Yourself and the Neighbors
SEUMAS' MacMANUS' LATEST BOOK— NINTH EDITION.
Illustrated by Thomas Fogarty.
fw^^f '? ^ ¥^^^ °^^°y y^^^» *^ere is published a book hnS^«^rr?^-.''"i '^ Pi-e-eminently above the general run o£ books that It deserves to be classed among the masterpieces
iourself ana the Neighbors.' "—The Baltimore Sun. • i,'^5 Ss"^^f MacManus is not taken to our bosom ard cher- i!^f?, ^./'^ classic, then all signs by which we estimate genius rail. —Ihe Los Angeles Times.
New^^ 7-^ T^^^ *^® ^°"^ °^ ^^^ ^^^^ ^°^^ language exquisite.''—
George W. Cable says: I may have read as good English- not often, iiowever. Assuredly Seumas MacManus's is a mas- ter pen ,and a joy to me which I mean to malie permanent.
Jamea ¥/hitcoiab Riley: I read it with avidity— as I read every line of Seumas MacManus.
Archibishop Prendergast: Now that I have read it every JI tho^^l^"'^'',^ parts more than once. I wish to sav that it hi i^® .^^'f dehghtrul book of its kind I ever read. It should De in the horae of every one of our race the world over. fin^^^'J^o^^^^^^' • ^ ^J>^A^^ if Seumas MacManus realizes how i™ J. ^^'^'^ ^^- . ^^ '^ S'' charming, fresh, and quaintly humorous, and at the same time so pa^heticallv tender that I smiled and laughed and gulped -all in one Veath!"' Mark Sullivan, Editor of Colliers: I have read it with the
Lover, or Lever, or Banim, or GeraM Grlffia-^nd worth S Wilderness ot the works of George Jloore
in^'eSu'St anl^dictSon." ^ ^'""^'^'^-''^ '=-»tifu. booU. both
Edwin Markham: I am struck by the freshress hp-mt-
poesy., of this, the best work Seumas MacManuT'has eve'-
Ruth McEnery Stuart: This book is a delight— and for so many qualities that I find them almost lost in the word "charm." Many times in my reading I found my eyes filling with tears — ot keen delight and sympathy— ^and pride too. This work is the real thing, and as vital as Seumas MacManus* first touch, which made the world look his way.
President Chase, Bates College: This intensely interesting book helped me to understand, to appreciate, to love, and to admire the Irish people to a degree that has enriched my own mind, and made more tender my own heai't.
Chief Justice of Canada, Sir Charles Fitzpatrick: I thank Seumas MacManus for giving me here the key to all the charm of the Irish people.
Chancellor McCormick, University of Pittsburgh: I wonder whether Seumas MacManus himself realizes what a fine piece of work he has here done. I dare anyone to spend an hour reading this book and not rise from it a kinder, gentler, finer soul. The worldv when it comes to know the book, will thank Seumas MacManus for it as I thank him.
Price (including postage) $1.65.
THE IRISH PUBLISHING CO
Box 1300, New York City
A Lad of the O'Friels
By SEUMAS MacMANUS.
Fiana MacLeod says: An admirable piece of work, true to life, true in sentiment, true in touch), with vivid actuality and the breath of romance, and a very real and appealing winsome charm. ... It gave me sincere and deep pleasure to read this delightful book.
New Ireland Review: The poetry of Irish homely life has never been more faithfully and more touchlngly portrayed than in this book. It is a powerful (piece of work.
Boston Transcript: This book is a landmark, showing the height of excellence to which the flood of fiction may rise.
Punch: A charming book sure of lasting fame and popularity.
To-Day: It grips and enthrals the reader.
Dundee Courier: A more delightful book than "A Lad of the O'Friels'' has not left the press for a long time.
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THE IRISH PUBLISHING CO Box 1300, New York City
IRELAND'S CASE
SEUMAS MacMANUS
(Fiftieth iTiousand)
1919
New York The Irish Publishing Co. P. O. Box 1300
Copyright, 1917, By Seumas MacManus
To JOHN DEVOY
Because you bestowed yourself on a forlorn cause—* without seeking reward or honor— and without getting them:
Because, when the night was blackest, and the way was loneliest, with few workers to cheer, but alas I many lurkers to sneer, you, unheeding, tolled faithfully oa :
Because though the faint-hearted failed you, saying the Day could never dawn, and the false-hearted assailed you, saying it should never dawn, you still kept your determined way:
And because now*, with the brave band which you took safely through the traps and treacheries of the Night, you, vindicated, stand at the threshold of the Dawn, whence you see the spears of the Resurrection morn strike the sky:
I would lend lustre to this little book by writing down at its beginning — even without your permission — your bright name —
And the golden name of
THE' CLAN-na-nGAODHAL.
s. :.i. M.
154B2
FOREWORD
In the course of my lecture tour last winter I was due to talk to a certain lar^ Woman's Club in a Pacific Coast Qty. The women were dis- cussing the subject en ^vhich I should be aske|l to address them. One of the members made claim that they should have, from me, an histori- cal talk upon Ireland. The President of the Club, a truly cultured woman, looked sympa- thetically through her lorgnette at the member Vv^ho had spoken, and patiently pointed out to the ignorant one, "But, my dear, you must know that Ireland hasn't any history/*
My continuous peregrinations through Ameri- ca have shown me tliat Americans know nothing of Irish history.
Irish-vAmericans know probably double as much as do Americans. So you can credit them with double 'ought on the subject.
And yx>\x may, at the same time, conservatively credit five ©r six times 'ought to the purely jlrish here.
In the case of the Irish this is criminal ignor- ance. In Americans it is largely the fault ol
?!
English historians who, through the gcnerationij, have done their best to shed abundant darkness upon the subject of Ireland — and of the\i coun- try's relations with Ireland. And it is partly due to the lack of a good, gripping, readable, Irish history being popularized here.
It is a century since Plowden was moved in his hcmesty to protest against his brother historians' continuous and persistent misrepresentation and beclouding of Ireland's story. But honest Plow- den's protesting was about as effective as the badger s trying to blow the breeze from his door. Except in rare instances, English historians have ever since stuck to their traditional policy of either ignoring Ireland's wonderful history or gaibling and misrepresenting it.
This little book is compiled for the purpose of enlightening all who need it, only upon the fear- fully tragic story of Ireland's connection with England. And even in that it only touches some of the high spots.
It is the duty of every man and woman of Irish blood, first to study and digest for themselves the following papers, and next to force them on the notice of the purely American people — to make Americans study and digest them likewise — thus opening their eyes to a revelation that will shock
them out of their present unwitting ignorance and unblamable indilterence.
If Irish- American readers do this perseveringiy and conscientiously, Ireland's cause will get neWj forceful allies.
I suppose it is superfluous to point out that the persecuting English Protestant v/ho will be so often mentioned in these chapters, is no nearer kin to the reader's sincere Protestant neighbor, whom he knows and loves, than is the politician to the patriot.
i may say that I hope the present little work, a preliminary canter into Irish history, is the forerunner of a far more ambitious one, The STORY OF THE IRISH RACE, on which I am working, and which, within two years, I may, with God's help, be able to present to Am- ericans and to Irish alike.
New York, July i, 1917.
BEFORE ENGLAND CAME CHAPTER I.
It was in the year of Our Lord, ii 72 that England's army of invasion landed in Ireland.
Some of my readers know — but I fear many of them do not know — that for hundreds of years before that, the little Island sitting on the West- ern Ocean, was a hive of learning. For many centuries it had been the school of Europe.
In his "Age of the Saints," Boriase says, "Ire- land \vas the center of all the religious and liter- ary life of the North. Thither every peaceful scholar and every philosopher fled for refuge, be^ fore the Pagan hordes which swooped over Eur- ope." And M. Darmesteter says, "Ireland was the asylum of tlie higher learning which took refuge there from the uncultured states of Europe. The Renaissance began in Ireland 700 years before it was known in Italy. At one time Armagh, the ecclesiastical capital of Ireland, was the metro-i polis of civilization."
Though Ireland's schools had been heard o! en the Continent of Europe before Saint Patrick
IX
IRELAND'S CASE
brought Christianity to Ireland in 432, it was under the stimulus of the new faith that the great schools multiplied in Ireland — in the sixth and seventh centuries — and fixed the eyes of Europe. They attracted crowds of hungering scholars from the Continent, to whom, as testified by the ancient Saxon chronicler, the Venerable Bede, Ireland gave food and shelter, the use of her books, and the service of her famous teachers, gratis.
The sixteenth century Briton, Camden, treat- ing of the manner in which the English in the early centuries had flocked to the Irish schools — and of the distinction conferred upon a foreigner wht> could boast an Irish education says: *'Hence it is frequently read in our histories of holy men, *He h'ds been sent to Ireland to school/ *'
The Reverend Dr. Milner in his history of the Eng'lish Church, says, "The Irish clergy were then the luminaries of the Western World. To them we are indebted for the preservation of the Bible, the Fathers, and the Classics. Then, a residence in Ireland, like a residence now at a university, was almost essential to establish a literary reputation."
We have record of seven Egyptian monks dy- ing in Ireland in the eighth century. And also we
12
BEFORE ENGLAND CAME
find fifty natives of Rome "attracted to Ireland by the repute of the people for piety and learn- ing, and especially for knowledge of the Sacred Scripture." And still again we find an account of 150 people, natives of Rome and Italy, sailing in company to Ireland the renowned.
The School of Glendalough in the County of Wicklow, was attended by two thousand stu- dents. The School of Clonard on the Boync ■was attended by three thousand students. King Dagobert II. of France was educated there. From this school, Ussher tells us. ^'Scholars came out in as great numbers as Greeks from the side of the horse of Troy." The School of Bangor in the County Down, one of the most famous of the Irish Schools, was attend- ed by three thousand students.
The great School of Clonmacnoise, founded by St. Ciaran in the sixth century, was attended Ly six thousand students. A great university city grew up around it. St. Seananus tells how he, in one day, saw no less than seven ships carrying scholars from the Continent of Europe, sail up the River Shannon, bound for the School of Clonfert, on an Island in the river.
And through those early centuries the Irish schools were not only receiving and educating
13
IRELAND'S CASE
scholars from the Continent, but, year after year they were sending forth to .t^e Continent oi Eur- ope learned men and holy men who went travel- lirg in bands, bearing the light of learnmg and the torch of faith to the barbarous and semi-bar- barous nations of the Continent, founding schools, churches, and monasteries wherever they went. The Irish saints of those days are the patron saints of many corners of Europe which they evangeUzed. Saint Columbanus evangehzed Burgundy and Lombardy in the sixth century. He founded an Irish monastery at Luxeuil in France and a school at Bobbio in Italy where he died* The Irish Saint Cathal (Cathaldus). after whom San Cataldo in Italy is named i3 the patron saint of Tarentum in Italy of which he was Bishop. Saint Fergal (Virgilius) Irish geometer, who, in the eighth century preacxied the sphericity of the earth, was Bishop of Salz- burg Saint Colman is the patron saint of Lower Austria. Saint Gall, who founded the famous Irish School and monastery named after him in Switzerland, is the great Swiss saint. Samt
*I would advise my readers to get Mrs. Tomas O'Concannon's very fine Life of St. Co- lumban,
14
BEFORE ENGLAND CAME
Fiacra did wonderful work for Christianity in France. Saint Kilian is the saint of Franconia.
The Irish monks, Aidan and his fellows, dis- ciples of Saint Colmcille, going forth from Colm- cille's school on lona, went down through Britain, evangelizing and teaching. It is said that, about the middle of the seventh century there was only one Bishop in all England not of Irish consecration, namely, Bishop Agilbcrct of Wes- sex. Yet he was trained in Ireland.
Good St. Bernard testified, ''Ireland poured out swarms of Saints, like an inundation, upon foreign coutttries."
• Antissiodorus, of old, said, "It may be super- fluous t0 relate how all Ireland, as it were, emi- grated to ©ur shores with her swarms of philoso- phers."
The Continental scholars admit that St. Co- lumbanus, evangelizer of Burgundy and Lom- bardy, was head and shoulders above all scholars of his day in Europe, The Emperor Charle- magne, gathered to his court great numbers of the Irish scholars. The court tutor Qement was an Irishman. The great Irish astronomer. Dun- gall, who explained for the Emperor (in a docu- ment still preserved, dated 8ii), the eclipses of the sun which occurred in 8io and which had
IREUJnyS CASE
Ikerrified Qiarlemagne's subjects, came to reside at the Imperial Court, at the request of Charle- magne. Charlemagne's grandson, Lothajre, had Dungall found the School of Pavia in Italy for civilizing the Lombards.
Some of the old writers relate the quaint story of how in Charlemagne's day there arrived in the royal City two men from Ireland, who, go- ing to the market-place, took a prominent stand there, and to the gaping, wondering crowds an- nounced knowledge for sale. When word of their strange proceedings was carried to the Em- peror he ordered the men from Ireland to be fetched to his Palace — where he asked them their price for knowledge. They answered, "A shel- tering roof, food and clothing, and eager-minded pupils," This price he readily and quickly ordered to be paid to the Irish km>wledge ven- dors.
Scaliger Le Jeune, the French critic, says that in Charlemagne's day, almost all the learned men in Europe were Irishmen. In Charles the Bald's time it was said on the Continent that every man there who knew Greek was either an Irishman, or the pupil of an Irishman.
That wonderful Irish scholar, Johannes Scotus Erigena, always referred to by the Continental
i6
BEFORE ENGLAND CAME
scholars, as "The Master/' and described as *'a miracle of learning* — poet, philosepher and the- ologian— was brought over by King Charles the Bald, and made head of his School in Paris.
Professor Stokes enumerates in the tenth cen- tury twenty-four Irish schools in France, eighteen in Germany, not to mention the many in Italy, Switzerland and the Lowlands. The German philosopher, Professor Goerres says, "To Ireland the affrighted spirit of truth had flown during the Gothic irruptions in Europe, and there made its abode in safety until Europe returned to repose, when these hospitable phil©sophers, who had given it an asylum., were called by EUirope to re- store its effulgent light over her bedarkened forests."
In their address to Daniel O'Connell in the time of his Repeal agitation, the German College men said: "We never can forget to look upon your beloved country as our mother in religion, that already, at the remotest periods of the Christian era. commiserated our people, and readily sent forth her spiritual sons to rescue our pagan an- cestors from idolatry at the sacrifice of her own property and blood, and to entail upon them the blessings of the Christian faith."
Hieric in his biography of Saint Germanus,
17
IRELAND'S t:ASE^
written in the latter part of the ninth century, says in the course of his dedication of the book to the Emperor, "Need I remind Ireland that she sent troops of philosophers over land and sea to our distant shores, that her most learned sons offered gifts of wisdom of their own free will, in the service of onr learned King, our Solomon."
The eminent Celtologist, the late Professor Zimmer (of the University of Berlin) says : "Ire- land can not only boast of having been the birth- place and abode of high culture in the fifth and sixth centuries, but nlso of having made stren- uous efforts in the seventh century to spread her learning among the German and Romance peo- ples, thus forming the actual foundations of our present Continental civilization."
Their love of faith and their love of learning were two passions — or was it one passion? which thrilled the souls of the Irish people. And they were consumed with eagerness to share with the unfortunate ones abroad, the blessing that Heav- en had so bountifully bestowed on them at home. Hence, for long centuries, there was pouring out from Ireland and spreading everywhere, from Ice- land to Africa, from Biscay to Syria, a steady stieam of fiery crusaders armed with Bible and Cross, and girded with stylus and tablets, who
BEFORE ENGLAND CAME
knew not rest nor ease while still any corner o% the darkened Continent yearned for the light of faith. In wave after wave they came, dispers- ing themselves over many lands, and lavishing, wherever they went, their golden treasure — till Ireland became known throughout the Continent of Europe by the phrase Insula Sanctorum et Doctorum, Island of Saints and Scholars; and the name of Eire became in the mouths of the European populace a holy name, as well as a name of mystery and wonder.
CHAPTER II.
^ ELIZABETH CIVILIZES IRELAND
Though the Danes had ravaged many quarters of Ireland in the ninth and tenth centuries — un- til they were cast out by King Brian Boru in IC14 — the schools were again flourishing, beauti- ful churches and monasteries were being erected^ and Ireland was holding aloft once more the torch of learning whose light had for so long lighted the world's path, when the English, in 11 72 be- gan the conquest which it took long and terrible centuries to consummate — if it was ever con-' summated.
Conquering Ireland, inch by inch, it took up-* wards of four hundred fearful years before the}^ had extended their rule to the country's four cof'* tiers. During all of those more than four cen-» ttiries, Ireland got but few momenta of respite from war. Though to name it respite is, after all, bitter irony. For when Ireland was not shaken by war, it was racked by infinitely worse than war.
Mrs. Green (widow of the English historian
ELIZABETH CIVILIZES IRELAND
Green) says, "At a prodigious price, at any con- ceivable cost of human woe, the purging ot the soil from the Irish race was begun. There was no protection for any soul — -the old, sick, infants, women or scholars. No quarter was allowed, no hith kept, and no truce given. Chiefs were made to draw and carry, to abase them — poets and historians were slaughtered, and their books of genealogies burned."
Under Elizabeth, Ireland almost touched the depths. Her troops butchered and burned, car- ried fire and sword to the ends of the Island — and left the hitherto smiling and fruitful province of Munster, a blackened and desolate waste. The old English chronicler, Hollinshed, vividly de- scribes this desolation — "The land which before was populous," he says, "and rich in all the good blessings of God; plenteous of corn; full of cat- tle; well-stored with fruits and other commodi- ties ; is now waste and barren, yielding no fruit, the pastures no cattle, the fields no corn, the air no birds. Finally, every way, the curse of God is so great and the land become so barren — both of man and beast, that whoever did travel from one end of Munster to the other, over six score miles, would not meet any man or child, save in
91
IRELAND'S CASE
towns and cities; nor yet see any beasts save wolves, dogs and other ravening things."
It was the curse of God observe, not that of Elizabeth, which had fallen upon Ireland. Always, to the good Briton, when England curses God applauds.
And of the stricken survivors of Elizabeth's Wars in the South, the English poet, Edmund Spenser, who came as Chief Secretary to Ireland, says "At that time, out of the woods and glyns came creeping forth upon their hands (being un- able to stand upright, from starvation), things that looked like anatomies of death, that chattered like ghosts risen out of their graves. And they did eat the carrions, happy where they could find them."
The English General, Sir Richard Perrin, ex- ultingly wrote that he left "neither corn, nor horn, nor house unburnt, between Kinsale and Ross."
And the Irish chroniclers, the Four Masters, v/riting of one of the vast tracts of Munster over which the civilizers had swept — under date, 1582. say ''Neither the lowing of a cow, nor the voice of a plowman was, this year, to be heard here."
Sir Henry Sidney (Deputy) at leng-th in formed Elizabeth, "There are not, I am sure, in any re-
23
ELIZABETH CIVILIZES IRELAND
gion where the name of Christ is professed such horrible spectacles as are here to be beheld — ^yea the view of bones and skulls, of dead who, partly; by murder and partly by famine, have died in the fields, is such that hardly any Christian can with dry eye behold."
Elizabeth did not content herself with merely civilizing. She also evangelized in the most per- suasive Christian way. In the twenty-seventh year of the reign of Elizabeth it was enacted that "Every Romish priest found in the Island is deemed guilty of rebellion. He shall be hanged till half dead, then his head taken off, his bowels drawn out and burnt, and his head fixed on a pole in some pub- lic place." While the criminal who would shel- ter a priest was to have all his goods confiscated, and for his flagrant crime die upon the gallows.
This Act of course was only meant as a rough working basis for the introduction of Christian light and love into the souls of the benighted Irish. The authorities were required to improve upon it by working out practical details. In the case of Archbishop O'Hurley of Cashel, for in- stance, the sublime beauty of true Christianity was brought home to him and to those whom he misled, by the simple but elective device of put-»
IRELAND'S CASE
ting his legs into loose jack boots which were then filled with quick lime and water ; and letting him meditate upon the wondrous splendor of the English religion, while his legs were being slowly eeten to the bone — after which other ingenious persuasions were practised on him, before his be- ing hung upon the gallows. A Protestant his- torian, revolting at this, describes the torture as "The most horrible torture known to humanity.**
That was a sample out of thousands of the evangelizing methods of Elizabeth in Ireland. Let us note some samples of the civilizing — say the massacres of Smerwick, Clannaboy and Mul- laghmast.
A garrison of Spanish allies of the Irish, who held Smerwick Fort in Kerry, was attacked by English troops under the Deputy, Lord Grey. On promise of mercy, the Spaniards surrendered. After their arms had been collected from them Grey sent into the fort a company of English soldiers under Sir Walter Raleigh to give these fellows a taste of English mercy. Every Span- iard was butchered in cold blood. Sir Walter Raleigh was rewarded with a grant of forty thou- sand acres (of other people's property of course), in County Cork. It should be noted that the gen*
ELIZABETH CIVILIZES IRELAND
tie poet, Edmund Spenser, made public defence of the Smerwick massacre.
In this connection I would pause to emphasize the essential and unconscious brutality of the Saxon nature when we find even the most beau- tiful minded of the race — one who had such lofty imagination, sweet fancy, and rare poetic soul as Edmund Spenser, not only defending this hor- rible deed, but actually advocating, as he did, that since the Irish nation could not be made amenable to fire and sword, the race could be wifjed out (to make room for good Englishmen) by creating famine and pestilence among them. "The end will (I assure me) ' be very short." Spenser says in his State of Ireland; "Although there should none fall by the sword nor be slain by the soldier ... by this hard restraint they would quietly consume themselves, and devour one another."
The massacre of Mullaghmast is probably a still better illustration of Elizabeth's forcible and effective civilizing strokes in Ireland. To the Rath of Mullaghmast were invited by English proclamation, some hundreds of the leading men among the Irish within the Pale — chiefly men of the clans O'Connor and O'More — ^invited for a friendly interview. When they were collected.
IRELAND'S CASE
they were surrounded by three or four lines of horse and foot, fallen upon, and murdered to the last man. No single soul was permitted to escape from the dreadful Rath of MuUaghmast.
And then Clannaboy. The Earl of Essex in- duced the Chief, Brian O'Neill of Clannaboy, to make peace with him. But a dead O'Neill was always a more comfortable sight to the English than a live one. To celebrate the peace-making the Earl with a great troop of retainers visited O'Neill. Well, and purposely, armed they attended the banquet given to Brian in his castle — to which banquet Brian had invited many of his fellows of note. In the middle of the banquet, when all the Irish were ofJ their guard, at a given signal the English drew their weapons and massacred ail of the Irish present with the exception of O'Neill, his wife, and his brother, who were carried to Dublin and there cut in qv.arters — as a stimulus to the Irish nation to respect, imitate, and adopt English civilization.
This massacre of Clan/iaboy is treated by Ethna Carbery in one of her most stirring ballads —
26
ELIZABETH CIVILIZES IRELAND THE BETRAYAL OF CLANNABUIDHE*
(Belfast Castle, November, 1574)
From Brian O'Neill in his Northern home
Went swiftly a panting vassal. Bidding the lord of Essex come '
To a feast in his forded castle, \£o a friendly feast where the gleaming foatE^
Of the wine-cup crowned the wassail, ^ iTo Brian O'Neill came his gentle wife,
And wild were her eyes of warning; '"A banquet-chamber of blood and strife,
I dreamt of *twixt night and morning. And a voice that keened for a Chieftain's life"?-i But he laughed as he kissed her, scorning.
"In peace have I bidden the strangers here.
And not to the note of battle ; My flagons await them with bubbling cheer,
I have slaughtered my choicest cattle; And sweetest of harpings shall greet thine caTg '.
Aroonl o'er the goblet's rattle.** In pride he hath entered his banquet hallg >
Unwitting what may betide him,
*From Ethna Carber/* ''The Four Winds of EirlMf (Funk. WagnaUs Co.), *
^1
IRELAND'S CASE
^Girded round by his clansmen tall,
And his lady fair beside him ; From his lips sweet snatches of music fall,
And none hath the heart to chide him.
Hath he forgotten his trust betrayed
In the bitterest hour of trial? Hath he forgotten his prayer half-stayed
At the Viceroy's grim denial? And the bloody track of the Saxon raid
Oa the fertile lands of Niall?
Essex bath coveted Massareene,
And Toome by the Bann's wide border,
Edenhncarrig's dark towers — tlie scene Of hard-won fight's disorder ;
And Castlereagh, set in a maze of green (Tail trees, like a watchful warder.
Brian O'Neill he hath gazed adown
Where the small waves, one by one, met
The sward that sloped from the hilltops thrown Dusky against the sunset;
Sighed in his soul for his lost renown. And the rush of an Irish onset.
28
ELIZABETH CIVILIZES IRELAND
Woe ! he is leagued with his father's foe»
Hath buried the ancient fever Of hate, while he watches his birthright go
Away from his hands for ever;
No longer Clan-Niall deals blow for blow,
Plis country's bonds to sever. » * « * ^ ft
Over the Ford to his castle grey
They troop with their pennons flying —
(Was that the ring of a far hurrah, Or the banshee eerily crying?)
In glittering glory the gallant array
Spurs hard up the strand, low-lying.
Three swift-speeding days with the castle's lord They had hunted his woods and valleys ;
Three revelling nights v/hile the huge logs roared, And the bard with his harp-string dallies,
Freely they quaffed of the rich wine, poured As meed of the courtly sallies.
(Yet one fair face in the laughing crowd Grew wan as the mirth waxed faster,
Her blue eyes saw but a spectral shroud, And a spectral host that passed her;
Jlcr ears heard only the banshee's loud Wilti prescience of disaster.)
29
IRELAND'S CASE
Gaily the voice of the chieftain rang,
Deeply his warriors blended In chant of the jubilant song they sang
Ere the hours of the feasting ended ;
Eut harkl Why that ominous clash and clang?
And what hath that shout portended?
What Speech uncourteous this clamor provokes.
Through the midst of the banter faring? Forth flashes the steel from the festal cloaks,
Vengeful and swift, unsparing— And Clannabuidhe's bravest reel 'neath the strokes,
Strive blindly, and die despairing!
O'Gilmore sprang to his Tanist's side
ShriUing his war-cry madly— Ah ! far are the kerns who at morning-tide
Would flock to the summons gladly ; The echoes break on the rafters wide,
And sink into silence sadly.
Captive and bleeding he stands— the lord Of the faithful dead around him ; Captive and bleeding— the victor horde
In their traitorous might surround him;
30
ELIZABETH CIVILIZES IRELAND
From his turrets is waving their flag abhorred, And their cruel thongs have bound him.
Cold are the fires in the banqueting hall, Withered the flowers that graced it,
Silent for ever the clansmen tall
Who stately and proudly paced it;
<jrloom broods like a pall o'er each lofty wall For the foul deed that disgraced it.
There is grief by the shores of the Northern sea. And grief in the woodlands shady,
There is wailing for warriors stout to see, Of the sinewy arm and steady;
There is woe for the Chieftain of Clannabuidhe, And tears for his gentle lady.
The honest Scottish Protestant Dr. Smiles sums up the Elizabethan work in Ireland, "Men, v/omen and children wherever found were put in- discriminately to death. The soldiery was mad for blood. Priests were murdered at the altar, chil- dren at their mother's breast. The beauty of woman, the venerableness of age, the innocence of youth was no protection against these san^ guinary demons in human form."
And old Hollinshed enthusiastically sets dowii|
31
IRELAND'S CASE
"The soldiers in the camps were so hot upon tlie spur, and so eager upon the vile rebels, that they spared neither man, woman or child. They put all to the sword/'
Cox, an English writer of the old time, tells with much relish, "They performed their duty so effectually and brought the rebels to so low a con- dition that they saw three children eating the en- trails of their dead mother, on whose flesh they had fed many days."
The historian Lecky (a bitter anti-Home Ruler^ and staunch upholder of British power in Ire- land), admits in the preface to his "History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century." "The slaugh- ter of Irishmen was looked upon as literally the slaughter of wild beasts. Not only men, but even women and children who fell into the hands of the English, were deliberately and systematically butchered. Bands of soldiers traversed great tracts of country, slaying every living thing they met." And he also says, "The suppression of the native race was carried on with a ferocity which surpassed that of Alva in the Netherlands, and which has seldom been exceeded in the pages of histor}'.**
It is no wonder that in a short time one of her «®ldiar courtiers was able to convey to Eliza-
33
ELIZABETH CIVILIZES IRELAND
beth the gratifying intelligence. *There is now little left in Ireland for your Majesty to reign over, but carcasses and ashes."
And Sir George Carew — after doing his fearful share, v/ith rack and torch and sword, in reducing Ireland almost to a solitude — wiped his sword, took up his pen, and leisurely wrote his Hibernia Pacata — Ireland Pacified !
The only other quality in an Englishman's makeup that is at all comparable with his un- conscious brutality, is his unconscious humor.
35
CHAPTER III. AND THEN CAME CROMWELL
Elizabeth's worthy work of introducing Brit- ish civilization to the benighted Irish met with marked success.
But the good work probably reached its cli- max under Cromwell, who scourged, tortured and butchered the population, and drenched the land in a deluge of blood.
For Cromwell, the ground was well prepared. Five Northern Counties had been depopulated thirty years before, to make room for James's Scotchmen. The wretched Irish survivors of the depopulation campaign, those who had been robbed of their houses and lands, and bereaved Oi kith and kin, were hunted like animals in the hills to which they had fled. On the 23rd of Oct. 1641 there was a general rising of the hunt- ed ones. They sw0®ped back over the lands where their plunderers had been fattening in ease and plenty. 1 Jgland was aroused by frightful reports of a general massacre of almost all the British in Ireland 1
AND THEN CAME CROMWELU
It would not have been strange if these poor ■wretches — plundered, harried, hounded, and driv- en to frenzy — had wreaked terrible vengeance on, and exterminated, their merciless tyrants. But the Protestant Minister, Rev. Ferdinand Warner in his "History of the Irish Rebellion," written a few years after the event, says, "It is easy enough to demonstrate the falsehood of the relation of every English historian of the re- bellion." And another celebrated Protestant historian, Dr. Taylor, in his "Civil Wars of Ire- land," says, "The Irish massacre of 1641 has been a phrase so often repeated, even in books of education, that one can scarcely conceal his surprise when he learns that the tale is apocryp- hal as the wildest fiction of romance." He says^ "There were crimes committed owing to the wickedness of particnlpr men. Ent it is only fair to add that all atrocities were not only dis- couraged, but punished, by the Irish nobility and g^entry."
To suppress this rebellion the whole pack of England's carefully nurtured savageries, and best trained savages, were unleashed against Ireland.
Sir Charles Coote typical of the English gen- erals ill this war employed rack, and dungeon
IRELAND'S CASE
and roasting to death for appeasing of the tur- bulent natives. He stopped at nothing — even hanging v^^omen with child.
Lord Clarendon in his narrative of the events of the time records, how, after Coote plundered and burned the tovv'n of Clontarf, he massacred townspeople, men and women, "and three suck- ling infants." And in that same week, says Clarendon, men, women and children of the vil- lage of Bullock frightened of the fate of Clon- tarf, went to sea to shun the fury of the soldiers who came from Dublin under Colonel Clifford, "Being pursued by the soldiers in boats and overtaken, they were all thrown overboard."
Coote and Clifford were not better or worse than the average of the pacifiers of Ireland. I could quote here more instances of the blood- freezing kind than would fill a large book. But for my purpose one or two samples are as good as a thousand. Castlehaven sets down one in- cident characteristic of the humanity of the Eng- lish troopers. He tells how Sir Arthur Loftus, Governor of Naas, marched out with a party of horse, and being joined by a party sent by Or- mond from Dublin, "They both together killed such of the Irish as they met .... but th^ most considerable slaughter occurred in a grv*iii
AND THEN CAME CROMWELL
8L*ait of furze, situated on a hill, where the peo- ple of several villages had fled for shelter." Sir Arthur surrounded the hill, fired the furze, and ■with the points of swords, drove back into the flames the burning men, women and children who tried to emerge — till the last child was burn- ed to a crisp. Says Castlehaven in his Memoirs, '*! saw the bodies — and the furze still burning." For it should be particularly noted that the suckling infant aroused in the brave Britons the same noble, blood-thirst that did the fighting rebel. The butchering of infants was more dili- gently attended to during the Cromwellian per- iod, than in any previous or subsequent English excursion through Ireland. It is matter of rec- ord that in the presence, and with the tolera- tion, of their ofncers — in at least one case with the hearty approval of a leader — the common soldiers engaged in the sport of tossing Irish babes upon their spears. A noted old English historian. Dr. Nalson, in his account of the rebellion states (Introduction to his Second Vol- ume) **I have heard a relation of my own, who was a captain in that service (in Ireland), relate that .... little children were promiscuously sufferers with the guilty, and that when anyone who had some grains of compassion reprehended
IRELAND'S CASE
the soldiers for this unchristian inhumanity, tfiey would scoflingly reply 'Why? nits will be lii:er and so despatch them."
In countering this rebellion the Britsh opesied the game with the fearful County Antrim hoiror known to history as the Massacre of Island Magee — where, after murdering a multitude in b^d, the women and children, screaming and begging for mercy, were driven before the troops' goading bayonets to the terrible Gobbins cliffs — and thrown over the cliffs to fearful death below !
The singer of Ireland's woes and Ireland's joys, Ethna Carbery, sang a fierce song of this terrible deed— BRIAN BOY MAGEE.
