Yankee Humanity.
In the second chapter of the XIV.
Book of his "Peninsula War,"
Naples, speaking of
Percival's accession to the office of
Premier, uses the following language with regard to him:
‘
"Narrow, Harrah, factious, and illiberal, in everything relating to public matters, this man's career was one of unmixed evil.
His
bigotry taught him to oppress
Ireland, but his
religion, did not deter him from passing a law to prevent the introduction of medicines into
France during a pestilence.
He lived by faction the had neither the wisdom to support nor the manliness to put an end to the war in the
Peninsula, and his crooked, contemptible policy was shown by withholding what was necessary to sustain the contest, and throwing on the
General the responsibility of failure."
’
The severe expressions here used with regard to
Percival, brought his son into the newspapers in defence of his father's memory.
The defence was of a character so personal, that
Napier challenged the younger
Percival, and when his challenge was not accepted, he poured out the vials of his wrath of the memory of the father with tenfold bitterness.
The horribly wicked prohibition upon the introduction of medicine into
France, at the time it was suffering from pestilence, formed the chief burden of his denunciation.
And justly it did so for what can be conceived more utterly diabolical, than such a war with the sick and the dying — with the mother and the infant at her breast — with a whole people combatants and non-combatants.
We believe it is some where mentioned that the godly Puritans of
New England, who claimed that all the earth belonged to the Saints, and that they were the Saints, once took occasion to establish their claims to the lands of certain Indian tribes by sending the small-pox among them.
We know not how much truth there may be in the charge, for we thank God we have never wasted time in perusing the annals of that detestable race, who appear to have been capable of every crime, from murder to petty larceny; but it bears a strict analogy to this offence of the
British Minister, For the honor of human nature, when we first read the paragraph quoted above, we were induced to hope that, as the crime had no parallel in past history, so it would never find imitators in the future.--We were mistaken.
The
Yankees, the most prompt imitators of everything, unless it happens to be something that has a touch of benevolence in it, have taken the worst Minister that has flourished in
England since, the reign, of Charles II, for a model.
They war against our sick with all the inveteracy of the most devilish malice.
They except not from their list of contraband articles, medicines designed for their relief.
Calomel and opium are excluded with as much strictness as Minnie rifles and Armstrong guns. "No man," says Lord Byron, "is all a devil." The great poet know nothing of the
Yankees, or he would never have hazarded such an assertion.
