaller. The whole English nation, "all orders and ranks of menare now unanimous and determined to risk their all on the contest. "

 "Under so many discouraging circumstances, can virtue, can honor, can the love of your country prompt you to persevere. Humanity itself (and sure I am humanity is no stranger to your breast) calls upon you to desist. Your army must perish for want of common necessaries, or thousands of innocent families must perish to support them. Wherever they encamp the country must be impoverished. Wherever they march the troops of Britain will pursue and must complete the devastation which America herself has begun. "

 "Perhaps it may be said, 'it is better to die than to be slaves. ' This indeed is a splendid maxim in theory: and perhaps in some instances, may be found experimentally true. But where there is the least probability of a happy accommodation surely wisdom and humanity call for some sacrifices to be made to prevent inevitable destruction. "

It reads almost as if you had written it yourself, does it not? Itraised the whole question fairly and squarely, the whole question of themoral right of a naturally separated people to struggle for independenceto the bitter end, the last ditch, extermination or whatever name youchoose to give it, or as in the case of Ireland, the Armenians and thePoles without end. 

I do not mean to say that that was the only time that Washington had hadthe question brought squarely before him. It was a question that came upall over the country every day for seven years down to within a fewmonths of the surrender of Cornwallis in 1781; for the year 1780 was asyou know the darkest hour in our revolution. Every individual in thoseseven years had that question before him every day and hour, and asindividuals settled it for themselves one way or the other they droppedin and out of the two sides of the contest. 

How did Washington settle it with Duché? The young clergyman made apowerful appeal to him. He said that the whole solution of the warrested with Washington alone. He alone could stop the fighting. He alonecould persuade the other leaders in the name of God and humanity to giveup a hopeless contest. This was somewhat of an exaggeration. The war wasdeeper than Washington just as the Boer war is deeper than Kruger. Butnever mind that. Duché's idea was that Washington should at the head ofhis army negotiate for some settlement short of independence. Independence, England would never grant. 

Awful and wicked as it now no doubt seems to you, Washington declinedthis honor. He sent Duché's letter to the wandering congress. It wascopied and given a wide publicity. Your ancestor and the men of thattime never dodged the question raised by that letter. Washington alsosent a copy to Duché's brother-in-law, Francis Hopkinson, and if youwant to read a stinging letter I can recommend the letter Hopkinsonwrote to his perverted relative. The whole correspondence includingDuché's letter is printed in the appendix to the edition of 1846 ofGraydon's Memoirs. I shall quote just one passage from Hopkinson'sletter:

 "The whole force of the reasoning, " he says to Duché, "contained in your letter tends to this point: that virtue and honor require us to stand by truth, as long as it can be done with safety, but that her cause may be abandoned on the approach of danger; or in other words, that the justice of the American cause ought to be squared by the success of her arms. "

The moral or principle contained in that passage is repudiated by youand by every one who lives in England; by the Russians also, most ofthe Germans, many Frenchmen and in fact Europe generally. If you fearnumbers you do well, no doubt, in repudiating it. But it was on thatmoral principle that our revolution was put through. Whoever denies thatprinciple denies the United States, denies our foundation principle andour validity, denies the justice and righteousness of the struggleswhich created Switzerland, and all the South American republicsincluding Cuba, struggles which are still carried on by the Armeniansafter seven hundred years of failure and by the Irish for the sameperiod, struggles which in fact, originally created England, France, Germany and all the powers which now affect to despise them, struggleswhich create nationalities and all that is useful, honorable or valuablein civil or political life. When you deny the right of a naturallyseparated people to struggle without end for independence, you deny themost fundamental and necessary, the most powerful and far reaching, themost scientific and well settled principle of moral conduct that historyhas disclosed. 

I do not wish to take up too much space accumulating instances in ourrevolutionary history, but Franklin's conduct is perhaps worthconsidering. He was not what is called an enthusiast or fanatic. He wason the contrary one of the shrewd calculating kind. He had fullknowledge of all the conditions. He resided in England as agent ofMassachusetts and of the rebel cause in general from 1764 to 1775. Itcannot be said that he did not know the power and merit of England. Headmired the English political system. He was very fond of English lifeand preferred a residence among learned and cultivated people in Englandto one in America. Under these influences he at first believed that thecolonists should submit after trying ordinary peaceful and so-calledlegal measures. In a word Franklin was at first of your opinion. 

