Ireland has been tortured and beaten, and her daughters and sons, in that
torture, those blows, have done wondrous work for us.
Coupled with divorce between the people and the land, there arose in the
British Isles, religious persecutions and tyrannies. These were the twin
forces which, with just exception enough to prove the rule, planted the
Anglo-Saxon in every corner of the earth. Two great evils working out in
good; a sowing in wrong and wickedness, the garnering righteousness.
Cradling like that made men and nations. When Spain founded colonies, she
sent delegates designedly to do so. When France colonised Canada, that
was her model; and the like with other nations. They planted all the Old
World institutions, with their imperfections, on new soil, which, as time
had shown, was like building on sand.
Taught by bitter experience at home, Anglo-Saxons struck out fresh lines,
in the fresh lands where, thanks to the discoveries of adventurous
rovers, they could find asylum. The humanities in them got scope; they
carried tolerance and liberty ever with them. Take the Puritans who
founded New England! Was there ever such a noble band? Again, take the
Quakers or the English and Irish Roman Catholics! In some cases, when
there was persecution on the Continent of Europe, these British emigrants
attracted to them what was persecuted.
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