I am Brian Boy Magee — My Father was Eoghain Ban — 1 was wakened from happy dreams By the shouts of my startled clan; And 1 saw through the leaping glare That marked where our homestead stood. My mother swing by her hair— And my brothers lie in their blood.
In the creepy cold of the night The pitiless wolves came down — Scotch troops from that Castle grim Guarding Knockfergus Town;
AND THEN CAME CROMWELE
And they hacked and lashed and hewed, With musket and rope and sword, TiU my murdered kin lay thick, In pools, by the Slaughter Fordl
I fought by my father's side, And when we were fighting sore We saw, a line of their steel With our shrieking women before ; The red-coats drove them on To the verge of the Gobbins gray, Hurried them — God, the sight! As the sea foamed up for its prey.
Oh, tall were the Gobbin cliiis. And sharp were the rocks, my woe 1 And tender the limbs that met Such terrible death below; Mother and babe and maid They clutched at the empty air, With eyeballs widened in fright, That hour of despair.
(Sleep soft in your heaving bed, O little fair love of my heart! The bitter oath I have sworn Shall be of my life a part;
IRELAND'S CASE
"" '^
And for every piteous prayer You prayed on your way to die, May I hear an enemy plead, ^While I laugh and deny.)
In the dawn that was gold and red, Ay, red as the blood-choked stream, I crept to the pervious brink — Great Christ! was the night a dream? In all the Island of Gloom I only had life that day — Death covered the green hill-sides, And tossed in the Bay.
I have vowed by the pride of my sires—! By my motiier's wandering ghost — By my kinsfolk's shattered bones Hurled on ^e cruel coast — By the sweet dead face of my love. And the wound in her gentle breast- To follow that murderous band, A sleuth-hound who knows no rest.
I shall go t© Phelim O'Neill Witli my sorrowful tale, and crave A blue-4)right blade of Spain, In the ranks of his soldiers brave^
AND THEN CAME CROMWELL
And God grant me the strength to wield That shining avenger well — When the Gael shall sweep his foe Through the yawning gates of Hell.
I am Brian Boy Mageel
And my creed is a creed of hate;
Love, Peace, I have cast aside —
But Vengeance, Vengeance, I wait!
Till I pay back the four-fold debt
For the horrors I witnessed there.
When my brothers moaned in their blood,
And my mother swung by her hair.
In 1644 the British Parliament ordered no quarter to Irish troops in Britain. Ormond shipt 150 Royalists from Gal way to Bristol, under Wil loughby. Captain Swanley seized the ship, picked out from amongst the troops seventy whom he considered to be Irish and threw them overboard. The Journal of the English House of Commons for June of that year records that "Captain Swanley was called into the House of Commons and thanks given to him for his good service, and a chain of gold of two hundred pounds in value."
In pursuance of the same admirable policy, Napier in hU "Life of Montrose" says that, in
IRELAND'S CASS
Scothnd, la one day, eighty Irish women and children were thrown over a bridge, and drowned.
Clarendon tells that the Earl of Warwick v/her» he captured Irish frigates, used to tie the Irish s*iilors back to back, and fling them into the sea.
So, a sympathetic atmosphere had been created for Cromwell's coming. And Cromwell quickly demonstrated that he deserved such preparation.
In Wexford town alone, although negotiations for surrender had begun, Cromwell slew two thousand. Lingard in his "History of Eng- land" says, **Wexford was abandoned to the mercy of the assailants. The tragedy recently enacted at Drogheda was renewed. No distinc- tion was made between the defenceless inhabi- tants and the armed soldiers, nor could the shrieks and prayers of three hundred females who had gathered round the great Cross in the market-place, preserve them from the swords of these ruthless barbarians."
Cromwell in explaining the matter to the com- plete satisfaction of his saintly self and the pious English nation, wrote, that he "thought it not right or good to restrain off the soldiers from their right of pillage, nor from doing execution on the enemy." (From "Cromwell's Letters.")
4J
AND THEN CAME CROMWELL
Though, after the sack of Drogheda, he prob- ably could not surpass himself. In the five days massacre at Drogheda only thirty men out of a garrison of three thousand escaped the sword. And it is impossible to compute what other thou- sands, of non-combatants, men, women and chil- dren, were butchered. In the vaults, underneath the church, a great number of the finest women o^ the city sought refuge. But hardly one, if om% even of these, was left to tell the awful tal(i of unspeakable outrage &nd murder.
And of all the men, womes and children who had taken refuge in the church tower, none esoaped. In the attack upon the church tower, the English soldiers made good use again of a device which they always practised when oppor- tufeity offered. They picked up children and carried them in front of them as bucklers.
Arthur Wood the Historian of Oxford, gives us a narrative compiled from the account of his brother who was an officer in Cromwell's army, and who had been through the siege and sack of Drogheda — a narrative that throws interesting sidelight upon the Christian methods of the Eng- lish army, and the quaint point of view of the mest cultured of them. Wood's narrative says, **Eftch of the assailants would take up a child
43
ntELAKiys CAsa
i
mnd use It as a buckler of defence td leec^ HSm from being shot <m: brained. After they hmi killed all in the church they went into the vaults underneath, where all the choicest of women and ladies had hid themselves. One of these, a most handsome virgin, arrayed in costly and gorgeous apparel, knelt down to Wood with tears, and prayers, begging for her life, and being stricken "wiUi a profound pity, he did take her under his arm for protection, and went with her out of the church with intention to put her over tfee works, iQ shift for herself. But a soldier, perceiving- his intention, ran his sword through her, whereupon Mr. Wood, seeing her gasping, took away hei; money, jewels etc., and flung her down over the works." The instincts of the English gentleman burst through the Qiristian crust in Mr. Wood. But hearken to how one of the greatest of Eng- lish Christians — ^perhaps the shinin|^ light of English Puritanism — at one stroke, beth haloes his crime and honors God by giving God partner- ship with him in his most demoniac work. la his despatch to the Speaker of the Eiouse of C&m* mons, after Droglieda, Cromwdl says, ''It laid pleased God to bless our endeavor at DrofiK^ [.] . . the enemy were about 3,000 stnmg ta tti<i town. I believe we put to the swerd tke
m
AND THEN CAME CROMWELL
number. •; • . This hath been a marvelous great mercy. , , . I wish that all honest hearts may give the glory of this to God alone, to whom indeed the praise of this mercy belongs." And again this shining light of Christianity says, "In this very place (St. Peter s Church), lOO of them were put to the sword, fleeing thither for safety. . . . And now give me leave to say how this work was wrought. It was set upon some of our hearts that a great thing should be done, not by power or might, but by the spirit of God. And is it not so clearly?"
The Englishman's intimacy with, and obedi- ence to, the spirit of God, throughout England's history in Ireland, enables him always to speak with authority upon the subject. And the spirit of God, we may expect, is exalted, when the Englishman, with characteristic generosity drapes it with his own character.
The English Parliament, on October 2, 1649, appointed a Thanksgiving Day for the triumph at Drogheda, and put upon record — "That the House does approve of the execution done at Drogheda, as an act both of justice to them (the butchered ones) and mercy to others who may be warned by iV
r^rte in his *'Life ol Ormond" records that at
IRELAND'S CASE
Drogheda, the offer to surrender, and request for quarter, had been made before the final assault and massacre.
The holy spirit that generally moved Britain in this war is exemplified by a pamphlet pub- lished in London at the height of the civiliz- ing demonstration in Ireland. The pam- phlet is represented as being published "by J. D. and R. I. at the sign of the Bible in Popes head Alley, 1647." I^ t^^ course of the pamphlet the writer says, "I beg upon my hands and knees that the expedition against them (the Irish) be undertaken while the hearts and hands of our soldiery are hot ; to whome, I will be bold to say, briefly: happy be he that shall reward them as they served us, and cursed be he who shall do the work of the Lord negligently. Cursed be he who holdeth back the sword from blood: yea cursed be he that maketh not the sword stark drunk with Irish blood; who doth not recom- pense them double for their treachery to the Eng- lish ; but maketh them in heaps on heaps, and their country the dwelling place of dragons — an astonishment for nations. Let not that eye look for pity, nor hand be spared, that pities or spares them ; and let him be cursed that curseth them not bitterly." ^
AND THEN CAME CROMWELE
•A truly sweet soul was the Lord's Anointed
who framed this delicate flower of prayer.
A little illustrative incident from Carte's Life of Ormond may here be set down to show how. the "treacherous Irish" retaliated. Carte tells how St. Leger when marching across the coun- try, "slaughtered men, women and children" — the usual thing — finally murdered one, Philip Ryan, whose infuriated relatives retaliated in kind upon several of the British settlers. Carte says "All the rest of the English were saved by the inhabitants of that place : their houses and goods safely returned to them. Dr. Saml. Pullen, Prot- estant Chancellor of Cashel, and the Dean of Clonfert with his wife and children, were pre- served by Father James Saul, a Jesuit. Several other Romish priests distinguished themselves by their endeavors to save the English. The English thus preserved were, according to their desires, safely conducted to the County Cork, by a guard of the Irish inhabitants of Cashel."
And how the Catholics retaliated on their persecutors in Ireknd ia the century before, is witnessed by the Protestant, William Parnell, in his '*Hi€torical Apology" (1807). When in the rdgn of Maiy, the Catholics were in the ascent
IRELAND'S CASE
dancy, **They entertained no resentment for the past/* Pamell testifies: "they laid no plans for future domination. Such was the general spirit of toleration that many English families, friends of the Reformation, took refuge in Ireland, and there enjoyed their opinions and worship without molestation."
So much for the Irish brand of retaliation as opposed to the London sample.
Half a century ere Cromwell, the conquest of Ireland had been technically completed. The Cromwellian Wars — like many other wars which continued to shake the Island — were merely civil- izing demonstrations.
Cromwell sent twenty thousand Irish boys and girls into slavery in the Virginian Colonies and the West Indies. (On one or two of the Islands of the West Indies, up to nearly a cen- tury ago, it is related, the negroes still spoke Gaelic.) The merchants of Bristol, ever enter- prising, and prompt to profit by a good opening, did a brisk business in Irish slaves then and later for the transatlantic markets — entering into formal legal contracts for the worthy purpose.
Prendergast in his Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland names four Bristol merchants who were the most active of the slave trading agents. Fo£?
AND THEN CAME CROMWELL
* illustrating the formal legal way in which the horror was commercialized Prendergast quotes "one instance out of many" — the case of Captain John Vernon, who as agent of the English Com- missioners who then governed Ireland, con- tracted with Messrs. Sellick and Leader of Bris- tol "under his hand, of date 14th September, 1653," to supply tliem with two hundred and fifty women of the Irish nation above twelve and under forty-five years of age. Also three hun- dred men between twelve years and forty-five years of age.
On the troopers, the camp followers, the Eng- lish friends, and London financiers, of the Crom- wellian expedition — for it was financed by spec- ulators in legal, regular way — was bestowed all of the richest of the lands in the East and South. To such of the Irish as escaped butchery and slavery, Cromwell gave the choice of "Hell or Connaught" — Connaught being the Western, the wildest and most barren province of Ireland.
After the Cromwellian settlement of Ireland, the official records (May, 1563) state "The starv- ing multitude are feeding on carrion and weeds on the highways, and many times orphans are found exposed and some of them fed upon by
49
IRELAND'S CASE
ravening wolves, and other birds and beasts of prey."
Thirty thousand Irishmen escaped with their lives to Europe — to all corners of which they wandered — and in all corners of which they with their Irish brilliancy, soon made themselves famed. One historian says, "They became Chan- cellors of Universities, professors, and high of- ficials in every European state. A Kerryman was physician to Sobieski,, King of Poland, A Kerry- man was confessor to the Queen of Portugal, and was sent by the King on an embassy to Louis the Fourteenth. A Donegal man named O'Glacan was physician and Privy Chancellor to the King of France, and a very famed prc^ lessor of medicine in the Universities of Tolouse and Bologna."
"There wasn't a country in Europe and not an occupation where Irishmen were not in the first rank — as Fieldmarshals, Admirals, Ambas- sadors, Prime Ministers, Scholars, Physicians, Merchants, Soldiers, and Founders of mining in- dustry."
Irish scholars and soldiers, the Wild Geese, continued streaming from Ireland to the Con- tinent over more than one hundred years — and during the next century and a half were making
SO
AND THEN CAME CROMWELL
their mark throughout Europe. Read O'Callag- haiv*s History of the Irish Brigade in the service of France for much that is absorbingly interest- ing.
From 1690 to 1745 it is recorded that almost half a million Irish soldiers died for France. But before they died they wrote their name and Ire- land's name, in glory, on many famous battlefields — at Steinkirk, at Landen, at Blenheim, at Spires, at Fontenoy the Glorious where they proved themselves the saviours of France, and on a score of other fields.
"On far foreign fields, from Dunkirk to Belgrade, Lie the soldiers and chiefs of the Irish Brigade."
In the middle of the eighteenth century Naples had an Irish regiment.
There were five Irish regiments with Spain. At Melazzo in Sicily, the Irish troops turned the tide of war when the Spaniards were sur- prised by the Germans — and saved the Span- iards.
The Irish Admiral, Cammock, who was the leading man in the Spanish Government in the sixties of the eighteenth century, had been an ambassador to London.
St
IRELAND'S CASE
Spain had noted generals, O'Mahoney, O'Don-i nell, O'Gara, O'Reilly, O'Neill.
When Cremona was surprised by Eugene and the Imperial troops, the Irish, tumbling out ol bed and fighting in their shirts, recovered the City.
Lecky says, ''llie Austrian army was crowded with Irish officers and soldiers."
The noble family of the Taaffes of Austrii. were Irish — and down to the present day kept up their Irish affiliations. The Duke of Tetuan, who was Spanish Minister of War during the Spanish-American War, is one of the Donegal O'Donnells who have been for centuries in Spain. He still maintains his affiliations with Donegal.
Lally of the Brigade who distinguished him- self at Fontenoy and elsewhere, ambitioned the conquest of India.
Tyrconnel was French ambassador to Berlin. Lacey was Spanish ambassador to Stockholm. And O'Mahoney was ambassador to Vienna. In recent days Marshal MacMahon was President of France.
The Dillons were high in the French army. And one of the family was Bishop of Toulouse.
One of the foremost Austrian generals during the Seven Years' War was the Irishman, Browne,
AND THEN CAME CROMWELL
Another Browne, cousin to General Browne, o! Austria, was Fieidmarshal in the Russian ser- vice, and became Governor of Riga. O'Brien it was who founded and built up the Russian navy. Peter Lacey was Russian Field Marshal and was the chief man in organizing the army of Peter the Great.
The Laceys achieved great fame in Spain and Austria, as well as in Russia.
While Ireland groaned through her long and terrible night of agony, and the Irish at home were as the wild beasts, Europe, throughout its length and breadth, scintillated wath the bril- liancy of the brilliant banished children of Inis- fail, and their children, and children's children.
These had escaped the blessings of English civilization.
CHAPTER IV, ENGLAND FOSTERS IRISH INDUSTRIES
It was not only about Ireland's morality and politics that England gravely concerned herself. Ireland's industries, trade and commerce, needed serious looking after by the protector.
From very remote days, as testified both by ancient history and ancient legend, the natives of this Island adventured much upon sea.
In the early centuries of the Christian Era the highly civilized Celt turned to trade and com- merce— probably stimulated thereto by the Phoenicians who carried on a large commercial intercourse with Ireland. The early Irish were famous for their excellence in the arts and crafts — particularly for their Vvonderfully beautiful vvork in metals — in bronze, silver and gold. A hundred hills and bogs in Ireland constantly yield up testimony to this — if we discarded the testimony of history, story and poem.
By the beginning of the Middle Ages, the trade of Ireland with the Continent of Europe was im- portant— and Irish ships seem to have been sail-
54
ENGLAND FOSTERS IRISH INDUSTRIES
ing to most of the leading ports of the Con- tinent. Irish merchants were well-known in the great Continental markets. And Irish money commanded universal credit.
This condition of things naturally did not suit Ireland's protector — her commercial rival — Eng- land. So at an early period she began to pro- tect Irish industry — by trying to keep it at home. It is interesting to foliow for a century or two the means adopted for this worthy object.
In 1339 England appointed an admiral whose duty was to stop traffic between Ireland and tlie Continent. He m.ust have been but indifferently successful ; for, a little more than a century later, Edward the Fourth deplores the prosperity of Ireland's trade, and he orders (in 1465) that since the fishing vessels from the Continent helped out the traffic with Ireland, these vessels should not henceforth fish in Irish waters without an English permit.
And since even this did not stop the stubborn Irish, in 1494 an English law is enacted prohibit- ing the Irish from exporting any industrial pro- duct, except with English permit, and through ar English port, after paying English fees.
This handicap, too, failed. For, we find Eng- lish merchants in 1548, unofficially taking a hand
IRELAND'S CASE
at tryingf to end the traffic — by fitting out armed vessels to attack and plunder the trading ships between Ireland and the Continent — com- mercialized piracy.
But official piracy had to be fallen back upon. Still twenty years later, Elizabeth ordered the seizure of the whole Continental commerce of Munster — much more than half of the trade of the Island. And in 1571 she ordered that no cloth or stuff made in Ireland, should be exported even to England, except by an Englishman in Ireland, or by a merchant approved by the Gov- ernment. (Nearly thirty years before, her res- pected, much married father, Henry of blessed memory, had forbidden Irish cloths to be ex- ported from Gahvay).
And Irish trade was attacked fr@m yet another angle. At the same time that the altruistic ad- miral was appointed, Irish coinag-e, was, by law, forbidden to be received in England. However, Irish merchants and Irish money had such worthy repute that not only did they still succeed with it on the Continent but, one hundred years later, Irish coinage had to be prohibited again in Eng- land. That was in 1447.
In 1477, after imprisoning some Irish mer- chants who traded with Irish money in England,
5i
ENGLAND FOSTERS IRISH INDUSTRIES
Ireland's protectors adopted a radical reform by Introducing into Ireland an English coinage de- based twenty-five per cent, below the English standard — and by law establishing it as the Irish currency.
Yet we are told that Irish credit on the Con- tinent was so good that, the "illegal" Irish coin- age still continued to pass there. And the Irish at home, with their usual perversity, seemed to have preferred the full value Irish coinage to the three-quarter value English coinage — for, seventy years later (in 1549) the refusal of an Irishman in Ireland to accept the debased English coin- age at its face value was decreed an act of trea- son. An immediate reason for this act was, that the English soldiers in Ireland, being paid with the debased brand of English coinage, found "nothing doing" when they tendered their coin for Irish products.
By reason of the big Continental trade the shipping industry had in itself become an impor- tant one in Ireland. Hence it was advisable to extinguish it. So, in 1663 the law prohibited the ise of all foreign going ships except such as were built in England, manned by Englishmen, and mailing from English ports.
Tlic Navigation Act of 1637 had already pro-
IRELAND'S CASE
vided that Irish ships must clear from English ports for foreign trade. After the Act of 1663 was passed, it was found that Irish merchants even at these heavy disadvantages, had begun to develop direct trade with the English Colonies. So this was stopped. And it was then tried to enact that no boats could even fish upon the Irish shore except boats built and manned by Englishmen. Anyhow the Irish ship-building sore was healed — by the effective method of re- moving it altogether.
The foreigner who knows not the way of Eng- land with Ireland, will pause to ask himself if all this is joke. It is a very grim joke. But dear foreign reader, be not discouraged — there's worse to come. Study Ireland's woolen joke.
The manufacture of cloths, more especially woolens, had become in these centuries, a great Irish industry. In the Continental markets, and even in the British, Irish woolens were in great demand. Consequently this trade should be stopped. Though, as usual, it took a long time to convince the pig-headed people who inhabited Ireland that it was for their benefit to stop it. The good work was, for mother England, a tedious and thankless task. But England work* not for thanks. Her work is altruistic evcTg
S8
ENGLAND FOSTERS IRISH INDUSTRIES
' III 1571, Elizabeth had begun the useful work % discouraging the cloth trade. But half a cen- tury later the good Lord Strafford, then Lord ILieutenant of Ireland, is begging for a little more discouragement. In 1634, he writes to Charles the First, **That all wisdom advises to keep this j(Irish) Kingdom as much subordinate and de- pendent on England as possible; and holding them from the manufacture of wool (which un- less otherwise directed, I shall by all means dis- courage), and then enforcing them to fetch their cloth from thence, how can they depart from us without nakedness and beggary?" Dear Mother England, how closely Ireland should cling to, and how dearly Ireland should love you !
But it was not until 1660 that woolen goods •were, by law, forbiddea to be exported from Ire- land to England. Then the Irish thought to ex- port their raw wool. This must be discouraged. So, in 1669, Ireland was prohibited from export- ing ber wool to England,
Biit there was ito r^son why, even when Irish wool was k^t at home, England might not make &^£i, profit out of it there — and also help her own merchants, by enabling them to under- sell tiie Irkh, in their own Irish markets. So, later, Ireland was asked to send her «h«^ tp
S9
IRELAND'S CASE
English ports for shearing — and iot oSctal ^^ ing of the price of Irish wool.
This was good. But there was better to come. In 1673, Sir William Temple (by request of Vice- roy Essex) proposed that the Irish would act wisely in giving up altogether the manufacture of WGoI (even for home use), because "it tended to interfere prejudicially with the English woolen tiade.*' This is the same English statesman and Irish protector who pointedly and pithily put the maxim which England has always observed in protecting Ireland, and fostering Irish wel- fsre — ^**Regard must be had" said Sir William Temple "to those points wherein the trade of Ire- land comes t© interfere with that of England, in v/hich case Irish trade ought to be declined so as t© give way to the trade of England.** The es- sence of the maxim, though, was then old. Sir Humphrey Gilbert in the sixteenth century had said, '*The trade of Ireland with Spain must be d&stmyQ<i and secured to England."
Now Ireland was almost completely cured of the bad habit of exporting woolens to her mas- ter's detriment. Only, a little trace of the habit 8^1 Imgered. While the British Colonies (by an oversight) had been left open to her, she con- tinued exporting to them. This needed attention^
ENGLAND FOSTERS IRISH INDUSTRIES
Accordingly in 1697 an act was introduced to pro- hibit Ireland from sending out any of her wool- en manufactures — to any place. That should finally fix her.
But, the Old England conscience yet scrupled that it had not fully done its duty by its stepchild. For though Ireland had ceased to interfere with the English market throughout the rest of the world, it was still wilfully making and wearing its own woolens — to the criminal detriment of English trade in Ireland. So, in 1698 a final step was taken. On June 9 of that year both of the English Houses of Parliament addressed King William (of Glorious, Pious and Immortal Me- mory) beseeching him to chide his Irish subjects for that — in the language of the House of Lords, "The growth of the woolen manufactures there hath long and will be ever looked upon with great jealousy by all your subjects of this kingdom, and if not timely remedied m.ay occasion very strict laws totally to prohibit and suppress same." The impending punishment for continued wll- fullness on the part of the naughty Irish child, was going to give the noble lords more pain than it would the child — ^which was being punished for its own good. ^
A^ the Commons in the course of their ad-
1^
IRELAND'S CASE
dress say, "And therefore we cannot without trouble observe that Ireland which is dependent on, and protected by, England, in the enjoyment of all they have" — that is so decidedly good that we must repeat it — "that Ireland which is de- pendent on, and protected by, England in the enjoyment of all they have, should of late apply itself to the woolen manufacture, to the great prejudice of the trade of this kingdom. . . . make it your royal care, and enjoin all those whom you employ in Ireland to make it their care, and use their utmost diligence, to hinder the export of wool from Ireland, except to be im- ported hither, and for discouraging the woolen manufacture of Ireland." And in token of their solicitude for the country which was "protected by England in the enjoyment of all that they have" they suggested that Irishmen should turn to making hemp and linen — which England had little means of making — and which, more betoken, Ireland then had less means of making.
King William answered his faithful Lords and Commons, "I shall do all that in my power lies to discourage the manufacture of woolens in Ire- land." And the King w^as this time as good as his word (despite the scandalous slanders of Limerick men). In this year of 1698 he signed
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ENGIIAND FOSTERS IRISH INDUSTRIES
an act to the effect that because these manu- factures are daily increasing in Ireland (disas- trous to relate!), the exports of wool and woolen manufactured articles from Ireland, should be forbidden under pain of forfeiture of the goods, and ships that carried them, and five hundred pounds fine. It needs an Englishman's sublimity of mind to comprehf^nd the enormity o\ the Irish crim.e, and the deep degradation of Irish criminals, which permitted the manufactures of their country *Maily to increase" — to such a grievous extent that their protectors had to step in and penalize the crime — and root it out.
It is worth remembering that though the mere Irish in Ireland were the workers, earning a sub- sistence at the trade, it was n®w almost entirely the Anglo-Irish, the purely British-blooded peo- ple of the Island who were the manufacturers, the traders, the capitalists. They, having had the misfortune to be born and to be living in Ire- land, were penalized and striven to be crushed out by their own kin in the holy motherland be- yond the Irish Sea. That they richly deserved, howeA^er, to be throttled and kicked, is proven by the fact that they, servile creatures, acting on the behest of William and their kin beyond the watf^r, did, on September, 1698, actually pass in
IRELAND'S CASE
tlicir own House of Parliament (from which the real Irish were carefully excluded) an act laying prohibitory duties on their own w©olen manufac- tures! In this connection it is worth comparing the spinelessness of the Anglo-Irish in 1698 with the spinefulness of their cousins in America, three quarters of a century later.
Except for a few little items such as waddings which were overlooked in the act of William the .Third — but carefully attended to by his succes- sors— the great Irish woolen manufacture was now extinguished forever. The Irish woolen comedy was ended.
For a long time after this destruction of one of the country's chief supports, the economic conditions in Ireland were terrible. Swift, who had stated that **since Scripture says oppression makes a wise man mad, therefore, consequently speaking, the reason that some men in Ireland arc not mad is because they are not wise" — he. Swift, thus describes the condition to which Ire- land was brought, by the suppression of the wool- en trade — ^"The old and sick are dying and rotting by cold and famine, and filth and vermin. The younger laborers cannot get work, and pine away for want of nourishment to such a degree that if at any time they are accidently hired to com-
ENGLAND FOSTERS IRISH INDUSTRIES
tnence labor, they have not the strength to per- form it."
And the Protestant Bishop Nicholson who was transferred to Derry from Carlisle, wrote "Never even in Picardy, Westphalia or Scotland, did I behold such marks of hunger and want as ap- peared in the countenances of most of the poor creatures met with on the road. In Donegal, in bad seasons, the cattle are bled and the blood boiled with sorrel."
Both Irish and English writers of this period draw fearful pictures of Irish suffering and Irish starvation, resulting from the abolition of her woolen manufactures.
But, of course, they had hemp and linen manu- factures to fall back upon — not to mention cot- ton. So, they turned their attention to these. But were not long at them till England got con- cerned that they v/ere in danger of making a suc- cess of them.
So, with the thoroughness of a real mistress, she attended to this. Twenty five per cent, duty was first put upon Irish cotton imported into Eng- land. And then, in the reign of George the First, tne inhabitants of Great Britain were forbidden to wear any cotton other than of British manufac-
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IRELAND'S CASE
hire. Which ended the brief cotton comedy in Ireland.
As for the linen, it began receiving England's attention immediately after the woolens were disposed oi. As early as 1705, the export of linen from Ireland to the British Colonies was for- bidden— except for the coarsest kinds of undyed Imens. Then the British Parliament put duties and prohibitions upon Irish linen manufacturers — and at the same time, granted bounties to Eng- lish and Scotch manufacturers — in order to cure Irishmen of the trade for promise of which Ire- land had permitted herself to be robbed of her woolen manufacture.
The Irish linens being excluded from England by the imposition of a heavy duty, the foreign Irish linen trade was soon safely ruined also. But English attention to the trade followed and sought it out even within the four seas of Ire- land. When Crommelin, the Hugenot, who had materially helped to build up the linen trade in Ulster, tried to spread the manufacture into Lein- stor, we are told that the fiercest English opposi- tion blazed up.
Edmund Burke challenged the English Gov- ernment for its breach of faith on the linen prop- psition. And the servile Irish (Anglo-Irish) Par-
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ENGLAND FOSTERS IRISH INDUSTRIES
liament in 1774 addressed Harwood, the Lord Lieutenant on the subject of the linen ruin, say- ing, "The result is the ruin of Ulster and the flight of the Protestant population to America." So, it was the ruin of the linen trade under Eng- land's "protecting them in the enjoyment of all they have" that helped to give to America her so- called Scotch-Irish pQpulation.
"Whoever," said Swift, "travels in this land and observes the face of nature, and contrasts it with the faces and dwellings of the natives, hardly thinks himself in a land where law, re- ligion, or common humanity is professed."
The linen trade was now well in hand. So let us follow up another Irish comedy.
From an early period the Irish had a large trade in the export of cattle to England. In 1665 England tried to stop this trade — and finally did stop it in the reign of Charles the Second, when the importation of Irish cattle into England was, by an act of Parliament, voted "a common nuis- ance"— and forbidden.
Carte in his "Life of Ormond" tells of the dis- astrous effect which these acts had upon Ireland. He says that horses went down in price from thirty shillings to one shilling. And beeves from £fty shillings to tenpence,
67
IRELAND'S CASE
The resourceful Irish then began kilting the cattle at home, and exporting the dead meat Their equally resourceful protectors immediately- countered with a law forbidding the import of beef into England. And to leave no little hole without a peg — they added pork and bacon for good micasure.
But the contrary Irish ferreted out a hole to get through. They developed dairying and began exporting butter and cheese, from Ireland. Their exasperated protectors had to go to the trouble of amending the prohibition laws— adding butter and cheese to the items which the Irish were in- •\ited to keep at heme.
Then the Irish killed their cattle and horses for their hides, and began what soon proved to be a prosperous trade in leather — which was in de- mand not only in England, but on the Continent of Europe.
Their vigilant English masters, how^ever, soon came along with another prohibition bill, which put an end to that business. Before quitting the cattle drive, however, it is only fair to say that one of England's most representative com- mercial writers of the early eighteenth century, Davenant, pleaded that England should permit
ENGLAND FOSTERS IRISH INDUSTRIES
Ireland to resume the cattle trade — because it would hold the Irish from manufactures I
Ireland attempted to develop her tobacco in- dustry. But a law against its gxowth was passed in the reign of Charles the Second. And again, in 183 1, under William the Fourth, it was enacted that any person found in possession of Irish- grown tobacco, should suffer a heavy penalty. So the tobacco trade was tenderly shown out.
Ireland, in the latter part of the eighteenth century, began not only making her own glass, but also making glass for export. In the reign of George the Second, the Irish, by law, were forbidden to export glass, and also forbidden to import any glass other than that of English man- ufacture. So the glass industry was protected to extinction.
Four and five centuries ago and upward, the Irish fisheries were the second in importance in Europe. Under careful English nursing they were, a century and a half ago, brought to the vanishing point. But the independent Irish Par- liament at the end of the eighteenth century saved them. It subsidized and revived the Irish fisheries — till they were rivalling the British. A few years after the Union, in 1819, England with- drew the subsidy from the Irish fisheries — at th«
IRELAND'S CASE
same time confirming and augmenting the sutn sidles and grants to the British fishermen — with ihe result that, notwithstanding Ireland's pos- session of ^ the longest coastline of almost any European country, it is now possessed of the most miserable fisheries.
Where 150,000 Irish fishermen in 27,000 Irish boats worked and thrived at the time that the English Parliament took away the subsidy in 1S19, only 20,000 Irish people get a wretched support from Irish fisheries today. The Brit- ish fisheries, three or four centuries ago, about squalled the Irish. The fisheries of Britain today are valued at 9,000,000 pounds annually. The fisheries of Ireland are worth 300,000 pounds. The Irish fish were with typical British solicitude, protected int@ the British net.
I have referred only to the leading Acts and <ievices for the suppression of Irish manufactures and Irish industries. What I have set down, however, is sufficient to show how England "pro- tected her beloved Irish subjects in the enjoyment of all they have" — how Ireland prospered under English Rule in a material way — and how Eng- land in her own kind way, took each little todd- ling Irish industry by the hand, led its childish footsteps to the brink of the bottomless pit, and
ENGLAND FOSTERS IRISH INDUSTRIES
gave it a push — thus ending its troubles forever.
Finally, the whole history of England's fos- tering of Irish industries may be shown in one illuminative sentence — When Englaad, several centuries ago, began the work of fostering Irish trade and industry, the commerce of Ireland was about equal to the commerce of Britain; in 1912, after several centuries assiduous English moth- ering of Irish industries, statistics showed that of the commerce of the foreign three kingdoms 1.2 per cent, was in Irish hands, 98.8 per cent, was in the hands of Britain I
The reader who would like to have at his finger ends the whole history of Irish trade progress under mother England may burn and forget all the rest of this chapter if he only remember those few eloquent figures.
Even the bitter, anti-Irish Froude, in his "Eng- lish in Ireland,*' is constrained to confess, "Eng- land governed Ireland for what she deemed her own interest, making her calculations on the gross balance of her trade ledgers, and leaving her moral obligations aside, as if right and v/rong had been blotted out of the statute book of the Universe."
Edmund Burke, asked, "Is Ireland united to the crown of Great Britain for no purpose otlicr
IRELAND'S CASE
than to counteract the bounties of Providence? And in proportion as that bounty is generous that we should regard it as an evil which is to be dealt with by every sort of corrective?"
Says Lecky, "It v/ould be difficult in the whole range of history to fnid another instance in which such various and powerful agencies agreed to degrade the character, and blast the prosperity of a nation."