But when he returned to America in 1775 and the spirit or influence ofindependence touched him he became the most unrelenting, obstinate andas you would say unreasoning, fanatical and blind stickler for absoluteand unqualified independence at any price or at the price ofextermination. 

The Continental Congress of which your ancestor was a member was, aslate as the year 1780, so determined to keep up the struggle although inthat year it was regarded as hopeless, that they arranged to havepictures prepared with short descriptions of what they consideredBritish atrocities, but which were the milk of human kindness comparedwith Kitchener's Spanish concentration camps and other benevolencesinflicted on the Boers. These pictures and descriptions were to be shownand taught to every American rebel child forever so as to burn intotheir minds eternal hatred and a struggle without end against theindependence hating British brute. 

Just at the close of the revolution Franklin was preparing to havethirty-five of these pictures designed and engraved in France "inorder, " as he wrote to an Englishman, "to impress the minds of childrenand posterity with a deep sense of your bloody and insatiable malice andwickedness. " If Franklin could apply such adjectives to England'scomparatively mild attempts to suppress a rebellion, what would he sayto-day of her worse than inhuman efforts to destroy two independentnations. Franklin believed that the success of our revolution haddestroyed forever the inherent cruelty and despotic brutishness of theEnglish tory. But the tory has gone on developing; and even the Englishliberal has less of the courage, intelligence and character which weresuch a brilliant and saving grace to him in the days of Burke, Chathamand Barré. 

I shall now consider what you say about the action of General Lee andthe leaders of the confederacy. You assume that they were struggling forindependence; and that is most extraordinary. It is an insult, as itseems to me, to the intelligence of the whole American people. I neverbefore heard our civil war described in that way. That Lee or theconfederacy were struggling for independence in the sense in which theAmerican colonists of 1776, or the Boers of to-day or the Swiss or theIrish struggled for that object I most positively deny. If Lee and theconfederacy had been struggling in that sense the civil war would notyet be over. The eleven southern states would be now either independentor in the condition of Ireland. 

First of all the southern states were not a naturally separate people. They were contiguous territory. There was no natural boundary dividingthem from the North. They were of the same race, language and socialstatus as the north. They had taken part with the north in making thewhole country independent of England and with the north they had madethe National Constitution. 

They had quarrelled with the north simply about the question of slavery. At one time they had disapproved of slavery in the abstract as much asthe north did; but as their slaves were more profitable than slaves inthe north they were slower about abolishing slavery than the north hadbeen. Their slaves were guaranteed to them by the Constitution. Therising moral sentiment against slavery in the north, which seemed tothem to threaten the abolition of slavery in the south by violencewithout regard to the Constitution and without compensation to ownersdrove them into war. Their confederacy which they formed was a meremake-shift to protect millions of dollars worth of slaves. There is noevidence of any passion for independence among them, such as hascharacterized the people already described, and as a matter of factthere was nothing in their unseparated situation that would cause thatpassion. 

High strung, intelligent men such as the southerners are, will fight along time over millions of dollars worth of slaves, if they think theyare to be suddenly and unfairly deprived of them, but not as they wouldfight for independence, for political existence. There was so littlemoral righteousness in slavery and they had always known so well itsunrighteousness that when the point of scientific defeat was reached, when their regularly organized armies were formally defeated they gaveup the game. The inspiration of the cause was not perennial. There wasnone of the eternal justness in it which inspired the cause ofWashington and your ancestor, which has kept the Cubans struggling forthirty years, and the Irish and the Armenians for seven hundred. 

General Lee, who, as you say, set the example of giving up, was a manof peculiar views on the civil war. He was not a believer in slavery. Hedescribed it as a "moral and political evil" and "a greater evil to thewhite than to the colored race. " He did not even believe in the right ofsecession. He spoke of it as an absurdity, and said that it wasimpossible to suppose that the framers of the Constitution could havecontemplated anything of the sort. He had great misgivings and muchmental struggle when Virginia seceded and he finally decided to go withhis state because as he put it, "I have not been able to make up my mindto raise my hand against my relatives, my children, my home. " He caredlittle or nothing for the confederacy. It was the invasion of Virginiaagainst which he fought and he always commanded the army in Virginia. "Save in defence of my native state, " he said, "I hope I may never becalled on to draw my sword. "

Such a man easily dropped the contest for the confederacy when the pointof scientific defeat had been reached. He fought to acquit his own honoras a man fights a duel until blood is drawn, and that done he has nomore incentive for fighting. 

