Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands, Volume 2 by Harriet Beecher Stowe
page 67 of 423 (15%)
page 67 of 423 (15%)
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characteristic English architecture.
We Anglo-Saxons have won a hard name in the world. There are undoubtedly bad things which are true about us. Taking our developments as a race, both in England and America, we may be justly called the Romans of the nineteenth century. We have been the race which has conquered, subdued, and broken in pieces other weaker races, with little regard either to justice or mercy. With regard to benefits by us imparted to conquered nations, I think a better story, on the whole, can be made out for the Romans than for us. Witness the treatment of the Chinese, of the tribes of India, and of our own American Indians. But still there is in Anglo-Saxon blood, a vigorous sense of justice, as appears in our habeas corpus, our jury trials, and other features of state organization; and, when this is tempered, in individuals, with the elements of gentleness and compassion, and enforced by that energy and indomitable perseverance which are characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon mind, they form a style of philanthropy peculiarly efficient. In short, the Anglo-Saxon is efficient, in whatever he sets himself about, whether in crushing the weak or lifting them up. Thomas Clarkson was born in a day when good, pious people imported cargoes of slaves from Africa, as one of the regular Christianized modes of gaining a subsistence and providing for themselves and their households. It was a thing that every body was doing, and every body thought they had a right to do. It was supposed that all the sugar, molasses, and rum in the world were dependent on stealing men, women, and children, and could be got in no other way; and as to consume |
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