First and foremost, war is war and military organization is, and must be, tyranny. This is, perhaps, the greatest and most barbarous cost of war and the most pressing reason for its abolition from civilization.
For we wanted not, O Lord, memory or wit, which thou wast pleased we should have in proportion to our age: but we were fond of play; and we were punished for it by them, that were doing no better; but the boys-play of those that are grown up is named business; whilst the equal toys of children are punished by them, and no one pities the children, or them, or both. For who is he that weighing things well, will justify my being beaten when I was a boy, for playing at ball, because by that play I was hindered from learning so quickly those arts, with which, when grown up, I should play far worse; as he was in the mean while doing, by whom I was corrected, who, if overcome in some petty dispute by his fellow teacher, was more racked with choler and envy, than I was when out done by my play-fellow in a game at ball?
Pittsburgh, (Pa.,) Sept. 1, 1831.
At a large and respectable meeting of the colored citizens of Pittsburgh, convened at the African Methodist Episcopal church, for the purpose of expressing their views in relation to the American Colonization Society, Mr J. B. Vashon was called to the chair, and Mr. R. Bryan appointed secretary. The object of the meeting was then stated at considerable length, and in an appropriate manner, by the chairman. The following resolutions were then unanimously adopted:
Resolved, That we, the colored people of Pittsburgh and citizens of these United States, view the country in which we live as our only true and proper home. We are just as much natives here as the members of the Colonization Society. Here we were born—here bred—here are our earliest and most pleasant associations—here all that binds man to earth, and makes life valuable. And we do consider every colored man who allows himself to be colonized in Africa, or elsewhere, a traitor to our cause.
Resolved, That we are freemen, that we are brethren, that we are countrymen and fellow-citizens, and as fully entitled to the free exercise of the elective franchise as any men who breathe; and that we demand an equal share of protection from our federal government with any class of citizens in the community. We now inform the Colonization Society, that should our reason forsake us, then we may desire to remove. We will apprise them of this change in due season.
I know not whether they work that in others, which they doe in mee. But when I heare our Architects mouth-out those bigge and ratling words of Pilasters, Arhitraves, Cornixes, Frontispieces, Corinthians, and Dorike workes and such-like fustian-termes of theirs, I cannot let my wandering imagination from a soddaine apprehension of Apollidonius his pallace, and I finde by effect, that they are the seche, and decayed peeces of my Kitchin-doore. Doe but heare one pronounce Metonomia, Metaphore, Allegory, Ætymologie, and other such trash-names of Grammer, would you not thinke, they meant some forme of a rare and strange language? They are titles and wordes, that concern your chamber-maides tittle-tattle.
Four years ago the French instituted an Armenian professorship. Twenty pupils presented themselves on Monday morning, full of noble ardor, ingenuous youth, and impregnable industry. They persevered, with a courage worthy of the nation and of universal conquest, till Thursday; when fifteen of the twenty succumbed to the six-and-twentieth letter of the alphabet. It is, to be sure, a Waterloo of an alphabet—that must be said for them.
It tickles human vanity to tell us that we are wiser than our fathers; and it is one of those propositions which is likely to pass without contradiction, from the circumstance that all those most interested in denying it are dead and gone. But if the grave could speak, and the churchyards vote upon the question, we living boasters would be in a most pitiful minority.