DOCTOR JERRIE CROWLEY, DOCTOR ANTHONY O’RYAN, CHARLES KICKHAM, THE
PHŒNIX SOCIETY.
After my marriage, my late employer moved into a new house he had
built. I rented the house in which I had lived with him the previous
four or five years, and I carried on the business of hardware and
agricultural seeds merchant. I prospered, pretty fairly, every way. I
had my advertising bills and posters printed in the Irish language. One
side of the house fronted a square, and on that side, I had painted the
words:
“Here, honest value you will find
In farm seeds, of every kind;
If once you try, so pleased you’ll be,
You’ll come to buy again from me.”
The business language of the shop was mostly Irish, as that was mostly
the business language of the farmers around who dealt with me. The
first Irish-language book I came to read was a book of Irish poems with
translations by Edward Walsh. I was able to read these Irish poems
without any previous book-study of the language. The man who gave
me the book was John O’Driscoll--a grandson of the Irish poet, John
Collins, of Myross. When O’Driscoll was a national school-teacher, he
had been up in Dublin in the training school, and brought the book home
with him.
When Fenian times came on, O’Driscoll was put in prison; he lost
his school-mastership; came to America, and got married in Rutland,
Vermont. The last day I spent with him was the day of John Boyle
O’Reilly’s funeral in Boston. He died shortly after that. God be good
to him! he was a proud, manly Irishman--too manly to live long and
prosper in this world.
In chapter xiii., I took myself, a Phœnix prisoner into Cork Jail in
1858.
The readers of the _United Irishman_ in which I am printing these
“Recollections” do not seem satisfied that I should make such a skip as
that in my life, by leaping from 1853 to 1858 without saying anything
particular in those four or five years.
There is nothing very particular to say about Ireland’s cause those
years--for that cause was apparently dead.
It was dead during the Crimean war, ’54-’55, and during the war of
the Indian Mutiny, ’56-’57. But as many writers have written books
and pamphlets about the origin of the movement that is now called
Fenianism--writers, too, who evidently knew little or nothing about its
origin, it may be no harm for me to put on record what I am able to say
on the subject. Any historical pith that may be in it may be picked
from the rest of this chapter.
The Crimean war was going on ’54. There was not a red-coat soldier
left in Ireland; there was not a stir in Ireland against English
rule. Charles Gavan Duffy left Ireland, telling the people the Irish
national cause was like the cause of a corpse on a dissecting table.
The Crimean war ended, and then came on the English war of the Indian
mutiny, ’56-’57. There was not a red-coat soldier left in Ireland. Some
of the young men in Skibbereen came together and started the Phœnix
Society. The phœnix is some fabled bird that dies, and from its ashes
rises into life again. We had some forty or fifty members in that
Phœnix Society. Our first meetings were in the rooms at the back of the
drug store of Doctor Jerrie Crowley.
We read in the newspapers one day in the year 1857 that some Tipperary
rebel had drawn on a wooden gate in the town of Carrick-on-Suir the
picture of an English soldier with an Irish pike through his body,
and that the Town Commissioners of Carrick had offered a reward
for the capture of the artist, and had called for subscriptions to
increase the reward. We got a “rasper” farthing, and we sent it with
a tearful letter to the Carrick Commissioners. Some days after, we
had a letter from Doctor O’Ryan (Doctor Anthony O’Ryan I think)
telling us that there was a rumor that we had sent such a subscription
to the Commissioners; but that the flunkeys had concealed it from
those who were not flunkeys, and asking us to send him a copy of our
communication. We sent it to him.
Doctor Jeremiah Crowley! I have spoken of him; I will speak more of
him. He was one of these Irish doctors of the “famine” times--one of
these Irish doctors who never grow rich at any time in Ireland; for
always in Ireland there is distress--and ever will be while England
is in it. And where there was distress and sickness and death, Doctor
Jerrie was there, without fee or money reward. He died shortly after
giving us his rooms for the Phœnix Society meetings. I was at his wake.