And here endeth what will be considered by those who know not England's way with Ireland a wonderful chapter of Irish history — but quite common-place to those who have a bowing ac- quaintance with Irish history.
CHAPTER V. THE PENAL LAWS
But these Lnsh knaves, barbarous and per- verse, were not yet domesticated to the satisfac- tion of the exacting Briton,
A less persevering people than the English, less zealous in the service of God, might have given up these unregcnerate heathens, in despair. But in doing his duty to God and man, nothing on earth or under the earth will deter the Briton.
Since fire and sword failed to carry civilization home to the Irish savages, sometliing newer and more effective must be tried.
So the Penal Laws were invented.
The great French jurist, Montesquciu, says of the Irish Penal Laws: "This horrible code was conceived by devils, written in human blood, and registered in hell."
Under the Penal Laws a Catholic (in Ireland synonymous with Irishman) was deprived of all rights of citizenship.
He was forbidden to vote.
He was forbidden to keep any arms for his piotection.
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IRELAND'S CASE
He was forbidden to enter any profession.
He was forbidden to hold public oflice.
He WB.B forbidden to engage in trade or com- merce.
He was forbidden to take a mortgage in security for a loan.
He was forbidden to live in a walled town— or within five miles of a walled town. (The Eng- lish and Scotch settlers owned and occupied the towns and carried on the trade and commerce there. The Irishman was graciously permitted to come into the town during daylight — but had to depart for his own wilds before sunset — un(2er risk of being shot at sight for transgressing this law. Even after the middle of the eighteenth Century it was the boast of such cities as Ban- don in the South, and Derry in the North, that no Catholic was tolerated within their walls. And when John Wesley visited Enniskillen after the middle of the century, he found that city boasting of the same proud distinction).
If any child of any Irish lather adopted the English religion, that child could defy his father, become thereby his father's landlord, m.ake his father support him in ease, and must inherit all of his father's estate.
II g man's wife chose to turn Protestant, the
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THE PENAL LAWS
n Lord Oiancellor provided for the wife, accord- ing to his pleasure from the property of her hus- band— and she became thereby the sole heir of all of her husband's property.
No Catholic could inherit the land of a Protes- tant.
It was illegal for a Catholic to purchase any land. He could not inherit any land by will. No Catholic could receive an annuity.
No Catholic could own a horse of greater val- ue than five pounds. If he found himself in pos- session of such an animal, the law compelled him, under severe penalty, to proceed at once tQ the nearest Protestant and inform on himself.
Catholics could only dwell on forfeited estates as laborers or cottiers.
It was illegal for a Catholic to hold any land valued for more than thirty shillings a year.
If, on his miserable patch of holding, a Catho- lic's profits exceeded one-third of his rent, all his land would, by law, go to the Protestant who dis- covered on him.
Lecky says: "All real enterprise and industry among Catholic tenants were destroyed by laws which consigned them to utter ignorance, and still more by the law which placed strict bounds to progress by providing that if their profits ever
75
IRELAND'S CASE
exceeded one-third of their rent the first Protes- tant who could prove that fact could take their farm."
As decent Protestants revolted at becoming in- formers it was enacted (by the Anglo-Irish Par- liament in 1705) "That the persecuting of, and informing against, papists, is an honorable serv- ice." (The renowned quality of English humor charmingly exemplified by making dishonor honor, by Act of Parliament !)
A Catholic father could not be guardian to, or have the tuition or custody ©f his own children, if they chose to turn Protestant.
A Catholic was forbidden to educate his child. And he was forbidden to exercise his religion.
If he sent his child abroad to be educated, ail his property was thereby forfeited, and he himself outlawed.
If by money help, or other help, he aided in sending the child of another abroad t© be edu- cated, his property was confiscated and he him- self outlawed. '^^"
If any child went abroad to be educated, the child's property, if it had any, or any property that it might ever after own, was thereby confis- cated— and the child was then and thenceforth placed outside all privileges of law.
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THE PENAL LAWS
A Penal Law passed as early as the reign of Elizabeth, and re-enacted as late as the reign of Anne, commanded all Irish people under penalty of fine or imprisonment to attend Protestant worship.
Under the same law the leading Catholics in each town or district were appointed to see, and held responsible for, all of their fellow Catholics strictly observing the foregoing. They were to be the queen's bailiffs in bringing their heathen fellows to hear the truth — and the queen's in formers upon all of their fellows who should turn a deaf ear to the truth.
Both schoolmaster and priest w^ere banned by law. Both of them hunted in the hills — tracked by blood hounds — and by human hounds infin- itely more beastly.
There was a price upon the head of the school- master and of the priest — the same as on the head of a w^olf. Though, frequently they were rated higher than the other pest. For instance, en June lO, 1567, Burton's Parliamentaiy Diary records the words of Major Morgan, M. P. for Wicklow — who was protesting in Parliament against striking more taxes on Ireland — ^**We have three beasts to destroy that lay burdens upon us; the first is a wolf upon whom wc lay
77
IRELAND'S CASE
five pounds ; the second beast is a priest on whons we lay ten pounds — if he be eminent, more; the third beast is a Tory on whom we lay twenty pounds."
For, the price of priests fluctuated. Like every other commodity on the English market, it had^ of course, to be governed by the law of supply and demand. And like most bad weeds the more the priest was rooted out the thicker he seemed to spring up again. When he was plentiful — > which was usually the case — the most that an honest, hard-working man could get for a priest was five pounds — at which the quotation usually stood.
Again, even when priests were few, but that the priest-hunting profession was over-crowded, prices slumped. After the Cromwellian Settle- ment, for instance, alhtough priests were then scarce, prices reached rock-bottom — because every man of the settlers was trying, through priest-hunting, to make a little ready money on the side. Here are a few sample dusbursemcnt items from the Government records of 1657:
"Five pounds to Thomas Gregson, Evan Pow- ell, and Samuel Ally, to be equally divided up- on them, for arresting a Popish priest, Donogb Hagerty, taken and now secured in the Countjr
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THE PENAL LAWS
jail at Clonmel." P'or, neighboring British set- tlers often formed a co-partnership in the good work, and divided their earnings, share and share alike.
f An enterprising man, however, such as an ex- soldier sometimes employed hired help for priest- hunting, and, paying them by the day^s work, thus reaped larger profits for himself. For in- stance *To Lieutenant Edwin Wood, twenty- five pounds for five priests and three frairs ap- prehended by him — nam^ely Thomas McGeogha- gan, Turlough MacGowan, Hugh Goan, Terence Fitzsimmons, and another — v/ho on examination confessed themselves to be priests and friars." It must not be misunderstood that the generous Lieutenant threw in three friars for good meas- ure, gratis to the Government. There was only a total of five head in the round-up, all of them priests, but three of them belonging to the orders.
"To Humphrey Gibbs and to Corporal Thomas Hill ten pounds for apprehending two Popish priests, namely Maurice Prendergast and Ed- ward Fahy." The ex-soldiers with their greater keeness land very fine training were usually able to skin the field — to the disgust of the civilians.
*To Arthur Spollen, Robert Pierce, and John Bruen, five pounds for their good service per-
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IRELAND'S CASE
formed in apprehending and bringing before the Right Hon. Lord Chief Justice Pepys on the 2 1 St January last, one Popish priest, Edwin Duhy." Only five pounds between three saints I The civilians it will be observed were only pikers at the work.
Maybe it was as well. For then, as now, too great commercial success, led these Captains of industry to ultimate ruin. Exempli gratia, Mr. Terrell. The Dublin Intelligencer of May 23, 1713 records the sad news — "This day Terrell the famous priest-catcher, who was condemned this term of Assize for having several wives, was executed.** The poor fellow could no more with- stand success than a Pittsburgh millionaire,
Linder Elizabeth it was enacted that every Romish priest found in Ireland after a certain date should be deemed guilty ©f rebellion, that he should "be hanged till dead then his head taken of!, his bowels taken out and burned, and his head fi:Ked on a pole in some public place."
And the same act of Elizabeth provided that any one who harboured a priest should have all his goods confiscated and should die upon the gallows.
The Puritans whose renowned strug-gle for liberty of corLscience (their conscience), itiU
go
THE PENAL L.\WS
makes the world rmg — the Puritans, in their con- suming zeal for liberty of conscience, re-enacted in Ireland this law of Elizabeth— with improve- ments. They provided that not only any man who harboured a priest, but any man who knew Vv'here a priest was hidden, and did not hurry the information to the authorities, should be punished with death. And furthermore they enacted that even the private exercise of the Roman Catholic Religion in Ireland should be punished by death.
Schoolmaster hunting, and priest hunting, in those days became a very profitable pursuit, and many enterprising Englishmen emigrated to Ire- land to enter the remunerative profession. Even Portuguese Jews came over to push their fortune at the sport
The Protestant Dr. Taylor says "During the latter part of the seventeenth and the beginning <ji the eighteenth century priest hunting had be- come a favorite field sport/'
Unlike most other field sports however, the end of the field day did not end the enjoyment. After the criminal was taken — if he was taken alive — the fun entered a new phase. For the prolongation of the enjoyment of the English sportsmen a "trial" v/as often staged and regular sentence gravely pronounced and its execution
IRELAND'S CASE
earned out with as much orderliness as an Ala- bama lynching-bec.
A fair sample of the proceeding's of the time is afTorded by the case of Oliver Plunkett the meek and saintly Archbishop of Armagh, whose '^execution furnished an English holiday In i6So. fThe Protestant Bishop Burnett says of his case, ***The witnesses v/ere brutal and profligate men." He was charged with the crime of trying ■to establish the Catholic religion in Ireland. The ILord Chief Justice pronounced sentence "And therefore you must go hence to the place from whence you came, that is, to Newgate, and from thence you shall be, drawn through the city of Lx)ndon to Tyburn; there you shall be hanged by the neck, but cut down before you are dead, your bowels shall be taken out and burnt before your face, your head shall be cut off, and your body divided into four quarters, to be disposed of as His Majesty pleases. And I pray God to have mercy on your soul."
Another historian describing the end of this base criminal says, ''His speech ended and the cap drawn over his eyes, OliTer Plunkett again recommended his happy soul, with raptures of devotion into the hands of Jesus, his Saviour, for whose sake he died — till the cart was drawn from
§3
THE PENAL LAWS
under him. Thus then he hung betwixt Heaven and earth, an open sacrifice to God for innocence and religion ; and as soon as he expired the exe- cutioner ripped his body open and pulled out his heart and bowels, and threw them in the fire, already kindled near the gallows for that pur- pose.'* And so perished one "surpliced ruffian" of Ireland — to the glory of England and God.
The Scottish Protestant, Dr. Smiles, (the fa- mous "Self-Help" Man,) in his History of Ire- land, says '*The Cath#Hc Irishman was degraded into a mere i^rf and bondsatan of the soil — ^from all proprietorship in wkkh he was debarred. His property (if he had atiy), might now be seized by his Protestant neighbors; the child might plunder the father; the wife, the husband; the servant, the master. The nation lay at the m.ercy of the vilest kind ©f disceverers and in- formers. The history of that time is the most elcquent in the histary of Ireland — eloquent of suffering and endurance under the deadliest wrongs.**
We will pause in our picturing of the English crime in Ireland — to consider a thought that may naturally arise in many minds.
"Might not the Irish themselves, if they had
t.3
IRELAND'S CASE
■ . *
had the power, have persecute3\theiryinemiel. after the same fashion?" , .. * * ;' ^ *-.-.^^
I confess it would be natural to expect that the Irish, coming into power, should have oppressed, persecuted and massacred those who had plun- dered them of their patrimony, made their land flov/ with blood, and forced them, the natives of this land, into the direst bondage.
It v/ould be only natural to expect this. But let us study an actual instance of what did occur. And after that we'll glance at an instance of the opposite kind.
When James II. came to Ireland in 1689 and rallied around him the often-befooled Irish people — and that the Irish were, for once, in com.plete control again of their own country, an Irish Par- liam.ent met in Dublin on May 7, 1689.
This was a Catholic Irish Parliament, repre- senting a Catholic Irish country. The members of it were men called together in the frenzy of Civil War — men too, everyone of v/hom was smarting from memory of the vilest wrongs ever Vv'rought by conqueror on conquered. Lecky says of the mxcmbers of the Plouse of Comm.ons : "They were almost all new men animated by resentmxent of bitterest wrongs," — men most of whom had been robbed of their father's estates.
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THE PENAi; LAWS
Yet though these men burned with holy indigna- tion for the persecutions that they and their land and their people had suffered at the hands of the; plunderer and the murderer — and though in this their hour of triumph they held the power of life and death over their wrongers, Lecky confesses, with evident astonishment, "They established freedom of religion in a moment of excitement and passion."
By this Parliament it was enacted "We hereby declare that it is the law of this land that not now, or ever again, shall any man be persecuted Cor his religion."
Four Protestant Bishops sat in the Upper House. No Catholic Bishop was called to sit there. Fifteen outlawed Catholic peers were r^ called, but only five new peers were made. Siit Protestant members sat in the Lower Housfr— most of the rest of the Protestant members hav- ing espoused the cause of William, or fled to England.
They established free schools.
Where; Catholic Ireland had before been com- pelled to support the Protestant Church, this Parliament enacted that Catholics should pay dntis to Catholic pastors, and Protestants should p9j dues to Protestant pastors,
8s
IREEAND'S CASE
The Catholic Bishop Moloney in writing to the Parliament went so far as to recommend that compensation should be provided for all Pro- testant Church beneficiaries who, under the for- eigner's regime, had been paid by the state.
And thus did these Irish Catholics, in theii^ brief moment of triumph, to the usurpers who had persecuted and plundered them till as one Protestant historian confesses, ** Protestantism came to be associated in the native mind with spoliation, confiscation, and massacre,"
Lecky admits that under this Irish Catholic Parliament "The Protestant clergy were guar- anteed full liberty of professing, preaching, and teaching their religion,**
And now let us glance at a contrasting picture.
A little more than two years after the sitting and legislating of the Irish Catholic Parliament, the British once more got the upper hand — by agreement. In the WilHamite War that ensued, the Williamites won all before them— till they came to Limerick. After ^^vo long sieges they could not defeat the Irish there. Accordingly they ended the war by the celebrated Treaty of Limerick. Under this treaty, to which the faith snd honor of the English crown were pledged, tie Irish people were promised in their own coun-
m
THE PENAL LAWS
try equal protection with the British usurper there, for their properties and their liberties — and in particular they were to enjoy the free and unfettered exercise of their rcligi©n.
On these conditions, and in their innocence thinking that the pledged faith and honor of the English crown was an inviolable guarantee, the Irish laid down their arms and ended the war.
What followed?
As it has been often, and well put, the cele- brated Treaty of Limerick was broken before the ink on the document was dry.
When the Lords Justices, returning from the treaty signing, attended service in Christ Church Cathedral, Dr. Dopping, Lord Bishop of Meath opened the ball by preaching a furious sermon upon the sin of keeping faith with papists. All over the country the persecution and plundering of the papist began again, and was soon in full swing. A million acres of papists' lands were con- fiscated. The British settlers in Ireland began bcmbarding Parliament with petitions against the Irish papists. If these people got their liberties it was shown that Ireland would be no place for decent British people. For instance, the Mayor and the Aldermen of Limerick, in their petition to Parliament, protested that they were "greatly
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IRELAND'S CASE
damaged in their trade (with the honest British residents) by the large number of papists residing here." Just as every good American knows how any American quarter is cheapened and ruined by negroes migrating into it, so Irish towns were ruined by the mere Irish being allowed to crawl in.
Even the Protestant coal porters of Dublin pre- sented in Parliament "the petition of one Edw^ard Spragg and others" in which the petitioners hum- bly show that Darby Ryan, a papist, is employ- ing porters of his own religion !
Just imagine — if you can — the Impudence of the diabolical Darby, an Irish papist living in a papist Ireland under the solemn pledge of the English crown's faith and honor that he should enjoy equal liberties with the foreigner — imagine this scoundrel perpetrating the outrage of giving his fellow papists work to do! The astounding im- pudence of the impudent fellow surpassed the comprehension of every noble-minded Briton!
Only three years after the faith and honor of the British crown had been pledged to the pap- ists, the Parliament passed its Act for the Better Securing of the Government against Papists.
No Catholic could henceforth have "gun, pistol or sword, or any other weapon of offense or de-
THE PENAL LAWS
fense, tinder penalty of fine, imprisonment, pillory or public whipping." It was provided that any magistrate could visit the house of any of the Irish, at any hour of the night or day, and ransack it for concealed weapons. John Mitchel says ''It fared ill with any Catholic vvho fell under the displeasure of his formidable neighbors." lie says no papist was safe from suspicion who had money to pay fines — ^but woe to the papist who had a handsome daughter!
Under the pledged faith and honor of the Brit- ish crown, which promised to secure the Irish from, any disturbance on account of their religion, it was now enacted that '*A11 Popish Archbishops, Bishops, Vicars-General, Deans, Jesuits, monks, friars, and all other regular Popish clergy shall depart out of this kingdom before the first day of May, 1698"— under penalty of transportation for life if they failed to comply — and under penalty to those who should dare to return, of being hanged, drawn and quartered.
And by such liberality and generosity on the part of the British was the Irish nation repaid for the generosity it had shown them in its hour of triumph.
And to our foolish trusting Irish people thus jras exemplified for tibe ninety and ninth time, th^
IRELAND'S CASE
folly of relying on a "solemn treaty" of Britain-^ of thinking there was some value in the "pledged faith and honor" of the British Crown!
This is the same Britain that was so painfully shocked (bless its virtuous heart!) when, recent- ly, a German diplomat called a treaty a scrap of paper! .Those unutterable Germans!
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CHAPTER VI, STILL THE PENAL LAWS
Throughout those dark days the hunted Irish schoolmaster, with price upon his head, was hid- den from house to house. And in the summer days he gathered his little class, hungering and thirsting for knowledge, behind a hedge in re- mote mountain glen — where, while tattered lads upon the hilltops kept watch for the British sol- diers, he fed to his eager pupils the forbidden iruit of the tree of knowledge.
Latin and Greek were taught to ragged hunt- ed ones under shelter of the hedges— whence these teachers were known as hedge schoolmas- ters. A knowledge of Latin was a frequent enough accomplishment among poor Irish moun- taineers in the seventeenth century, — and was spokea by many of them on special occasions. It is truthfully boasted that cows were sometimes bought and sold in Greek, ia mountain market- places of Kerry. I had a valued friend, an old mountaineer in Donegal, who toJd me how, even at the end of the eighteenth century, his
91
IRELAND'S CASE
father, then a youth, used to hear at **rhe Priests Dinner/' in the mountain station house, the priest, the schoolmaster and many of the weli-to-do mountaineers discourse in Latin.
To these hedge schoolmasters who at the cost of all their happiness and risk of their lives, fed the little flame of knowledge and kept it burn- ing among the hills and glens of Ireland, through- out Ireland's dread night, Ireland can never re- pay her debt. In my book of verse, ''Ballads of a Country-boy," I sing a little stave to their memory :
THE HEDGE SCHOOLMASTERS
When the night shall lift from Erin's hills, 'twere
shame if we forget One band of unsung heroes whom Freedom owes
a debt. When we brim high cups to brave ones then,
their memory let us pledge Who gathered their ragged classes behind a
friendly hedge.
By stealth they met their pupils in the glen's
deep-hidden nook, And taught them many a lesson was never ia
English book;
92
STILL THE PENAL LAWS
iThere was more than wordy logic shown to use in wise debate;
Nor amo was the only verb they gave to con- jugate.
When hunted on the heathery hill and through the shadov/y wood^
They climbed the clift, they dared the marsh, they stemmed the tumbling flood;
[Their blanket was the clammy mist, their bed the wind-swept bent;
lii ^tiul sleep they dreamt the bay of blood- hounds on their scent.
[Their lore was not the brightest, nor their storCp
mayhap, the best, But they fostered love, undying, in each young
Irish breast; 'And through the dread, dread night, and long,
that steeped our island then, [The lamps of hope and fires of faith were fed by
these brave men. iThe grass waves green above them ; soft sleep b
theirs for aye; [The hunt is over, and the cold ; the hunger passeif
away.
IRELAND'S CASE
O, hold them high and holy! and their memory
proudly pledge, .Who gathered their ragged classes behind a
friendly hedge.
Throughout these dreadful centuries, too, the hunted priest — who as a youth had been smuggled to the Continent of Europe to receive his training — tended the flame of faith. He was hidden like s thief among the hills. On Sundays and feast days he celebrated Mass on a rock on a mountain- side in a remote glen, while the congregation knelt there on the heather of the hillside under the open heavens. While he said Mass, faithful sentries watched from all the nearby hilltops, to give timely warning of the approaching priest- hunter and his guard of British soldiers.
But sometimes the troops came on them un- awares, and the Mass Rock was bespattered with the blood of the "surpliced rnffian" (as he is, by English authority, appropriately named), — and men, women and children caught red-handed in the crime of w^orshipping God among the glens, >veft butchered on the mountainside.
Bishops and archbishops, meanly dressed in Irough home-spuns, trudgied on foot among their
STILL THE PENAL LAWS
people — and sometimes sheltered themseives» and ate and slept in caves in the ground.
The gentle Spenser in his day, observing all this, "did marvel" how these hunted priests, fore- going all the comforts and pleasures of life, and inviting both life and death's fearfulest terrors, pursued their mission "without hope of reward and richesse/*
"Reward and richesse 1" exclaims the Presby- terian patriot, John Mitchell, commenting on this, *'l know the spots within my own part of Ireland where venerable archbishops hid themselves, as it were, in a hole of the rock. . . . Yet it was with full knowledge of all this, with full resolu- tion to brave all this, that many hundreds of edu- cated Irishmen, fresh from the colleges of Bel- gium or of Spain, pushed to the Sea Coast at Brest or St. Malo, to find some way of crossing to the land that offered them a life of work and of woe. Imagine a priest ordained at Seville or Salamanca, a gentleman of high old name, a man of eloquence and genius, who has sustained disputations in the college halls on question of literature or theology, and carried off prizes and crowns ; — see him on the quays of Brest, bargain- ing with some skipper to be allowed to work his passage. He wears tarry breeches and a tar-
95
IRELAND'S CASE
paulin hat (for disguise was g^enerally needed) — he throws himself on board, does his tull part of the hardest work, neither feeling the cold spray nor the fiercest tempest. And he knows, too, that the end of it all, for him, may be a row of sugar canes to hoe, under the blazing sun of Barbadoes^ overlooked by a broad-hatted agent of a Bristol plantation. Yet he pushes eagerly to meet his fate; for he carries in his hands a sacred deposit, bears in his heart a holy message, and must tell it or die. See him, at last, springing ashore, and hurrying on to seek his bishop in some cave, or tinder some hedge — but going with caution by reason of the priest catcher and the wolf dogs."
The learned and saintly Bishop Gallagher (still famed for his sermons), a noble and beautiful character, had many narrow escapes from butch- ery in his unending peregrinations, traveling stick in hand, and homespun clad, among his flock — sleeping, sometimes in human habitation,. sometim.es in a hole in the bank and frequently among the beasts of the field. Once when he had the good fortune to be sheltered under a poor roof in Donegal, he was aroused in the middle of the night by the alarm that the priest hunters wc'ce c'o<e upon him. Half-clad, he escaped — but the poor man who had been guilty of housing him,
96
STILL THE PENAL LAWS
was taken out and butchered — thereby saving the priest hunters from an entirely unprofitable and uncomfortable night journey.
After Bishop Gallagher was translated from Donegal to a Bishopric in the midlands, the Bishop's Palace of this learned and truly noble man was a bothy built against a bank in the bog of A.llen.
Thus in their miserable lairs, in the bogs and barren mountains, whither they were trailed by wolf-hounds and blood-hounds, were sheltered all that was noble, high and holy in Ireland — while scoundrels, silk-and-fine-linen-clad, fattening on the <at of an anguished land, languished in the country's high seats of honor; or with Bible in blood-embrued hands, and eyes upturned to God, stalked abroad, models of true English Christian- ity for the edification of the Irish barbarians.
The late date down to which these persecutions were carried may be judged from the fact that the present Irish Primate's predecessor, Archbishop McGettigan, used to tell how, in his young days, at the Mass Rock in the meuntain, he acted as sentry, as acolite, and as candle-stick (one of the two boys who at either side of the altar-rock held the lighted candle and shielded it from the wind).
On the occasion of a recent lecture tour in Cal-
IRELAND'S CASE
ifornia, I met, in a valley of the Sierras, a middle- aged Donegal man, who told me how when he was a little boy in Donegal a man with a much disfigured face came one day to his father's house, and how his father told him that the man had es- caped with only this disfigurement from a Mass Rock massacre — when the priest hunters and sol- diers had, unawares, surprised the congregation in their crime.
In contrast with the manner in which the Irish papist was dealt with for his religion's sake, keep in mind how he dealt with others when he had had the upper hand.
We have already seen what happened in the times of Mary of England, and of James II. of England.
The old-time Protestant, William Pamell, in his historical treatise, testified: "The Roman Catholics are the only sect that ever resumed power without exercising vengeance."
With this Protestant testimony to the liber- ality and forgiveness of the Irish to their oppres- sors, contrast then another Protestant's testimony
98
STILL THE PENAL LAWS
to the liberality of the usurpers to their victims. Under the rule of the English, Smiles tells us, **Laws of the most ferocious cruelty were devised against the Catholic priesthood. They were hunted like wild beasts, hanged, tortured, behead- ed and quartered. The mere Irish were deprived of the protection of the English law, and might be killed with impunity."
Indeed the bereaved family needed to be grate- ful, if the good Englishman who took the trouble to shoot one of its members generously refrained from assessing them with the price of the gun's priming.
It is good to record that many and many a time during the centuries of Ireland's agony, the de- cent Protestant hid the hunted priest wb-en the bloodhounds, and human hounds, were close upon him, and saved his life — at the risk, too, of his own.
And many a time, too, the decent Protestant — sometimes a poor man — accepted legal transfer of the lands of his Catholic neighbor to hold these lands for his Catholic neighbor's benefit, and thus save them from being forfeited to an informer.
Of the Penal system, the great Irish Protestant, Edmund Burke, said ; '*It was a machine oi' wise
IRELAND'S C\SE
and elaborate contrivance as well flitted for the impoverishment and degradation of a people, and the debasement in them of human nature, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man." And of those dreadful days the ardent Protes- tant young Irelander, Thomas Davis, sang:
*'0 weep those days — the Penal Days
When Ireland hepelessly complained 1 O weep those days, the Penal Days,
When Godless persecution reigned! They bribed the fiock, they bribed the son,
To sell the priest, and rob the sire. Their dogs were taught alike to run
Upon the track of wolf and friar ; Among the poor and on the moor,
Were hid the faithful and the true, While traitor, slave, and recreant knave.
Had riches rank and retenue.**
Even in recent days in some of the remote parts of Ireland often the local representatives of Brit- ish power, the landlord and magistrate, would not permit the erection of a Catholic Church within the district that he lorded over. The Church of the famous, fighting Father McFadden in Gwee- dore, had to be erected on a No-man's land, the
TG9
STILL THE PENAL LAWS
tiead-line between the possessions of two Englisli landlords — a gulch which had been the bed of a mountain torrent — now diverted. On a fatal stormy Sunday in the '8o's the torrent, finding its old way again, swept down upon the little chapel when it was packed with its mountain congrega- tion, carried away chapel, priest and worshippers, and left sad hearts and lone hearths in bleak Gweedore.
In my own parish of Inver, a relic of the Penal Days was with us till I had reached mature man- hood— in the form of a scalan — a three-walled, thatched Mass-shed which sheltered the altar and the officiating priest. In front of the open end, the congregation, gathered hither from miles of moor and mountain, kneeling on the bare hillside tinder the open Heavens — often with slush soak- ing their knees, and pelting rain or driving hail mercilessly lashing their bodies, and whipping their upturned faces — heard Mass evtry Sunday. Whether blowing or snowing, shining or shower- ing, every Sunday morning were there from re- mote homes man and woman, boy and girl, bare- footed child and crawling old. I have knelt with them — one of them.
In the days when I, la bouchaillin, scudd ed the moors to Mass, there mothered England and
IRELAND'S CASE
step-mothered Ireland a very respectable, very lugubrious, and very homely-minded old lady, who had developed a comfortable embonpoint, and fattened a very large and very ordinary brood of children, at the expense of poor, lean, famished, famine-haunted Ireland — a worthy enough old lady who represented the power that robbed us of everything except our hardships, and gave us nothing but our poverty. Now about the very time that our scalan congregation would be kneeling down on the arctic shoulder of Ardag- iiey Hill this good lady and her middling well- trained children would probably be bogging* their knees in the yielding plush of their prie-dieux in the magnificent Chapel of Buckingham Palace — or before a comforting fire, languidly sinking out of one another's sight in the caressing up- holstery of their Palace drawing-room. And I can vividly remem^ber the queer questioning that started in my boyish mind one fierce February Sunday when, with the miserable multitude at IMass on that storm-lashed hillside, our knees sunk in the marrow-freezing mire, our few sorry clothes soaked through and plastered to our bones by the snow-broth, our bared heads battered, and faces whipped and cut by the driving sleet, I heard the sagart (a simple saintly soul) lead ua
I03
STILL THE PENAL LAWS
in supplication to the Lord to grant health and happiness to, and fhower His manifold blessings upon, "Her Majesty, the Queen of this Realm, and all the Royal Family 1"
Oh the irony of the ways of poor hungry Ire- land ! Oh the wistful naivete of comfortable, fat England ! happy as the happiest hog that ever wallowed and grunted in the spilt wealth of his sti\
3^
CHAPTER VII. THE BRITISH GARRISON IN IRELAND
This cliapter does not treat upon the ordinary British army in Ireland. It refers to an unofficial British army, which, more than the regular army, has held Ireland for England — held it down.
What has come to be known as the British gar- rison in Ireland, is the vast body of the Brito- Irish, referred to in the last chapter as having been amongst the cruellest, most brutal maltreat- ors of the Irish people. It is the greater portion of the descendants of the British — the English and Scotch, who, through centuries, came here either as olicials to grow fat upon Ireland or as settlers to accept her richest confiscated lands.
While a small, but important, percentage of the best of them have become truly Irish, the greater part of these people, v^^hose families have been 300 and 400 years in Ireland, are, today, more truly anti-Irish than were their ferefathers, centuries ago.
The early English who came over before the days of Elizabeth, and who were chiefly Norman
104
THE BRITISH HARRISON IN IRELAITO
English, were absorbed by the Irish, almost as last as they settled amongst them. It was the bitter complaint of an early English Deputy to the British Parliament that these people to whom England had generously given, with lavish hand, of Irish lands, had after a few generations become •—to quote his oft^quoted words — ^*'ipsis Hiber- nicis Hibemiores"— more Irish than the Irish themselves. Special laws had to be passed by the British Parliament, forbidding amongst these early British settlers in Ireland any Irish cus- toms, Irish manners, Irish dress, Irish language— in endeavor to save them to England as an Eng- lish garrison. But the laws were passed in vain. The exceptional cruelty that characterized the British wars in Ireland from Elizabeth onwards, coupled with the difference of religion of all set- tlers thenceforward^ and the religious persecution which was superadded to the political, now ac- complished what laws had hitherto failed to do. The two races henceforward not only never blended, but the bitter«t feelings between them were naturally begotten and nurtured. And the major part of British in Ireland from that day to the present day, have reversed the order of their antecedents and become more anti-Irish than the
IRELAND^S CASE
English, more British than the British them- selves.
What w« call the British garrison in Ireland- all of those of purely British blood who still retain their British anti-Irish bias — constitutes about one-fourth of the population of the Island at the present day — by far the largest portion of them being in the northeast of the Island, with Belfast, so to speak, as their capital center. It is they who, today, form the political party known as Unionists, Orangemen, Anti-Home Rulers, and anti-everything that Is for the political advance- ment of the country on which they batten.
By far the largest portion of this British gar- risn In Ireland was planted here in the beginning and in the middle of the seventeenth century. They came over chiefly in the course of two great "settlements"— the Ulster Plantation and the Cromwellian Settlement.
The Ulster Plantation was carried out in the first decade of the seventeenth century by James the First of England (Sixth of Scotland). From five of the richest counties of Ulster (which has nine counties in all), he drove such of the Irish as had survived the sword — drove them to dwell with the snipes on the moors, and the badgers in the mountains, of those barren portions of Ulster
io6
THE BRITISH GARRISON IN IRELAND
that were of no use to Mm, his followers or any normal human being. The fertile lands that were taken from these fugitives— about the most fertile ill Ireland — James bestowed upon his own faith- ful Scots. He brought over the Scotch Under- takers (as they were oiFicially called), and par- celled out to them the confiscated rich lands in parcels of S,ooo acres, 2,000 acres, and 1,000 acres.
Yet the sons of Ulster Scots (and many of their unthinking advocates) now proudly point to their wealth and their Catholic neighbors' pov- erty— as object lessons on industry and idleness!
The written conditions on v/hich they^ v/ere given these lands— and on which they undertook them — are practically all summed up in the stipu- lation that they were to be England's garrison in Ulster — keeping so many armed retainers and so many stands of arms, and building their houses like fortresses, to hold the wild Irish confined to their mountain lairs, if they could n©t succeed in extinguishing them.
