Thursday, June 9, 2016

George 3d and a Lincoln.
[Richmond Daily Dispatch, June 9, 1864]
     If George the Third had been as great a tyrant as Abraham Lincoln, what would he have done with the Divine referred to in the following, which was published at the time in the English papers, from one of which, now before us, Lloyd's Evening Post, we make the extract?
     "The following is the conclusion of the daily family prayer of a very pious, respectable Divine of the Church of England, at the West end of the town: 'Finally, we recommend to Thy fatherly goodness our poor, distressed brethren in America; enable them to support the severe trials that a wicked Administration have laid upon them; may it not alienate their affections, nor oblige them to seek
protection in a Foreign Power; may the sacred ties of blood, friendship, justice, and humanity, never be violated by our soldiers; on the contrary, may they excite in them a just abhorrence of the cruel, arbitrary measures they are sent over to enforce, and firmly unite them with our friends in the glorious cause of liberty and their country; may their present sufferings be their future security, and a removal of bad counsellors from the ear and person of our Sovereign prove the salvation of the Colonies of the Mother Country.'" To which the editor adds: "When clergymen pray in this manner, what must some people think of themselves?" But no one molested the minister arrested the minister, nor"gutted" the printing offices.
     If George the Third had been as great a tyrant as the vulgar despot, who has every public man who draws a free breath tried for his life, what would he have done to Cumings, when he exclaimed, in the House of Commons, "I rejoice that America has resisted?" What would he have done to Chatham, when he said, in one of his famous speeches:
     "As to conquest, therefore, my lords, I repeat, it is impossible. You may swell every expense and every effort still more extravagantly; pile and accumulate every assistance you can buy or borrow; traffic and barter with every little petty German prince that sells and sends his subjects to the shambles of a foreign country; your efforts are forever impotent and vain, doubly so from this mercenary aid on which you rely, for it irritates, to an incurable resentment, the minds of your enemies, to overrun them with the sordid sons of rapine and of plunder — devoting them and their possessions to the rapacity of hireling cruelty. If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country. I never would lay down my arms — never! never! never!"
     In another speech: "In such a war as this, unjust in its principle, impracticable in its means, and ruinous in its consequences, I would not contribute a single effort nor a single shilling."
     And again: "This barbarous measure (employing Indians--a superior race to negroes — against the Americans,) has been defended, not only on the principles of polity and necessity, but also on those of morality; for it is perfectly allowable," says Lord Suffolk, "to use all the means which God and nature has put into our hands. I am astonished, shocked, to hear such principles confessed, to hear them avowed in this hour, or in this country." The outburst of indignant eloquence which followed is familiar to every school boy. Again we ask, if George the Third had been as great a tyrant as Abraham Lincoln, what would have become of Lord Chatham.

     Vallandigham, for not one-tenth of his offence, is banished; others sent to dungeons, others threatened with the loss of life. No one in the United States dares to sympathize with the South, or to utter one word in behalf of outraged humanity, except at the peril of liberty or life. Yet George the Third was such a tyrant that America stands vindicated before the world in throwing off his Government. Abraham Lincoln is the pink of Republican Presidents!

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