have been deprived of equal privileges, political, religious and social,
cannot be denied, and that this deprivation on the part of the ruling
classes is cruel and unjust, is also equally true. Such classes have
even been looked upon as inferior to their oppressors, and have ever
been mainly the domestics and menials of society, doing the low offices
and drudgery of those among whom they lived, moving about and existing
by mere sufferance, having no rights nor privileges but those conceded
by the common consent of their political superiors. These are historical
facts that cannot be controverted, and therefore proclaim in tones more
eloquently than thunder, the listful attention of every oppressed man,
woman, and child under the government of the people of the United States
of America.

In past ages there were many such classes, as the Israelites in Egypt,
the Gladiators in Rome, and similar classes in Greece; and in the
present age, the Gipsies in Italy and Greece, the Cossacs in Russia and
Turkey, the Sclaves and Croats in the Germanic States, and the Welsh and
Irish among the British, to say nothing of various other classes among
other nations.

That there have in all ages, in almost every nation, existed a nation
within a nation--a people who although forming a part and parcel of the
population, yet were from force of circumstances, known by the peculiar
position they occupied, forming in fact, by the deprivation of political
equality with others, no part, and if any, but a restricted part of the
body politic of such nations, is also true.

Such then are the Poles in Russia, the Hungarians in Austria, the
Scotch, Irish, and Welsh in the United Kingdom, and such also are the
Jews, scattered throughout not only the length and breadth of Europe,