There is also another point you have forgotten. The terms which GeneralGrant offered Lee were of a liberality beyond the capacity of anyBritish general or statesman. Lee's whole army was paroled and told togo home taking their horses with them to cultivate their farms. Therewere to be no punishments or executions for treason. Afterwards whensome people in the north foolishly clamored for punishment, Grantsternly insisted on the fulfillment of every condition in the surrender. Under such terms it was very easy and natural for Lee to ride quietlyfrom the surrender to his own home, walk in and shut the door, and nevertrouble himself about the rebellion again. 

You say Lee's example influenced the other southern leaders. But it wasGrant's example, the fair and honorable terms, which were the realinfluence, the real power that was accomplishing this result. It wasvery American and possible only among Americans. The English are toostupidly violent ever to achieve such a result as that. 

You may remember that some months ago Botha and some of the Boer leadersmet Lord Kitchener to discuss terms of peace. And what were the Britishterms? Compare them with Grant's. Lord Kitchener said that immunitywould be given to certain of the leaders, but no immunity could bepromised to certain others. Could honorable men consent to surrenderthemselves and escape on condition that certain of their associates wereto be hung?

Suppose Grant had said to Lee, "You and your officers, if you willsurrender, shall be guaranteed immunity; but Jefferson Davis, andJohnston and Beauregard are to be hung. " Do you suppose Lee would havesurrendered? I am inclined to think that if any such British policy hadbeen carried out there would be guerilla war and Irish rebellion in thesouth to this hour. 

Lord Kitchener, you will also remember, would give the Boers no promiseof local self-government. It was indefinitely postponed. They asked himabout giving the right to vote to the black Kaffir population. ButKitchener refused to give any promise on that point. 

In other words they were asked to surrender without any agreement thatthe lives of the rebels in Cape Colony who had been assisting themshould be spared the gallows, they had no definite promise of localself-government, and so far was the possibility of self-governmentremoved that it was left uncertain whether or not the black Kaffirpopulation would not be used to control them and outvote them if a shamof self-government were set up. 

Now let us suppose Grant offering similar terms to Lee. Let us supposehim saying that the eleven states of the confederacy would be held ascrown colonies, or presidential subject colonies for an indefiniteperiod, and that the north reserved the right to control the south bymeans of giving the vote to the recently freed black slaves andwithholding it from the whites. Do we not all know what Lee's answer andwhat the answer of the whole south would have been to those terms?

We all know what happened a few years afterwards in the reconstructionperiod when the blacks were to a certain extent put over the whites. Weall know that the south immediately turned to guerilla methods or asthey were called the Ku Klux societies, societies of secretassassination and terror, methods far worse than ordinary guerillaism. Moreover these Ku Klux methods were successful. They broke the dominionof the black man. They compelled the north to stop, to recall its carpetbaggers, to reconsider its injustice; or as Mr. Page puts it thesoutherners reconquered their own country, and had it again under theirown normal state governments. But if Lee and the other southern leadershad known all this was coming they would have begun the guerillaism atAppomatox. 

The Ku Klux methods were unpleasant, atrocious, unfortunate in manyways; for as most of us can remember, they fixed upon southern life thehabit of assassination, which continued for many years in a manner mostrevolting and shocking to northern moral sense and it has only recentlybegun to die out. But who was to blame? England has in the same wayturned the Irish into assassins, rioters and law breakers, and thencries out that they are barbarous and uncivilized and must be "coerced"and forced into more assassination, rioting and law breaking. I placethe blame where it belongs; and I venture to predict that if Englandcontinues her inhuman, morally degrading and worse than Irish policywith the Boers she will turn them into a race of assassins or lawbreakers. They are now the very reverse of that. They have shown ahigher regard for the sacredness of human life than we have to-day inAmerica. They have shown more self-restraint, more respect for personalrights, have dealt more fairly with their opponents than we did in ourrevolution. They are the superiors of both ourselves and the English andthey are inferior to us and the English only in numbers. 