The aim, object and conditions of the Ulster Plantation (as it is known) is very pithily pre- sented in a few words of a communication from one of the garrison in Ireland to a government official in England. I do not recall whether it is from Lecky <»• from Mrs. Green, that are
IRELAND'S CASE
taken these words of the British gentleman. •"'The present frame of Irish government is partic- ularly well suited for our purpese. That frame is a Protestant garrison in possession of the land, magistracy, and power of the country; holding that property under the tenure of British power and supremacy, and ready at every instant to crush the rising of the conquered." And thus were the Irishrie induced to develop their well- knovvn affection for Mother England.
Sir John Davies in his b®@k, "Discoverie of the True Causes Why Ireland Was Never Sub- dued and Brought Under Obedience to the Crowne of England Until the Beginning of His Majestie's Happie Reign," throws interesting light on this. He says, "The multkude, having been brayed, as it were, in a m©rtar, with sword, pestilence and famine, altogether became admir- ers of the crowne ©f England.** How could the gratified creatures help it, gentle Sir J®hn !
These people and their descendants, in Ulster, far frem blending with the Irish people, always aimed, as was expected, to trample them out. From the day they came to Ireiana t© the pres- ent day there has been no intermarriage, no in- termixture. The two streams have since flowed side by side but always in contrast, always dis-
loS
THE BRITISH GARRISON IN IRELAND
tinct And the flow has never, to the present iday, been peaceable.
These Scotch-Irish (as they have been nick- named in America) always, up to a few years ago, held all honors, all offices, all power, in their hands — even, so far as they dared, the power of life and death over their Irish papist neighbors. rJut from their first day in Ireland down to their last day of power (which, in some parts of Ul- ster, is not yet) they exercised the power piti- essly upon their despoiled neighbors — ^always, of course, for patriotic reasons.
And that the "patriots' " last day of power is not just yet is eloquently evidenced by cold gov- ernment statistics. The return of men holding Local Government Offices in Ulster five years ago shows that there were 1,192 Protestant office- holders and 199 Catholics I What the statistics 60 not show, however, is that almost all of the 199 favored Papists got offices which were too mean for the God's chosen to accept.
The story of the terrible wrongs inflicted by these settlers and their descendants upon those whom they or their forefathers had dispossessed would make as fearful reading as does any chap- ter of Irish history since the coming of the Eng- Hsh.
log
IRELAND'S CASE
But as their power of wrong doing has ahnost passed, it is better that the repulsive particulars of the wrong doing should pass with it. The de- plorable situation of the harried and hunted Irish of the North during that time may be summed up and dismissed in the words of an Anglo-Irish Jurist of the bad days — "The law does not suppose any such person to exist as an Irish Roman Catholic."
Before quitting this portion of the subject, it will be of interest to Irish-Americans and to Scotch-Irish-Americans to note the character of the ifien who formed the Ulster Colony, from which came those whom America names the Scotch-Irish. I quote the testimonials not from their enemies but from their own. And it ean- not be disputed that they knew of what they were speaking.
Reid, in his "History of the Irish Presbyteri- ans," says, "Although among those whom divine Providence did send to Ireland, there were sev- eral persons eminent for both education and parts, yet the most part were such as either pov- erty or scandalous lives had forced hither."
x\nd Stewart, the son of a Presbyterian min- ister who was one of the planters, writes, *Trom Scotland came many, and from England not &
IIO
THE BRITISH GARRISON IN IRELAND;
lew, yet all of them generally the scum of both nations, who from debt, or breaking, or fleeing justice, or seejcing shelter, came hither hoping to be without fear of man's justice.*'
It Is well worth observing that while, for the first hundred years after they came to Ireland these Ulster Presbyterians worked con amore with the English Episcopalians, in passing and in executing the cruellest laws for the suppression oi the hunted Irish, — in the reign of Anne, when the Episcopalians found themselves able to do without the aid of these despised tools, the Ulster Presbyterians were, for half a cen- tury, treated to a right hearty dose of tiic very medicine they had so eagerly mixed for the hated Papists. *i1ie laws they had helped to pass for the suppression of Papistry, were now used for the suppression of Presfeyterianism — their religion was proscribed, their industries were killed — the rod they had pickled for the Papist was right smartly applied to their own hereafters — they were whipped out of Ulster, and in tens of thousands sent scurrying to America, where they arrived in crowded ship-loads, calling down curses on England, her persecutions and perse- cutors !
It was amongst these people ia Ulster that tk«
III
IRELAND'S CASE
Orangfc Society was formed, and fostered, prac- tH-ally for the suppression of Roman Catholics find Roman Catholicism. And it is these people Ytho, still foreigners in blood, breeding, educa- tion, and outlook, occupying less than one-haif of Ulster, and electing less than half of the Parli- amentary reprcseatadves of Ulster, are mistak- enly known in Amftrka as Ulsttrites, and are mistakenly supposed to own and occupy all, or almost all, of Ulster. Though it must be admit- ted that the amount of noise they make when taking Ulster's name in vain makes it excusable for any uninformed outsider to suppose 1 .:it they own not only all Ulster but all Ireland.
This Ulster plantation was then one o: the very great and permanent "Settlements" of Ire- land. The other great and permanent one oc- curred half a century later. It was the Crom- wellian Settlement.
Cromwell began by desolating Ireland and then settling it. But first let me say, in Crom- well's behalf, that in depopulating and desolat- ing the land he was merely carrying out orders conscientiously. From Dublin, under date 25th February, 1642, tlie Government issued for the guidance of its generals, the very clear and ex- plicit command, "to wound, kill, slay and destroj
112
THE BRITISH GARRISON IN IRELAND
hy all the ways and means you may, all the reb- els and adherents and relievers; and burn, spoil, waste, consume and demolish all places, towns, -and houses, where the said rebels are or have been relieved and harboured, and all hay and corn there, and kill and destroy all the men in- habiting, able to bear arms." (See Carte's "Or- snond").
When Cromwell had completed his work to his satisfaction, and that almost all of the able-bodied snen (not to mention thousands of old men, women and children) had been killed and de- stroyed or sold into slavery, the Cromv/ellian Settlement began under direction of the English Commissioners. The survivors of the Irish peo- ple were, by Parliamentary edict, commanded to betake themselves to Connaught — the wild and desolate Province beyond the Shannon — by or before the first day of May, 1654. And the Cromwellian troops were paid with confiscated lands and homes.
Of this time Prendergast gives a picture in his "Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland"; *'Ire- iand, in the language of Scripture, now lay void as a wilderness. Five-sixths of her people had perished. Women and children were found daily perishing in ditches, starved. The bodies
113
IRELAND'S CASE
of many wandering orphans, whose fathers had been killed or exiled, and whose mothers had died of famine, were preyed upon by wolves. In the years 1562 and 1563 the plague, following the desolating wars, had swept away whole counties, so that one might travel twenty or thirty miles and not see a living creature. Man, beast and bird were all dead, or had quit those desolate places. The troops would tell stories of the place where they saw a smoke, it was so rare t« see either smoke by day, or fire or candle by night. If two or three cabins were met with, there were found none but aged men, with wo- men and children ; and they, in the words of the prophet, 'become as a bottle in the smoke,' their skins black like an oven because of the terrible famine."
Then every knave and rascal from England, and every English vulture, harpy, and ghoul, flew hither, to rob the dead and the dying. Over the desolate land from which was rising the reek of blood that smelt good in the nostrils of these scoundrels, they roamed, picking and choosing where they would, and where they could — and in the meantime lived zestfully and profitably by harrying and murdering and plundering of their few pitiable belongings, the streams of tottering
114
THE BRITISH GARRISON IN IRELAND
vcrj old and crawling very young, the hungering, piteous children and skeleton-like, hollow-eyed •Id men and women who, with sighs and groans and breaking hearts, were painfully toiling on their weakened limbs to their Westward Siberia. *'To Hell or Connaught" had been the command. %esc poor creatures had chosen Connaught.
From the Government records, Prendergast g-ires us samples of the official description of the migrating Irish, both the high brought low, and t^e lowly still lower.^Here are a few of these ©ficial entries : ' -^--^ -
"Sir Nicholas Comyn'^of Limerick numb on one side of dead palsy, accompanied only by his wife, Catherine, aged thirty-five, flaxen hair, of middle stature, and one maid servant, Honor MacNam.ara, aged twenty, brown hair, micldle stature — having no substance."
"Ignatius Stacpool of Limerick, orphant, eleven years of age, flaxen hair, full face, low of stature ; Catherine, his sister, orphant, age eight, flaxen hair, full face — having no substance."
"James, Lord Dun Boyne in County Tipperary, describes himself as likely to be accompanied by twenty-one followers, and as having four cows, ten garans, and two swine."
The Lord and the commoner, the palsied old
115
IRELAND'S CASE
man, and the toddling orphan child— all alike were driven forth from their homes, and by Brit- ain's brave soldiers goaded over the blood-stained flints to their Siberia.
The Barony of Burren in Clare, to which the first batch of these unfortunates were consigned, ■*^as such a god-forsaken region that it was popu- larly said to have, not wood enough on which to hang a man, water enough to drown him, nor earth enough to bury him. Beside it Siberia were Eden.
The historian Morrison, a Britisher who was on the ground and saw for himself the horrors, records: "Neither the Israelites were more cruelly persecuted by Pharaoh, nor the innocent infants by Herod, nor the Christians by Nero, or any other of the pagan tyrants, than were the Roman Catholics of Ireland by these savage Comxnissloners."
But be it noted England plundered and drove to starvation and death,entirely for this ungrate- ful people's good. Sir John Davies, who had planned the method of the Ulster Plantation, laid it down that—like tvtry other crime ever committed by England — it was for the good of the people and the glory of God to rob them of their fruitful lands and banish them to the bar-?
ixi
THE BRITISH GARRISON IN IRELAND
ren wilds. Sir John in his historical tract says, **This transplanting of the natives is made by his Majesty like a father, rather than a lord or mon- arch. , . , So as his Majesty doth in this imitate the skillful husbandman who doth remove his fruit trees, not on purpose to extirpate and destroy^ but that they may bring forth better and sweeter fruit J'*
If England roasted a man alive — as often she did — the virtuous Englishman proved to his own satislaction that roasting alive was the most wholesome thing under Heaven for that fellow's constitution. And, of course, humbly, to God alone was the glory. That was always, of course, in the history of Britain. God is ever Britain's accomplice, before, during and after every vir*^ tuous British act.
In this connection I set down here another fine illustration of England's pious way of sending people to Hell for their good and God's glory.
After the conquest of Jamaica in 1655 — ^and after thousands of the Irish had, through years before, been shipped into slavery, the Governor asked for a thousand girls from Ireland to be shipped there — to the most appalling kind of slavery.
Secretary Thurloe's Correspondence, Voi. 4*
IRELAND'S CASE
gires Henry Cromwell's reply to this modest re- <(Uest — in his letter of September ii, 1655:
**Concerninge the younge women, although we must use force in takeinge them up, yet it beinge so much for their owne goode and likely to be of soe great advantage to the publique, it is not in the least doubted you may have sucli number of them as you thinke fitt to make use upon this account. ... I desire to express as much zeal in this design as you would v/ish, and shall be as diligent in prosequution of any directiones . . . judgeinge it to be business of publique concernment. . . . Blessed be God, I do not finde many discouragements in my worke, and hope I shall not doe it soe longe as the Lord is pleased to keep my harte uprighte before him."
And tinder date of September 18, 1655, Henry of the Uprighte Harte, writing from Kilkenny again to Thurloe, says in the course of his letter, **! shall not neede to repeat anythinge about the g^rles, not doubtinge but to answer your expec- tationes, to the full in that : and I think it might be of like advantage to your aftaires there, and to ours heer if you should thinke fitt to sends 1500 or 2000 young boys of from twelve to four- teen years of age, to the place aforementioned. We could well spare them, and they would t)C of
iiS
THE BRITISH GARRISON IN IRELAND
«?se to you ; and who knowes but that it may be the meanes to make them Englishmen, I mean rather Christians/*
The justification of himself on the ground that the boys' enslaving mi|;ht m.ake them good Eng- lishmen (which in the sight of God, meant, of course, good Christians) -^and the tearing away and the carrying of! of the girl children for the personal use of the swinish English planters in Jam,aica, because it was "so much for their own good"! — is a brilliancy that, of all men under Heaven, could burst forth only from the brain of an Englishman— whose harte the Lord is pleased to keep uprighte before Him.
And this was the Cromwellian Settlement.
Some authorities say that before the Cromwel- lian Settlement the proportion of the Irish lands still in the hands of the Irish was two-thirds of all Ireland. Still others say that as jnuch as nine- tenths of the lands in three of the provinces had still been in the hands of the Irish. After the Cromwellian Settlement, Sir William Petty says that two-thirds of Ireland was owned by the British settlers, but another authority says that four-fJths of it was in the hands of the Brit- ish.
Our zealous Christian conqiierorg always pro*
IRELAND'S CASE
lessed that their Irish activities were prompted by their eagerness to bring home the truth and beauty of English Protestantism to the Irish Papist heathen, and turn his footsteps from Hell- ward to Heavenward. But as ©ne old Irish his- torian recorded, the event proved that they were more anxious to make the Irish land turn Protes- tant than the Irish people.
Says Dr. Smiles in his "History of Ireland": "The British colonists who settled in Ireland erected themselves into an Ascendancy, of the most despotic and tyrannical kind. In the course of time they possessed themselves of almost the entire soil of Ireland, treating the natives as Helots and slaves, and with a cruelty that has never been exceeded in any age or country/*
So Ireland was again settled. Connaught, containing the miserable remnant of the Irish nation, was a frightful scene of plague, sicknes^; starvation and death. And Euglaiad was thank- ing God, with whom she was so intimate and so privileged, for the great mercy shewn her— and for the praper retribution that He had meted out, through her, His humble Instrufamit, to the Irish barbarian enemies of herself and Heaven.
And Ireland was given into the charge of th« volunteer Bri^tish garrison.
CHAPTER yilL RESOURCES OF ENGLISH aVILIZATION
I In Chapter H. I attempted a faint picture of England's civilizing methods in Ireland. But some readers will object: The age of which you spoke was a barbarous one, anyhow.
j On the contrary, the age of which I spoke was England's golden age.
\ And her methods of civilizing Ireland in that age were not isolated methods. They were the methods that England consistently followed in
'dealing with the "Irish Hottentots" (vide the late lamented Lord Salsbury's speeches) — the Hotten- tots, who, it may be remembered, had given civ- ilization, education, and the Christian faith to the greater part of Britain.
I Let us come down some centuries farther, and see how England's methods in Ireland have im- proved. For they really did improve as they went along. Readers will admit that, after they have had a glimpse of English methods in Ireland ed the threshold of the Nineteenth Century,
I2£
IRELAND'S CASE
Well, first, hear the testimony from the oppoan !ng party.
At that time Lord Moira was one of the many British Lords who enjoyed Ireland's confiscated lands. But, unlike most of his fellows, he had a human heart, instead of a stone, in his breast. Un- like the host of his fellows, he had realized that, after all, these Irish slaves were human bdngs. At length, he felt so revolted at the scenes going: on in Ireland every day, that he, in the House of Lords, on the 226. November, 1797, had to express himself as follows: "What I have to speak of, are not solitary and isolated measures nor par- tial abuses, but what is adopted as the system of government ; I do not talk of a casual system, but of one deliberately determined on, and regularly persevered in . . . My Lords, I have seen in Ireland the most disgusting tyranny any nation ever groaned under.
"I have seen the most wanton insults practised upon men of all ranks and conditions, the most grievous oppressions exercised in districts as quiet and free from disturbance as is this city of London. I have known a man, in order to ex- tort confession of a supposed crime or of the crime of some of his neighbors, picketted till he fainted; when he recovered, picketted untU he
I2J
RESOURCES OF ENGLISH QVILIZATION
fainted again; and after that, picketted until he fainted yet again; and all upon mere suspicion. Many have been taken and hung up until half dead, and then threatened with repetition of this, unless they confessed imputed guilt. These ■were not particular acts of cruelty exercised by men abusing power committed to them, but form part of our system."
Mark well, this British Lord resident in Ire- land takes care to emphasize and to repeat that the horrible cruelties to which the Irish were then, as always, subject, were merely the or- 'dinary system., used and recommended to b^ used, by Englishmen in ruling Irishmen.
Lord Moira went on to tell how in pursuance oi an illegal proclamation, ordering any Irish people who were in possession of arms to give them up— **If anyone was suspected of having concealed weapons of defense, his house, furni- ture, and all property were burned." The local Government official, he said, arbitrarily named the numbers of arms that should be given up by each district — the numbers that he supposed, or pretended to suppose, each district to possess. If any district did not surrender all the arms for which it had pleased this man to rate it, a mili- tary party was sent out to collect the number
123
IRELAND'S CASE
rated. And in execution of this, said Lord Moira, "as many as thirty houses were sometimes burned in one night."
But a significant part of this testimony is the tail end of it wherein he teld their krdships that, in public speech, "for prudential reasons I wish to draw a veil ©ver the more aggravated facts."
The account of Lord Moira's speech may be found in the book (published in 1840) entitled, "Lights and Shadows ef Whig^ and Tories."
It was in Ireland, in that self same year of i;97, that General Abercrombic's honest old Scotch heart revolted, and he wrote, "Every crime and cruelty that could be committed by Cossacks or Calmucks has been committed here . . . the abuses of all kinds that I found here can scarcely be believed or enumerated."
It is only fair to add that the shocked author- ities gave particular attention to Abercrombie's complaint. Out ©f consideration for his revolted feelings, they relieved him of his command,
Frem this bit of testimony al©ne, the reader may see clearly how far England's methods in Ireland kept pace with the march of civilization in the world at large.
When Elizabeth, tw@ hundred years but one, before that, was sending Carew t@ Ireland to
124
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propagut^ civilization in that beniglited land, she authorized him "to put suspected Irish to the rack and to torture them when found conveni- ent.*' With the aforementioned march of civili- zation progressing daring two hundred years oi English inventiveness and English progress sup- plied the English civilizer in Ireland with rich choice of many improved forms of torture — all of which were in constant use in the declining years of the eighteenth century.
In 1798, and the years preceding, when it was necessary to goad the people into a prema- ture rebellion, and pave the way for the Parlia- mentary Union, the torturers, both official and non-official, suiTered from an embarrassment of riches. The Rev. James Gordon, Protestant Rector of Killegney in Wexford, relates some- thing of the stimulating means adopted; and among them mentions — ^"Various other violent acts were committed such as to cut away pieces of men's ears, even sometimes the whole ear, or part of the nose. The High Sheriff of Tippcr- ary seized a gentleman named Wright, against whom there were no grounds of suspicion, had five hundred lashes administered to him, in the severest manner — and then confined him several
125
^ -vA"^ IRELAND'S CASE ^-..
days without permitting his wounds to he dressed."
The delightful tortures of picketting, the cat, and half hanging, for the purpose of extracting confessions, were so common as to pass unno- ticed.
The triangle and the pitch cap were newer methods of persuasion in use then.
The facetious plan of cropping off a man's ears, piece by piece, by way of stimulating his mem- ory, and developing his confidingness, became quite popular.
Laceration of the back, either by flogging with a cat-o'-nine-tails, or by combing it with a steel- toothed combed, and then rubbing salt into the wounds, was fashionable. And burning of the hair with gun-powder was a new process of tor- ture that gave much satisfaction.
Edward Hay, in his "History of the Insurrec- tion in Wexford," gives a description of this lat- ter refined amusement. He says that Mr. Perry, a Protestant (evidently suspected of sympathiz- ing with the rebels), was taken out by the troops, the sign of the cross cropped in his hair — from forehead to neck and from car to ear, then gun- powder mixed through his hair and set on fire. This was repeated till every hair that remained
. 126
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could be pulled out by the roots. Yet they still continued to burn it with the gun-powder lit by a candle— continually applied and continually burned till the entire scalp was burned away.
For the brutal and lustful soldiery, free-quar- ters with all its attendant horrors, was provided in the homes of the country people.
It is no wonder that numbers of the poor, ig- norant, suffering, tortured, country people when, driven to madness by such fearful practices, burst Into disorganized revolt, and in several places, before leaders brought them imder control, massacred hundreds of the Anglo-Irish Protes- tants— many of whom were innocent of any crime whatsoever against their Catholic neigh- bors. Only, they were of those who had driven these people to their frenzy. This, though the work of men driven to madness, is the saddest thing in the Rebellion of '98 — to good Irishmen far sadder and more painful than the endless tor- turing and massacring of hosts ©f their own peo- ple by the English and the Anglo-Irish.
When one ponders ®n the sights that the agon- ized people were daily seeing around them, the horrors indicted upon their kith and their kin — a father, for instance, seeing his child of twelve years wantonly cloven through the skull by the
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IRELAND'S CASE
sword of the gentlemanly English ofHcer to whom the child had opened the door— the cord- bound brother compelled to witness his sister outraged by a troop of British beasts — it is hard to realize how, when at length the inevitable frenzy seized them, and that, spurning conse- quences and seeing only red vengeance, they arose up, they could be restrained from slaking their thirst for vengeance in murderotjs deeds done indifferently upon innocent and guilty of the class that had evoked their frenzy.
But notwithstanding that Irishmen must record their sorrow and shame that their people, even in the madness to which they were driven, should do the deeds that were appropriate only to the oppressor, it is, yet, a source of consola- tion to think that even in their frenzy these men did not altogether forget Irish manhood. Hear again the Protestant Rector, Rev. James Gor- don— "Amid all the atrocities, the chastity of the fair sex was rwpected by the insurgents. I have not been able to find one instance to the contrary in the Comaty Wexford, though many beautiful young w«»en were absolutely at their mercy.** He also testified that "Women and children were not put to death by the insurgents, excepting in the one instance of the burning of
RESOURCES OF ENGLISH aVIUZATION
Sctillabogue bam (where about 200 Anglo-Irisli rcfug-ecs were burned to dea"^).
After the Rebellion had broken out, the policy of torture and of horror was, of course, not only continued, but improved upon.
The higher officials who could not be in the field to enjoy tlie fun there, because they had to direct operations from Dublin Castle, were not, nevertheless, to be deprived of their share of the entertainment Sir Jonah Harrington says, **Dead bodies of insurgents sabred by Roden's dragons were brought in carts to Dublin, with some prisoners tied together. And en a hot day, these bodies, with wounds gaping, were stretched out in the castle yard in view of the Chief Secre- tary's windows."
Disembowelling of rebels— espexnaDy of leaders or supposed leaders, was a favorite form of relax- ation, for the English troops and their officers. While General Lake sat at dinner, he was enter- tained by the hanging, and then the mutilating, of a rebel, in front of his window.
Illuminative of British refinement and noble nature was the treatment accorded the body of Father Murphy (the leader of the Rebels) after liis death in the battle of Aidclow. Mr. George Taylor, in his Historical Account of the Wexford
1*9
IRELAND'S CASE
Rebellion, says, "Lord Mountnorris and some of his troopers found the body of the perfidoiis priest Murphy, who had so much deceived him and the country. Being exasperated, his Lord- ship ordered the head struck off and the body thrown into a house that was burning-, exclaim- ing, at the same time, *Let his body go where his soul is/ Particularly observe that his Lordship <lid not for a moment forget he was a gentleman. He was only exasperated. A noble English Lord never stoops to anything below exasperation. One of the common herd could afford to indulge in a paroxysm of brutal saveagery at the sight of a dead patriot leader — but not my noble lord.
When the exasperated gentlemen had ridden away, a body of the Ancient Britons Regiment came along. >The news that it was the body of Father Murphy which they saw burning there, naturally ruffled the temper of these English gentlemen. And a man not partial to the insur- gents, Rev. James Gordon, in his History of the Rebellion, written five years later, tells us that these English gentlemen, to soothe their ruffled temper, "cut open the dead body of Father Mur- phy, took out his heart, roasted the body, and oiled their boots with the grease that dripped from it." — ''Captain Holmes of the Durham Reg-
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iment," says Mr. Gordon, "told me in the pres- ence of several, that he himself had assisted at cutting open the breast with a hatchet and pulling out the heart." He who, striving to lift from his country the pleasant yoke of Britain, ex- asperates British gentlemen, merits some such impressive British rebuke.
No quarter was given to rebels, or persons taken as rebels, with or without arms. Just as was enacted by the English Parliament a century and a half b v. lore, no quarter for the Irish was still the English rule of warfare.
Ihe rule, too, applied to wounded and dying, equally with those who were still militant and whole. In Enniscorthy thirty wounded and dy- ing insurgents in one house, which was being used as a hospital, were burned to death. On? .\nglo- Irish historian excuses the soldiers from deliber- ately burning these men to death. He says that the house was fired by the wadding of the sol- diers' guns setting fire to the beds, when the Srcl- diers were shooting the patients in bed!
On the attitude of the general body of the Anglo-Irish, the Ascendancy party, toward the mere Irish whom they trampled, Hunter Gowan, the leader of the band of Yeos in Wexford, gave fair illustration. We find him returning from one
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IRELANiyS CASE
of his forays at the head of his Ycos, with « rebel's finger as a trophy impaled oo the point of his sword Mr, Gowan made a friendly call at a rectory which they passed, and playfully fright- coed the yo^ng ladies with the fanny object oo his sword point — poking it in their faces, chasing them through the honse with it, and humorously dropping the rebel's finger down inside the bosom erf one young lady's dress, causing her to famt To wind op a great day's adventure by fittino^ cel- ebration, he stirred the punch at dinner with the Croppie 8 finger.
For, cruel and savage as were the methods of the Enofltsh in Ireland, those of the Anglo- Irish (the British who had been here for generation* or centuries) were sometimes infinitely worse
The noted Sir John Moore, who had been seat to Ireland in command of Elnglish troops, report- ed that he found the presence of troops necessary not to check the pet>ple in general, but rather to check the Anglo-Irish Yeos in their career of car- nage These Yeos, raiding the country in bands, oftentimes brought with them on their excursions a professional hangman to aid their worthy work.
In Clogheen, Sir John Moore found the High Sheriff having the streets lined with country peo- ple oa their knees, and with hats off, while he
I3S«
RESOURCES OF ENGLISH CIVILIZATION
© was whipping a poor devil to death. The High Sheriff confided to Sir John that he had "flogged the truth out of many respectable persons/'
With horror and disgust at England's inhuman work in Ireland, Moore resigned his command and left the country.
Teeling, in his "Narrative of the Rebellion," pictures for us some of the sufferings of the Irish people during this terrible time. As exemplify- ing the small things for which great punishment was given, he tells how one Bergan in the City of Drogheda, being convicted of rebellious tenden- cies, because found in possession of % small gold ring v/ith shamrock device, was, in the public street, stripped of his clothes, placed upon a cart, and torn with a cat-o'-nine-tails not only till he gasped his last gasp, but "till long after the final spark was extinct**
In Drogheda also, a boy, as heroic of will as he was frail of body, being sentenced to receive five hundred lashes for refusing to make some dis- closure that was sought from him, bore up, dur- ing nearly half of the punishment without show- ing a single sign of wincing. Then, finding him- self unable to bear any more without yielding, and thus satisfjnng his executioners, he pretended to make a confession, sent them off upon a blind
IRELAND'S CASE
trail, thus getting time and opportunity to cut his throat before the brutes could again resume his slow execution.
At headquarters in Dublin, the Government of- ficials ran a torture factory, the horrors of which have seldom, if ever, been surpassed in the annals of the most savage and most barbarous nations. "The world has been astonished at the close of the Eighteenth Century," says Teeling, "with acts which the eye views with horror and heart sick- ens to record. Not only on the most trivial but the most groundless occasions, torture was in- flicted without mercy on every age and on every condition. In the center of the city the heart- rending exhibition was presented of a human be- ing rushing from the infernal depot of torture and death, his person besmeared >vith a burning preparation of turpentine and pitch, plunging, in his distraction, into the Liffy, and terminating at onc?rhis sufferings and his life."
These few instances of English methods in Ireland on the edge of the Nineteenth Century, are only samples of thousands of such that oc- curred. They are quite enough for my purpose — which is to give a plain picture without revolt- ing the reader by still more horrible details.
If this method of ruling, crushing, and tortur-
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ing of a weak and beaten people, were practiced by Russia in Poland, or by Turkey in Armenia, or by some uncivilized barbarian rulers, over a beaten tribe in the jungles of Africa, it might well cause the world to shudder. But it was the method employed to a people who had preserved and given back light and learning to Europe — by a people who inform us that they are not only the greatest and most powerful in the world, but also the champions of liberty, propagators of civiliza- tion, and sponsors of Christ's teachings, to the darkened regions of earth.
One's mind naturally turns back to Cromwell, with upturned eyes disclaiming the renown and glory of butchering the women, men and children of Drogheda, infr.rming his Parliament and his Heaven that all the glory for the noble work was God's alone. It is the Briton's ingenious w^ay of making his glory work for him at double com- pound interest, by the ingeniious device of ten- dering to his Maker, on the tactit understanding (always observed between gentlemen) that it will be handed back bigger — while the world at the same time swells it still more, by admiration of his wondrous humility. England's sword is still wielded by Cromwell ; and in England's voice his
^35
IRELAND'S CASE
voice yet speaks. In the English sou! Cromwell never dies.
Lord Salisbury, referring to the innumerable wars of extermination upon the petty tribes of India, said, ^They are but the bloody foam on the crest oi the advancing tide of British civilization. "
Oh! Qvilization, what British blessings ar* ocKnmitted in thj name 1
ISI
CH.\FTER IX.
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNION OF
IRELAND WITH BRITAIN
The simple American view of Ireland's relatioas with Eiigiand w^s well illustrated recently by the Editor of a leading review when, in explain- ing away (for his readers' benefit) my showing of Ireland's right to independent nationhood, he informed his public that, in 1800, Irishmen volun- tarily resigned their own Irish Parliament, and eagerly united with England,
Let us see.
Although Ireland was officially conquered to Britain centuries before, the Island was alleged to have a Parliament of its own, under the Brit- ish Crown, up to the year i8oo.
It vvras, of course, a Parliament of, and for, the British in Ireland, The mere Irish had no say in it — except for an insignificantly brief period. Had no right even to vote for a member of it It was not considered that they whose land this was, and who constituted six-sevenths of the popu- lation of the land, could presume to take even the
IRELAND'S CASE
humblest part in governing their own country. The Parliament was for half a million British in Ireland— to hold three million Irish in subjection. Moreover, of the 300 members, only 72 were real- ly elected. Three-fourths of its members were just appointed by the Borough owners, the Brit- ish owners who owned Irish towns.
I called it an alleged Parliament. It was only at rare intervals that the Anglo-Irish who owned and ran this Parliament dared assert their right to make it a Parliament in reality, as well as in name. For centuries it was held in the strangle- hold of Poyning's Law — a law which forbade it to initiate any legislation — only gave it liberty to legislate under the direction and command of the English Parliament — to pass into law what- ever the English Parliament recommended — and to refrain from legislating upon all things that the English Parliament forbade it to legislate upon.
Under this state of things naturally Ireland's woes increased w^ith the years. Just before the Anglo-Irish Parliament took heart to shake from its shoulders its Old Man of the Sea, the English Parliament which paralyzed it, Hely Hutchinson,, speaking in the Irish House of Commons (in 1779) said: "Can the history of any other fruit-
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNION
ful country on the globe, enjoying peace for eighty years, and not visited by plague or pestil- ence, produce so many recorded instances of the poverty and the v^^retchedness, of the reiterated want and misery of the lower order of people. There is no such example in ancient or modern story."
In 1782, when Britain's hands were filled with an American problem, Henry Grattan and the great army of Ireland's Volunteers, 100,000 strong, demanded the independence of their Par- liament. And as they had in their hands, when making the request, a hundred thousand muskets their request was graciously granted. During the succeeding years, this Anglo-Irish Parlia- ment, acting independently of the British Parli- ament, was enabled to do wonderful things for the restoration of Ireland's commerce and man- ufactures. Many of the disabilities of the Irish Catholics, too, were, under it, removed — and an Irishman was acknowledged to have some citizen rights.
But, it did not suit England's book to have any body of people in Ireland, even their own Anglo- Irish kin, running Ireland with profit to Ireland — and consequently a curtailment of English profit. So, the mistake must be corrected. And
139
IRELAND'S CASE
the best way to correct it was bodily to remove the cause of the trouble. Parliament, both in reality and in name, must be taken from Ireland altogether. So, Prime Minister Pitt of England conspired with his good instruments, Cornwallis, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and Castlereagh, the Irish Secretary, to attain the desired end. For this splendidly corrupt object Pitt fortunately had, in Cornwallis and Castlereagh, a pair of splendidly corrupt tools.
To undermine the prestige of the Irish Parlia- ment and prove its incompetence for governing Ireland, they first goaded the Irish people into a premature rebellion — by such methods as those described by Lord Moira. And they then launched their campaign for giving to the Eng- lish Parliament the sole right of directly govera- ing this ungovernable Island.
That the Anglo-Irish inhabitants of the Island would not easily yield their right Pitt and his instruments knew well. But that a large portion of their representatives was purchasable, they divined. So they set themselves enthusiastically to the congenial work of bribing and debasing right and left, and buying men's souls.
Lies, perjury, and fraud were the British stock- in-trade during all of Britain's connection with
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THE PARLIAMENTARY UNION
Ireland. But there was never another period in which so much baseness was crowded into so little time as now, when they were debasing their own kin and robbing them of their **rights." No other scandal of British administration, before or since, ever equalled this one of buying the Union. The immediate chief instruments, Cornwallis and Castlereagh, were probably no worse than any ether English administrators in Ireland — only that this large job gave them an exceptional op- portunity to distinguish themselves.
