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RIDGEWAY
AN HISTORICAL ROMANCE OF THE FENIAN INVASION OF CANADA
By Scian Dubh
“On our side is virtue and Erin; On theirs’ is the Saxon and
guilt.”--MOORE.
1868
[Transcriber’s Note: The nonstandard spellings of the original have been
retained in this etext.]
INTRODUCTION.
In the dark, English crucible of seven hundred years of famine, fire and
sword, the children of Ireland have been tested to an intensity unknown
to the annals of any other people. From the days of the second Henry
down to those of the last of the Georges, every device that human
ingenuity could encompass or the most diabolical spirit entertain, was
brought to bear upon them, not only with a view to insuring their speedy
degradation, but with the further design of accomplishing ultimately the
utter extinction of their race. Yet notwithstanding that
confiscation, exile and death, have been their bitter portion for
ages--notwithstanding that their altars, their literature and their flag
have been trampled in the dust, beneath the iron heel of the invader,
the pure, crimson ore of their nationality and patriotism still flashes
and scintillates before the world; while the fierce heart of “Brien of
the Cow Tax,” bounding in each and every of them as of yore, yearns
for yet another Clontarf, when hoarse with the pent-up vengeance of
centuries, they shall burst like unlaired tigers upon their ancient,
and implacable enemy, and, with one, long, wild cry, hurl her bloody and
broken from their shores forever.
Had England been simply actuated by a chivalrous spirit of conquest,
alone, or moved by a desire to blend the sister islands into one
harmonious whole, even then her descent upon Ireland could not be
justified in any degree whatever. Ireland had been her _Alma Mater_.
According to the venerable Bode and others, her noble and second rank
flocked thither in the seventh century, where they were “hospitably
received and educated, and furnished with books _without fee or
reward_.” Even at the present moment, the Irish or Celtic tongue is
the only key to her remote antiquities and ancient nomenclature. The
distinguished Lhuyd, in his Archaelogia Britannica, and the celebrated
Leibnitz himself, place this latter beyond any possible shadow of doubt.
Scarcely a ruined fane or classic pile of any remote date within her
borders but is identified with the name of some eminent Irish missionary
long since passed away. What would Oxford have been without Joannes
Erigena, or Cambridge, deprived of the celebrated Irish monk that stood
by the first stone laid in its foundation? The fact is every impartial
writer, from the “father of English history” down to the present
day, admits, that in the early ages, when darkness brooded over the
surrounding nations, Ireland, learned, philanthropic and chivalrous,
blazed a very conflagration on the ocean, and stretched forth her
jewelled and generous hand to poor, benighted England, and fostered, in
addition, the intellectual infancy of Germany, France and Switzerland,
as well as the early civilization of regions more remote still. Then it
was that the milk and honey of her ancient tongue and lore flowed out
from her in rivers to wash the stains from the soul and brow of the
stolid and unintellectual Saxon. Then it was, that her very zone gave
way in her eagerness to pluck his Pagan life from gloom, and wed her day
unto his night. But what of all this now?--The sin that is “worse than
witchcraft” is upon him! His hands are stained with innocent blood!
He has spurned his benefactress with the foot of Nero, “removed her
candlestick”, and left her in hunger, cold and darkness upon her own
hearthstone.
Had not Ireland, at the time of the invasion, been cut up through the
fierce pride and petty jealousies of her rulers, the English could
never have effected a permanent footing upon her shores. Contemptible in
numbers, shipping and appointments, the concentrated opposition of even
a few petty chiefs could have scattered them to the winds, or sent them
“howling to their gods”. But, wanting in that homogeneity without which
a nation must always remain powerless, the invasion of the territory
of one individual ruler was often regarded as a matter of no very grave
importance to those who were not his immediate subjects; so that from
this cause, as well as from, the unhappy dissentions which harrassed the
country at the period, the new colony found the means of establishing
themselves upon the eastern borders of the island, and of possessing
themselves of some of the walled towns, which they subsequently turned
to such good account in fortifying themselves against surprise and
baffling the pursuit of the natives, when worsted in the open field.