About midnight, twelve young girls dressed in white came into the room
and cried around his coffin. The women cried, and the men in the room
and in the house cried--and cried loudly. A more touching picture of
Irish life and Irish death is not in my recollection. I wrote some
lines about it at the time: they were published in the Cork _Herald_; I
will try and remember them here:
DOCTOR JERRIE CROWLEY.
With sorrowing heart my feelings tend
To paying a tribute to a friend;
But friendship is too light a name
By which to designate the flame
Of holy love that filled his mind--
That which endeared him to mankind.
Skibbereen now mourns his spirit fled,
For Doctor Jerrie Crowley’s dead.
Each hill from Skea to Clashatarbh
Cries out “Ta Doctuir Jerrie marbh.”
How much--how many, I can’t say
That tidings grieved that dismal day.
Far from the town, with lamentation
They “waked” him--in imagination;
His house--the poor man’s hospital,
Received whoever chose to call,
And townsmen flocked in countless numbers
To “wake” him from unearthly slumbers.
If ever cries aroused the dead,
That corpse would lift its lowly head
When twelve young maidens dressed in white
Approached his bier about midnight,
Shed tears, and raised in solemn tone,
An unaffected ullagone;
The women joined, the men by and by
Were forced to swell this Irish cry,
Until the house, from door to door,
Was naught but mourning and uproar.
Nor quietness reigned, ’till head and voice
Succumbed to nature--not to choice.
A hearse next day its presence showed
To take him to his last abode--
Brought forth amid an ullagone,
The public claimed him as their own,
And said, no hearse should bear his weight
From thence unto the Abbey gate.
The Abbey gate is reached, and there
Eight mourning townsmen did appear
Who worshipped God a different way,
Requesting earnestly that they
Alone would be allowed to lay
The body in its mother clay.
Ten priests in tears read obsequies;
The grave is closed ’mid deafening cries,
And there, that honest, loving heart
Ere long, of dust will form a part.
The sod is laid, the poor remain,
And loudly call his name--in vain.
Some recollect when at his door
At midnight hour they called before.
Some recollect the pressing hurry
Be smart; go on for Doctor Jerrie,
No matter at what hour I mention,
The humblest call had his attention.
Tho’ storm howled and swelled the ford;
Tho’ lightning flashed and thunder roared;
Thro’ hail and rain, and piercing blast,
He made his way in anxious haste,
And never took a poor man’s fee,
But left one--where was poverty.
Thus, for his family the worse,
His heart was larger than his purse.
A widowed wife and orphans four
In mourning sad his loss deplore.
Skibbereen, for whom he ever toiled,
May pay some tribute to his child
By educating him, to gather
A knowledge worthy of the father.
The doctor had four children. The eldest of them was a boy, and the
suggestion in the last four lines was the subject of conversation at
the wake--that it would be a good thing to get up a testimonial to the
widow that would enable her to send the boy to college and have him
educated for the medical profession.
A few other lines in verse may be noted:
Eight mourning townsmen did appear
Who worshipped God a different way,
Requesting earnestly that they,
Alone, would be allowed to lay
The body in its mother clay.
There was at that time somewhat of a distant feeling between the
Catholics and the Protestants of the town. Some few years before that,
the Ecclesiastical Titles bill was passed in Parliament, that made
it an offense for a Catholic bishop to sign his name to any paper
or pastoral as “bishop of his diocese.” Some of the Protestants of
the town had privately sent a petition to Parliament praying for the
passage of the bill. Some member of Parliament got the names of those
who signed that petition, and sent them to Skibbereen. The Skibbereen
men had them printed and placarded on the walls, and from that sprang
the cold feeling I allude to. The Protestants, at Doctor Jerrie’s
funeral, stood at the graveyard gate of the Abbey field, and asked us
who were bearing the coffin, to do them the favor of letting them bear
it from the gate to the grave. We granted them the favor, and there
were the ten Catholic priests reading the Catholic prayers, and the
eight Protestants, bearing the coffin through the graveyard.
John Tierney, of Kings County, is reading those “Recollections” of
mine, and he sends me a communication which I will make a place for
here, as the subject he alludes to had place about the time I am now
speaking of--the year 1857. This is his note.
