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Home  »  The American Language  »  Page 391

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956). The American Language. 1921.

Page 391

  When a man was arrested and asked for a jury trial, not letting him have no jury trial.
  Chasing men out of the country, without being guilty of nothing, and trying them somewheres else for what they done here.
  In countries that border on us, he put in bum goverments, and then tried to spread them out, so that by and by they would take in this country too, or make our own goverment as bum as they was. He never paid no attention whatever to the Constitution, but he went to work and repealed laws that everybody was satisfied with and hardly nobody was against, and tried to fix the goverment so that he could do whatever he pleased.
  He busted up the Legislatures and let on he could do all the work better by himself.
  Now he washes his hands of us and even declares war on us, so we don’t owe him nothing, and whatever authority he ever had he ain’t got no more.
  He has burned down towns, shot down people like dogs, and raised hell against us out on the ocean.
  He hired whole regiments of Dutch, etc., to fight us, and told them they could have anything they wanted if they could take it away from us, and sicked these Dutch, etc., on us without paying no attention whatever to international law.
  He grabbed our own people when he found them in ships on the ocean, and shoved guns into their hands, and made them fight against us, no matter how much they didn’t want to.
  He stirred up the Indians, and give them arms ammunition, and told them to go to it, and they have killed men, women and children, and don’t care which.
  Every time he has went to work and pulled any of these things, we have went to work and put in a kick, but every time we have went to work and put in a kick he has went to work and did it again. When a man keeps on handing out such rough stuff all the time, all you can say is that he ain’t got no class and ain’t fitten to have no authority over people who have got any rights, and he ought to be kicked out.
  When we complained to the English we didn’t get no more satisfaction. Almost every day we warned them that the politicians over