Whether the subtle influences of a common nationality moved Pope Adrian
the Fourth--who was an Englishman named Nicholas Breakspear,--to issue
the famous Bull granting Ireland to his fellow countryman, Henry the
Second of England, or whether, as it has been alleged, no such Bull was
ever issued, and that the one still extant is a forgery, it matters but
little now. The Pope’s claims extended to the spiritual jurisdiction of
Ireland only; and even had he granted the Bull in question, and assumed
the right of conveying the whole island to the English king, the
transfer was obtained under false pretenses for, from the very wording
of the document itself, it is palpable that Henry led the Sovereign
Pontiff, to believe that Ireland was sunk in the grossest ignorance and
superstition, and that, in making a descent upon it, he had only the
glory and honor of the Church in view. So terrible a distortion of the
facts of the case on his part, necessarily rendered all action based
upon his statement morally invalid at least; and thus it is, that even
those who have confidence in the genuineness of this Bull, regard it as
utterly worthless, and at not all admissable into any pleadings which
ingenious English politicians may choose to advance on the subject.
So inveterate the hostility that manifested itself on the part of the
Irish towards the invader from the moment that his foul and sacrilegious
foot first desecrated their soil, a reign of terror was at once
inaugurated in the vicinage of his camp or stronghold, by those
chieftains with whom he came into more immediate contact, and upon whose
territories he more directly impinged. In the track of both peoples,
“death follows like a squire.” Neither truce nor oath was kept by the
English; while their fiery adversaries, necessarily stung to frenzy
at the presence of yet another invader in their midst, made sudden
reprisals in a manner so unexpected and daring, that the laws of the
hour like those of Draco, were literally written in blood. While the
dash and chivalry of the Irish prevented them from adopting the stealthy
dagger of the assassin, and prompted them rather, to bold and open deeds
of death, the enactments of “The Pale” as the English patch or district
was termed, were absolutely of a character the most demonical. According
to their provisions, the murder of an Irish man or woman was no offence
whatever; while the slaughter of a native who had made submission to the
Pale, was visited with a slight fine only--not for the crime _per se_,
but for the murderer’s having deprived the king of a servant. From this
it can be easily perceived, that a cowardly system of warfare obtained
on the part of the English, which, were it not for the quick eye and
fierce agility of the inhabitants, would soon have resulted in their
total annihilation.
This foul and dastardly system of assassination was but simply a leading
expression of the bastard nationality of the invader. Not one, single
drop of proud, pure blood coursed through his veins. His degraded
country had been in turn the mistress of the Roman, the Saxon, the Dane
and the Norman, and he was the hybrid offspring of her incontinence.
Consequently, he had neither a history nor a past of his own, calculated
to prompt even one exalted aspiration. He was a mongrel of the most
inveterate character, and was therefore, and inevitably, treacherous,
cowardly; and cunning. Not so the brave sons of the land he so ardently
coveted. Ere the mighty gnomon of “The Great Pyramid” had thrown its
gigantic shadow o’er the red dial of the desert, they had filled the
long gallery of a glorious past with an array of portraits, the most
superb presented by antiquity. Before the Vocal Memnon poured forth
his hidden melody at sunrise, or “The City of a Hundred Gates” had sent
forth her chariots to battle, they had a local habitation and a name,
and had stamped their impress upon many a shore. No people in existence,
to-day, can look back to an origin more remote or clearly traceable
through a countless lapse of ages than the Irish: and hence it was,
that at the period of the Anglo-Norman descent upon their borders, the
chivalry of a stupendous past was upon them: and having its traditions
and its glories to maintain and emulate, and being, besides, inspired
by the pure and unadulterated crimson tide that had flowed in one
uninterrupted stream through their fiery veins for the space of
two thousand years previously, they shrank from the treacherous and
dastardly system of assassination introduced by the ignoble and cowardly
Saxon, and struck only to the dread music of their own war cry.
Still, although in detail hostile to the invader, no great, united
effort appears to have been made to rout him out root and branch, until
he had become so powerful as to make any attack upon him a matter of the
most serious moment, and had, in addition, enlarged his borders through
sundry reinforcements from his own shores. The few more purely Norman
leaders that were inspired with some desire at least for a more
honorable mode of warfare, were utterly powerless among the overwhelming
throng of their followers who had been long brutalized on the other side
of the channel. In this connection the proud, revengeful and chivalrous
natives were had at a sad disadvantage; for then, as to-day, they were
characterized by a spirit of knight-errantry, which disdained to take an
enemy unawares.