NO. 635 WEST 42D STREET, NEW YORK.
DEAR SIR--I like best the books I brought with me from dear old
Ireland; though, like myself, they are sadly the worse for the
wear.
I send you Charles J. Kickham’s story of “Sally Cavanagh.”
He speaks of you in the preface. Well--well--the figure of
the world, for us two anyway, “passeth away.” Still, “while
every hope was false to me,” and also thee, there is pride and
comfort in such testimony from such a whole-souled Irishman as
Kickham, who knew not how to favor or flatter, any more than
your old friend,
JOHN TIERNEY.
The following are the words of Kickham to which Mr. Tierney refers:
“As I have spoken of so many of my fellow laborers at No. 12 Parliament
street, I must not forget the most devoted of them all. His name
was first brought under my notice in this way: It was the end of the
year 1857, a sketch of the poet Edward Walsh appeared in the _Celt_,
a national periodical established by my lamented friend, Doctor
Robert Cane, of Kilkenny. The poor poet’s story was a sad one, and
it was mentioned that his widow was then living in an humble lodging
in Dublin, hardly earning her own and her children’s bread, as a
seamstress. This moved some generous-hearted persons to write to her,
proffering pecuniary assistance; but the poet’s widow was proud, and
she wished it to be announced in the _Celt_ that she could not accept
money. Mrs. Walsh sent me one of the letters she had received, and here
it is:
“SKIBBEREEN, Xmas morning, 1857.
“DEAR MADAM--I hoped to spend a happy Christmas Day; but before
sitting down to breakfast, I took up the last number of the
_Celt_, and read the conclusion of the memoir of your husband,
by some kind writer. I now find I cannot be happy unless you
will do me the favor of accepting the enclosed pound note as
a small testimony of my sympathy for the widow of one of our
sweetest poets. I remain dear madam,
“Yours, Sincerely,
“J. O’DONOVAN ROSSA.”
I felt a strong desire to know more of this Mr. O’Donovan (Rossa), who
could not sit down to his Christmas breakfast after reading an “o’er
true tale” of suffering, till he had done something to alleviate it.
And when, some months after, I saw his name in the list of prisoners
arrested in Cork and Kerry, on a charge of treason-felony, I was not
surprised. The first of these “Phœnix prisoners placed at the bar,
Daniel O’Sullivan-agreem, was convicted and sentenced to ten years
penal servitude. But before the trials proceeded further, there was
a change of government, and Thomas O’Hagan, now lord-chancellor,
the eloquent advocate of the prisoners, was made attorney-general.
O’Donovan (Rossa) and the rest were prevailed on to go through
the form of pleading guilty, having first stipulated that Daniel
O’Sullivan should be set at liberty. By this step they relieved the
new attorney-general of the awkward duty of becoming the prosecutors
of his clients. The prisoners were released on their own recognizances
to come up for judgment when called upon. It is needless to say that
the fact that he could be at any moment consigned to penal servitude
for life, or for any number of years the government pleased without the
form of a trial, had no effect whatever upon the political conduct of
O’Donovan (Rossa). After this I saw his name again in the newspapers as
a candidate for the situation of Relieving Officer to the Skibbereen
Union. In his letter to the Guardians he said in his manly way: ‘If
you appoint me, notwithstanding my political opinions, I shall feel
proud. But if you refuse to appoint me on account of my political
opinions, I shall feel proud, too.’ It is to the credit of the Board of
Guardians that he was unanimously elected; and the fact shows, too, the
estimation in which the indomitable rebel was held by all who knew him
personally, irrespective of class or creed. The scenes of misery with
which he was brought into closer contact while discharging the duties
of this office intensified his hatred of foreign misrule. Mr. O’Donovan
was the manager of the _Irish People_, and while on his business tours
through Ireland and England, one of its ablest correspondents. He also
contributed to its leading columns, and even to the ‘poet’s corner.’”
When I come to the years 1859 and 1862 I will have something to say
about that “pleading guilty” and that “Relieving Officership of the
Skibbereen Union.”
