Page:The Complete Works of Henry George Volume 3.djvu/69

 APPEALS TO ANIMOSITY. 61

hatreds are appealed to, counter-prejudices and -hatreds must be aroused.

It is the very madness of folly, it is one of those political blunders worse than crimes, to permit in this land agita- tion that indiscriminating denunciation of England and everything English which is so common at Land League meetings and in the newspapers which voice Irish senti- ment. The men who do this may be giving way to a natural sentiment; but they are most effectually doing the work of the real oppressors of Ireland. Were they secret emissaries of the London police, were they bribed with the gold which the British oligarchy grinds out of the toil of its white slaves in mill and mine and field, they could not better be doing its work. " Divide and conquer" is the golden maxim of the oppressors of man- kind. It is by arousing race antipathies and exciting national animosities, by appealing to local prejudices and setting people against people, that aristocracies and despotisms have been founded and maintained. They who would free men must rise above such feelings if they would be successful. The greatest enemy of the people's cause is he who appeals to national passion and excites old hatreds. He is its best friend who does his utmost to bury them out of sight. For that action and reaction are equal and uniform is the law of the moral as of the physical world. Herein lies the far-reaching sweep of those sublime teachings that, after centuries of nominal acceptance, the so-called Christian world yet ignores, and which call on us to answer not revilings with revilings, but to meet hatred with love. "For," as say the Scrip- tures of the Buddhists, " hatred never ceases by hatred at any time; hatred ceases by love; that is an old rule." To undiscriminately denounce Englishmen is simply to arouse prejudices and excite animosities to separate force that sought to be united. To make this the fight

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