As an evidence that Henry had the spiritual welfare only of the people
of Ireland at heart, and that the building up of the Church there
was his sole object, no sooner did he land in that country, than he
parcelled out the entire island among ten Englishmen--Earl Strongbow,
Robert Fitzstephens, Miles de Cogan, Philip Bruce, Sir Hugh de Lacy, Sir
John de Courcy, William Burk Fitz Andelm, Sir Thomas de Clare, Otho de
Grandison and Robert le Poer. At one sweep, in so far as a royal grant
could go, he confiscated every foot of land from Cape Clear to the
Giant’s Causeway, denied the right of the inhabitants to a single square
yard of their native soil, and made the whole country a present to
the persons just named. Perhaps history does not record another such
outrageous and infamous act, and one so antagonistic to every principle
of right and justice. Had there been a preceding series of expensive
and bloody wars between both countries, in which Ireland, after years of
fruitless resistance, fell at last beneath the yoke of the conqueror,
it could be readily understood, that the victor would seek to indemnify
himself for his losses, on terms the most exacting and relentless if you
will; but in the case under consideration, no animosity existed between
the two nations until the ruler of one, without even a shadow of
provocation on the part of the inhabitants of the other, made a
deliberate descent upon them, and ignoring the benefits conferred
gratuitously by them, previously, on his own ungrateful land, subjected
them to every barbarity and wrong known to the history of crime.
For upwards of four hundred years of the English occupation--that is,
from the landing of Strongbow down to the period of James the First,
there was no legal redress for the plunder or murder of an Irishman, by
any of the invaders, or for the violation of his wife or daughter. The
laws of the Pale, enacted under the sanction of the King and the people
of England, subsidized, in effect, a horde of ruthless assassins and
robbers, with a view to striking terror to the hearts of the natives,
and driving them into a recognition of the right of the usurper to rule
over them, and dispose as he saw fit of their property and persons. This
right, however, was never conceded in even the most remote degree; for,
notwithstanding that the colony of foreign spears and battle-axes waxed
stronger daily, the Irish element, disunited though it was, fought it
constantly. True, that an occasional lull characterized the tempest as
it swept and eddied through each successive generation; but never did
Ireland assume the yoke of the oppressor voluntarily, or bow, for even a
single moment, in meek submission to his unauthorized sway.
It would require volumes to recount a tithe of the frightful atrocities
practiced by the invaders upon the rightful and unoffending owners of
the soil during the long period just referred to, and especially towards
its close, when that lewd monster, Elizabeth, disgraced her sex and the
age. No language can describe adequately the various diabolical modes
of extermination practiced against all those who refused to bow the knee
and kiss the English rod. No code of laws ever enacted in even the most
barbarous age of the world, could compare in fiendish cruelty with the
early penal enactments of the Pale--so forcibly supplemented in after
years by the perjured “Dutch boor” and the inhuman Georges. The foul
fiend himself could not have devised laws more diabolical in their
character or destructive in their application. So close were their
meshes and sweeping their folds, that the possibility of escape was
obviously out of the question; as their victim was met and entangled
at every turn, until at last the fatal blow descended, and the unequal
contest was ended. But more infamous and unjustifiable still, when “the
foul invader” found himself occasionally unable to cope successfully
with his brave and chivalrous antagonists, he had recourse to a darker
and deeper treachery than even that which characterized the stealthy
and unexpected stroke of his midnight dagger. He adopted the guise of
friendship; and professing to forget the past, lured into his power
with festive blandishments the chiefs of many a noble following, whom he
dared not meet in open fight, but who, at a given signal, and while the
brimming goblet circled through the feast, were suddenly set upon and
foully murdered ere they could draw a dagger or leap to their feet. In
corroboration of this assertion, we have only to refer to Mullaghmast,
where a deed of this description was perpetrated; and of a character so
cruel and dastardly, that the names of those concerned in the inhuman
plot are now desecrated by every individual raised above the brute, or
inspired with the hope of heaven.