After the death of Dr. Jerrie Crowley, the Phœnix men moved from the
rooms they had occupied back of the drugstore into other rooms that
they rented from Morty Downing--not the Morty I have spoken of before,
but another Morty who was called Morty the Second.
On the 2d of January, 1858, we had an anniversary celebration in those
new rooms. We had a supper, and after the supper we had speech-making.
Daniel O’Crowley, now living in Springfield, Ill., was, I think, the
secretary of the meeting at that time. Denis McCarthy-Dhoun, who
afterward died in London, was the chairman at the supper. We were
subscribing for the Irish National journals at the time. I sent a
report of the meeting to the _Dundalk Democrat_, and I sent with it a
pound note, asking the editor to send me a pound’s worth of the papers.
The speeches were published in the _Democrat_, and from the _Democrat_
they were published in other papers--in French papers and American
papers. It was from those circumstances that that which is now called
Fenianism took the start. James Stephens was in Paris at the time,
and I think John O’Mahony was in Paris, too. Anyway, they were in
communication with each other, or got into communication with each
other. The report of the Skibbereen meeting showed them that the old
cause was not dead; that the seed of national life was in the old land
still. They agreed to start into action. James Stephens was to act
in Ireland, and John O’Mahony was to act in America. Thus it came to
pass that James Stephens visited Skibbereen in the summer of 1858,
and planted the seed of the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood there, as
I have already said in chapter xiii.; and thus it came to pass that
John O’Mahony started the “_Phœnix_” newspaper in New York in the year
1859, when many men in Skibbereen, Bantry, Kenmare, Killarney and other
places had been arrested and put to prison, under the name of Phœnix
men.
How do I know all that? you may ask. Well, I know it this way: After
the Phœnix scare had subsided, Jas. Stephens was living in Paris,
and he wrote to Skibbereen expressing a wish that Dan McCartie and
Patrick J. Downing would visit him there. They did visit him; not the
two together, but one at a time. Dan McCartie returned to Skibbereen;
Patrick J. Downing was sent to America. I met the two of them since,
and it is from them I learned all I have stated relative to the start
of Fenianism. Patrick J. Downing went through the American war; he
was a Colonel of the Forty-second (Tammany) Regiment; he learned his
drill on the hill sides of Ireland; he became our drill-master after
Owens (Considine, whom James Stephens had sent us), left us; he died
in Washington some years ago. Dan McCartie is living in America as I
write--and long may he live.
* * * * *
I was in the town of Dundalk, Ireland, in the year 1894. I gave
a lecture there. The chairman of the meeting was Thomas Roe, the
proprietor of the _Dundalk Democrat_. I asked him had he a file of the
paper for the year 1858. He said he had. He went to the office and got
the issue of the paper in which was the report of the Phœnix Society
meeting of January 2d, 1858. I got him to re-publish it; and it is from
the _Dundalk Democrat_ of August 18th, 1894, that I now publish this
speech I made in Skibbereen thirty-nine years ago.
* * * * *
“In his lecture at the town hall, Dundalk, last week, O’Donovan Rossa
referred to the fact that the first speech he ever delivered--at a
commemoration of the anniversary of the Phœnix National Society,
Skibbereen, in the beginning of 1858--was sent by him to the _Democrat_
and published by this journal. On turning to the file of 1858, we find
the report of the speech amongst those delivered on the same occasion,
and it is both interesting and instructive at the present time. We
reproduce it here:
PHŒNIX NATIONAL AND LITERARY SOCIETY, SKIBBEREEN.
“On the 2d instant the members of this society celebrated the
first anniversary of its formation by dining together. Mr. D.
McCarthy presided. When ample justice had been done to the good
things provided by Mrs. Downing, the following toasts were
drunk with enthusiasm and responded to:
“‘OUR COUNTRY.’
