I think I was told in 1849, as I stood in the burial ground at
Skibbereen, that at least four hundred people who had died of famine
were buried within the quarter of an acre of ground on which I was then
looking. It is a country, too, from which there has been a greater
emigration by sea within a given time than has been known at any time
from any other country in the world. It is a country where there has
been, for generations past, a general sense of wrong, out of which has
grown a chronic state of insurrection; and at this very moment when I
speak, the general safeguard of constitutional liberty is withdrawn, and
we meet in this hall, and I speak here to-night, rather by the
forbearance and permission of the Irish executive than under the
protection of the common safeguards of the rights and liberties of the
people of the United Kingdom.
I venture to say that this is a miserable and a humiliating picture to
draw of this country. Bear in mind that I am not speaking of Poland
suffering under the conquest of Russia. There is a gentleman, now a
candidate for an Irish county, who is very great upon the wrongs of
Poland; but I have found him always in the House of Commons taking sides
with that great party which has systematically supported the wrongs of
Ireland. I am not speaking of Hungary, or of Venice as she was under the
rule of Austria, or of the Greeks under the dominion of the Turk; but I
am speaking of Ireland--part of the United Kingdom--part of that which
boasts itself to be the most civilized and the most Christian nation in
the world. I took the liberty recently, at a meeting in Glasgow, to say
that I believed it was impossible for a class to govern a great nation
wisely and justly. Now, in Ireland there has been a field in which all
the principles of the Tory party have had their complete experiment and
development. You have had the country gentleman in all his power. You
have had any number of Acts of Parliament which the ancient Parliament
of Ireland or the Parliament of the United Kingdom could give him. You
have had the Established Church supported by the law, even to the
extent, not many years ago, of collecting its revenues by the aid of
military force. In point of fact, I believe it would be impossible to
imagine a state of things in which the Tory party should have a more
entire and complete opportunity for their trial than they have had
within the limits of this island. And yet what has happened? This,
surely: that the kingdom has been continually weakened, that the harmony
of the empire has been disturbed, and that the mischief has not been
confined to the United Kingdom, but has spread to the colonies....
I am told--you can answer it if I am wrong--that it is not common in
Ireland now to give leases to tenants, especially to Catholic tenants.
If that be so, then the security for the property rests only upon the
good feeling and favor of the owner of the land; for the laws, as we
know, have been made by the land-owners, and many propositions for the
advantage of the tenants have unfortunately been too little considered
by Parliament. The result is that you have bad farming, bad
dwelling-houses, bad temper, and everything bad connected with the
occupation and cultivation of land in Ireland. One of the results--a
result the most appalling--is this, that your population is fleeing your
country and seeking refuge in a distant land. On this point I wish to
refer to a letter which I received a few days ago from a most esteemed
citizen of Dublin. He told me that he believed that a very large portion
of what he called the poor, amongst Irishmen, sympathized with any
scheme or any proposition that was adverse to the Imperial Government.
He said further that the people here are rather in the country than of
it, and that they are looking more to America than they are looking to
England. I think there is a good deal in that. When we consider how many
Irishmen have found a refuge in America, I do not know how we can wonder
at that statement. You will recollect that when the ancient Hebrew
prophet prayed in his captivity, he prayed with his window open towards
Jerusalem. You know that the followers of Mohammed, when they pray, turn
their faces towards Mecca. When the Irish peasant asks for food and
freedom and blessing, his eye follows the setting sun, the aspirations
of his heart reach beyond the wide Atlantic, and in spirit he grasps
hands with the great Republic of the West. If this be so, I say then
that the disease is not only serious, but it is desperate; but desperate
as it is, I believe there is a certain remedy for it if the people and
Parliament of the United Kingdom are willing to apply it....
I believe that at the root of a general discontent there is in all
countries a general grievance and general suffering. The surface of
society is not incessantly disturbed without a cause. I recollect in the
poem of the greatest of Italian poets, he tells us that as he saw in
vision the Stygian lake, and stood upon its banks, he observed the
constant commotion upon the surface of the pool, and his good instructor
and guide explained to him the cause of it:--
"This, too, for certain know, that underneath
The water dwells a multitude, whose sighs
Into these bubbles make the surface heave,
As thine eye tells thee wheresoe'er it turn."
And I say that in Ireland, for generations back, the misery and the
wrongs of the people have made their sign, and have found a voice in
constant insurrection and disorder. I have said that Ireland is a
country of many wrongs and of many sorrows. Her past lies almost in
shadow. Her present is full of anxiety and peril. Her future depends on
the power of her people to substitute equality and justice for
supremacy, and a generous patriotism for the spirit of faction. In the
effort now making in Great Britain to create a free representation of
the people you have the deepest interest. The people never wish to
suffer, and they never wish to inflict injustice. They have no sympathy
with the wrong-doer, whether in Great Britain or in Ireland; and when
they are fairly represented in the Imperial Parliament, as I hope they
will one day be, they will speedily give an effective and final answer
to that old question of the Parliament of Kilkenny--"How comes it to
pass that the King has never been the richer for Ireland?"