Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/17

4 to administer the organization. This power is one which contributes greatly to both their commercial and political success. But this tribe is also most eminently material in its aims and means ; it loves riches, works for riches, fights for riches. It is not warlike, as some other nations, who love war for. its own sake, though a hard fighter when put to it.

5. We are the most aggressive, invasive, and exclusive people on the earth. The history of the Anglo-Saxon, for the last three hundred years, has been one of continual aggression, inyasion, and exteUination.

I cannot now stop to dwell on these traits of our tribal anthropology, but must yet say a word touching this national exclusiveness and tendency to exterminate.

Austria and Russia never treated a conquered nation so cruelly as England has treated Ireland. Not many years ago, four-fifths of the population of the island were Catholics, a tenth Anglican churchmen. All offices were in the hands of the little minority. Two-thirds of the Irish House of Commons were nominees of the Protestant gentry ; the Catholic members must take the declaration against Transubstantiation. Papists were forbidden to vote in elections of members to the Irish Parliament. They suffered "under a universal, unmitigated, indispensable, exceptionless disqualification." "In the courts of law, they could not gain a place on the bench, nor act as a barrister, attorney, or solicitor, nor be employed even as a hired clerk, nor sit on a grand jury, nor serve as a sheriff, nor hold even the lowest civil office of trust and profit; nor have any privilege in a town corporation ; nor be a freeman of. such corporation ; nor vote at a vestry," A Catholic could not marry a Protestant: the priest who should celebrate such a marriage was to be hanged. He could not be " a guardian to any child, nor educate his own child, if its mother were a Protestant," or the child declared in favour of Protestantism. "No Protestant might instruct a Papist. Papists could not supply their want by academies and schools of their own ; for a Catholic to teach, even in a private family, or as usher to a Protestant, was a felony, punishable by imprisonment, exile, or death." " To be educated in any foreign Catholic school