“Mr. Jeremiah O’Donovan (Rossa) in response to this toast
spoke as follows: Mr. Chairman and gentlemen. At your call I
reluctantly rise, for I am badly prepared and ill qualified to
speak to the toast of Our Country; but should that country ever
have a call on the services of her sons during my existence,
I trust I will be found more willing to rise and better
prepared to act than I am now to speak for it. Too much talk
and too little action have been the characteristics of Irish
patriotism during a large portion of the last half century; and
as we are supposed to learn from experience, it is believed
that less of the former and a corresponding increase of the
latter will, in the future, serve our country’s cause best
and our enemy’s cause least. I don’t know whether or not the
committee who prepared our toasts took this view of the matter
when they wrote down this land to be toasted as _our_ country,
when it is an established fact that _we_ have no country. We
are the most cosmopolitan race in the whole universe; but
Irishmen _should_ have a country; they have a right to the
country of their birth. By the use and aid of one steel--the
pen--our committee have taken possession of that right, and
as their title one day may be disputed, I trust they will be
able and willing to prove it by the aid of another steel--the
sword (loud cheers). I have heard an anecdote, which I will
repeat to you, concerning Dr. Croke of Mallow. When a young
man, he was traveling through France, and in a village there
he had his seat taken on a Diligence, but having forgotten
something at the time, he went for it and on his return found
his place occupied by another. In consideration of the loss
of his seat he received some impertinence, which he resented;
a dispute arose, the disputants appealed to the authorities,
and their names were taken down to appear before a tribunal
of justice next morning. He gave his name as Thomas Croke, of
Ireland, but for reasons that you can plainly understand, he
was called next morning as Thomas Croke, Englishman! Feeling
the indignity to his country, he never answered till pointed
out by one of the officials, and when he stated he was Thomas
Croke, Irishman, and not Thomas Croke, Englishman, he was only
sneeringly laughed at for presuming to think that he had a
country. Thus was this Irishman reminded of the loss of his
country; he had no country; we Irishmen are slaves and outcasts
in the land of our birth. What a shame! What a disgrace! Yes;
disgraceful alike to peer and peasant--Protestant, Catholic and
Presbyterian. Thus may foreign nations believe this country
is not ours, and I am sure you will not be surprised that
England is particularly positive on this point. She has made
all possible efforts to convince us of it. She has broken the
heads of many Irishmen trying to hammer this opinion into them.
For seven long and dreary centuries has she been trying to
force it on us; and against her during all this time have the
majority of Irishmen protested. Yet has she disregarded every
protestation, every claim, and every petition, and instead of
treating us as human beings or subjects, she has made every
effort that pen, fire and sword could make to extirpate our
race. She has stained almost every hearthstone in the land with
the heart’s blood of a victim; and the other day, in savage
exultation at the idea of her work being accomplished, she
cried out, ‘The Irish are gone, and gone with a vengeance’
(groans). But the mercenary Thunderer lies. I read it in
your countenances. The Irish are not gone; but part of them
are gone, and in whatever clime their pulses beat to night,
that ‘vengeance’ which banished them is inscribed on their
hearts, impregnates their blood, and may yet operate against
that oppressor who, by his exterminating and extirpating
laws, deprived them of a means of living in the land of their
fathers (hear, hear, and cheers). I don’t now particularly
confine myself to the last ten or twelve years. If I go back
centuries, the same language will apply to England. In the
seventeenth century she issued the following instructions
to Lord Ormond, and as the Eastern monarch said, I now say,
‘hear and tremble’:--‘That his lordship do endeavor, with his
majesty’s forces, to wound, kill, slay or destroy, by all the
ways and means he may, all the said rebels, their adherents
and relievers; and burn, waste, spoil, consume, destroy and
demolish all the places, towns and houses where the said rebels
are, or have been relieved or harbored, and all the hay and
corn there, and kill or destroy all the men inhabiting there