There is a great deal of talk of England's success in rulingdependencies. She rules no doubt successfully enough over the servile, over toadies, flunkeys and weaklings or those who have no spirit or loveof independence. Wherever she has attempted to rule anindependence-loving people as in the case of the Irish, ourselves or theBoers, she has made a most shocking failure of it. Few people troublethemselves to read the long history of England's dealings with the SouthAfricans for nearly a hundred years previous to the present war. It isall detailed in Theal's admirable volumes of the history of SouthAfrica. Theal was himself an Englishman, an official in South Africa, and he prints all documents in full. I must confess I was astonished toread this long record of atrocious injustice, inhumanity, stupidity andcruelty which generation after generation has hammered the Boers into aseparate people, given them a long list of martyrs and anniversaries offerocity and built up in them a fell hatred of the English, which nowastonishes men like yourself, who suppose this to be a mere suddenoutbreak, and who have not the time, or will not take the trouble, toinvestigate the long chain of causes which led up to it. 

With an independence loving people England has only two methods ofsuccess, extermination or banishment. She always rules with completesuccess over the dead. When with Martinis and Lee Metfords she hasslaughtered over 27, 000 black or brown men, carrying spears orold-fashioned guns, with a loss on her side of only 387, and with a vastcrop of medals and Victoria crosses for the supposed heroes of thissupposed wonderful victory, she has unquestionably solved a "problem" inher way. 

When, after 700 years of conquests, "colonization, " reform bills, finalsettlements, coercion acts, land acts, hangings, confiscations, corruptions, treachery and broken promises, a large part of the nativeIrish are living in the United States, where by their steadiness, industry, bright minds and success they contradict and disprove everycharge and statement made against them by pottering English statesmen, England may undoubtedly be said to have successfully solved the problemof her "white man's burden" so far as concerns these Irish in the UnitedStates. 

As to those who remain in Ireland we again hear of coercion, are toldthat there is to be some more legislation for them which is to be a"final settlement. " An Englishman has just written a book to prove thatall settlements with such people as the Boers and the Irish should be"finalities" and settle the question. This, he says, is very important. 

I notice also that some Irish representatives arrived the other day inNew York to collect from Irish-Americans subscriptions in money toenable them to discuss this "final settlement, " which has beenprogressing for 700 years without arousing the least sense of humor inany Englishman whom I ever knew or heard of. 

I know however of one settlement which is supposed to have been final. It was a document signed in Paris in the year 1783, by an Englishmanwhose name is of no importance, but the persons who signed on the otherside were Franklin, Adams and Jay. I am wrong to call this a finalsettlement. It gave us only independence on the land. England stillruled us on the ocean where she searched our ships as she pleased andclaimed a suzerainty over us as she has claimed a suzerainty over theBoers, and for the same contemptible purpose, to enable her to watch herchance to destroy our independence. 

We remained semi-independent until 1812 when we fought what used to becalled the Second War for Independence. There were a great many peoplein your part of the country who thought we ought not to fight that war. They used your argument. They said what is the use? It will waste moneyand destroy valuable property, both English and American. What is theuse of fighting for a mere sentiment? Let us be governed by sense ratherthan sentiment. Let us be content with the substantial advantage and theliberty we already have rather than risk it all, and our materialinterests besides. And you carried this argument so far that youthreatened to secede from the Union. 

England had secret emissaries here at that time to encourage secessionand dissolution in the hope that at any rate she could turn New Englandand possibly the Middle States into dependencies again. A few yearsafterwards in our Civil War, she again did her utmost to dismember us;and she would to-day seize with eagerness any similar opportunity. Shenever gives up her purpose to destroy the political manhood of anypeople. 

If she had the courage of her convictions and intentions and was notafraid of the outcry of the civilized world, she would be much shorterand quicker in her work with the Boers. She would surround theconcentration camps of Boer women and children with machine guns andpump into the mass of humanity until that heroic race was extinct. Butshe prefers the safer and more veiled, but equally infamous, method ofslow starvation and disease, of banishment and imprisonment in distantcountries to extinguish a race which she hates because she knows she hasalways done them evil and wrong and because they excel her own people inmorals, military intelligence and courage. 

She hated our love of independence as she hated Ireland's and it wasmerely an accident that she did not make of us an Ireland. When shedeals with an independence-loving people she makes of them either anIreland or a United States. And that is the question in South Africa. Shall there be an Ireland in South Africa or a United States of SouthAfrica?

