It is a rare pleasure to me thus to address an assembly of this
character for the first time in my seven years and a half of
residence in the United States, my adopted country. Lexington marked
the birth of American Independence and the Republic.
The contiguity of Ireland to England accounts for the comparative
ease of conquest owing to the small area of the island, as compared
with the huge territory of the United States—absorption of Scotland,
almost certain to be followed by absorption of Ireland. The
religious oppression under Cromwell and William III, might soon have
given way to mutual toleration and freedom of conscience had it not
been intensified by economic oppression.
Irishmen who know how the English merchant, manufacturer, landowner,
mine-owner, and farmer, were combined by common jealousies to
suppress competition in Ireland; how in cold blood, laws were
enacted to hinder the development, and paralyze the energies of
Ireland, can never naturally be found strengthening, either at home
or abroad, a policy which makes for the aggrandizement of the few by
the plunder of the many. The early history of our race developed to
a remarkable degree, to a degree unattained, I believe, even in
continental or oriental societies, the tribal life and the
interdependencies of men in social and family relations.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the political genius of our
countrymen has been so splendidly manifested in municipal politics.
Nor is it surprising again that through jealousy of the eminent
success of Irishmen in local politics, men of other nationalities
sneer at us as the world’s policemen. The jibe of jealousy is the
best compliment of character. We are the world’s policemen, and that
sarcasm has no sting for us which, wagging its head, says, “Irishmen
rule every country but their own,” for we make bold to say, that no
other race, not even the Jew excepted, against such overwhelming
odds, suffering poverty so grinding and so protracted, could have
preserved its spirit of patriotism through so many and so terrible
baptisms of fire and blood. And, grandest triumph of all, we
conserved its manhood, its physical and spiritual energy so full,
that, instead of a race crippled by conquest, dwarfed by oppression
and inapt through inexperience of self-government, the Irishman
to-day, whether in the pulpit or the parliament, in the court-house
or congress, on the highway or in the home, as a soldier or a
statesman, is _facile princeps_, both in the East and in the West.
It is impossible for Irishmen to think of Lexington without the
associated thought of the United Irishmen,
“Who fears to speak of ’98?”
We remember those noble souls who banded themselves in 1798 for “the
purpose of obtaining the repeal of the penal laws against Roman
Catholics and for the right of the electoral franchise” and who,
after the illustrious Grattan’s modest reform bill had been
rejected, and the tyranny of coercive laws had changed whips for
scorpions, gave their lives for freedom of conscience and civil
liberty. As an Irish Protestant I claim in the loftiest pride,
kinship with the chivalrous Wolfe Tone, the memorable Simon Butler,
the daring Napper Tandy, with James Nelson, the owner and fearless
editor of the organ of the United Irishmen in Belfast; with
McCracken the Presbyterian minister, who was hanged by the neck in
Belfast’s High street by the British because of his scholarly
influence in the cause of freedom, and last, yet ever first, with
the glorious, pious and immortal Robert Emmet,—God haste the day
when we may be able to write the epitaph for which he prayed in the
hour of his sacred martyrdom.
As a Protestant Irishman, I repudiate the policy, and pity the men
with my whole soul, who in ignorant bigotry and misguided zeal—in
which they were encouraged by their English masters—persecuted
hundreds of their fellow-countrymen whose only offense was that they
desired a rational measure of civil and religious liberty, and may
the day never dawn when any of my countrymen shall be hounded again
with the inhuman cry, “To hell or Connaught.”
The skies are brightening. “The blood of our martyrs as the seed of
liberty is bearing golden fruit.” We have the emancipation of the
farmer through Gladstone; the emancipation of the taxpayers, the
county councils through Balfour. What a change as compared with
Salisbury’s statement in 1884, in debate on Mr. Gladstone’s
franchise bill when Salisbury was opposing the extension of this
franchise to Ireland: We warned you when you gave the ballot to
Ireland, and were we wrong?
The Irish Presbyterian clergy are, by poorly informed people,
supposed to be of the Orange cult. Not so! There are seven hundred
Presbyterian clergymen in Ireland, and I am certain that not half a
dozen of these are in actual or tangible touch with the Orange
society.
* * * * *
The Rev. Mr. Nelson spoke further for the amalgamation of all
classes of Irishmen. He dwelt on the misconception of Irish matters
here, as illustrated by the Providence _Journal’s_ statement
recently that the government’s scheme of a Catholic University in
Ireland had been dropped owing to opposition of Orange bigots. Such
opposition would have little weight, he said. The principal
opposition arose from the attitude of the Presbyterians of Ireland
toward the proposed measure,—an opposition which was in no degree
influenced by religious prejudice. “I speak what I know,” said he.
“It was opposed solely on the ground that non-sectarian education is
in their judgment the best policy both for the healing of past
dissensions and the development of future citizenship in beloved
Ireland.”