capable of bearing arms.’ When I reflect on this and the other
innumerable instruments made and provided for the destruction
of the Irish, I begin to doubt my identity as of Milesian
descent. Many of you possess similar doubts or feelings, for
assuredly our ancestors were none of the favored class, and
nothing but the miraculous intervention of Providence could
have preserved our race from utter extinction. Again, hear
what the following historians say:--Carte writes: ‘That the
Lord Justices set their hearts on the extermination not only
of the mere Irish, but also of the old English families who
were Catholics.’ Dr. Leland says that:--‘The favorite object of
the Irish Governors and the English Parliament was the utter
extermination of all the Catholics of Ireland.’ Clarendon
writes that:--‘They have sworn to extirpate the whole Irish
nation;’ and the Rev. Dr. Warner says that:--‘It is evident
that the Lord Justices hoped for an extirpation not of the
mere Irish only, but of all the old English families who were
Catholics.’ I give you these extracts without wishing to be
sectarian. The old Irish Catholics were fighting for their
nationality, and if the old Irish Protestants were to fight
for the same to morrow, it is proved that the tyrant would
treat them similarly if she had the power. When will Irishmen
cease from doing the work of the enemy? When will they ponder
on their present degraded condition? When will the sunshine of
unity dispel the clouds of dissension and distrust that hover
over their understanding, and make them blind to the interests
of their common country? If it be advantageous for Irishmen to
make their own laws, to govern their own country--if they are
qualified to do so--why allow another people to think and act
for them? Why not Irishmen prefer the interest of their own to
that of another country? Can I attribute the motives to love or
fear? Are we so pleased with the fostering care and protective
kindness of our masters, that we do not care about changing our
condition? Or can it be that we are so much afraid of the power
of England, that cowardice alone prevents us from properly
claiming and obtaining the rights of free men? The time is gone
when England could create fear; under present circumstances
she has still the power over Ireland in consequence of all her
internal elements of discord, disunion and disorganization, but
not over any united or enlightened people. Russia has proved
this. America and Naples insult and defy her, and India grasps
her by the throat and cries: ‘Robber, stand and deliver up your
booty’ (prolonged cheers). In her humility, she is truly a most
gullible creature. She now calls for our sympathy and aid. I
don’t for a moment deny the Saxon interest is strong amongst
us; yet who will wonder at it? And who will be surprised if
Lord Mayors and Town Scoundrels, official invaders and castle
traders; lunatic, militia, stipendiary, detective, expectants,
and all other innumerable officers and satellites of vicious
and vice-royalty should forward an address of commiseration
and condolence, accompanied with a few _lacs_ for the comfort
and relief of their task masters (cries of ‘they want it’).
The poor struggling tenant-at-will will pay for all; he can
starve his family a few pounds more, and he can fatten the
master’s pigs proportionately, and then when he can’t do any
more, he will get Indian tenant right, what he richly deserves
when he fails to take the proper steps to right himself. If
every farmer in the country had a proper supply of agricultural
implements, one of which is a pitchfork, and if all combined
then and petitioned Parliament, stating they were determined to
improve their holdings and positions, and praying to the House
to consider their situation, it is my firm conviction they
would not be long without tenant right, and the remnant of our
race would not be forced into exile. England has never given
us anything through a love _for us_ or a love of justice. She
has ever spurned our petitions when they were not backed by the
sword or a firm determination, and whenever Irishmen demanded
an instalment of their rights by the pen alone, they were only
mocked and laughed at, and sometimes favored with additional
fetters. Wellington and Peel granted emancipation through fear;
they admitted it was not safe to refuse it longer; and Grattan
would never have repealed the Sixth of George I., passed in
1720, to confirm ‘and better secure the dependence of Ireland,’
only that the English government knew that
“Swords to back his words
Were ready, did he need them.