Castlereagh indeed partly redeemed himself by living to cut his throat
Cornwallis, through all the vile business, took the superior stand of the h^'pocrite who thinks he conceals his hypocrisy beneath the cloak of frankness. He writes to a friend, "My occupa- tion is of the most unpleasant nature, bargaining and jobbing with the most corrupt people under Heaven" (the Anglo-Irish). "I despise and hate myself for ever engaging in such dirty work.** In another place he confesses that he is "involved in this dirty business beyond all bearing."
The people were wheedled, coaxed, threatened, and bribed, into signing petitions in favor of Union with England. Barrington tells us that, vnder promise of pardon, felons in the jails were
141
IRELAND'S CASE
got to sign the Union petition. Everyone hold- ing a government job in the country had not only to sign the petition himself, but was compelled to make his relatives and the relatives of their relatives sign it likevi^ise.
Not merely those w^ho held positions under the government were required to do this; but to every man who hoped or dreamt of ever stand- ing chance of a position under the government, it was plainly intimated that he and his relatives' relatives must becom.e petitioners. Mixed bribes and threats were scattered over the land like seed corn — falling upon, sticking to, and germinating in thousands upon thousands of every rank from the public hangman ail the way up to the Arch- bishop of the Established Church.
The pro-British historian, Lecky, says, "Ob- scure men in unknown political places were dis- missed because they or some of their relatives declined to support it." He says, "The whole force of Government patronage in all branches was steadily employed. The formal and author- itative announcement was made, that, though defeated Session after Session and Parliament after Parliament — the act of Union would al- ways be reintroduced — -and that support of it would hereafter be considered the main test by
142
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNION
which all claims to government favor would be determined." — "Everything in the government of the crown in Ireland," Lecky further states, "in the church, in the army, in the law, in the rev- enue, was uniformly and steadily devoted to the single purpose of carrying the Union. From the great noblemen who were bought for marquis- ates and ribands; from the (Protestant) Arch- bishop of Cashel who agreed to support the Union on being promised the reversion of the See of Dublin and a seat in the Imperial House of Lords, the virus of corruption extended and de- scended through every rank and title, and satur- ated the political system, including even crowds of obscure men who had it in their power to as- sist or obstruct addresses on the subject."
Men who dared be independent and staad for their rights were hounded and persecuted and dismissed from office. Even the highest in rank, such as the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and a Prime Sergeant and Privy Chancellor, were kicked out for daring to deny England's divine right to do wrong.
Men who refused to be bribed were forced out of their seats in the Irish Parliament by every dirty means known to dirty men. Their own instruments, their own official aides, even, were
143
IRELAND'S CASE
put into o&ct mad put into Parliament for the evenly avowed purpose of voting away Ireland's rights. Ei^flishmen who never before had givca any thought to Ireland, were actually imported to sit as Irish members of Parliament — and vote away Ireland's Parliament to England.
Some of these latter rascals never saw—some- times hardly knew — the name of the Irish Bor- ough for which they sat. When one of them, one day, presented himself at the English House of Parliament and requested some privilege that was of courtesy accorded there to members of the Irish Parliament, he was asked for v/hat Irish Borough he sat "By Heaven," he replied, "the name of the devilish place 'as escaped me. — But if you bring me the Irish Directory I believe I can pick it out."
They ovcraw^ed patriotic people who ventured to meet any protest against the proposed Union, Barringtou relates how, on the occasion of an Anti-Union m.eeting in King's County, Dariey, the High Sheriti, and Major Rogers (acting of course under instructions from Dublin Castle) placed two six pounders, charged with grape shot, opposite the Court-house where the meet- ing was being held- — bringing England's logic to bear on the misguided ones who thought they
S44
thp: parliamentary union
could better know than England, what was for Ireland's benefit.
The Habeas Corpus Act was suspended.
Martial law was proclaimed.
England stationed in Ireland, 126,000 soldiers.
All constitutional guarantee was annulled.
The use of torture was frequently availed of.
Meeting of the people were dispersed by mil- itary force.
Offices and commands were trafficked in.
Every foul devise that the most ingeniously tnean-mindcd tools could contrive was employed against Irish liberty — or Anglo-Irish liberty.
And by use of all conceivable and inconceiv- able mean devices they managed, at length, to secure a bare majority in favor of the Union — 162 out of 303 members. One hundred and six- teen of these 162 were their own salaried tools — placemen.
They carried their "JJnioa^' It has been stated that as much as eight thousand pounds was paid for one vote. Henry Grattan is authority for it that, of those who voted in favor of tiie Union with England, not more than seven were un- bribed. Gornwallis had no illusions about the quality of the men whom he purchased — knew r^ght well that they could be just as faithless to
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IRELAND'S CASE
him, despite his gold, as they were to their adopted country, despite their duty. He wrote, "I believe that half of our majority would be as much delighted as any of our opponents, if the measure could be defeated."
Place, title, and gold, were the inducements for sacrificing Ireland at England's bidding. As reward for good work done — or to be done — twenty-eight Irish peerages were created. Six Irish peers got English peerages. Twenty Irish peers were elevated in rank. New and lucrative jobs, offices, government appointments, were cre- ated—for bestowal on those who rendered "serv- ices."
In those days the boroughs in Ireland were "owned" by Lordly proprietors who put in for them such puppet members of Parliament as they pleased. In 1782 out of 300 members, only 72 were really elected — and of course only one- seventh of the people in Ireland (the British portion) got a chance at electing those. This ownership came to be recognized by law! And to compensate eighty titled Borough owners in Ireland (who owned one hundred and sixty mem- bers) an act was passed appropriating for them £1,260,000— being at the rate of aboiit £8,000 for each member.
146 ^"^
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNION
And, crowning joke of all the grim jokes played upon Ireland by England, this million and quar- ter for greasing the groove down which Ireland's Parliament was to be skidded to England — was added to the Irish National Debt!
Lord Ely who had at first been opposed to the Union, but came finally to see the light and voted for it, received £45,000 of this for his Boroughs.
These moneys were paid as "compensation" for "disturbance" caused, or to be caused, or in danger of being caused, by the Union. And not only Anglo-Irishmen but likewise every pocket- picking Englishman and hungry Scotchman who could get near it, fought and struggled and mauled one another, for the chance of getting a hand in the Compensation bag.
Barrington records that even the necessary woman of the English Privy Council asked "com- pensation" from Ireland for the extra trouble which the influx of Irish Privy Councillors would cause in her department !
And the Lord Lieutenant's official rat catcher insisted on the right to get his paw in the bag as compensation for "decrease of employment.'* Why the Union with England should affect this gentleman's employment is not stated — but it is easy to suppose that he foresaw the certainty
147
IRELANiyS CASE
of droves of British rats quitting tke stidd&f
ship.
Daniel O'Connell once said, that he coald not, under Heaven, apprehend how H was that they forgot to charge against Ireland the price of the razor with which Castiereagh afterwards cut hk throat
And this is the wonderftil story of Ireland's voluntary and eager Union with England. It is a fair illustration of Englaiwi's nice honor, clean handedness, clean mindedness, in dealing with the island that was and is "dependent on and protected by England."
The carrying of the Union the reader sees, re- flected nearly as much credit upon England's nice honor as did the Treaty of Limerick upon the pledged faith and honor of the British crown.
I4§
CHAPTER X. OUR ENGLISH LAND LAWS
Li Ireland we had not the Feudal System which obtained in England and in Continental countries. Our lands were, practically speaking, the com- mon property of the Chief and the members of the clan.
When England had succeeded in killing off or banishing the Chiefs, to English landlords were granted the stolen lands. And such memijcrs of the clan as still survived and were permitted to live as "tenants" upon their lands had to begin paying a tribute called *'rent" to the British over- lords. They were at once reduced to serfdom.
The Irish "tenants" were not only morally owners of the lands, but under the overlordship of their British landlords they still bought and sold the lands among themselves. It is of the utmost importance to note that in Ireland the landlord took no part in improving the land, or in putting up buildings upon it. He did abso- lutely nothing but sit down in his Irish castle, or his London Club, or Continental Gambling- Hell, and accept his rents. The rule for rent- fixing was that the tenant should be made to pay
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IRELAND'S CASE
from the lands every penny that could possibly be squeezed out of him. If he was foolish enough to drain and improve his land, and thus make it yield a better crop, his rent was immedi- ately raised — because he was now able to pay more. This vile system of penalizing industry killed ambition in the serf's soul. If he could wring even the most wretched living from his lands, after paying the extortionate rent, the dis- heartened tenant had to be fatalistically content. His lot, throughout the more barren portion of Ireland, was wretched beyond description.
Swift, in his day, was forced to cry out, "Rents are squeezed out of the clothes and dwellings, the blood and vitals of the tenants, who live worse than English beggars."
If the tenant failed in his efforts to raise the rent by hook or crook (and in hundreds of thou- sands of cases he raised it not from his land, bnt from outside sources, often emigrating to Eng- land, Scotland and America for the purpose) or if the landlord wanted the land for some favorite, or if the tenant refused to give his labor free to the landlord, disobeyed or otherwise displeased the landlord, or broke one of the man}^ tyran- nical "rules of the estate," he got notice to quit — was evicted from the land that he owned, from the house that he or his forefathers had raised — his home was tumbled down and he and his fam-
OUR ENGLISH LAND LAWS
ily were cast upon the road (without, of course, any penny of compensation), there to starve or die.
The brutal "rules of the estate" often almost forbade the tenant to breathe without the land- lord's permission. On many estates the tenant dare not, under penalty of eviction, marry, or permit any of his family to marry, without a li- cense from the landlord's Agent. The tenant had to give to the landlord, the Agent, and the bailiff, all the free labor that they chose to demand. On many estates, the tenant was forbidden to keep a lodger, to harbor a visitor, to give a night's shelter to a beggar, or to any homeless one. On some estates the tenant was forbidden to har- bor even a relative. Butt in his "The Irish Land and the Irish People," instances the case of a widow being evicted for the crime of having brought a widowed daughter to live with her.
The landlord would not have on his estate any such criminal hospitality. Because it encouraged pauperism — for which he would have to pay his share in poor-tax. And, these people had no right to squander on worthless vagabonds, money that were better employed trying to keep the He- brew wolf from their Lord's door.
To oflPer shelter and share of their bread to the wretched being, or family, that their landlord had cast out, was especially to invite their own death
IRELAND'S CASE
e
sentence. As illustrati^ this, let me quote from A. M. Sullivan's "New Ireland," the case of the trial before Chief Baron Pigott of some ten- ants who were accused of the manslaughter of a little boy— the manslaughter being caused by their having forcibly expelled him from their house, and let him die of exposure — under terror of being themselves expelled for violating the "rules of the estate.** The happening occurred on the Kerry estate of Mart^ of Lansdowne. The orphan boy was Denis Sk&L, twelve years old.
"His mother at one time held a little dwelling from which she was ^q)elled. His father was dead. His mother had left him, and he was alone and unprotected. He foiaad refuge with his grandmother, who hd4 a Iktie farm, from which she was evicted by the iaad4ord in con- sequence of her harboring this poor boy — as the agent of the property had g^ytn public notice to the tenantry that expulsion from their farms would be the penalty inffieted upon them if they harbored any persons hariag no residence on the estate. These cases, not erf eviction, but cases where eviction did not occar, showed that the tenantry were, because of ^c extraordinary powers coirferrcd by law on landtords, in such a stxtt of scrMom, tiba^ th« moditr could not receive her datq^blcr— -diet lite graa^aodicr
OUR ENGLISH LAND LAWS
could not receive her own grandchild unless that child was a tenant on the estate. And the re- sult was tiiis, that the poor boy, without a house to shelter him, was sought to be forced into the house of a relative in a terrible night of storm and rain. He was immediately pushed out again, he staggered on a little, fell to the ground, and the next morning was found cold, stiff and dead. The persons who drove the poor boy out were tried for the offence of being ac- cessories to his death; and their defence was that what they did was done under the terror of *the rule of the estate' and that they meant n© harQ to the boy. They were found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced."
And while these wretched victims of the "rule of the estate" were enjoying jail, the framef of the rule, the boy's real murderer, was nonchal- antly throwing his dice in his gambling resort.
Mitchell, in tailking of the evicting horror, gives a terse and terrible summary of the hap- penings upon one estate as the result of one eviction crop:
**At an eviction in 1854, on a property under the management of Marcus Keane, James O'Gor- man, one of the tenants evicted, died on the roaa- side. His wife and children were sent to the workhouse, where they died shortly afterwards.
"John Corbet, a tenant on another townland,
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IRELAND'S CASE
was evicted by the same agent. He died on the roadside. His wife had died previous to the evic- tion; his ten children were sent into the work- house and there died.
"Michael McMahon, evicted at the same time, was dragged out of bed, to the roadside, where he died of want the next day. His wife died of want previous to the eviction, and his children, eight in number, died in a few years in the work- house."
How is that for fruit of those beneficent Brit- ish laws which it is the inestimable privilege of the Irish barbarians to live under?
And be it remembered not only did England back up this fearful state of things in Ireland with all the power of her legislature and well- chosen judiciary, but her brave troops, in all their red and royal glittering splendor, with rifles and bayonets, marched out behind the landlord and bailiffs to the noble work of evicting from their hovels these miserable people — and took position in front and on flank of the wretched hovels where the death sentence — as the eviction was usually known— was to be executed. For at the beck of the British landlord, the British army was ever held in readiness to lend the im- posing terrors of its presence at the committal of these awful crimes against God and God's most miserable people.
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OUR ENGLISH LAND LAWS
Foreigners can hardly believe that earth's greatest and most glorious empire could so dis- grace and degrade its forces as to lend them, year after year, week after week, day after day, for exhibitions that would be ludicrous if they were not fraught with such awful consequence to the condemned, who were thereby losing their land, their home, their all — sometimes, too, their rea- son and their life ! I talk of what I myself have seen — what who in Ireland has not seen ?
To convey to strangers a picture of what an Irish eviction is like, I shall set down here de- scriptions of a few of them given by spectators. The first is from the Right Rev. Dr. McNuIty, Bishop of Meath and is copied from Mitchel:
"In the very first year of our ministry, as a missionary priest in the diocese, we were wit- ness of a cruel and inhuman eviction, which even still makes our heart bleed as often as we allow ourselves to think of it.
"Seven hundred human beings were driven from their homes in one day, and set adrift on the world, to gratify the whim of one who, before God and man, probably deserved less considera- tion than the last and least of them. The Crow- bar Brigade employed on the occasion to extin- guish the hearth fires and demolish the homes, in- dustriously worked at their awful calling until evening.
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IRELAND'S CASE
"Then an incident occurred that varied the monotony of the ghastly work. — They stopped suddenly, and recoiled panic-stricken from two dwellings which they were directed to destroy with the rest. A frightful typhus fever held those houses in its grasp, and had already brought pestilence and death to some of the inmates. They supplicated the agent to spare these houses a little longer ; but the agent was inexorable, and insisted that they also should be levelled. He ordered a large winnowing-sheet to be put over the beds on which the fever victims lay — fortu- nately, they happened to be delirious at the time — and then directed the house to be unroofed carefuUy and slowly, because, he said, he very much disliked the bother of a coroner's inquest. I administered the Sacrament of the Church to four of tiiese fever victims next day; and, save the above-meationed winnowing-sheet, there was not then a r^of nearer to them than the canopy of Heaven.
**The borriWe scenes 1 then witnessed I must remember all my life long. The wailing of wom- en-—the screammg, the terror, the consternation of childrea^ — th« speechless agony of honest, in- dustrious men — wrung tears of g^ief from all who saw and heard them. The heavy rains that usu- ally attend the atrtumnal equinox descended in cold, copious blowers throughout the night,
1S»
OUR ENGLISH LAND LAWS
bringing home to those helpless sufferers the aw- ful realities of their condition.
"I visited them next morning, and rode from place to place administering to them what com- fort and consolation I could. The appearance of men, women, and children, as they emerged from the ruins of their former homes — saturated with rain, blackened and besmeared with soot, revealed in every member cold and misery — pre- sented positively the most appalling spectacle I ever looked on. They were driven from the land on which Providence had placed them; and, in the state of society surrounding them, every walk of life was rigidly closed against them. What was the result? After battling in vain with pri- vation and pestilence, they at last graduated from the workhouse to the tomb; and in little more than three years nearly one-fourth of them lay quietly in their graves."
The scenes and happenings here described by Dr. McNulty were only such as were become commonplace in every corner of Ireland.
For, be it noted that, sometimes, 70,000 crea- tures in one year underwent the foregoing fate.
The next I give is a description of the great clearance at Glenveigh, in my own County of Donegal.
There the landlord, Adair, in a fit of spite against his tenants, determined to clear every
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IRELAND'S CASE
miserable soul in the countryside from their home and their lands, and throw them as beg- gars on the beggared world around them.
"It was early in February, that the poor peo- ple first knew of the tragic fate that awaited them; some realized its terrible import, but the majority did not. In that remote and lonely region, they had never heard that any man couid possess such power — they owed no rent; they had done no man wrong. In a couple of months a large force of police and soldiers, with tents and baggage, marched on Glenveigh, and on the night of Sunday, April 7, had closed in around the place, occupying or commanding the entrances or passes. Still the hapless people, in fatal confidence, slumbered on. In the early morning of Monday, the sight of the red-coats and the glit- tering bayonets gave the signal of alarm, and from house to house, and hill to hill, a halloo was sent afar. Soon there arose on the morning air a wail that chilled even the sternest heart, and there burst from the women and children a cry of agony that pierced the heavens."
The Derry Standard, the Presbyterian organ of the Northwest, reported the eviction. A. M. Sul- livan in "New Ireland" quotes the report. Read it, and bless the benign rule that God grants Ire- land the blessing to enjoy — and the benign ruler
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OUR ENGLISH LAND LAWS
who sends his gallant war-heroes, in all of war's panoply, to help an Englishman wreak his spite on the most pitable of God's creatures.
"The first eviction was one pecularly distress- ing, and the terrible reality of the law suddenly burst in surprise on the spectators. Having ar- rived at Lough Barra, the police were halted, and the sheriff, with a small escort, proceeded to the house of a widow named McAward, aged 60 years, living with whom were six daughters and a son. Long before the house was reached, loud cries were heard piercing the air, and soon the figures of the poor widow and her daughters were observed outside the house, where they gave vent to their grief in strains of touching agony. The Agent's men, who had been brought from a distance, immediately fell to levelling the house to the ground. The scene then became indescrib- able.
"The bereaved widow and her daughters were frantic with despair. Throwing themselves on the ground, they became insensible, and burst out in the old Irish wail — then heard by many for the first time — their terrifying cries resound- ing along the mountainside for many miles. They had been deprived of the little spot dear to them with associations of the past — and with poverty before them, and only the blue sky to shelter them, they naturally lost all hope, and those who
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IRELAND'S CASE
witnessed their agony will never forget the sight. Every heart was touched, and tears of sympathy flawed from many. In a short time we with- drew from the scene, leaving the widow and her orphans surrounded by a small group of neigh- bors who could only express their sympathy for the homeless, without possessing the power to r^ieve them.
^'During that and the next two days the entire holdings in the lands mentioned above were vis- ited, and it was not until an advanced hour on Wednesday the evictions were finished. In ail the evictions the distress of the poor people was equal to that depicted in the first case. Dearly did they cling to their homes till the last moment, and while the male portion bestirred themselves in clearing the houses of what scanty furniture they contained, the v/omen and children remained within till the sheriff's bailiff warned them out, and even then it was with difficulty they could tear themselves away from the scenes of happier days. In many cases they bade an affectionate adieu to their former peaceable, but now desolate, homes. One old man, near the four score years and ten, on leaving his house for the last time, reverently kissed the doorposts, with all the im- passioned tenderness of an emigrant leaving his native land. His wife and children follov/ed his example. And in agonized silence the afflicted
160
OUR ENGLISH LAND LAWS
ji family stood by and watched the destruction of their dwelling.
'*In another case an old man, aged 90, who was JyiGgf ill in bed, was carried out of the house. In nearly every house there was someone far ad- vanced in age — many of them tottering to the grave — while the sobs of the helpless childrci took hold of every heart. When dispossessed the families grouped themselves on the ground, beside the ruins of their late homes, having no place of refuge near. The dumb animals refused to leave the wallsides, and in some cases were with difficulty rescued from the falling timbers.
"As night set in, the scene became feariully sad. Passing along the base of the mountain the spectators might have observed, near to each house, its former inmates crouching around a turf fire, close by a hedge; and as the drizzling rain poured upon them they found no cover, and were entirely exposed to it; but only sought to warm their famished bodies. Many of them were but m.iserably clad, and on all sides the greatest desolation was apparent. I learned afterwards that the great majority of them lay out all night, either behind the hedges or in a little wood which skirts the lake ; they had no other alternative. I believe many of them resorted to the poorhouse. There, these starving people remain on the cold bleak mountains, no one caring for them whether
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IRELAND'S CASE
they live or die. 'Tis horrible to think of, but more horrible to behold."
It is wonderful to contemplate the patience of the wrathful God who from His Heavens gazing down upon such blackguardism, yet holds His hands from blasting with His bolts the canting hypocrites who are incessantly telling Him how they, the holiest and greatest of His people, glorify Him by carrying His Gospel of love and joy to the outer barbarians whom they take into their Empire to civilize and Salvationizc !
Later some friends in Australia subscribed a fund, and sent for these beneficiaries of British law — thanks to the untiring efforts of A. M, Sul- livan.
Mr. Sullivan says, "The poor people were sought out and collected. Some by this time had sunk under their sufferings. One man named Bradley had lost his reason under tlie sliock ; other cases were equally as heartrending. There were old men who would keep vv^andering over the hills in view of their ruined homes, full of the idea that some da.y Adair might let them return ; but who at last had to be borne to tlie v/orkhouse hospital to die."
What followed is too touchingly beautiful to omit — one of the most deeply touching in the records of nineteenth century Ireland. And the man, friend or enemy of our race, who can read
162
OUR ENGLISH LAND LAWS
to the end of this chapter with heart unmoved and eye undimmed, is a creature to be commiser- ated.
"A strange mixture of joy and sadness !" says Mr. Sullivan. "The survivors heard that their friends in Australia had paid their passage money. On the day they were to set out for the railway station, en route for Liverpool, a strange scene was witnessed. The cavalcade was ac- companied by a concourse of neighbors and sympathizers. They had to pass within a short distance of the ancient burial ground where the 'rude forefathers of the valley slept.' They halt- ed, turned aside, and proceeded to the grass- grown cemetery. Here, in a body, they knelt, throwing themselves on the graves of their rela- tives, which they reverently kissed, again and again, and raised for the last time the Irish caoine, or funeral v/ail. Some of them pulled tufts of the grass, which they placed in their bosoms, and then resumed their v/ay on the road to exile."
In Dtrry, the port of embarkation, dinner was provided for them. The Presbyterian Derry Standard, in its report, said:
"When dinner w^as concluded. Rev. Mr. M'Fadden, amidst the most solemn stillness, briefly addressed the assemblage; and it was a most touching sight. He spoke in the Gaelic tongue ; the language of their homes and firesides^
163
IRELAND'S CASE
ere Adair had levelled the one, and quenched the- other, forever. As the young priest spoke, his own voice full of emotion, the painful silence all around soon became broken by the sobs of wom- en, and tears flowing down many a cheek. He reminded them that this was the very last meal they would partake of on Irish soil ; that in a few hours they would have left Ireland forever. He spoke of their old homes amidst the Donegal hills, of the happy days passed in the now silent and desolate valley of Derryveigh; of the peace and happiness that they had knoAvn then, because they were contented, and were free from tempta- tions and angers of which the busy world was full. He reminded them of their simple lives — the Sunday Mass, so regularly attended ; the con- fession ; the consolation of faith. Many a cheek was wet as he alluded to how they would be missed by the priest whose flock they were. But, most of all, their lot was sorrowful in the fact that, while other emigrants left behind them parents and relatives over whom the old rooftree remained, they, alas ! left theirs under no shelter, in no home — they were wanderers and outcasts, with the workhouse for a last resort. But (said he), you are going to a better land, a free coun- try, where there are no tyrants, because there are no slaves. Friends have reached out their hands to you; those friends await you on the shore of
164
OUR ENGLISH LAND LAWS
that better land. And here, too, in this city, hearts equally true and kindly have met you. Let your last work on Irish ground be to thank the good gentleman who now stands by my side, Mr. Alexander Sullivan.
"And now, dear brothers, we shall be depart- ing. Before you take your foot off your native land, promise me here that you will, above all things, be faithful to your God, and attend to your religious duties, under whatever circumstances you may be placed. (Sobs and cries of 'We will! We will!'). Never neglect your night and morn- ing prayers, and never omit to approach the Blessed Eucharist at least at Christmas and Eas- ter. And, boys, don't forget poor old Ireland. (Cries of 'Never! Never! God knows'). — Don't forget the old people at home, boys. Sure they will be counting the da^'-s till the letter comes from you. And they will be praying for you, an4 we will all pray God be with you."
Ah ! how these children of woe in Ireland, an«i the children of their children at the world's four corners, to which they were scourged by Eng- land, her laws and her lords, should, in their in- most souls, cherish and revere the sublime laws and benign rule of their loving protector, Britain the Chivalrous !
165
CHAPTER XI. THE LAST CENTURY
Since the Irish Parliament was purchased, 117 years ago, and Ireland still more closely gathered up to the bosom of her stepmother, the history of the island may be written in three words — TAXATION, STARVATION, EMIGRATION.
Or economically, we might make one word do for it all— RUINATION.
In the first quarter century after the Union, al- most all the little industries that remained in Ireland melted away.
The period since has been marked by a succes- sion of famines, the direct result of English rule and ruin. The trying month of July, during which the preceding year's food crop was usually exhausted, and the current year's crop not yet ready, came to be known, in the Irish-speaking districts, as Mi na Sul Siar — that is, the Monm of the Hollow Eyes. But tens of thousands bore the hpllow eyes from January to January.
Carlyle asks, "Has Ireland been governed in a wise and loving manner? A Government and guidance of white European men which has end- ed in perennial hunger of potatoes to eyery main
i66
THE LAST CENTURY
extant, ought to drop a veil over its face and walk out of court under conduct of the proper officers."
The most terrible of all the half score of great famines which marked the last century, was that of 1846-1847. At the beginning of that awful famine, when people were already dropping and dying by the wayside, the motherly Government stubbornly refused to close the ports and prevent the shipping of com out of the country. The suffering of the people in those years exceeded the powers of description. While generous ones at the ends of the earth were sending their help to the stricken ones — even to Britain's shame, the Sultan of Turkey, moved to pity by the ter- rible happenings in Ireland, sending contribu- tion— British officials were busy denying that there was any more suffering or any more famine than usual — and the British Parliament was aid- ing a perishing people by contributing talk with lavish generosity.
The famished subjects of this great British Government, stricken by starvation and by fam- ine fever, were dying so thick and fast, and leav- ing survivors so exhausted, that their bodies oft- entimes remained unburied for weeks. Then only the rats of the land flourished, gorging them- selves on the neglected dead.
In this fruitful smiling island, sitting in the
167
IRELAND'S CASK
seas contiguous to the seat of the worWs great-
est and richest Empire^and itself a part of that Empire, and taken under the Empire'a special care-u is estimated that during those famine years of 46-47 almost a million died of starvation —died in the houses, in the fields, on the hish- roads, in the workhouses, on the public .treets « the towns.
And the vast number that died was far from completing Ireland's loss by that famine
In two other terrible ways it did dread damage to the Irish nation. ^
In the first place, the undermining of the physical system of the Irish people by the con- stant recurrence of these famines, and especially the radical weakening of their system in this par- ticular famine, is probably the cause of the tu- berculosis scourge which has fastened on, and given the Irish nation an unenviable pre^-emin- tnce in the history of the White Plague
And again, in those terrible years the people began flocking from the stricken land in tens and hundreds of thousands—to America and to the ends of the earth. The little b^s of Ireland were in those years, and for mfiny succeeding years, pitifully floating out human cargoes upon the bosom of every tide— till within five years' time about a million despairing refugees had B«d from Ireland.
ISS.
' -' THE LAST CENTURY
And in the famine exodus thousands and thou- sands carried their load of famine fever with them aboard the little ships or developed fam- ine fever on the voyage — and thousands upon thousands of them, fleeing from Ireland for the promised land beyond the Sea, never saw that land, but left their bones to whiten on the Ocean bed.
And still other thousands and thousands reached the Promised Land only to see it, and die.
Along the Canadian Shore, to which their little ships came, the famine-sticken ones were quar- antined in droves, and died in heaps, and in piles were buried.
I have visited the little Island at the mouth of the St. John River in the company of an old man, a doctor, who gave me a harrowing picture of the appearance of the unfed, unclad creatures who were dumped there by the shipload in '46, '47 and '48 — some of them, he said clad in straw — and I saw the great furrows which mark the trenches in which myriads of them were buried.
Six thousand of these poor creatures perished on Gros Island in the St. Lawrence. The Mon- treal Emigration Bureau estimated that the banks of the St. Lawrence from Quebec to Port Samia, were dotted with the graves of twenty thousand Irish emigrants, victims of the three-thousand-
i 169
IRELAND'S CASE
mile-distant famine, which they foolishly thought they had escaped.
Of certain ninety thousand only, of the emi- grants to Canada in '47, of which accurate ac- count was kept, it is recorded that 6,100 died on the voyage, 4,100 died on arrival, 5,200 died in hospitals, and 1,900 soon died in the towns to which they repaired.
Here is a sample of the reports for a few of the individual ships:
The Larch, carrying 440 passengers, had 108 deaths. The Queen, carrying 493 passengers, had 137 deaths. The Avon, carrying 552 passengers, had 236 deaths. The Virginius, carrying 476 passengers, had 267 deaths.
And thus was the flower of one of the finest nations on the face of the earth in swaths mowed down. And thus in wind-rows did they wither from off the earth — under the aegis of British rule.
The famine specter was then aggravated by the emigration specter. From that time forward emigration from Ireland assumed alarming pro- portions.
It is 1,700 years since the old Roman Geogra- pher, Solinus, descanted upon the ideal climate and the fruitful soil of smiling lerne, set upon the Western waves. lerne can still boast of ideal climate and fruitful soil — yet in hundreds of thou- sands its children have been fleeing from it, as
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THE LAST CENTURY
from a doomed land, to earth's ends, seelcing sus- tenance which should be plentiful at home — but that the British Government with the devastating hordes of its officials, hangersHDu, landlords, strangling ramifications and ramificators have been, like leeches, sucking to the last drop the country's life-blood.
Here is what an English writer who visited the scene in '45 was constrained to confess : "Nature does her duty. The land is fruitful enough. Man and Nature do produce abundantly. The Island is full and overflowing with human food. But something ever interposes between the hungering mouth and the ample banquet. The famished victim of a mysterious sentence spreads out his hands to the viands which his own industry have placed before his eyes; but no sooner are they touched than they fly. The decrees of sic vos non nobis condemns him to toil without enjoyment. Social atrophy drains off the vital juices of the nation."
Experts have pronounced fruitful Ireland as capable of supporting in comfort a population of twenty million. Today less than four and a half millions cling to existence there.
Seventy years ago Ireland had a poulation of almost nine million souls. At the natural rate of increase, the population today should be twenty million. Yet, through oppression, starvation, and
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IRELAND'S C\SE
emigration, the population, instead of being doubled in these seventy years, has been halved. That fact alone is a gauge by which to measure the beneficence of British rule in Ireland.
And the poignancy of regret felt by our kind rulers over the depopulation they caused was very well voiced by the London Times, when, in 1848, writing of the wholesale emigration then going on, it exclaimed triumphantly : "They are going! the Irish are going with a vengeance! And a Celt will soon be as rare in Ireland as a Red Indian on the shores of Manhattan !"
And through the typically British Imperial Saturday Review of November 28, 1863, the voice of England again speaks. Referring to these creatures whom the brute-hearted Briton was scourging from the land of their forefathers, it howled after them, "Departing demons of assas- sination and murder! ... So complete is the rush of the departing marauders that silence reigns over the vast solitude of Ireland. . . . Just as civilization gradually supersedes the wild- er and fiercer creatures by man and cities, so de- civilization, such as is going on in Ireland, wipes out man to make room for oxen."
When England lashes her conquered ones till every square inch of their bodies gives a gaping, quivering wound, such is the salve that is then, exultantly, rubbed into the agonizing wounds, by
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the propagator of Christianity and pioneer of civ- ilization.
Under British Rule, however, there are two things that flourish in Ireland. They are Public Debt and Taxation. The Tax-raising industry is the only healthy and progressive one that the Island knows. But, then, it is remarkably vig- orous. And the encouraging thing is that the w^orse the condition of the country grows the more merrily and the faster hum the wheels of the taxing machine ; and the more light-heartedly the tax-master sings at his w^ork.
Ireland was found to be a convenient kitchen garden for furnishing useful, unornamental tax- supplies whose raising in England's shoAv-garden might hurt the aesthetic sense of the English- man. When an English lady, visiting Ireland in Swift's day, said to the Dean, "What a splen- did climate Ireland has," the Dean replied, "For the Lord's sake, madam, don't tell that when you go back to England, or they'll tax it on us !"
Mrs. Green says : "They quartered on Irish rev- enues all pensioners that could not safely be pro- posed to a free Parliament in England — mistress^ es of successive kings, and their children ; German relations of the Hanovers ; useful politicians cov- ered by their names ; a queen of Denmark ban- ished for misconduct ; a Sardinian ambassador under false title. About six hundred thousand
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IRELAND'S CASE
pounds were yearly sent over to England for ab- sentees' pensions, annuities, and the like."
