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Yourself and the Neighbors

SEUMAS' MacMANUS' LATEST BOOK— NINTH EDITION.

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IRELAND'S CASE

SEUMAS MacMANUS

(Fiftieth iTiousand)

1919

New York
The Irish Publishing Co.
P. O. Box 1300

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

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

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

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,

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

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,

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

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-

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 —

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.), *

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.

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.)

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;

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|

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-

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.

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.")

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

ntELAKiys CAsa

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

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

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

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.

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-

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,

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

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

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-

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

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-

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-

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,

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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-

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

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.

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,

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-

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

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!

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

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;

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-

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,

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

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\

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

RESOURCES OF ENGLISH CIVILIZATION

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

RESOURCES OF ENGLISH CIVILIZATION

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

.127

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-

130

RESOURCES OF ENGLISH CIVILIZATION

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

131

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-

134

RESOURCES OF ENGLISH CIVILIZATION

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

140

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

145

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

149

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

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,

153

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.

154

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.

155

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

157

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

158

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

159

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

161

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

170

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

171

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

172

THE LAST CENTURY

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

173

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

^7A

THE LAST CENTURY 1

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

175

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

176

THE LAST CENTURY

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

178

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

179

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

181

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.

182

' 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-

183

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,

184

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

189

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-

190

^ 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?

191

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

193

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.

199

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.

^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

313

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-

314

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

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.'*

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 ®

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 ©

234

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

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:

(fe) That the excessive cost seemed to them
td be caused by Ireland's connection with Brit-
ain.

(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.

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.

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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