Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 3, 2025
'In 1778 Monsieur Turgot wrote that America was the hope of the human race that the earth could see consolation in the thought of the asylum at last open to the down-trodden of all nations.
Milton, writing of all bishops: "They shall be thrown down eternally, into the darkest and deepest gulf of hell the trample and spurn of all the other damned ... and shall exercise a raving and bestial tyranny over them ... they shall remain in that plight forever, the basest, the lowermost, the most dejected and down-trodden vassels of perdition."
Syndicalism is the latest despairing cry of the industrially vanquished and down-trodden, and is not to be suppressed by force of argument, whether the argument comes from the side of the employer or the fellow-workman. Only with the removal of the causes can we expect this philosophy of despair to vanish, for it is the courage of despair that we witness in its converts.
In my opinion Christianity has played a sorry part in the life of humanity. At the very moment when human beings felt that their lot was unbearable, and when the down-trodden and oppressed, coming to their senses, had determined to upset the monstrously unjust order of things, and to destroy all human parasites then, I say, Christianity made its appearance, gentle, humble, and promising much.
This passionate sympathy, on the part of some, for "the down-trodden," as they call the negroes, is not like zeal for a theological, or a political, or a scientific, doctrine, which would justify its adherents in rebuking the error and indifference of others; for if slavery be as they represent it, the proofs of it must be as self-evident as starvation.
Hope kept us up through that dismal country the path of war, where instead of harvest on the August day we saw down-trodden, half-burned wheat fields, where a few wretched creatures were trying to glean a few ears of wheat. Each village we passed showed only blackened walls, save where at intervals a farmhouse had been repaired to serve as an estafette for couriers from the French army.
The warm and generous cooperation extended to me by the friends of my despised race; the prompt and liberal manner with which the press has rendered me its aid; the glorious enthusiasm with which thousands have flocked to hear the cruel wrongs of my down-trodden and long-enslaved fellow-countrymen portrayed; the deep sympathy for the slave, and the strong abhorrence of the slaveholder, everywhere evinced; the cordiality with which members and ministers of various religious bodies, and of various shades of religious opinion, have embraced me, and lent me their aid; the kind of hospitality constantly proffered to me by persons of the highest rank in society; the spirit of freedom that seems to animate all with whom I come in contact, and the entire absence of everything that looked like prejudice against me, on account of the color of my skin contrasted so strongly with my long and bitter experience in the United States, that I look with wonder and amazement on the transition.
Hadrian had legislated for the down-trodden: no longer had you power of life and death over your slaves; they were protected by the law like other men; you could not even treat them harshly. True, there was slavery, a canker; and there were the gladiatorial games; we may feel piously superior if we like. But there was much humanism also.
The condition of the country, in which every man is liable to be arrested, thrashed, imprisoned, if not tortured, to extort from him his wealth, is such as furnishes the usurer with crowding clients; and the condition of things among the Indian cultivators, bad as it is, since they can at least turn to a fair-handed Government, is not to be compared to that of the down-trodden Moorish farmer.
Brooks, for the Honorable W. A. Duer and the Honorable Fernando Wood, to delight the citizens of New York with their peculiar eloquence. This was the appropriate occasion to stand up for the persecuted and down-trodden South! This was the grand opportunity to assert the noble principle, that, by the Constitution, every traitor had the right to be tried by a jury of traitors!
Word Of The Day
Others Looking