Just watch Ireland's debt grow under the magic- touch of a mother's hand ;
In 1795, when England was beginning her machinations for taking away the Irish Parlia- ment, the Irish National Debt was £3,000,000.
In 1801, when England had finally succeeded in stealing the Parliament from Ireland — and charg- ing to Ireland every bribe and every mean ex- pense entailed by the stealing — the Irish National Debt was £28,000,000— had multiplied by nine.
In 1817, when the Irish National Debt was finally merged with the British National Debt, the Irish debt had reached £112,000,000. It had been multiplied by four in the sixteen years since the Union. (In the same sixteen years the Brit- ish Debt had only increased seventy-five per cent.) And in the twenty-two years from the time England had begun contriving for the Union, it had multiplied by thirty-seven !
At the present day Ireland is privileged to share on equal terms in an Imperial National Debt — incurred for carrying on England's wars of aggression, oppression, expansion, and general greed — wars for the enriching of England at the expense of the weak in all corners of the world — an Imperial debt of more billions than could be set down in a short book like this — more billions
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than would pave every Irish highroad and every Irish byroad through the length and the breadth of the land with golden guineas. Ireland is now privileged to share in an Imperial National Debt that would purchase Ireland twenty times over at market prices — a staggering debt, every penny of whose expenditure went to the enriching of England, and the impoverishing of Ireland.
So much for the debt industry in Ireland.
Now for the taxing.
In 1795 Ireland was taxed nine and one-half shillings per head of the population.
In 1801, when the Union was finally completed, the taxes were fifty per cent, higher — somewhat less than fourteen shillings per head. In 1914 (before the war began) the taxes were more than fifty-two shillings per head.
Within 120 years the taxes had been more than multiplied by five. And in the 113 years since the Union they had been almost multiplied by four.
In the present day, 1917-1918, I believe they are about three times what they were three years ago. What they will be like tomorrow — after the war — may be judged by those who live to listen to the groans of the crushed people — that is, if there be left in the nation enough vitality to emit a groan.
Here is another way in which to bring home
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IRELAND'S CASE ^
to one the crushing enormity of Ireland's terrible taxation :
All income of the people over and above what is supposed to be a mere living pittance, is called the taxable income, or the taxable surplus. Now in complete tax revenue, beggared Ireland is pay- ing an amount equal to four-fifths of all her tax- able surplus — sixteen shillings out of every pound I And at the same time wealthy England^ possessed of an enormous taxable surplus, is pay- ing aa amount less than one-sixth of her taxable surplus — less than three shillings in every pound of her taxable income !
In proportion to their respective wealths, then the starving Irishman's tax burden is much more than five times that of the fat-paunched English- man who rolls in his riches.
Since the Union, England's taxation per head (1914) has decreased considerably. Since the Union, Ireland's taxation per head (1914) has in- creased almost four hundred per cent.
And those are a few tax facts that will, and well may, astonish the million.
la the beginning of the Sixteenth Century^ Archbishop King, the Protestant Archbishop of Dublin, was so amazed at the taxing of Ireland into beggary, that he wrote, "I don't see -how any more money is to be got out of these people
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unless we take away their potatoes and butter- milk, or slay them and sell their skins."
The Archbishop offered choice of these two suggestions in bitter jest. But since then, the English rulers of Ireland have again and again lit- erally acted on both suggestions.
The bitterest part of the pill is that the Irish people have to pay these terrible taxes for the purpose, chiefly, of enabling Britain to hold them down. A large portion of the taxes goes not only toward the support of the regular army and navy, tnaintained for the cowing of Ireland — but also for the paying of the army of police which is maintained for the purpose of naggfng the people and spying on the people — and for paying the swarming hordes of British officials who glut themselves upon Ireland's vitals. Just as at the time of the Union England made Ireland pay the cost of her own robbing, today Ireland has to pay for the knife that cuts her own throat.
The portion of the taxes that went for Imperial purposes, army, navy, etc. — ^was usually about one-third of the whole. Of the remaining two- thirds that came back to Ireland the droves of British ofiiciaU, ©f police spies, of hangers-on, consumed a large part. For every twenty-nine shillings of England's taxes expended in England under the head of "cost of administration," near- ly twice as much — ^no less than fifty-two shillinga
X77
ICELAND'S CASE
— of Irish taxes expended under the head of "cost of administration." These are the pickings of the British vultures in Ireland.
The Financial Relations Committee of 1896, composed chiefly of Britons appointed to investi- gate the financial relations between Ireland and England, were constrained to pronounce, "We believe that a large proportion of the so-called local expenditure in Ireland is due to Ireland's connection with Great Britain." (See Report of Financial Relations Committee.)
This same Financial Relations Committee, composed chiefly of Britons, had to declare, as a result of their investigation, that England had taken, in principal and interest, from Ireland, a sum of $1,250,000,000 over and above Ireland's fair contribution. Mr. Childers, the head of the commission, advised that England should pay back to Ireland, in some form, $11,000,000 a year — by way of compensation. And when Ireland presented herself at the treasury and asked for this paltry reparation for centuries of crime and centuries of robbery, the genial John Bull, but toned up his fob and benignantly said, "To Hades with upcasting! Let's forgive and for- get."
To contrary Ireland the benignant John gave two splendid choices — "You forgive my crimes, and 1*11 forget my debts. But, if that does not
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r THE LAST CENTURY
please you, take it the other way around — You forget my crimes, and I'll forgive my debts." And when Ireland remained stolidly irresponsive to such characteristic British magnanimity, John, pained and hurt, appealed to the world, "What can a godly body do with such a perverse ani- mal r
To the devil his due, however. During the last century England was in one way generous almost to extravagance.* With a lavish hand, through the century, she dealt out to the Irish Arms Act after Coercion Act, and Coercion Act after Arms Act. With frequent and constant beneficence she,^ year after year, bestowed on them repressive measure after repressive measure, punitive law after punitive law. The Irish asked for justice and she gave them jail. They asked for bread — their own bread — and she gave them bullets. England's own good friend, Mr. John Redmond, it was who reckoned up the repressive Acts of the Nineteenth Century, and found that in those one hundred years no less than eighty-seven Co- ercion Acts were bestowed by England upon Ire- land !
The world, in the Nineteenth Century, would not stand for the fire, sword, and bloody mas- sacres which were handy for soothing Ireland in former days. So England, ever in the forefront of repressive progress, treated her dependency
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IRELAND'S CASE
Vviia equally effective but more refined and up-to- date species of tortures.
From the century's beginnings to the century's ending Ireland's continuous groaning made mask in the ears of BritaiiL
CHAPTER XII. ENGLAND'S PRESENT-DAY SYSTEM
On the last summer that I was at home in Ire- land— the summer before the war — I went to Dublin to give a lecture upon the highly sedi- tious subject of story-telling. Two Dublin Castle detectives took position facing the entrance door of the lecture room — with their backs against the railing of Parnell Square — nearly an hour before the time announced for the lecture. They took note of every conspirator who entered the hall for the felonious purpose of reviving Irish story- telling. They did not leave their post till the last batch of criminals left the hall, at eleven o'clock. And as the last party consisted of my- self and a few intimate Dublin friends, they then left their post only to follow us to our hiding places. They did not quit my trail till they had seen me safely in my hotel, after midnight.
Foreign readers will probably be surprised at this incident. I only set it down here as a sample of the common incident in Ireland — of the man- ner in which several hundreds of people in Ire- land— people whose crime is that they are striv- ing to uplift their country, are, and always have
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IRELAND^S CASE
been, dogged and shadowed from year's end 'to year's end — and complete and detailed record kept in Dublin Castle of every move of theirs — every place they went, every man they met, every person they spoke with, every house they visited — almost every thought they were suspected of thinking. This applies to all men who make themselves prominent even in the harmless move- ment of reviving the industries of Ireland, or re- viving the language of Ireland, or reviving any- thing at all that might directly or indirectly help Ireland.
Whenever, on any of my constant visits home, I reach Ireland from America, a detective is awaiting me at the dock. And from that day till the m.oment that, several months later, another detective sees me off at the pier, I am under constant surveillance — either by official detec- tives or by local police. Whenever, during that time, I quit my own little mountain village for either a business or a pleasure trip, for any other point in Ireland, the local police, having always at their command such souuces of information as the railroad ticket-office, wire ahead to my point of destination, providing for my reception there — in Belfast, in Dublin, or elsewhere — by a detec- tive who shadows me and keeps record of all my movements from my arrival in the city till I quit it again.
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' ENGLAND'S PRESENT-DAY SYSTEM
And this mean Middle-Ages system is prac- ticed upon, probably, a thousand men in Ireland r— on most men who are guilty of the crime of working for Ireland's uplift.
Of all the spy systems in the world, the old Russian spy system seems instinctively to come uppermost in people's minds and first upon their tongue. This is because, before England found it useful to ally herself with Russia, English cables and English writers, for English purpose, busied themselves in keeping the phrase "Rus- sian Spy" in the world's eye, and in the world's ear.
The world knows it not, because English writ- ers and English news services see no good rea- son for mentioning it — but the Russian Czar in his palmiest days might gnash his teeth in envy of the English spy system in Ireland.
Every soul (if such creatures have a soul) of the swarms of British officials who gorge them- selves upon Ireland's vitals, is supposed to do his part in observing and conveying "useful infor- mation'* to Dublin Castle. Not only are there crowds of official detectives for use everywhere and on every occasion, but Ireland is bent double under its burden of police — every single one of whom is, and must be, an untiring spy.
No other country in the world bears such an intolerable police burden — chiefly for spy pur-
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IRELAND^S CASE
I' poses — as does Ireland. There is a British po- liceman to every 250 men, women and children in Ireland.
Every little hamlet in every remote corner of the mountains has got its police barracks rising amidst its handful of huts. And thousands of little villages in Ireland with population of 200 or 300 souls (including babies) have got six and seven and eight police quartered upon each of them. It is the duty of these police to await every train that comes in or goes out, make note of all who leave the train and all who enter it — to watch, with the same object, every car that enters or leaves the village, to observe and find out all particulars of every stranger, riding, driv- ing, or afoot, in coach, carriage, or wheelbarrow, who visits the village, halts in it, or flies through it. And for the upkeep of this spy-army Ireland is mulcted in $7,500,000 a year.
They are responsible to their authorities for being able, at a moment's notice, to answer any question and give any information regarding any person, local or foreign, who ever came within their purview — his name, his description, his business, his associates, his conversation — if pos- sible, these creatures are expected to have worm- ed out the secrets of his soul.
The British police system in Ireland is car- ried to still further perfection. The police must,
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ENGLAND'S PRESENT-DAY SYSTEM
of course, be on the alert to anticipate and detect all political "crime." When its detection or un- ravelling baffles them, that deficiency must not stand in their way of making an example of some one, innocent or guilty, for every political of- fence ; otherwise there would be an end of Brit- ish Government. So, for every "crime" com- mitted, someone must be made to suffer — the guilty by preference — but only by preference. '^
Where lay witnesses are necessary to corrob- orate the splendid swearing of men who must swear hard to hold their jobs, these witnesses are always provided.
When, in a political crisis, it becomes neces- sary to the policy of the authorities that any specified locality should be lawless, the police have to see to it that, if lawlessness cannot be discovered or provoked, it will be invented. And the patriotic policeman who creates crime for his superiors is not only protected, but promoted. If he blunders and lets the source of manufacture get exposed to the world he, properly, receives condign punishment.
The famous Sergeant Sheridan case is as good an example of police manufactured crime as any one of a thousand others. The Sergeant had in his district several men, w^ho, being guilty of the high crime of striving for the redress of Ire- land's wrongs, should be got rid of. At the same
185 ..^
^ IRELAND'S C/\:5E
time, because the whole district was active for Ireland, it was desirable that it should be proved to be a criminal district in order that the authori- ties would have an excuse for coercing and ter- rorizing it — and for punishing the more patriotic.
But, unfortunately, the Irish workers in the district, in their perversity, worked within the law. Something had to be done then.
The Sergeant, true to the police instinct, saw it was his duty to do that something — either saw it of his own well-trained accord, or was made to see it by the authorities. ^
Now, in England, because it constitutes an effective, as well as a noble, text from which to preach against the barbarous Irish, one of the most welcome pieces of Irish news is the news of the malicious maiming of dumb ani- mals. This news always assures a shiver of holy horror, shaking the shocked souls of pious English people who feel cheered of reports of the maiming or killing of an Irish agitator or an Indian agitator, the blowing of Sepoys from a cannon's mouth, or at the butchering of wounded Soudanese after a battle. So the good Sergeant, knowing his market and his mar- keteers, devised a splendid conspiracy for mut- ilating dumb animals in his district. It was, for a time, highly effective, proving a safe and con- venient way for swearing away tjie liberties of
* i86
ENGLAND'S PRESENT-DAY SYSTEM
"objectionable" persons in the district. But through an unfortunate accident the Sergeant let himself be discovered. Quietly and quickly the Government slipped him out of the district, gave him one hundred pounds, shipped him to America, and let the little affair blow over.
This is only quoted as a sample of the spirit that permeates the whole English method of gov- erning Ireland. The same spirit goes through every branch and stem of every department of the terrible English system in the country. And all the official crimes are locked and interlocked. The judiciary is packed with reliable, picked men for doing England's work — men who have been tested and proved satisfactory in subor- dinate places before being entrusted with their high positions.
The same packing system applies to the juries in the courts. In any political case where it is desirable to convict and sentence a man who has become objectionable by reason of his too ar- dent work for Ireland, trial by jury is supposed to be accorded him. But the British officials take care to select such a jury that the man will not have a chance in twenty of a fair verdict. From the jury panel the Crown Prosecutor care- fully selects the trusty men for trying the case — and in court goes through the form of getting a jury, causing to stand aside every man on all
187
IRELAND'S CASE
the jury roll who is Irish and National, every man who has Irish or National leanings, and every man, even of the British garrison in Irel- land, who might be in danger of putting con- science before prejudice, when deciding whether or not the victim should be deprived of his lib- erty or his life.
Of his life, I say, because, during the crisis of the Land League agitation in Ireland, when crimes were committed and it was necessary to make an example, there were several undisputed cases of men having been hung for crimes with which they had no connection.
If a guilty man was to be transported or hung the jury packing system was handy and effective. If an innocent man was to be transported or hung the jury packing system was more valu- able still. A Crown Prosecutor's value was often rated by the perfection of his jury packing abili- ties. The notorious prosecutor, Peter O'Brien, whose perfected abilities in this matter earned for him his national nickname of Peter the Pack- er, proved himself of such especial value to the British Government that he was raised to the Bench, and pushed upward till the fellow ac- tually sat as Lord Chief Justice for Ireland! This fellow only ceased to disgrace the Bench when he died off it, a few years ago.
The system is thorough. The manufacture of
i88
ENGLAND'S PRESENT-DAY SYSTEM
a crime is backed by the subornation of perjury, which, in turn, is backed by hand-picking the jury; and that in turn strengthened by Bench- packing. This Bench-packing, by the way, was ludicrously illustrated at a famous Irish State trial of the nineteenth century, when the pre- siding Judge, alluding to the counsel for the de- fendant, let slip his mind with the phrase, "The gentleman on the other side."
So intimate, almost certain, is the connection in Ireland between law and the most terrible injustice, that the Irishman, at length, has come instinctively to range himself on the side of the accused.
That the Habeas Corpus is suspended in Ire- land whenever the Government chooses, and men thrown into jail without charge, and kept there without trial, astonishes incredulous foreigners.
Under Chief Secretary Foster there were seven hundred "suspects" enjoying jail terms at one time — without one of them ever having been faced with a charge, or confronted by an accuser. Probably several thousand such suffered jail in the same way, during Buckshot Foster's regime.
Then, when a man became troublesome by do- ing too effective work for the amending of the miserahV' land laws, it was only necessary for the ] adlord, or the British authorities, to pro- cur . two men — they might be the landlord's own
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IRELAND'S CASE
bailiffs or officials of the Government — to go be- fore one of the British magistrates, and swear that they had good reason to suspect this man was dangerous to the peace of the realm. Neither examination nor cross-examination was neces- sary. No details were asked or required. The accused was not only not there, but in no case did he know of the secret proceedings against him. Just the simple oath of men to whom oaths were a joke — their formal oath, given and taken without question, and in secret — sufficed to de- prive the best and most reputable men in the land — alike lay and cleric — of their liberty. The first intimation given the accused of his "trial" and "conviction" was the descent upon his house, oftentimes in the dead of night, of an armed troop of police, who carried him off without charge, and lodged him in a jail cell, among drunks and thieves, where he should remain till such time as it pleased the Government to re- lease him.
That this method of arresting a man without accusation and jailing him without trial is still a valuable adjunct of the English Government in Ireland, and likely to continue so, is proved by the fact that the authorities have been using it effectively against workers in the Irish Volun- teers and Sinn Fein during the past few years.
And the treatment of arrested political pris-
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^ ENGLAND'S PRESENT-DAY SYSTEM
oners by the British authorities is usually viler than anything that occurs in semi-barbarous na- tions.
Even as I write this chapter I pick up an Irish Unionist newspaper, "The Belfast Daily Tele- graph/' of current date (May 28, 1917), giving account of the trial of an Irish Nationalist, a school teacher, James Joseph Layng, court-mar- tailed in Dundalk for the crime of being found in possession of a rebel revolver — from which account I wish to quote, for the benefit of the readers, the following cross-examination ©f Po- lice Sergeant Graham :
"ATTORNEY— You brought the prisoner te the barracks at Castlebellingham and put him in- to the lock-up there?
"SERGEANT— Yes.
"ATTORNEY— Am I right in saying that that room is nine feet by three feet six inches?
SERGENAT — I cannot say that you are far astray, but it is more than three feet six inches.
"ATTORNEY— It has a stone floor, without any windows?
"SERGEANT — There is a small open slit.
"ATTORNEY— Isn't it devoid of any comfort?
"SERGEANT — There is a big wooden plank in it.
"ATTORNEY — There are no sanitary conven- iences?
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IRELAND'S CASE
"SERGEANT—None.
"ATTORNEY-— Was the accused put in that night ?
"SERGEANT— He was.
'* ATTORNEY— And kept there for five days and five nights?
"SERGEANT— Yes.
"ATTORNEY— During that time was he eve. taken out for any exercise?
"SERGEANT— No.
"ATTORNEY— Was there any bed there?
"SERGEANT— No."
And that is but a sample of the brutal savagery with which Irish political prisoners are and al- ways have been treated, by the first, greatest, and most glorious empire on earth I
O^Donovan Rossa, when in English prisons^ serving his life sentence, and protesting against the indignities to which he and his fellows were subject, frequently had his hands chained behind his back for days together, in solitary confine- ment. And to eat the bits of food that were thrust to him through the bars, he had to go on his knees and lap it up like a wild beast!
Michael Davitt, the one-armed, tells how he and his fellow political prisoners in English dun- geons, in ©rder to get a mouthful of the fresh air for which they gasped, had oftentimes, to lie on their stomachs on the floor of their cell and put
192
ENGLAND'S PRESENT-DAY SYSTEM
their mouth to the slit at the bottom of the door. And on passing a garbage barrel when the keep- er vv'as fortunately not watching them, the pris- oners grabbed from it the dirty ends of tallow candles, and secreted the tid-bits, which at the first opportunity they ravenously devoured.
The treatment of Irish political prisoners in English dungeons has been universally so brutal, so savagely unhuman, so much worse than any- thing the world is aware of, that it is no wonder these Irishmen emerge from the English dun- geons— v.'henever they do emerge— incurably in- valided, crippled, blind, and insane. For some, the jail door opened to the tomb. For others, far worse, it opened to the madhouse.
On the eve of this chapter's going to press comes the news of the doing to death of Thomas Ashe by Britain's usual prison practices. It is a sadly fitting climax for this chapter.
This noble fellow, a teacher, a Gaelic League enthusiast, and a beloved leader of his people, was thrown into prison for the crime of wearing' an Irish Volunteer uniform. He was a political prisoner — but Britain branded him criminal, and ordered him to be treated with all the prison in- dignities meted out to the lowest criminal. A^e refused to observe the rules for criminals, and ke refused to take food. He was confined t« his
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IRELAND'S CASE
cell. His bed clothes were taken from him, his bed was taken from him, the little jail seat was taken from him, his own clothes and shoes were taken from him. For days he was left in that condition in his little, dirty, cold, cell — without a seat to sit on, without a bed to lie on, without clothes to preserve to him the vital heat. And meanw^hile he was being forcibly fed. When at length they found that their work was accom- plished, that his heart was giving out, and that he must die within some hours, they had the dying man carried nd carted from his cell, and from the jail, and flung into an outside hos- pital— where, in a few hours, he expired — only one other Irishman done away wath, to England's glory !
,This crime — which may well seem unbelieve- able to some readers — was not committed in Bel- gium— nor in the South Sea Islands. But in the heart of the Empire most renowned on earth.
194
CHAPTER XIII. HAS THE LEOPARD CHANGED HIS SPOTS?
But England has got a change of heart in re- cent years, say some people. These people are strangers. And these strangers who give us pleas- ant news of England in Ireland describe Eng- land's change of heart under four various head- ings.
First — England is, today, generously giving Ireland ameliorative legislation.
Second — She has been lavishing large sums of money on Ireland during recent decades — pur- chasing the land for the people, building laborers cottages, etc.
Third — She is yielding more freedom and jus- tice to Ireland.
Fourth — She is exercising her rule over the two peoples in Ireland, the Anglo-Irish and the Irish- Irish, with much m.ore impartiality than she did.
Let us seek for proof of the four allegations :
THE FIRST — A generous money prize can safely be offered the man who will discover one instance of England's having voluntarily granted to Ireland relief from any oppression — voluntari- ly bringing forward and passing even one remed- ial measure for Ireland— in the 117 years sincethe 195
IRELAND'S CASE
Irish Parliament united with the English Parlia- ment.
During that period Ireland has at various times, won various ameliorative measures — in every case won these measures by force. Every one who has even a nodding acquaintance with Irish history during the past 117 years, knows that in all of that time never once — even once — did England look around and say, Here is a gross wrong perpetrated upon Ireland — Let us remedy it.
Every single remedial measure of the 117 years — from A. D. 1800 to A. D. 1917, was wrung from England only after the whole Irish nation had for years, and for decades — and sometimes for generations — struggled and fought for that meas- ure, and compelled it. England, far from gener- ously granting such measure, had a hundred times vowed through her ministers that she never would consent to grant it. She had filled the jails, and crowded the gibbets, v^th the fight- ers for the measure, in vain efforts to allay the storm and withhold the reform. For every "con- cession" won, our best people had to rot in jail, be shot down on the streets, hang from the gib- bets— before generous England, harried and har- assed, and her rule in Ireland nullified, had at length to swallow her vows and yield a little to save the rest.
196
HAS TKK LEOPARD CHANGED HIS SPOTS?
This applies to every single "generous" grant, from first to last, that "generous" England in change of heart has 'bestowed" upon Ireland — from the Act of Catholic Emancipation in '29 to the Land Acts of recent years. Every "gen- erous" grant was dragged from England by su- perhuman force — was given by England with as much hearty good- will as would grace the giv- ing of her eye-teeth. For insta ^ce :
(a) With holy wrath and burning indigna- tion the idea of emancipating and gfiving rights of citizenship to Irish Roman Catholics in Ireland was at first spurned by British Ministers, As late as 1827, when the agitation for their rights had long been raging, Sir Robert Peel still as- serted, "I cannot consent to widen the door of political power to Roman Catholics. I cannot consent to give them civil rights and privileges equal to those possessed by their Protestant fel- low countrymen." The Irish people answered Peel with still more fearful agitation — giving him "change of heart." In February, 1829, he said, "In the course of the last six months, England, at peace with the world, has had five-sixths of her infantry force occupied in maintaining peace, and in doing police duties in Ireland. I consider such a state of things much worse than rebel- lion." In that year, when things in Ireland got worse than rebellion, the Emancipation Act, so
^97
IRELAND'S CASE
long spumed, was passed, and generous England, getting sudden change of heart, generously per- mitted Irishmen to have some of the rights ©f citizens !
(b) The next relief of any importance that Ireland got was the Act of Church Disestablish- ment, passed by Gladstone in 1869. T^^ Anglican Protestant Church was the Established Church in Ireland which Catholic Ireland had to support by tithes. In thousands of districts where the only Anglicans were the imported minister, his wife and children and the imported sexton, the minister drew from Catholics, many of whom were themselves perishing with hunger, a fat salary which kept him in luxury's lap. Often- times, too, the man who benefitted from a parish did not live in the parish — lived maybe on an- other fat living in England, and paid a salary to some poor substitute devil, who went through the form of conducting services for nobody on Sunday morning — or, like Swift, preaching his sermon to "My dearly beloved Roger" — his horse- boy— and drawing the large salary for his em- ployer. When, after terribly long and terribly fi€ft« agitation, Gladstone at length disestab- lished the English Church in Ireland, he, in his place m Parliament, confessed: "If it had not bcfeti for the Fenian movement in Ireland I never
HAS THE LEOPARD CHANGED HIS SPOTS?
would have brought in the Disestablishment Act"
(c) The Land Acts of a still later period, when the land agitation was rocking the king- doms, were passed for exactly the same forceful reason — after the idea had time and time again been scorned and spurned by all England and its Ministers, and after time and time again they had practically vowed that they would rather clear all the Irish out of Ireland than grant such measures. When the first and most important of these land acts was passed by Gladstone (in '8i), after he had vainly tried to cow Ireland by a reign of terror. Lord Derby, in the course of an article in The Nineteenth Century, comment- ing upon Gladstone's confession that he had dis- established the Church only out of fear, wrote: *'That was the exact and naked truth. But it is regrettable that for the third time in less than a century agitation accompanied by violence should have been shown to be the most effective instru- ment for righting whatever Irishmen may be pleased to consider their wrongs."
(d) The Full Measure of Home Rule, so long and so solemnly promised Ireland — and which proved indeed to be a Fool Measure of Home Rule, one of the latest, most comic proofs of Eng- land's change of heart, need not be dilated on here. It belongs in a joke book.
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IRELAND'S CASE
Yes, England gtta a change of heart, and gen- erously gives to Ireland more generous laws, every time, and only every time, that the strug- gle within Ireland is strong enough to compel her — every time, and only every time, that it becomes imperative on her to sacrifice a little in order to save the remainder.
THE SECOND— In the last quarter century England has been bestowing large sums of money on Ireland with a lavish hand — so many hundreds of thousands of pounds for building laborers' cottages — so many millions of pounds for buying out the landlords, and presenting the land to the people — and so many billions for so many other charitable objects — in vain hope of appeasing the Irish beggars.
It was Mr. Redmond and his Parliamentary party that, for their own small glorification, glad- ly led the world to believe that the generous Eng- lishman in a sudden spasm of munificence had begun showering his gold upon the pitiable Irish beggar.
But what is the reality:
The District Councils throughout Ireland were granted permission to pre-empt from their own members and from their electors, portions of land for the farm laborers — ^and given permis- sion to borrow, at a reasonable rate of interest, from the common purse — ^the Imperial purse-—
HAS THE LEOPARD CHANGED HIS SPOTS?
the moneys necessary for building cottages for these laborers — to borrow and pay back the prin- cipal plus the interest, on the instalment plan. Which was neither a gain nor a loss, to the Im- perial purse.
The farmers were likewise given permission to borrow from the common purse — the purse into which Ireland was paying a far higher proportion of her wealth than was England — to borrow at a rate of interest which secured the Imperial ex- chequer against any loss on the transaction — enough to buy from the landlords at an exorbil ant valuation, the lands that were really theit own, and that had been the possessions of their family from time immemorial.
And please observe, in this connection, that the Irish money in the Imperial Savings Banks was lent to the Government at two and one-half per cent — while the Imperial Government was gen- erously lending back to these investors the mon- eys for purchase of their lands, at three and one- quarter per cent. The English and Anglo-Irish landlords of the Irish estates were the people most directly benefitted by England's won- drous generosity.
And these ordinary and safe business transac- tions furnish the sole foundation for the English- gentleman-and-Irish-beggar legend, which a mil- Ifcn innocent people outside of Ireland so greed-
IPIELAND'S CASE
ily committed to memory, from the continuous re-iteration of Mr. Redmond's Perliamentary Parrots !
THE THIRD — And now let us examine how she has extended freedom and justice in Ire- land.
(a) Mr. Arthur Balfour, who visited America recently — as a champion of Democracy and Lib- erty!— said, apparently without wincing, that England and America could not stand by and see "one unscrupulous power deprive mankind of its liberties !"
Now this dazzling democrat was Chief Secre- tary for Ireland, and, like the other Chief Secre- taries, of course, suppressed the right of public meeting and the right of free speech, whenever and wherever he chose. There is nothing spe- cially worth noting in such performance of any Englishman — in Ireland. But his most notable achievement in the cause of liberty, to which I wish to draw attention here, was when, after proclaiming a public meeting in Mitchellstown, County Cork, and sending his armed forces there to back his proclamation, he, to prevent ny crim- inal leniency in the forcing of English liberty upon Irish barbarians, telegraphed to the Com- mandant of the forces, on the morning of the proscribed meeting, his famous telegram (in cipher), "Do not hesitate to shoot."
202
HAS THE LEOPARD CHANGED HIS SPOTS?
In compliance with the order of this champion of world freedom, British bullets were that day shot into the limbs and bowels and heads and hearts of men who mistakenly thought that to voice their grieveances they could insist upon liberty of meeting and liberty of speaking, in their own land. And crosses in the little grave- yard at Mitchellstown, to this day, attest not only Mr. Balfour's consuming passion for mankind's liberties, but also England's generous change of heart, toward the land "that is dependent on and protected by England."
(b) Until the privilege was forced from Eng- land by a big struggle a few years ago, Irish his- tory dare not be taught to Irish pupils in Irish National Schools. Novv' Irish pupils are gracious- ly permitted to learn just as much hand-picked Irish history as may be contained in a text-book approved of by the appointees of the English Government !
(c) It is a crime in Ireland, punishable by fine or imprisonment, and for which men have frequently been fined and imprisoned, to reply in Irish to the inquiries of a policeman. Only the other day even, an Oxford student, named Chevasse, an enthusiast for the Irish language, was imprisoned for this revolting crime. And it is a crime, punishable by fine or imprisonment, and for which men have frequently been fined
203
IRELAND'S CASE
and imprisoned, for an Irishman to print hti name upon his cart in the Irish language, in- stead of the English language.
During the recent Land League agitation m Ireland "intimidation" of any Government pet was exalted among the crimes on the Statute book. A man was imprisoned for instance for the crime (as literally sworn to) of intimidating a boycotted man by ''winking at his pig" as he passed the grunter gentleman in the market- place. And a man was imprisoned for smiling, "a humbugging kind of smile," as he passed an- other anti-Irish Irishman. Those are literal ex- amples of Irish "crimes" for which scores oi Irishmen have been fined and imprisoned.
(d) In 1915, 1916 and 1917, young men, work- ers in the Irish Volunteers were again and again being arrested without charge, and imprisoned without trial. In the same years young men, workers in the Volunteers, were being taken from their homes and from their employment, and, without charge preferred, deported to Eng- land— and without any provision being made for them, left to live or die in hostile rural English vJEages, where the "Irish traitors" were taunted and jeered, and made the constant objects of conti*m©Iy by the liberty-loving Briton.
(e) In 1914, after the Orange Volunteers of the North had imported all the *rms they wanted,
•04
HAS THE LEOPARD CHAKGKD HIS fOfOTM
and transmitted them without nu^M^tion tD every comer of the Province, the Irish Volun- teers in Dublin imported a ship-load of armi which they landed at Howth. On receipt of thif news at Dublin Castle a regiment of soldiers was immediately marched out to take the arms from these men. The soldiers failed in their task, re- turned into Dublin downcast, and were marching along Bachelor's Walk to their barracks, when a number of boys, women and children, emerging from back streets, jeered them and threw at them some sticks and stones. Suddenly, at the word of command, a company of the soldiers wheeled, knelt on one knee on the street, and poured two volleys ©into a dense throng — leaving fortjr- eight people of both sexes lying in their blood, four or five of them never to rise again !
As is usual in Ireland, not the slightest pun- ishment was meted out to anyone of the mur- derers, officers or soldiers.
(f) In 1916, during the Insurrection in Dub- lin, one of the officers in command, Captain Colt- hurst, a typical British Junker, arrested tiire« men, Skeffington, Maclntyre, and Dickson, who had no connection with the Rising — and, without confronting them with any charge, without court- martJal or hearing of any kind, had these men t\kcn into the barrack yard and shot dead. Skeffington bad wittieMed tiic shooting dead 9i %
•OS
IRELAND^S CASK
boy of sfxteen years, named Coady, wlio hsid ipvcn Colthurst a disrespectful reply. To com- pel England to grant even an inquiry into these murders, Heaven and earth had to be moved after the insurrection was over. A form of inquiry was gone through, the brute conveniently ad- judged "insane" and ordered to be confined dur- ing his Majesty's pleasure!
(g) In the same insurrection the English sol- diers, exasperated that Irishmen should have the presumption to fight for their country, and un- nble to oust the fighters who held their quarters so gallantly — visited several houses in non-fight- ing districts, chiefly in King Street, and there shot to death an unknown number of people, es- timated at forty, who were guilty of no crime and against whom there was no charge — and buried them in the cellars — from which their bodies were being dug up during the week suc- ceeding the insurrection. Heaven and earth and the British Parliament were moved by Mr. Gin- nell, M, P., to get an inquiry into this barbarous massacre. But even an inquir>' was stubbornly refused — by that Empire which is the champion of all small nations that have fallen under the rule of her trade rival.