But that treaty of ’82 was broken as perfidiously as was the
treaty of Limerick, and every other treaty or compact that was
ever made between the two peoples. As a prelude, Ireland was
incited by the enemy to premature rebellion; and as Archbishop
Hughes, of New York, said when delivering a lecture on Irish
starvation in ’46--‘Martial law for the people--a bayonet or
a gibbet for the patriot who loved Ireland--a bribe for the
traitor who _did not_--led to that act called the Union, in
which the charter of Irish nationality was destroyed--I trust
not forever.’ Irishmen have since experienced the happiness
of being an integral portion of the _disunited kingdom_; they
have been relieved from the cares and troubles of native
manufactories and internal bustle, and they are now such an
important people as to be saddled with an ‘integral’ portion
of a thousand million pounds, as a national debt. If we were
able to pay this debt for England, Ireland may have some
chance of becoming a separate portion of this kingdom; but
whoever would seriously endeavor to make her so without any
stipulation, may experience the blessings of the ‘Glorious
British Constitution’ through the agency of the halter, the
dungeon, the convict ship, the gibbet or the jail. When I
speak of these instruments of our tyrants, thoughts of blood
and fiendish deeds connected with ’98 and the succeeding years
visit my memory. The two Thomas street murders, within a few
years and a few yards of each other, forcibly and brilliantly
reveal to us the charms of that constitution, and particularly
that circumstance connected with the murder of Lord Edward,
where the bloodhounds pursued his spirit to the other world,
and after the Universal Judge in heaven had passed sentence
on him either as a traitor or a martyr, they retried him, and
by a packed jury robbed and plundered his widow and orphan
children. Excuse me, Mr. Chairman and Irishmen, for trespassing
so far upon the property of my successor, who is to speak of
the men of ’98. I have digressed much from my subject, but it
is more of the heart than of the mind. A few other remarks and
I will have ceased from tiring you farther. You will understand
that I am not one of those individuals who believe in the
regeneration of my country through the agency of a viceroy or
vice-_reine_, through the propagation of high-blood cattle
and the cultivation for their support of mangel-wurzel and
yellow-bullock; the latter would be very well in their proper
time and place, but I would reverse the order of things, and
the comforts of human creation would be with me a primary
consideration to the comforts of the brute species, or as
my friend and neighbor, Michael Burke, says, I would rather
see ‘stamina’ in the man than in the animal (laughter). To
effect this, the existing relations of Irishman and Englishman
should undergo a change, and now should be the time for the
Irish nation to agitate for this change, and strive to obtain
it by every proper means, so as to prevent a recurrence of
the national disasters of ’46 and ’47, when England allowed
thousands of our people to starve, and blasphemously charged
God Almighty with the crime, while the routine of her
misgovernment compelled the cereal produce of the country to
be exported. A curse upon foreign legislation. A domestic
government, no matter how constituted, would never have allowed
it; even this terrible evil might have been averted, had the
leaders in ’48 profited by the past history of their country;
they ought to have known that an enemy never paid any attention
to moral force, when not backed by physical force, and had the
Repealers followed the example of the ’82 men, and had they
presented their petitions with pikes and swords instead of
with magic wands and brass buttons, the issue would have been
different with them, and instead of injuring the cause of their
country, they would occupy as prominent and proud a place in
her future history as Grattan and his compatriots. To obtain
a name and a position for our country, and the restoration of
our plundered rights, we will need such an organization as that
of ’82--nay such a one as ’48, if you will. Had Irishmen, or
_any one_ class of Irishmen, been united, bided their time, and
embraced their opportunity, the future would be ours--no matter
though there may be many difficulties before men who seek to
establish a name and position for their country amongst the
nations of the earth. But let me say, that as Irishmen here
to-night--we have no foe--no enemy amongst any class or creed
of our countrymen; politically speaking, the man who looks upon
us, and men of our political profession, as his enemy, is our
enemy. He _must_ be a man who would have his country forever
under the yoke of the foreigner; or, he _must_ be a man who has
profited by the plunder, or who is supported by the plunderer.
I now conclude, thanking you for the honor you have done me,
and the kindness you have shown me, assuring you wherever I am
cast by fortune, it shall ever be my pride to stand, as I stand
here to-night, amongst men who are prepared to assist in any
and every agitation or undertaking to obtain their rights, or
an instalment of their rights, which may ultimately result in
qualifying them to write the epitaph of Robert Emmet.”
It isn’t that I say it--that wasn’t a bad speech at all, at a time when
Ireland was dead or sleeping. People who write about the origin of
that particular movement called Fenianism--knowing nothing about that
speech, or about the Phœnix Society men, know nothing as to what they
write about. If the license of a little pleasantry may be given me, I
may say that several of my early-day acquaintances would often lament
that I would not bind myself to the speech-making business, to free
Ireland.