Nor was there any mode of propitiating the satanic spirit which seemed
to actuate the English against their opponents, from the first moment
that they set their foot upon Irish soil; for, when, in the lapse
of years, a portion of the inhabitants in the vicinity of the Pale,
professed their readiness to conform to the manners, laws and customs of
the invader, their overtures were rejected, and they were still held at
the point of the sword, as “the Irish enemy,” and denied the protection
of the laws that they were ready to obey. In short, every move of the
English, established beyond any possibility of doubt, that their sole
object was the utter and complete extirpation of the natives, and the
subsequent establishment upon their conquered shores of a dynasty from
which every drop of pure, Celtic blood should be excluded forever.
But that day never arrived, and with God’s help never shall. However she
might have suffered or failed through an occasional traitor, Ireland,
as a whole, fought against English usurpation from the moment that she
became aware of its ultimate aims, and felt its growing power within
her borders. There was, besides, in the two races, those opposites of
character--those natural antagonisms which repelled each other with
a force and vehemence not to be neutralized or unified by any process
within the reach of even the most humane or astute ruler. They were too
different peoples, with habits of thought, moral perceptions, and ideas
of chivalry at total variance with each other as entertained by them
individually. The great bulk of the English colony was composed of
unprincipled freebooters and degraded Saxon serfs; the Conqueror having,
a century previously, turned the masses of the English into swine-herds,
banished their language from court, and reduced them to a condition of
the most abject slavery. Hence their stolid brutality, the low plane of
their intelligence, and their systematic murders. But, how different
the condition of the Irish in this respect. Far ages previous, both
learning, refinement, and the chivalrous use of arms, pervaded their
shores. Evidences of the truth of this assertion lie scattered around
us in every direction. Girald Barry--the English Cambrensis, William
Camden, Archbishop Usher, Vallancey, Lord Lyttleton, and a host of
others, all bear witness to the profound learning and noble chivalry
of the Irish from the earliest periods; while the various educational
institutions throughout the continent, founded shortly after the
introduction of Christianity into Ireland, establish, upon a basis the
most immovable, the truth of an assertion made by one of the authors
just mentioned, namely, that “most of the lights that illumined those
times of thick darkness proceeded out of Ireland”. As may be presumed,
then, a people so refined and chivalrous--so sensitive to all that was
noble and elevated--a people who, as in the case of Alfred, had educated
the very kings of the invaders, as well as plucked their subjects
from Paganism, were averse to meeting the usurper on his own plane of
warfare, and that consequently, the very pride and dignity of their arms
walled in, as it were, the tyrant from any of those cold-blooded and
dastardly atrocities which so disfigured his own career.
Notwithstanding that, after four hundred and twenty years of outlawry
the most cruel and unrelenting, the Irish were, (12th James I. 1614.) at
last, admitted within the pale of English law, and recognized nominally
as subjects at least, so long had they been subjected to the grinding
heel of oppression, and the baneful influences of continuous warfare,
and so long, also, had the usurper been accustomed to treat them as
enemies, that this recognition of their claims upon humanity availed
them but very little. Under the new regime, their freedom was merely
technical only; for now the terrible ban of the Reformation, intensified
by the cruel spirit evinced throughout the whole of Elizabeth’s infamous
reign, was upon them, and their persecution, which had so long been
regarded as a matter of course, experienced but little diminution
through the attempted toleration of her weak and pedantic successor.
Still, frightful and unprecedented as was the ordeal through which
they had passed, they preserved their nationality, and clung to their
traditions, hoping one day to rid themselves of their oppressors, as
they had already done in the case of the Danes; and in this way has the
case stood between both parties up to the present hour.
Although long previous to the Reformation, the atrocities practiced
upon Catholic Ireland by Catholic England were of a character the most
revolting, and although the murderous hand of the invader was never
stayed by the knowledge or conviction, that both parties professed
a common creed and knelt at a common altar, yet the intensity of the
sufferings of the Irish, or what may be termed their studious, refined,
and systematic persecution, began with the _civilisation_ of Elizabeth.