(h) ©A little matter of parellels here, will bet- ter bring out England's change of heart toward Irelimds
^66
HAS THE LEOPARD CHANGED HIS SPOTS?
The Boer "barbarians" some years ago took prisoner the Jameson raid criminals.
The "civilized" Britons, one year ago, took prisoner a band of Irish patriots.
The Britishers, hired by British capitalists, and backed by English statesmen (who wanted the diamond mines of Boer-land) attempted to seize and steal the government and the liberties of the foreign Republic whose hospitality they were enjoying, and whose opportunities were en- riching them.
The Irish patriots, fired by their country's wrongs, and backed by all that was noble of their race, arose up in their country, in brave attempt to wrest their own country from the robber who held it — and return it to its rightful owners to rule.
Britain the honorable, which had hired its ras- cals to do their vile crime, then begged for the rascals' lives; and by the barbarous Boers the lives were spared — of both leaders and men.
Brftain the liberty-loving, backed up against the nearest wall the sixteen leaders of the Irish patriots and shot them dead.
(i) James Connolly, Commandant of the Irish Nbels, a noble character and brare man, wat
IRELAND'S CASE
seriously wounded in the Dublin fighting. The doctors disagreed as to whether the wound was vital or not. England, however, was not taking any chances. In his bed he was court-martialled, and sentenced to death for the unforgivable crime of fighting for the freedom of a small nation under other heel than Germany's. And as, of course, he was unable to walk, England's un- daunted soldiers carried him to the place of ex- ecution, and there propped up the hopeless crim- inal— while her firing squad shot their bullets through his heart.
So far have freedom and justice been extended in Ireland in recent years.
And FOURTH : -/ : '■
We learn that England, too, is dealing impar- tially with both peoples in Ireland — the people of British blood and sympathy who are the British garrison in Ireland — and the people of Irish blood, the Irish Nationalists. Let us see.
Sir Edward Carson, a few years ago, threat- ened to lead a rebellion of the British in Ireland — the Orangemen — against the British Govern- ment if it dared to give Ireland even a miser- able shadow of Home Rule. He publicly an- nounced that he would get the aid of Germ.any's Kaiser, that he would ally himself and his fol- lowers v/ith the German Empire, and get the
208
HAS THE LEOPARD CHANGED HIS SPOTSF
Germans to fight his battle. Sir Edward Carson
v/ent to Germany, had interviews with the high- est officials there, lunched with the Kaiser, and had a German military man — a German spy — broug-ht into Ulster, to study the situation and the gTound. Sir Edward Carson, because he did this only for the laudable purpose of holding Ire- land down, was soon after elevated to the Eng- lish Cabinet, an idol of the English people. So fsr. so good.
Next, Roger Casement, an Irish Nationalist 2nd idealist, working to uplift and free Ireland, did aiiTiost exactly the same things as Sir Ed- vvard Carson — except that he did not introduce any German spy into Ireland.
On a certain morning when the anti-Irish Car- son, idolized by England, and weighted with hon- ors and responsibility, was seated in the British Cabinet, the noble Casement was swinging from a gallows tree I
In this connection we shall pause to note an il- luminative incident reported in the newspapers on the day of Roger Casement's hanging. The news report said, "When the black flag was hoisted, signal that the law had taken its course, and justice been vindicated, there went up from the multitude" (of change-of-heart Britons) which surged In front of the jail, a great howl
IRELAND'S CASE
of mingled execration of the traitor and jabMation for his ending. At the back of the jali waH« a little grottp of Irishmen and women were knelt ia prayer."
In that little picture is presented seven cen- turies of the history of England ^ Ireland. In the jailyard Erin hanging from the gallows tree, while the British mob (better spelt Brut- ish) inspired by the devil, dance, curse, and howl for joy — the while at the back of the jail Erin's children kneel with their sorrows and their God.
Has England got a change of heart toward Ire- land?
Four centuries ago killing the natives of Ire- land was a field-sport for the gentlemen of Eng- land.
Three centuries ago "Because the Queen'i troopers eonld not kill Irishmen fast enough, no Irishman was pardoned Unless ht undertook to murder his friend or relative" (Wm. Parnell). And Lord Mountjoy's Secretary relates that "Lord Mount joy never received any rebel to mercy but such as had drawn blood Oh their fel- low rebels."
Nearly a century and a half ago, Hussey Burgh, in the Anglo-Iriah House of Commoc», protested ^"The words Crime, Punishmraat «^ Ireland are in England's eyes synonymouB, Th^
HAS THE LEOPARD CHANGED MIS fflPOTt?
arc marked in blood on the margin of her Sl»- tules. The destructive influence of the lawi have borne Ireland down to a state of Egyptian bondage."
Today Mrs. Gren testifies "The evils of the English conquest have never for a moment stib- s'.ded ; and they are at the present day almost M rife as they were seven hundred years ago.**
Has the leopard indeed changed his spo^?
[Please turn to page 237 and learn the very latest In gentle British ways with Irish ruffian convicts.]
Bll
\
CHAPTER XIV. THE SUMMING UP
I have tried to picture of the ways of England with Ireland — of England's methods in first rop- ing, and then ruling, another race. Though the picture be only roughly sketched, it is yet suf- ficient to show by what unparalleled barbarism she imposed her rule upon Ireland, and by what fearful injustice she has since tried to maintain it.
If England had discovered Ireland, an uninhab- ited Island, and colonized it with her own people, and in ruling even her own people had meted out to them a tithe of the horrors which she has dealt to the Irish people — inflicted upon them a hun- dreth of the atrocities which she has perpetrated upon the Irish race — all humanity would cry out that her own people must cast ofT the rule of their unnatural mother — that England had for all time forfeited all right to rule her own colony, of her own offspring.
For merely trying to levy unjust taxation upon her own kin (as well as the other races) in her own American Colonies, even that portion of her Colony population which was Anglo-Saxon, rose tip in its wrath and shook off the yoke of the
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THE SUMMING UP
In Ireland's case the argument against Eng- land's continued rule is multiplied a thousand fold.
Since, through lust of power, England sent her devastating army into an ancient land to conquer an ancient race possessed of a higher civilization than her own — ravished this race, murdered, plundered, abased, and degraded, and wrought on them inhumanities beyond the gift of pen or tongue to describe — in this land, put out a light that had lighted the world's path ; and through fearful centuries of fearful night kept savagely stamping out the seeds of the fire, which, having once given its light to the world, was ever in im- inent danger of doing so again — and from the day of conquest down to the present day, imposed upon this people "laws" that have always been synonymous with injustice the rankest, and op- pression the most terrible — a thousand times stronger, then, is this people's claim for the free- dom which is the ordinary due of all people's oc- cupying the land of their forefathers.
It is for this freedom — which all men who are MEN must claim — that the Irish people have, against overwhelming odds, fought an astound- ing fight, lasting through seven centuries — a fight that has never slackened — and never will slacken till the end is won.
The winning of mere Home Rule, even if it
213
IRELAND'S CASE
were real Home Rule, instead of the mockery that was lately played with under the nick-name of Home Rule, would, of course, be considered by the Irish people only as a milestone on the way to their goal.
But it has been suggested by American people, who thereby consider themselves liberal, that the Irish question should be settled by giving to Ire- land Colonial Home Rule — the same rule that is enjoyed by Canada and Australia.
It should be pointed out to these liberal Amer- icans that, in the first place, their American fore- fathers, many of them, sprung from the loins of England, would not have been content to accept from their mother, England, that Colonial Home Rule which they now think should satisfy a dis- tinct race inhabiting a distinct country.
Next, Canada and Australia, enjoying Colonial Home Rule, are countries colonized by England and inhabited by England's own chiMren. In accepting Colonial Home Rule they only unite in bonds of affection with their motherland and mother race.
And in the third place, the motherland of Can- ada and Australia is not now, and has not been through centuries past, striving to starve their bodies, and crush their spirits, and kill their souls —has not for centuries been plundering and mur-
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THE SUMMING UP
dering them, and devastating their land. If such had been the case, Australia and Canada, far from being content with Colonial Home Rule, would long since have rebelled against their ov/n mother and thrown her off.
In Ireland we have an ancient race, as distinct from the English race as is the French from the German, the Scandinivian from the Turk. This distinct and ancient race inhabits a distinct and separate country. To this race experience has discovered no reason for drawing near to, but a thousand fearful reasons for pushing away from, tbose "conquerors" who are still striving to hold them by the same brute force by which they first captured them. And physically, morally, and spiritually, this struggling race is certainly not inferior to the average races of earth that now do hold their freedom — and more certainly not inferior to the race which regards itself as com- missioned by God to dominate its neighbors.
For it is well always to keep in mind that Ire- land's fight is, not merely against foreign misrule, but against FOREIGN RULE.
And in the Irishmen's stating and proving of Ireland's claims, whole tomes of argument and reams of reasoning may be given to the world in four words— WE WANT OUR COUNTRY.
- Many foreigners, deeply smypathetic toward 215
IRELAND'S CASE
f rciand, and desirous of Ireland's prosperity, pro- test upbraidingly, "Why not forget the past, and joiii in a true partnership with England — for Ire- land's best benefit?"
To this protest there are three rather effective replies.
In the first place, if England, with her grasp still upon the throat of prostrate Ireland, and her heel sunk into Ireland's bowels, made the propo- sition. "Join me on equal terms or be d to
you" — prostrate Ireland, being possessed of some trace of spirit, could not accept such highway- man invitation. It is only after England has let go her hold on Ireland's throat, and that Ireland, risen to her feet and standing erect, looks Eng- land fearlessly in the face, that she can with credit say whether or not she wishes such part- nership. The most cursory examination of the character of the inviting partner (as displayed in the previous chapters) will show the reader what would be Ireland's prompt decision.
In the second place, the English race and the Irish race are as dissimilar as the plow horse and the race horse. Yoke in the same team the best race horse in the world with the best plow horse in the world and the very quick result will be — no race horse.
In the third place, there is infinitely less reason for Ireland's allying with England than with
2X6
THE SUMMING UP
France, Spain, Germany or America. For, if % practical and sensible person be looking for a partner he will hardly, out of a world-full, choose the one and only one that stabbed, beat, belaborftd him, knocked him down, jumped on him. Of all the many practical and sensible Americans who have recommended to me this "practical" solution of the Irish question I could not find one who would say that in his own personal business he would for a moment dream of allying himself with such a partner.
Finally, the thousands of well-meaning people who wish what is best for Ireland, point out seven "insuperable" obstacles to Ireland-s free- dom. They are:
1. The Anglo-Irish — the Orangemen and all of the other Anti-Irish Irishmen — will never be induced to accept separation from England.
2. In a free Ireland the Irish Catholics can not be trusted to treat the Protestant minority fairly.
3. Anyhow, the Catholic majority, which all the world knows to be poor and thriftless, could not be permitted to run the progressive, indus- trious and wealthy Protestant minority.
4. Ireland is financially unable to run her- self.
5. Because of Ireland's strategic position*
217
IRELAND'S CASE
IngUmd, ev«n witk the belt intention in the wofM, could not, in «elf-defense, afiFord to hare a free Ireland at h&e back door.
6. If England freed Ireland tomorrow one or other big" Continental power would grab her up on the day after.
7. Ireland has been for so many long cen- turies conquered, that, according to the law <^ Nations, she has long lost her claim to freedonL
We shall look over these seven iiMUperable obstacles.
I. The real Irish in Ireland will Hardly give up in despair if the Orangemen and etker Anglo- Irish, refuse to accept separation friaa England. Generously consenting to bury In ©bHvlon the fact that these Anglo-Irish are in enfoymeat of the fattest parts of Ireland which thicir forebears wrongly obtained — and consentinff to forg^ all the brutalities and all the sayagerfes by which the Anglo-Irish continued to secure themselves in the possession of the goods and of the power of Ireland, the real Irish people have, for a hun- dred years, been stretching hands ©f forgtveiiess and entreaty to these people, begging them to be loyal to the country in which they live-r-^find on whkh they thrive-— begging ^em to accept for- giveness, and to be brothers workfng vA^ their Irish brothers, shofllder to shoulder for Ireland. Today, as ever, the hands of ikt Irlsk are
mm
THE SUMMING UP
stretched to their Anglo-Irish brethren, v If ^ksf choose to accept, and to give their loyalty to, the country that has borne them and bred them, cher- ished and fee them, then they are equally wcK come with their Irish brethren to all the benefits and all the joys of a free Ireland. But if they find they cannot bear to be separated from their beloved England, they are made heartily wel- come to bring themselves to the country to which they give their love and their loyalty. "If you do not love me, you are free to leave me," is a solution both simple and just.
2. To get the measure of Irish Catholic intol- erance, when they have their old persecutors in their power, the reader need only be referred backward some chapters.
Note there just how intolerant in the sixteenth century were these Irish Catholics when the reign of Mary put Papistry in the ascendant.
Note how intolerant they were in the seven- teenth century, when they had all power in their hands at the beginning of the WilHamite wars— in circumstances under which an angel might well be excused for being intolerant.
In the beginning of the nineteenth century, William Parncll, who lived his life among th# Irish people, said, TThe Irish Roman CathoKc* bigots! Perverse and superficial men have ad- vanced this falsehood in the very teeth of^fact^
J19
IRSLANXyS CASE
mnd contrary to the most distinct evidence of his- tory." The case of the Irish Catholics, he says, ii? the only instance known to history of op- pressed and persecuted ones, on returning to power, refraining from visiting vengeance upon those who had trampled them.
In the middle of the nineteenth century the Presbyterian Isaac Butt testified (in his "Plea for the Celtic Race") "Limerick and Cork (Cath- olic cities) are free from religious dissension. In (Protestant) Belfast, the town has been held for days by partisan mobs."
And in the beginning of the twentieth century, the Protestant historian, Mrs. Green, testifies, "Irish Protestants never had cause for fear in Ireland, on religious grounds."
While such an idea as a Catholic Mayor for Protestant Derry and Protestant Belfast is laugh- ably absurd, such Catholic cities as Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Kilkenny, often honor Protestant clt- iiens by making them their first magistrates. And while the idea of a Catholic Member of Parliament sitting for any of the Protestant Counties of the Northeast is ludicrously laug-h- ablc, purely Catholic Counties in both North and South frequently elect Protestants to represent them in Parliament.
And finally, and above all, be it remembered that almost every man whom the Irish Catholics
■©■as?
THE SUMMING UP
clxoie as their National leader from the days of Robert Emmet to the; days of Charles Stuart Parnell, has been ProtestaaL
There is bigotry in Ireland — ^bigotry of the most intoleraatu moBt raoapant, type — but it is almost entirely confined to non-Catholics of the Brito-Irish part of the population.
"Forgiveness to the injured doth belong, They ne'er forgive who do the wrong.'*
In the case of Catholic Ireland, the bigotry barrier comes down with a crash. ©
3. The legend that the Celtic (Catholic) ma- jority is shiftless, and the English and Scotch blooded (Protestant) minority is thrifty, pro- ^■ressive, and wealthy, has been so often shouted by the shouters, that a multitude of even think- ing people have come to believe it.
This is a typical English legend about Ireland — and displays typical English brilliancy — but for so long has it done foul service that it is time now to explode the legend once and for all.
Here is the recipe for concocting the legend — First, assault your man, blackjack him, bind him hand and foot, rob him of all he has — and bestow the plunder on your friend. Next, pass laws for- bidding the victim to arise, forbidding him to un- tie his hand* and feet, and forbidding any one to
9 ®
MI
IRELAND'S CASE
render him aid. Finally, call upon the world to behold the contrast of the shiftless, thriftless creature who wallows in his misery---*-<and the splendid, progressive, industrious, well*to-do fel- low (your friend) who stands erect.
And there should be a most convincing case against the victim.
Only, unfortunately for your case, while yots are pre-occupied telling the world about his shift- lessness, the corded creature was u-ntying the knots with his teeth, painfully rising up, and des- perately trying to improve his condition.
And while yoti were pre-occupied telling the world about your thrifty, progressive, industri- ous, and wealthy friend, this fine upstanding friend was getting bowed and broken. **I11 got, i\\ gone."
For the million who were misled into believ- ing the English legend about Celtic shiftlessnes-- and British thriftiness, the following few cold facts will prove a tonic .
Dr. O'Riordan, In "Catholicity and Progress/' qtKites from the Government statistics (of '82 — evidently the latest then available) the compar- ative Income tax assessments for boasting Ulster mtd for the miserable, more Celtic, provinces. Mem they are:
® £ s. d.
Lefnster 10 9 6 per head
222
Munster 6 0 7" "
Ulster 5 14 5 " "
Connaught ... 3 13 7 " "
And the comparative figures for income tax on profits in the professions and trades :
£ s. d.
Lelnster 4 2 6 per head
Ulster 1 8 1 " "
Munster 1 7 4" "
The reader will admit that 'tis mortal pity the Ulster legend should be spoilt — by Providence and the taxing-man.
Again, v/ithin Ulster itself, where the Catholic Celt was robbed of his all, and denied all rights and privileges — and everything lavished on the Protestant Scot — the former is "coming back" at the same amazing rate at which the latter is going under.
Today fifty-six per cent, of the farms, and fift3^-seven per cent, of the farmers in Ulster are Catholic Celts — the men who had been robbed of their all. Today these people have secured more than one-half of the Parliamentary representa- tion of the province that had been stolen from them. TodorV the Ulster Catholic, whose fore- fathers had been hunted into the holes and the rocks of the most barren mountains — is stream-
IRELAND'S CASE
ing down the valleys and flowing over the fer- tile plains, winning back, buying them back, from the usurpers' descendants who are fast losing, their grasp upon them, losing their pre-eminent wealth, losing their footing — "melting like the snow off the ditch in May."
In the city of Derry — a typical case — ^where, only a hundred years ago, no Catholic dare en- gage in any trade or profession, and no Catholic dare own a house, and no Catholic dare live — in that city, to-day, the Catholic Celt, swarming in the trades and professions, forms a majority of the population, and returns his choice as Parlia- mentary representative for that once great stronghold of Ascendancy.
And, as final illustration of the progressiveness CI the Scottish blooded in Ulster, as compared with the thirftlessness of the Celt, I would in- stance from Dr. O'Riordan's book (a matter like- wise recorded by Butt in "The Irish Land and the Irish People") the case of the Protestant Colonization Societies, founded in 1830 and 1840, when the Ascendancy Party took alarm at the rapid melting away of the Protestant population and the fearfully rapid advancement of the Cath- olic— or as more picturesquely put in the Pros- pectus of the 1840 Society, "Where the estab- lished Church once stood, now stands the Popish 't ©
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THE SUMMING UP
Mass-house, pouring forth th« soul-destroyiiif doctrines of immorality of Maynooth!"
To remedy this deplorable state of thing^s and keep Ulster Protestant, the Societies proposed to take great tracts of landlords* demesne land, colonize them with Protestants, build houses for these people, and start them on the way t© wealth. In 1832, the first colony was planted — on the estate of Sir Edward Hayes in County Don- egal. Protestant families were selected in thrifty Scotland, brought over and given houses and farms — after each of them had, for the world's good, signed and sealed this chief con- dition— "Every tenant distinctly understands and agrees that no Roman Catholic, under any pre- tence whatever, shall be permitted to reside or be employed in this colony." The result of the laudable project is very forcibly put in the sim- ple report obtained fifty years later from a resi- dent in a nearby locality — ^"There is not a rem- nant of the original settlers in the place for many years. They remained for some time till they spent any means they had, and went away, paupers. . . . The houses arc now in a tumble-down condition."
That is to say, in the place where the oppressed and persecuted Celt thrived so that he went forth to buy up and absorb the possessions of his rich neighbors ©n the fertile plains, the industrioui
MS
IRELAND'S CASE
started with gifts of land and house, aided by every favor the powers could sh#w, sank into pauperdom, and disappeared in ^e course of a couple of decades !
And now that we can appreciate the rare flavor qI it, let us repeat — ^"The Catholic majority which ali the world knows to be poor and thriftless could not be permitted to run the progressive, industrious, and wealthy Protestant minority."
4. But, anyhow, Ireland is financially unable to run itself.
Here, hark back to the Childers' Commission (&i 1896), composed almost entirely of Britons, appointed by the British Government — for the purpose of finding the facts about the financial re- lations of Ireland and Britain — hark back to that Commission, and note its main findings:
a) That the running of Ireland cost (propor- tionately) nearly twice as much as the running ©f England.
(fe) That the excessive cost seemed to them td be caused by Ireland's connection with Brit- ain.
(c) That Ireland herself was not only paying a fair cost for her own running — but that,
(4) Ireland, herself, was paying an unfair ex-*
226
THE SUMMING UP
(c) That Ireland, besides, was not only pay- ing her fair contribution to the Imperial purse (paying for hdlding herself down)— but also,
(f) That Ireland was paying a very largo sum over and above her fair contribution to the Imperial purse — paying one-eleventh of the tax revenue of the three Kingdoms, while her tax ca- pacity was only one-twentieth.
(g) That in excessive Imperial contribution alone — principal and interest — England had then robbed from Ireland $1,250,000,000 (an im- mensely larger sum now).
"And while this heavy ransom was being ex- acted," says Mrs. Green, "Ireland was represent- ed as a beggar, never satisfied, at the gates of England."
So, while the reader now sees that Ireland hat been financially able to run and outrun herself— he may also divine the truth that her master is determined she shall not be long so.
5. England, in self-defense, cannot afford a free Ireland at her back-door.
England can no more afford to have a free Ire- land at her back-door than can Germany afford to have a free Belgium, or France a free Switz- erland, Austria to have a free Servia, or America a free Mexico alongside her — no more than can Joha D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil afford to
227
IRELAND'S CASE
have a free little competitor running his little one-horse store just over the way.
If it be the New Justice that the greedy brute among either the nations or the corporations hag- the divine right to gobble up the little fellow who lies near him, or if it be the new morals to en- throne Strategy on the emptied seat of Justice, then we have first g:ot to reform Heaven before we can reform earth to our liking, in the new- era.
6. If England freed Ireland tomorrow, one of the Continental powers would gobble Ireland up on the day after.
If England freed Ireland tomorrow, Ireland, instead of having one army and one fleet guard- ing her, would, through the jealousy of the Pow- ers, next day be guarded by half a dozen armies and half a dozen fleets. For her own selfish in- terests, England would then have to guard Ire- land more zealously than ever — against the greed of the other Powers — and the other Powers would have to guard it against the greed of Eng- land. Ireland would have the same greedy, jealous protection that has Servia, Holland, Switzerland and Denmark.
7. Ireland has been so long conquered that by the law of nations she has lost her claim to free- <iom, ^ ^^
There is many a rank injustice established by 228
THE SUMMING UP
t> the Law of Nations — the law of the big trusts
irameci against the little fellows. But tne iaw
01 Heaven is a little way above and beyond the
Law of Nations.
Moreover, one might ask the advocate of the Law of Nations, After how many years does in- justice become justice? After how many years' persistence in doing a wrong will that wrong automatically become a right?
And further — and this point is most important —will the reader remember that in reality Ire- land has never been conquered? ®
A nation is never conquered till its resistance has been beaten down, its spirit broken, and that, despairingly dropping its hands, it cries, I give in. During her long long struggle, Ireland has been a thousand times defeated, but never once con- quered." A thousand times beaten to earth, she has a thousand times returned to the struggle, renewed and determined. From the day England first set her foot in Ireland, down to the present day, Ireland has never ceased to fight the injus- tice— ^it has been one prolonged seven hundred years* war betweefi little, weak Ireland, and great strong England — ^tbe struggle has never abated, never slackened its intensity. And if England should still persbt in h» unjust claim, all who know the Irfeh oatttire know well that Ireland vnll ccmtintie the war for another seven hundred
829
IRELAND'S CASB
^rears — for sev^iteen ko&dred years, if necessary^ What man, or what nation, or Law of Natiojaa, decides that Ireknd, nev«r having ceased to fight, forfeited her ri|^kt of freedom? And, then, at what point in t^e struggle, at what date, did sh« forfeit this riglit? Or, If she continues the strug^ gle, when will she have forfeited it?
Today Germany has ovemin Belgium. Th« Belgians are fighting for their country's freedom. All Americans are, properly, applauding the Bel- gians in their brave struggle. There is no Amer- ican so unprincipled as to question Belgium's right to freedom — none so absurd as to advocate that Belgium should be satisfied with Home Rule under Germany — even if under the provi- sion of this Home Rule Belgiam were granted aM power over Belgian taxation. There is no Amer- ican so unjust as to advocate Colonial Homo Rule under Germany as a settlement of the Bel- gian question.
Now, if we consider the Belgian fight contin- ued indefinitely — after how many years, or how many centuries, of struggle, will Americans begin to preach that Belgians have forfeited their claim to rule Belgium? Woald not a trtie and just man, the more applaud Belgium the longer she sustained the ttneqnal struggle? And would he not say that her claim to freedom increased with every additional year she fottght the unequal
230
THE SUMMING UP
c fight — that the claim multiplied a hundred-fold for every terrible century during which she bravely prolonged it?
When, then, any other nation on earth, strug- gling for its freedom, would, with a prolongation of the struggle, win more applause, and more hrmly establish its claim to freedom, in the world's eyes, why should Ireland alone forfeit iicr claim by having prolonged her gallant and marvellous struggle through agonizing centur- ies?
A-nd thus are disposed of the seven insuperable obstacles to Ireland's freedom. Than Ireland, no other nation on earth has more unquestionably established its claim to freedom.
And Ireland shall win. Though, if she were never to win, the very fight fot freedom carries with it all the spiritual benefits of freedom. They who struggle for fredom are already free.
While other races, with less moral stamina, would long since have resigned themselves to the seemingly inevitable, and sunk into the degradation of slavery — becoming faithful slaves to kind masters — the Irish people, scorning the line of least resistance, chose suffering and strug- gle— and thereby found salvation — preserved and fostered all that was noble in their natures, and
231
IRELAND'S CASE
from the seed of suffcrlrig even now reap a heav- enly harvest.
Ireland, a nation, shall, with God's help, live and flourish.
With her wonderful spirit vision Ethna Car- bery foresaw the glorious dawning — as set forth in one of the most beautiful of her poems :
MO CHRAOIBHIN CNO
A Sword of Light hath pierced the dark, otir eyes
have seen the Star ; Oh Eire, leave the ways of sleep now' days of
promise are ; The rusty spears upon your walls are stirring to
and fro, Li dreams they front uplifted shields — Then
wake,
Mo Chraoibhin Cno !
The little waves creep whispering where sedges fold you in,
xA.nd round you are the barrows of your buried kith and kin ;
*PronoiiRced Mo chreeveen no. "My cluster of nuts" — my brown-haired girl, i. e., Ireland. When it was treason to sing of Ireland openly, the olden poets sang of, and to, their beloved, under many figurative names.
232
THE SUMMING UP
jOii) famine-wasted, fever-burnt, they faded like
the saow, Or aet their hearts to meet the steel^ — ^for you» Mo Chraoibhin Cno!
Their names are blest, their caoine sung, our
bitter tears are dried; y/t bury Sorrow in their graves. Patience we
cast aside; Within the gloom we hear a voice that once was
ours to know — Tis Freedom — Freedom calling loud, Arise 1 Mo Chraoibhin Cno!
Afar beyond that empty sea, on many a battle- place.
Your sons have stretched brave hands to Death before the foeman's face —
Down the sad silence of your rest their war- notes faintly blow.
And bear an echo of your name—of yours, Mo Chraoibhin Cno I
Then wake, a gradh! We yet shall win a gold
crown ioT your head. Strong wine to make a royal feast — ^the white
wine and the red — And in your oaken mcther the yellow mead shall '^iow
«33
IRELAND'S CASE
have a free little competitor running his little- one-horse store just over the way.
If it be the New Justice that the greedy brute among either the nations or the corporations has- the divine right to gobble up the little fellow who lies near him, or if it be the new morals to en« throne Strategy on the emptied seat of Justice, then we have first got to reform Heaven before we can reform earth to our liking, in the new era.
6. If England freed Ireland tomorrow, one of the Continental powers would gobble Ireland up on the day after.
If England freed Ireland tomorrow, Ireland, instead of having one army and one fleet guard- ing her, would, through the jealousy of the Pow- ers, next day be guarded by half a dozen armies and half a dozen fleets. For her own selfish in- terests, England would then have to guard Ire- land more zealously than ever — against the greed of the other Powers — and the other Powers would have to gnard it against the greed of Eng- land. Ireland would have the same greedy, jealous protection that has Servia, Holland,, Switzerland and Denmark.
7. Ireland has been so long conquered that by the law of nations she has lost her claim to free- dom. @ ^
There is many a rank injustice established by 228
THE SUMMING UP
the Law of Nations — the law of the big trusts trained against the little fellows. But tne law oi Heaven is a little way above and beyond the Law of Nations.
Moreover, one might ask the advocate of the Law of Nations, After how many years does in- justice become justice? After how many years' persistence in doing a wrong will that wrong autoiuatically become a right?
And further — and this point is most important — will the reader remember that in reanty Ire- land has never been conquered? 9
A nation is never conqu-e-red till its resistance has been beaten down, its spirit broken, and that, despairingly dropping its hands, it cries, I give in. During her long long struggle, Ireland has been & thousand times defeated, but never once con- quered.* A thousand times beaten to earth, she has a thousand times returned to the struggle, renewed and determined. From the day England first set her foot in Ireland, down to the present day, Ireland has never ceased to fight the injus- tice— it has been one ^t>long'ed seven hundred years' war betweeft little, weak Ireland, and great strong England — the struggle has never abated, never slackened its intensity. And if England should stni persist in her unjust claim, all who know the Irish nature know well that Ireland will continue the war to* ai^th^ seven hundred
sag
IRELAND'S CASE
years — for scv«nU«a kindred years, if necessary^ What man, or what n^on, or Law of Natioai, decides that Ireland, nev^ having ceased to fight, forfeited her ri^ht of freedoai? And, then, at what point in the struggle, at what date, did sh« forfeit this right? Or, if she continues the strug>^ gle, when will she have forfeited it?
Today Germany has ©verrun Belgium. Th« Belgians are fighting for their country's freedom. All Americans are, properly, applauding the Bel- gians in their brave struggle. There is no Amer- ican so unprincipled as to question Belgium's right to freedom — none so absurd as to advocate that Belgium should be satisfied with Home Rule under Germany — even If under the provi- sion of this Home Rule Belgium were granted aM power over Belgian taxation. There is no Amef« ican so unjust as to advocate Colonial Home Rule under Germany as a settlement of the Bel- gian question.
Now, if we consider the Belgian fight contin- ued indefinitely— after how many years, or how many centuries, of struggle, will Americans begin to preach that Belgians have forfeited their claim to rule Belgium? Would not a true and just man, the more applaud Belgium the longer she sustained the unequal struggle? And would he not say that her claim to freedom increased with every additional year she foug^ht the unequal
230
THE SUMMING UP
fight — that the claim multiplied a hundred-fold for every terrible century during which she bravely prolonged it?
When, then, any other nation on earth, strug- gling for its freedom, would, with a prolongation of the struggle, wan more applause, and more hrmly establish its claim to freedom, in the world's eyes, why should Ireland alone forfeit her claim by having prolonged her gallant and marvellous struggle through agonizing centur- ies?
And thus are disposed of the seven insuperable obstacles to Ireland's freedom. Than Ireland, no other nation on earth has more unquestionably established its claim to freedom.
And Ireland shall win. Though, if she were never to win, the very fitght for freedom carries with it all the spiritual benefits of freedom. They who struggle for fredom are already free.
While other races, with less moral stamina, would long since have resigned themselves to tht seemingly inevitable, and sunk into the degradation of slavery — becoming faithful slaves to kind masters — the Irish people, scorning the line of least resistance, chose suffering and strug- gle— and thereby found salvation — preserved and fostered all that was noble in their natures, and
231
IRELAND'S CASE
from the seed of suffering- even now reap a heav- enly harvest.
Ireland, a nation, shall, Avith God's help, live and flourish.
With her wonderful spirit vision Ethna Car- ber}^ foresaw the glorious dawning — as set forth in one of the most beautiful of her poems:
MO CHRAOIBHIN CNO
A Sword of Light hath pierced the dark, our eyes
have seen the Star ; Oh Eire, leave the ways of sleep now days of
promise are; The rusty spears upon your walls are stirring to
and fro, In dreams they front uplifted shields — Then
wake,
Mo Chraoibhin Cno !
The little waves creep whispering where sedges
fold you in, And round you are the barrows of your buried
kith and kin;
*Pronounced Mo chreeveen no. "My cluster of nuts" — my brown-haired girl, i. e., Ireland. When it was treason to sing of Ireland openly, the olden poets sang of, and to, their beloved, under many figurative names.
232
THE SUMMING UP
9 )0^i famine-wasted, fever-burnt, they faded lik«
the snow, Sk set their hearts to meet the steel — for you^ Mo Chraoibhin Cnol
Their names are blest, their caoine sung, our
bitter tears are dried; ]We bury Sorrow in their graves. Patience we
cast aside; Within the gloom we hear a voice that once was
ours to know — Tis Freedom — Freedom calling loud, Arise 1 Mo Chraoibhin Cnol
Afar beyond that empty sea, on many a battle- place.
