The anomalous condition of a people legally ranking as animals, and not human beings, would naturally produce unpleasant consequences when they are criminally the aggressors.  When they steal or kill they cannot be tried, sent to jail or hung as if they were human in the eye of the law.  The ruler of each enclosure is granted arbitrary power in such cases to punish at his discretion.  He is judge, jury, and often executioner.  He has a control over the lives of these people more absolute than that of any Christian monarch over his subjects.  If he thinks proper to shoot the offender, he can call upon the regular army of the country to sustain him.  If the individual offender escapes, the whole of the inmates of the enclosure are held responsible, and men, women and children are slaughtered by wholesale and without mercy.

My readers understand my little fable by this time.  It is no fable, but a disgraceful truth.

The government under which a people—­many of whom are educated, enlightened Christian gentlemen—­are denied the legal rights of human beings and all protection of law is not the absolute despotism of Siara or Russia, but the United States, the republic which proclaims itself the refuge for the oppressed of all nations—­the one spot on earth where every man is entitled alike to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  The only people in the world to whom it denies these rights are not its quondam slaves, not pagans, not runaway convicts, not the offscourings of any nation however degraded, but the original owners of the country.

The legal disability under which the Indian is held is as much of an outrage on human rights, and as bald a contradiction of the doctrines on which our republic is based, as negro slavery was.

R.H.D.

A LITTLE IRELAND IN AMERICA.

The humorous side of life was never more vividly brought before me than while living a few years ago in the vicinity of an Irish settlement in one of the suburbs of New York.  What we call “characters” were to be found in every cottage—­the commonplace was the exception.  Indeed, I do not remember that it existed at all in “The Lane,” as this locality was called.

Perhaps among the inhabitants of The Lane none more deserved distinction than Mary Magovern.  The grandmother of a numerous family, she united all the masculine and feminine virtues.  About the stiff, spotless and colossal frill of her cap curled wreaths of smoke from her stout dhudeen as she sat before the door blacking the small boots of her grandchildren, stopping from time to time to remove the pipe from her mouth, that she might deliver in her full bass voice a peremptory order to the large yellow dog that lay at her feet.  It was usually on the occasion of a carriage passing, when the dog would growl and rise.  Very quickly out came the pipe, and immediately followed the words, “Danger, lay by thim intintions;” and the pipe was used as an indicator for the next movement—­namely, to patiently lie down again upon the ground.