It is most dismal to read of Englishmen suggesting for the Boers thesame old methods that were used in Ireland, "colonization, " stamping outthe native language, stamping out the love of independence, banishment, depriving of weapons, the greatest severity, no mercy. The Irish weredeprived of their weapons, even of their shot guns. They were forbiddento have carving knives above a certain length or horses above a certainvalue. They were "colonized" and their lands taken away from them andgiven to Englishmen over and over again, in exactly the same manner thatCecil Rhoads now recommends for the Boers. Measures to exterminate theirlanguage and their Roman Catholic religion were taken over and overagain and were of such relentless severity that no reasonable man coulddoubt that both the language and the religion would disappear within ageneration. 

Cromwell went among them with scythes, bullets and Bibles and the warcry of his soldiers was "Jesus and no quarter. " The town of Droghedasurrendered to him on his promise that their lives should be spared. 

 "But no sooner had they laid down their arms than Cromwell took back his word and slaughtered every man, woman and child in the city, so that five days are said to have been spent in this ghastly massacre. At Wexford the same miserable scenes of treachery and butchery were enacted. " (Gregg's Irish History, p. 64. )

Very few educated people in this country read Irish history. It is asort of forbidden subject. It might reveal too much. From what I haveread of it I am free to say that for stupid injustice, blind, unreasoning, brutal cruelty, treachery and corruption on the part ofEngland from about the middle of the 12th century down to to-night itequals if it does not exceed in atrocity the rule of the Spaniard inSouth America. 

Yet all the wicked things that the atrocity was intended to exterminateare still alive and possibly stronger than they were in the twelfthcentury. Roman Catholicism is as strong as ever, the language stilllives, and there has been a special revival of it within the last twoyears. The most wonderful part of all is that the Irishman is stillalive, still an Irishman with children and grandchildren. He still loveshis country, still loves independence and home rule, is still carryingon what you call guerilla tactics; and this very summer made a specialoutburst of guerillaism in the British parliament itself in the veryheart of London. 

What does all this show? Simply that the spirit of independence, thenatural nation-forming instinct of human beings, when once aroused, isusually inextinguishable except by the annihilation of every individual;and that this is a provision of nature for the formation of humansocieties in the world. Secondly that men will fight longer and moredesperately for justice or against injustice than they will fight formoney. 

It has been the consciousness of eternal justice that has kept the Irishand Armenians going for seven hundred years, that inspired theNetherlands to resist the Spaniard for eighty years, that kept yourancestor fighting for seven years and determined Washington to resort to"predatory" war rather than yield to the "benevolence and goodgovernment" of England. 

Justice is far superior to philanthropy, charity, "the white man'sburden" or any other pious hypocrisy or fraud that the villainy of manhas invented. It is more important than, and it must precede both moralsand good government. After you have been just to a people you may beginto preach to them. Good government as well as agricultural, commercialand industrial prosperity, have been rendered impossible in Ireland forcenturies because there has been no justice to the native and patrioticparty among the people. Justice can purify most of the internationalhorrors of the world far better than "benevolence. "

We are on the whole more just than other nations. We founded ourselvesupon justice, upon the doctrine that a naturally separated people had aright to their independence, that all men were politically equal andequal before the law, and that no government could be just that did notrest on the consent of the governed. These doctrines are the highestdevelopment of justice that has been wrought out in the past and by thatgreat movement called the Reformation. But England has never acceptedthem. 

We have taught England many things. The dread of our influence compelledher to give the Canadian French liberal institutions. Any rights theCanadians, the Australians or the East Indians enjoy are the result ofour revolution and the Sepoy Mutiny. Without our example the Englishlower classes would still be serfs. Real liberty and free government, the rights of the laboring man, have grown during the last century inEngland out of American precept and example. 

We have compelled her to enlarge her elective franchise towardsuniversal suffrage. Only a few years ago there were no cheap newspapersin England. No reform journals or periodicals favoring popular rights, could be started because there was a tax on the paper, a tax on theadvertisements and a tax on each copy of the journal, so levied andmanipulated that the tory aristocracy could kill at their pleasure anypopular journalistic enterprise. But the example of free and cheapnewspapers in America, under the guidance of a Gladstone, extinguishedthose taxes and from that time dates the development of popular rightsin England. In the same way has England been compelled to adopt oursystem of the secret ballot in place of her method which placed everytenant at the mercy of the landlord and every mill hand at the mercy ofthe mill owner. She is now struggling in a comical way to adopt ourpublic school system. It remains for us to teach her to be just to theBoers. 

With the greatest esteem for your distinguished ancestor and yourself, Ihave the honor to remain, Very truly yours, SYDNEY G. FISHER.