Your sons have stretched brave hands to Death b^ore the foeman's face —
Down the sad silence cA your rest their war- notes faintly blow,
And bear an echo of your name — of yours, Mo Chraoibhin Cnol
Then wake, a gradhi We yet shall win a gold
crowa for your head. Strong wine to make a royal feast — ^the white
wine and the red — Aad in ymir oaken metiier the yellow mead shall eflow
233
IRELAND'S CASE
What 4ay you rise, in ail m«n's eyes a Queen, M^ Chraeibkia Cuol
The silver speech our fathers knew shall onca
again be heard. The fiie-iit story, crooning song, sweeter than lilt
of bird; Your quicken-tree shall break in flower, its ruddy
fruit shall glow, And the Gentle People dance beneath its shade— » Mo Chraoibhin Cnol
There shall be peace and plenty — the kindly open door;
Blessings on all who come and go — the prosper- ous or the poor —
The misty glens and purple hills a fairer tint shall show,
When your splendid Sun shall ride the skies again —
Mo Qiraoibhin Cnol
THE PARTING WORD In this work is sketched an outline only of one of the saddest, terrible tragedies the world ever witnessed — the crudfixioa of a noble nation.
The picture is incomplete. But the little that has here been set down ^iffices to shov/ that the inhuman barbarity and demonaic savagery with
«34
THE SUMMING UP
whkii Ii^lnd has been ravaged — from the first 'da|r «l the English inva^on to the present day — is withcmt parallel in history. The reader will ■have seen how an ancient land which led the world in culture, wms ravished by the destroyer, and that light whicli had been Europe's lode star, extinguished — how an honorable race was de- .graded — ^a brave people beaten into the earth. He will also see how, in this worthy land, a pow- er which successfully presents itself to the world as a pillar of liberty and a pioneer of civilization, has, with wanton deviltry, throughout seven cen- turies, wrought havoc and spread desolation, trampling the smiling garden into a piteous wil- derness, and hounding its noble denizens like savage beasts.
The reader will now, I hope, better understand ,and appreciate the strange Irish spirit which, without failing, has watched the millions of the power of her manhood and the flower of her womanhood driven out from her, and scattered like chafi to the winds of the world — and without quailing, has witnessed every foot of green hill- side again and again crimsoned with the blood of her best. And he will, I think, understand how it is that in Ireland a felon's cap is honored above a Eling's crown — that the dungeon cells wherein, through the generations, the noblest of our race rotted or went ni-d, are reverenced as
235
IRELAND'S CASE
Saints' cells — and how, here, thousands of men and women would cmsh aad struggle for the privilege oi kissing the steps that go up to the gallows-tree^ — how the jail has, for Ireland, be- come a holy place, and the gibbet a sacred sign.
He will realize that Ireland has agonized in the garden of the ages, and sweat a bloody sweat: over the cruel flints, bloodied by her bleeding feet, through the jeering multitude, she has passed, dragging her heavy cross, and struggled up her toilsome Calvary — and, taunted by the jeers and pricked by the spears of the tyrant's servitors, endured her terrible crucifixion.
But the faithful weep not, knowing that tht Easter of the crucified cometh — the glorious ri»« ing time, the Resurrection Mom 1
(Spread the Light — ^The r^der is requested to lend this book to an American friend who needi to know the truth about Ireland — and to contin- ue lending it till it wears itself out doing worthy work. Both God and Ireland will bless the eager lender. And the borrower won't fail to get a whiflF of the blessing).
236
SEMPER IDEM, JOHN.
There is a tribe of innocents abroad (many ot them Irish, more by the same token), v/ho delight- edly swallow the seas of slush which England's hired agents are constantly sending down the gut- ters of the American press — about the old vagabond John Bull's happy transformation into a sucking dove in his recent dealings with Ireland. For the edification of these kindly ones here is set down the most recent report of their dove's soft, sweet cooing :
SWORN STATEMENT Of Charlea Kenny, of No. 1 Ulster Terrace, North Strand, Dub- lin, taken at the Mansion House, Dublin, on the Nineteenth day of July, 1918.
I am twenty-flve yeara of age. I am a sanitary contractor. Having been »entenced to aix months' imprisonment for drill- ing, I was sent to Belfast Jail during the second week of April from Mountjoy Jail, where I had spent a fortnight. There were over one hundred others In Belfast Jail serving sentences for drilling, etc. . . .
In May the prison diet to any of the men who were not getting food from outside was very poor, and gradually be- came worse. . . .
The conditions as to the food continued, and on the 27th day of June, 1918, all the men met as usual after breakfast on that day. Some of the men occupying cells on the top landing com- plained that the windows of their cells had been replaced and fixed so as not to allow any air to come In through them. This action was discussed, and whilst at exercise we saw the warders fixing the windows in the cells and we were Informed that the windows in all the cells were to be similarly closed. We looked upon this action as a piece of petty tyranny on the part of the Ruthorities, the men decided not to allow the windows to be replaced, and in order to prevent it the men proceeded t« break the windows aa a pretest and aa a means of prs^entiav
237
the cells fro.n becominar unbearable to liv« In. A few of th* windows had been broken when the Governor came on the acene and said that if the breaking was stopped he would not have the windows put in. This was agreed to and nothing fur- ther happened until that night when the men had been locked up each in his own cell.
At 7.30 the Governor and warders came on the scene and pi-Qceeded to remove the men from their own cells to the bas- rnent cells, which are smaller than the ordinary cells and are lor prisoners under punishment. As this was a breach of the conditions the men resisted, and proceeded to barricade the doors t'f the cells. Thereupon a big force of police — I think there were two hundred — were brought in from Belfast and they proceeded to break in the doors with sledge hammers and crowbars, at the same time turning a water-hose on each man in his cell. When they entered the cells the police brutally i.s- saulted the men with batons and sticks, and having manacled ihe men with their hands behind their backs, they kicked and punched them when lying helpless on the floor. The police entered my cell and beat me to the ground, striking me on the head with their batons.
When the men were handcuffed they were dragged down th« iron stairs to the underground cells, some of them head first I saw Mr. McKenna, the Chairman of the Kerry Council, being dragged down the stairs head first while his hands were man' acled behind his back. I saw two policemen dragging Hugh McNeill, of Dublin, along the ground. They were holding his feet and dragging him along on his face, while his hands were handcuffed behind his back. In the month of May I had been suffering from pneumonia, necessitating my removal to the Mater Hospital, Belfast, and from that time up to the 27th of June I was under the care of the prison doctor. The police came to my cell, turned the hose on me, broke open the door, entered my cell, and attacked me with their batons, striking me on the head, and handcuffed me with my hands behind my back. The doctor and the Governor were outside my cell and were in a position to see the way in which I was treated, and when the other prisoners were being removed from the cells the doctor and Governor were standing outside their cell doors and eaw the manner in which they were dealt with and in the case ®f any man badly wounded the doctor attended him in his cell before be was removed to the punishment cells, amongst thes*
238
b&ing Hugh McNeill and a man named McMahon, of MuUlncftr; the former had his Angers badly torn and the latter had hla h^ad split with a blow of a baton.
Five of the men, including Brosnan. Talty, Qulnn and Quealy^ all of the County Clare, had to be removed immediately to hospital in consequence of the injuries they received. The other men were left handcuffed and wounded, lying ou the bare floor in their wet clothes and some of them^ half naked, until Fri- day morning. As they could not open their clothes to relieve themselves, ma&y of the men were in a filthy condition in the morning, and as a result of this in particular I have not been able to walk properly since, my legs being frayed and scalded.
When I was put in the basement cell I had not been before the Governor and was not under any order for punishment, and had not been charged with any oftense against prison discipline, nor, as far as I am aware, had any of my comrades who were /Similarly treated. On Friday the handcuffs were removed for a few minutes only while we were eating, but only after a refusal to eat with the handcuffs on. They were then fastened on again in front. On Friday also we were told by the Visit- ing Justices that on account of insubordination all our privileges were withdrawn. On Saturday morning we went to Mass, as It was a holy-day, but the handcuffs were not taken off. Sub- sequently some of the men smashed the handcuffs, and in con- ■equence the police were brought In again and also a detach- ment of military with fixed bayonets, whereupon Commandant MacDonagh ordered us to submit to the handcuffs, which we did.
We were brought one by one before the Visiting Justices and sentenced to terms of bread and water punishment, vary- ing from three days in some cases to twenty-eight days in others.
On Saturday we went to Confession handcuffed, and on Sunday every one of the ninety-three men went to Communion. Except the men from the hospital, all the men going to Com- monion were handcoffed, some of them were even in straight- Jackets, and most of them, besides being handcuffed, were "mulTed," the "mnlTs" consisting of trebly-locked straps from arm to arm so that it was impossible to move the elbows. Many of the men were nnable to stand up to leave the altar rails without assistance. The clothes of most of the men were in a filthy condition for the reasons X have already given.
On Sunday afternoon two priests — I think one of them was Father McGlenaghen of the College — came round to visit the cells. They found Flanagan, a hoy of eighteen, belonging to Dublin, unconscious In his cell, and McQInley, another Dublin boy, also unconscious. . .
On Monday night I recollect hearing some of the men sing- ing and after that I knew no more until I awoke in the hos- pital on Wednesday evenly. 3. I had been three days on bread and water before I collapsed, the bread allowance being twelve ounces per day — four ounces each meal. . . .
I was released on Saturday, July 13, on account of the state of my health, having completed four months of my sentence. The prison doctor, Dr. O'Flaherty, told me that owing to the condition of my heart I was not to get into a state of excite- ment or attempt any sudden exertion. I affirm that this state- ment is absolutely and entirely true.
(Signed) CHARLES KENNY. July 19. 1918.
Witnesses:
(Signed) LAURENCE O'NEILL,
Lord Mayor of Dublin.
(Signed) PATRICK WM. CORRIGAN,
Alderman of Dublin Corporation. (Signed) (Rev.) PATRICK FLANAGAN. C. C. Church of the Holy Family,
Aughrlm Street. (Signed) JOSEPHINE MART PLXJNKETT.
26 Upper Fitzwilliam St.. Dublin.
So the voice may be the voice of the dove, but the paw is ever the blood-stained paw of the old. unchanged and unchangeable hypocrite, John.
(Please turn over.}
240
SPREAD THE LIGHT.
If IRELAND'S CASE appeals to you will you join the en- thusiastic Irish throng who in every corner of America (and in far-off Argentina and Australia, too) are with it, spreading the light and converting many to Ireland's cause?
Great numbers of laymen, pastors and societies have got it in parcels of 100 (at only 25 cents each when taken in such quantity), and put it in the hands of the hosts who sorely need
MANY PASTORS HAVE PUT IT IN THEIR SCHOOLS AS A HANDBOOK OF IRISH HISTORY.
THE PRESIDENT of the UNIVERSITY of NOTRE DAJIB has put it in the hands of his students. TPIE BISHOP of SYRACUSE, putting it into his schools, designated it "by far the best and finest compendium of Irish history I have ever seen."
T^HE CARMELITE FATHERS of New York (who put it in the schools) distributed 400 copies of it.
The CASEMENT F. O. I. F. of Pittsburgh took 1,100 copies.
Rev. tT. J. Kerwin, O. M. I., Buffalo, distributed no less than 1,300 copies of it.
A PI-IILADELPHIA PASTOR, after reading one copy, sent immediate order for a copy to be mailed to each of the 279 pastors in the Archdiocese and 100 copies to himself.
RT. REV. BISHOP GRIMES of SYRACUSE writes: "I am enamoured of IRELAND'S CASE, and determined to have every exiled Irishman under my jurisdiction read it. The argument is superb and should echo throughout civilization."
A Western Ecclesiastic says: "I call this book the Bible of Irish nationality. It has dene more here in half a year to strengthen and establish the cause of true Irish nationality than ail other books combined of the previous fifty years."
One copy, paper covered, costs Gj cents (free by post). In green cloth, gilt lettered, $1.15,
Three copies are given for price of two. Three in paper for $1.30; three in cloth binding, |2.30.
Ten copies for price of six and one-half; twenty-five for price cf fifteen; fifty copies for price of twenty-five.
100 IN PAPER COVER ONLY $25. 100 CLOTH BOUND §55
Order from THE IRISH PUBLTSPIING CO.,
P. O. Box 1300, New York City.
241
ENGAGEMENTS FOR IRISH LECTURE-RECITALS BY
SEUMAS MacMANUS
are accepted, for any part of America, by
The Management of SEUMAS MacMANUS
P. O. Box 1300, New York City
SUBJECTS:
Readings from His Own Boolis.
An Irish Story-Tellingr.
The Glories^ the Sorrows^ and the Hopes of Ireland.
A Rambls 'Round Ireland, Illustrated with 100 Beautiful Colored Views.
The Irish Question.
Fairy and Folii-lore.
Irish Wit and Humor.
The Irish Question.
Fairy and Folk-lore.
Irish Wit and Humor.
SEUMAS MacMANUS, the Irish poet, is a brilliant repre- sentative of a poetic race. Poetry and mysticism, wit, humor and pathos, are everywhere present in his work. And audiences are held spellbound at the will of this prince of Btory-tellers.— Boston. Transcript.
As child and youth, he sat at the feet of the Shanachiea by the turf fires, and lived the life of his own people, until, saturated with the Celtic spirit, this brilliant spokesman of a wonderful people now comes to enthrall us with his de- lightful intellectual diversions.— 5^071- Francisco Bulletin.
Edmund Clarence Stedman said : He is the poet story-teller from ancient time ; the rbapsodist ; the Irish Homer.
Judg^e Ben Lindsey: Never in my experience have I heard a moi'e wonderful story-telling.
Dr. Washington Gladden: Don's miss the delight of hear- ing Seumas MacManuS !
William Allen White, of Kansas : He has a marvellous gift of story-telling and power of holding his audience.
National Geographical Society; President Henry Gannett: Rarely has a lecturer captured our audience as completely as did Seumas MacManiis.
Library Commission of Portland, Ore. : His twelve lectures and story-tellings here, were ^he very happiest thing that happened to us in many a long day. On the last night, the crowd filled all seats, lined the walls, (sat on the platform, packed the entrance— and no one moved during the two hours. There's magic for you !
University of Wisconsin: He charmed the University Club diners with a talk utterly unUke any other literary treat that they hav§ ever had.-T7ie Democrat.
University of Missouri: It was a great night for Ireland— and the University of Missouri.— TTie Herald. University of Michigan: The surprising novelty and unique- ness of his discourse, delighted his three thousand eager auditors.— y/ie Times-Keivs.
Columbia University: In his series of six lecture-recitals the spell of his poetry, the euchuutment of his prose, his quaint and beautiful tales, held his large audiences charmed.— The^ Columhia Spectator.
Dean Brifirgs of Harvard: Everyone enjoyed Seumas Mac- Manus' readings exceedingly.
University of Texas: No lectures at the University in recent years have given more general satisfaction than those of Seumas MacManus.— C. S. I'otts, M.A.
Univresity of Kansas: It was a very unusual and effective lecture.— Chancellor Strong.
University of Indiana: If I were jnyself a poet, I should try to find words which would tell fittingly how Seumas Mac- Manus' writing and his speaking express the finest spirit of Ireland.— Dr. Bryan.
The Comparative literature Society of N. Y. : He moved our difficult audience to frequent sudden laughter, or nobly touched them to silence by the simple dignity and human feeling of his theme.— Dr. Merle St. Croix Wright-
Buffalo, N. Y. — Although so ill that he had to be carried on the stage of Shea's (Theatre in a chair, Seumas Mac- Manus last night delivered the most impressive address ou. Ireland ever heard by the people of Buffalo.— 27ie Buffalo Evening News.
Normal School Edinboro^ Pa.— He held the children spell- bound, and the adults were as the childi-en. He is an edu- cational ^ inspiration ! !— Frank E. Baker, President.
Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences: On the occasion of each of his preceding lectures hundreds had to be turned away for lack of accommodation— but last night the numbers turned away at least equalled what found seating accom- modation.—T/ie Brooklyn Eagle.
Notre Dame University^ Ind.— The students of this year can never forget the great advantage they enjoyed in hearing Seumas MacManus's course of twelve lectures. The time he spent with us was a period memorable and full tof inspira- tion.~Rev. John Cavanaugh, C.S.C, President.
University of Nevada: Seumas MacManus' lecture was a gem— both in matter and the manner of delivery. For two hours he held an audience of students literally entranced by his stories.— President J. E. Stubbs.
Smith College: He captured us from the first words, and we listened breathlessly as children do.— Smith College Monthly.
Teachers* Association of Essex Co., Mass. : Seumas Mac- Manus' stories delighted and refreshed two thousand tired teachers at our annual meeting in Tremont Temple, Boston.— Charles E. Towne, President.
Alamaba Polytechnic Institute: The beautiful viev?s, the Wit, the eloquence, and the literary charm of the lecturer, made for us an evening of notable delight and profit. It was* one of the pleasantest evenings 1 ever enjoyed.— Dr. Charles O. Thach. President. *
Baylor College, Texas.— No one has ever been before this student body who gave such general satisfaction as Seumafl MacManus.— Dr. J. C. Hardy.
IRELAND'S CASE
What day you rise, m all mrnx's eyes a Queea, Mo Chraoi^hm Cuol
The silver speech our fathers knew shall onct
again be heard. The lire-lit story, crooning song, sweeter than lilt
oi bird; Your quicken-tree shaU break in flower, its ruddy
fruit shall glow, And the Gentle People dance beneath its shade— » Mo Chraoibhin Cnol
There shall be peace and plenty — the kindly opcts door;
Blessings on all who come and go — the prosper- ous or the poor —
The misty glens and purple hills a fairer tint shall show,
When your splendid Sun shall ride the skies again —
Mo Chraoibhin Cnol
THE PARTING WORD In this work is sketched an outline only of one of the saddest, terrible tragedies the world ever witnessed — the crucifixioa of a noble nation.
The picture is ineomplete. But the little that has here been set down suffices to show that the inhuman barbarity and demonaic savagery with
234
THE SUMMING UP
whuii h«hmd has b«ea ravaged — from the first <la|r ^ the English invasioa to the present day — IS wkhetit parallel in history. The reader will fiave seen how an ancient land which led the world in culture, ^^^8 ravished by the destroyer, ^!id that light whicli had been Europe's lode star, -extinguished — how an honorable race was de- graded— a brave people beaten into the earth. He will also see how, in this worthy land, a pow- er which successfully presents itself to the world as a pillar of libert)'- and a pioneer of civilization, has, with wanton deviltry, throughout seven cen- turies, wrought havoc and spread desolation, trampling the smiling garden into a piteous wil- derness, and hounding its noble denizens like savage beasts.
The reader v/ill now, I hope, better understand and appreciate the strange Irish spirit which, without failing, has watched the millions of the power of her manhood and the flower of her womanhood driven out from her, and scattered like chaflf to the winds of the w^orld — and without -quailing, has witnessed every foot of green hill- side again and again crimsoned with the blood •of her best. And he will, I think, understand how it is that in Ireland a felon's cap is honored above a Eling's crown — that the dungeon cells -wherein, through the generations, the noblest of our race rotted or went nx..d, are reverenced as
235
IRELAND'S CASE
Saints* cells — and hew, here, thousands of men and women would crssh and struggle for the privilege of kissing the steps that go up to the gallows-tree — how the jail has, for Ireland, be- come a holy place, and the gibbet a sacred sign.
He will realize that Ireland has agonized ia the garden of the ages, and sweat a bloody sweat: over the cruel flints, bloodied by her bleeding feet, through the jeering multitude, she has passed, dragging her heavy cross, and struggled up her toilsome Calvary — and, taunted by the jeers and pricked by the spears of the tyrant's servitors, endured her terrible crucifixion.
But the faithful weep not, knowing that th« Easter of the crucified cometh — the glorious ri»* ing time, the Resurrection Mom I
(Spread the Light — The reader is requested to lend this book to an American friend who needi to know the truth about Ireland — and to contin- ue lending it till it wears itself out doing worthy work. Both God and Ireland wHl bless the eag^ lender. And the borrower won't fail to get a whiff of the blessing).
236
SEMPER IDEM, JOHN.
There is a tribe of innocents abroad (many of them Irish, more by the same token), who delight- edly swallow the seas of slush which England's hired agents are constantly sending down the gut- ters of the American press — about the old vagabond John Bull's happy transformation into a sucking dove in his recent dealings with Ireland. For the edification of these kindly ones here is set down the most recent report of their dove's soft, sweet cooing :
SWORN STATEMENT Of Charles Kenny, of No. 1 Ulster Terrace, North Strand, Dub- lin, taken at the Manaion House, Dublin, on the Nineteenth day of July, 1918.
I am twenty-five years of age. I am a sanitary contractor. Having been sentenced to six months' imprisonment for drill- ing, I was sent to Belfast Jail during the second week of April from Mountjoy Jail, where I had spent a fortnight. There were over one hundred others in Belfast Jail serving sentences for drilling, etc.
In May the prison diet to any of the men who were not getting food from outside was very poor, and gradually be- came worse. . . .
The conditions as to the food continued, and on the 27th day of June, 1918, all the men met as usual after breakfast on that day. Some of the men occupying cells on the top landing com- plained that the windows of their cells had been replaced and fixed so as not to allow any air to come in through them. This action was discussed, and whilst at exercise we saw the warders fxtng- the windows In the cells and we were informed that the windows in all the cells were to be similarly closed. We looked upon this action as a piece of petty tyranny on the part of th* authorities, the men decided not to allow the window* to be rt'T laced, and In order to prevent It the men proceeded t« brtak the windows as a protest and as a means of prerentian
237
the cells froai becoming unbearable to live In. A few of thf windows had been broken when the Governor came on Lh^ f^cene and said that if the breaking waa stopped he would nut have the windows put in. This was agreed to and nothing fur- ther happened until that night when the men had been locked np each in his own cell.
At 7.30 the Governor and warders came on the scene and ■ ■roceeded to reniove the men from their own cells to the bas- ment cells, which are smaller than the ordinary cells and are for prisoners under punishment. As this waB a breach of the conditions the men resisted, and proceeded to barricade the doors of the cells. Thereupon a big force of police — I think there were two hundred — were brought in from Belfast and they [iroceeded to break in the doors with sledge hammers and crowbars, at the same time turning a water-hose on each man In his cell. When they entered the cells the police brutally xs- c-^aulted the men with batons and sticks, and having manacled the men with their hands behind their backs, they kicked and punched them when lying helpless on the floor. The police entered my cell and beat me to the ground, striking me on the head with their batons.
When the men were handcuffed they were dragged down th» iron stairs to the underground cells, some of them head first I saw Mr. McKenna, the Chairman of the Kerry Council, being dragged down the stairs head first while his hands were man- acled behind his back. I saw two policemen dragging Hugh McNeill, of Dublin, along the ground. They were holding his feet and dragging him along on his face, while his hands were handcuffed behind his back. In the month of May I had been suffering from pneumonia, necessitating my removal to the Mater Hospital, Belfast, and from that time up to the 27th of June I was under the care of the prison doctor. The police came to my cell, turned the hose on me, broke open the door, entered my cell, and attacked me with their batons, striking me on the head, and handcuffed me with my hands behind my back. The doctor and the Governor were outside my cell and were In a position to see the way in which I was treated, and when the other prisoners were being removed from the cells the doctor and Governor were standing outside their cell doors and saw the manner In which they were dealt with and In the case of anj' man badly wounded the doctor attended him In his cell before be was removed to the punishment cells, amongst theae
238
being Hugh McNeill and a man named McMahon, of MuUlnffar; the former had his fingers badly torn and the latter had hla h*'ad split with a blow of a baton.
Five of the men, Including Brosnan, Talty, Quinn and Quealy, all of the County Clare, had to be removed Immediately to hospital in consequence of the injuries they received. The other men were left handcuffed and wounded, lying on the bare floor in their wet clothes and some of them half naked, until Fri- day morning. As they could not open their clothes to relieve themselves, many of the men were in a filthy condition in the morning, and as a result of this in particular I have not been able to walk properly since, my legs being frayed and scalded.
When I was put in the basement cell I had not been before the Governor and was not under any order for punishment, and had not been charged with any offense against prison discipline, nor, as far as I am aware, had any of my comrades who were aimilarly treated. On Friday the handcuffs were removed for a few minutes only while we were eating, but only after a refusal to eat with the handcuffs on. They were then fastened on again in front. On Friday also we were told by the Visit- ing Justices that on account of insubordination all our privileges were withdrawn. On Saturday morning we went to Mass, as It was a holy-day, but the handcuffs were not taken oft. Sub- sequently some of the men smashed the handcuffs, and in con- sequence the police were brought in again and also a detach- ment of military with fixed bayonets, whereupon Commandant MacDonagh ordered us to submit to the handcuffs, which we did.
We were brought one by one before the Visiting Justices and sentenced to terms of bread and water punishment, vary- ing from three days in some cases to twenty-eight days In others.
On Saturday we went to Confession handcuffed, and on Sunday every one of the ninety-three men went to Communion. Except the men from the hospital, all the men going to Com- munion were handcuffed, some of them were even in straight- Jackets, and most of them, besides being handcuffed, were "muffed," the "muffs" consisting of trebly-locked straps from arm to arm so that It was impossible to move the elbows. Many of the men were unable to stand up to leave the altar rails without assistance. The clothes of most of the men were in a filthy condition for the reasons I have already gives.
On Sunday afternoon two priest* — I think one of them w»a Father McGlenaghen of the College — came round to vl«it the cells. They found Flanagan, a boy of eighteen, belonging to Dublin, unconscious in his cell, and McGlnley, another Dublin boy, also unconscious. . .
On Monday night I recollect hearing some of the men sing- ing and after that I knew no more until I awoke in the hos- pital on "Wednesday evenly, s. I had been three days on bread and water before I collapsed, the bread allowance being twelve ounces per day — four ounces each meal. . . .
I was released on Saturday, July 13, on account of the stat« of my health, having completed four months of my sentence. The prison doctor. Dr. O'Flaherty, told me that owing to the condition of my heart I was not to get into a state of excite- ment or attempt any sudden exertion. I affirm that this state- ment is absolutely and entirely true.
(Signed) CHARLES KENNY. July 19, 1918.
Witnesses:
(Signed) LAURENCE O'NEILL,
Lord Mayor of Dublin.
(Signed) PATRICK WM. CORRIGAN,
Alderman of Dublin Corporation. (Signed) (Rev.) PATRICK FLANAGAN, C. C. Church of the Holy Family,
Aughrim Street. (Signed) JOSEPHINE MART PLUNKETT,
26 Upper Fltzwilliam St., Dublin.
So the voice may be the voice of the ciove, but the paw is ever the blood-stained paw of the old, unchanged and unchangeable hypocrite, John.
(Please turn ove?J 240
SPREAD THE LIGHT.
If IRELAND'S CASS appeals to you will you join the en- thusiastic Irish throng who in every corner of America (and in far-off Argentina and Australia, too) are with it, spreading the lig-ht and converting many to Ireland's cause?
Great numbers of layir^en, pastors and societies have got it in pa.rcels of 100 (at only 25 cents each when taken in such quantity), and put it in the hands of the hosts who sorely need it.
:jany pastors have put it in their schools as
A IIAN'DBOOK of IRISH HISTORY.
THE PRESIDENT of the UNIVERSITY of NOTRE DAME ha.s put it in the hands of hi.s students. THE BISHOP of SYRACUSE, putting it into his schools, designated it "by far the best and finest compendium of Irish history I have ever seen."
'I'HE CARMELITE FATHERS of New York (who put it in the schools) distributed 400 copies of it.
The CASEMENT F. O. I. F. of Pittsburgh took 1,100 copies.
Rev. >T. J, Kerwin, O. M. I., Buffalo, distributed no less than 1,300 copies of it.
A PHILADELPHIA PASTOR, after reading one copy, sent immediate order for a copy to be mailed to each of the 279 pastors in the Archdiocese and 100 copies to himself.
RT. REV. BISHOP GRI^.IES of SYRACUSE writes: "I am enamoured of IRELAND'S CASE, and determined to have every exiled Irishman under my jurisdiction read it. The argument is .superb and should echo throughout civilization."
A Western Ecclesiastic says: "I call this book the Bible of Irish nationality. It has done more here in half a year to strengthen and establish the cause of true Irish nationality than all other books combined of the previou.g fifty years."
One copy, paper covered, costs C5 cents (free by post). In green cloth, gilt lettered, $1.15.
Three copies are given for price of two. Three in paper for $1.30; three in cloth binding, $2.30.
Ten copies for price of six and one-half; twenty-five for price cf fifteen; fifty copies for price of twenty-five.
ICO IN PAPER COVER ONLY $25. 100 CLOTH BOUND $55
Order from THE IRISH PUBLTSITTNG CO.,
P. O. Box 1300, New York City.
9 '1
ENGAGEMENTS FOR IRISH LECTURE-RECITALS BY
SEUMAS MacMANUS
are accepted, for any part of America, by
The Management of SEUMAS MacMANUS
P. O. Box 1300, New York City
SUBJECTS:
Readings from His Own Books.
An Irish Story-Telling.
The Glories^ the Sorrows^ and the Hopes of Ireland.
A Ramble 'Round Ireland, Illustrated with 100 Beautiful Colored Views.
The Irish Question.
Fairy aad Folk-lore.
Irish Wit and Humor.
The Irish Question.
Fairy and Folk-lore.
Irish Wit and Humor.
SEUMAS MacMANUS, the Irish poet, is a brilliant repre- sentative of a poetic race. Poetry and mysticism, wit, humor and pathos, are everywhere present in his woi-k. And audiences are held spellbound at the will of this prince of story-tellers.— i?osfoji Transcript.
As child and youth, he sat at the feet of the Shanachies by the turf fires, and lived the life of his own people, until, saturated with the Celtic spirit, this brilliant spokesman of a wonderful people now comes to enthrall us with his de- lightful intellectual diversions.— Sofn Francisco Bulletin.
Edmund Clarence Stedman said: He is the poet story-teller from ancient time ; the rhapsodist ; the Irish Homer.
Judgre Ben Lindsey: Never in my experience have I heard a more wonderful story-telling.
Dr. Washington Gladden: Don's miss the delight of hear- ing Seumas MacManus !
William Allen White, of Kansas : He has a marvellous gift of story-telling and power of holding his audience.
National Geographical Society; President Henry Gannett: Rarely has' a lecturer captured our audience as completely as did Seumas MacManus.
Library Commission of Portland, Ore.: His twelve lectures and story-tellings here, were ^he very happiest thing that happened to us in many a long day. On the last night, the crowd filled all seats, lined the walls, sat on the platform, packed the entrance— and no one moved during the two hours. There's magic for you !
University of Wisconsin: He charmed the University Club diners with a talk utterly unUke any other literary treat that they hav§ ever had.— T/ie Democrat.
University of Missouri: It was a great night for Ireland— and the University of Missouri.- TTie Herald. University of Michigan: The surprising novelty and unique- ness of his discourse, delighted his three thousand eager auditors.— T/ie Times-Neics.
Columbia University: In his series of six lecture-recitals the spell of bis poetry, the cuchuntinent of his piose, his quaint and beautiful tales, held his large audiences charmed.— The^ Columbia Spectator.
Dean Briggs of Harvard: Everyone enjoyed Seumas Mac- Manus' readings exceedingly.
University of Texas: No lectures at the University in recent years have given more general satisfaction than those of Seumas MacManus,— C. S. Potts, M.A.
Univresity of Kansas: It was a very unusual and effective lecture.— Chancellor Strong.
University of Indiana: If I were myself a poet, I should try to find worda which would tell fittingly how Seumas Mac- Manus' writing and his speaking express the finest spirit of Ireland.— Dr. Bryan.
The Comparative literature Society of N. Y. : He moved our difficult audience to' frequent sudden laughter, or nobly touched them to silence by the simple diguity and human feeling of his theme.— Dr. Merle ^t. Croix Wright.
Buffalo, N. Y.— Although so ill that he had to be carried on the stage of Shea's (Theatre in a chair, Seumas Mac- Manus last night delivered the most impressive address ou Ireland ever heard by the people of Buffalo.— 27te Buffalo Evening News.
Normal School Edinboro, Pa.— He held the children spell- bound, and the adults were as the children. He is an edu- cational ^ inspiration ! !— Frank E, Baker, President.
Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences: On the occasion of each of his preceding lectures hundreds had to be turned away for lack of accommodation— but last night the numbers turned away at least equalled what found seating accom- modatlon.— r/ie Brooklyn Eagle.
Notre Dame University, Ind.— The students of this year can never forget the great advantage they enjoyed in hearing Seumas MacManus's course of twelve lectures. The time he spent with us was a period memorable and full bf inspira- tion.—Rev. John Cavanaugh, C.S.C., President.
University of Nevada: Seumas MacManus' lecture was a gem— both in jnatter and the manner of delivery. For two hours' he held an audience of students literally entranced by his stories.— President J. E. Stubbs.
Smith College: He captured us from the fii'st words, and we listened breathlessly as children do.— Smith College Monthly.
Teachers' Association of Essex Co., Mass.: Seumas Mac- Manus' stories delighted and refreshed two thousand tired teachers at our annual meeting in Tremont Temple, Boston.— Charles E. Towne, President.
Alamaba Polytechnic Institute: The beautiful views, the wit, the eloquence, and the literary charm of the lecturer, made for us an evening of notable delight and profit. It was pone of the pleasantest evenings I ever enjoyed.— Dr. Charles C. Thach, President.
Baylor College, Texas.— No one has ever been before this student body who gave such general satisfaction as Seumas MacManus.— Dr. J. C. Hardy.
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