The new creed of the three preceding reigns had not, up to that period,
acquired sufficient strength to exert its deadliest influence against
the ancient faith of the people, or to be introduced as a new agency of
oppression in the case of Ireland; but now, no sooner had the “Virgin
Queen” ascended the throne, than the heart of the tigress leaped within
her; and, breaking loose from every restraint, human and divine, she
at once pounced upon the unfortunate Irish, and sought to bury her
merciless fangs, with one deadly and final crash, in their already
bleeding and lacerated vitals. The coarse, cruel fibre of an apostate
and libertine father, and the impure blood of a lewd mother, had done
their work in her case. From the first to the last moment of her reign,
she combined the courtesan with the assassin. She was the murderer of
Essex, said to have been her own son and paramour; and was, at the same
time, the mistress of more than one noble besides Leicester. According
to her own countryman, Cobbett, she spilled more blood during her
occupancy of the throne, than any other single agency in the world for
a commensurate period; while her treatment of Ireland, under the “humane
guidance” and advice of such cruel wretches as Spenser, was neither
more nor less than absolutely satanic. For fifteen long years she never
ceased to subject that unhappy land to famine, fire and sword. Every
device that her hellish nature or that of her agents could concoct for
the total extirpation of the people, was put into the most relentless
requisition by her. Under the guise of the most sincere friendship,
her deputies, times without number, betrayed many of the leaders of the
Irish into accepting their hospitality, and then foully set upon them
and murdered them while they sat unsuspecting guests at their festive
board. And yet, notwithstanding her penal laws, her blood-thirsty
soldiery, and all her revolting persecutions, the Irish were more than
a match for her in the open field, and ultimately embittered the
closing years of her life. From the first moment of the invasion, the
O’Neills--Kings and Princes of Aileach, Kings of Ulster and Princes
of Tir-Eogain--as well as other chiefs and leaders, fought the Pale
incessantly: and now, after a lapse of nearly four hundred years, again
evinced to the world, that Ireland was still unconquered, and regarded
England as a tyrant and usurper. And yet the opposition of those chiefs
and rulers to the hirelings and paid assassins of this infamous woman
and her corrupt associates, was of a character the most chivalrous.
Unaccustomed to cowardly deeds of blood, these proud warriors preferred
to meet the enemy face to face, and decide the issues of the hour in
fair, open fight. They could not entertain the Saxon idea of disposing
of an adversary by the stealthy knife of the professional murderer; and
hence it was that their pride and chivalry had ever been taken advantage
of: the invaders being convinced that no reprisals of a character
sufficiently dastardly or atrocious to meet their own depredations,
would be indulged in by their chivalrous opponents. In evidence of the
spirit that actuated both parting individually in this connection, we
may refer to the massacre of Mullaghmast, on the one hand, where the
English, under professions of the purest friendship, lured many of the
Irish chiefs and nobles to a conference or council, and then suddenly
pouncing on them, murdered every single soul of them in cold blood;
while, on the other hand, we may contrast with this cowardly act--which
is but one of a series of the same sort--the noble and generous conduct
of Tir-Oen, at the battle of the Yellow Ford, in 1598, where, after
defeating the Queen’s troops with terrible slaughter, taking all their
artillery and baggage, as well as twelve thousand pieces of gold, the
remainder of the shattered army was totally at his mercy, when he might
have put every soul that composed it to death. Unlike the cowardly
invader, the field once won, he sheathed his sword, and ordered the
remnant of the enemy to be spared, as they were unable to fight longer,
and commanded that they should be conducted in safety to the Pale. In
these two instances we have a thorough insight into the character of the
invader and the invaded: so that not another word need be said upon this
part of the subject.
And in this manner have the O’Neills and the Irish fought the English
up to the present hour. Circumstances have, we know, from time to time,
caused a lull in the tempest of arms, but the moment opportunity served
the smouldering fires burst forth anew. Not a single day of pure and
happy sunshine has ever obtained between England and Ireland, since the
flag of the former first flew over the latter. Throughout every single
hour of seven hundred long years, Ireland has been secretly plotting or
openly fighting against England. Not one solitary reign, from Henry II
down to Victoria I, but has been marked with Irish dissatisfaction of
English rule. Either in the aggregate or in detail, the Irish people
have, throughout that long period, been constantly asserting their right
to independence, and their unalterable antipathy to the presence of a
foreign power upon their shores. And the same spirit that fought the
Henrys, Elizabeth, William and the Georges, is alive still, and lighting
their descendants to-day; 1688, 1798, 1848, and 1868 are all episodes of
the same history; and the volume now must soon be closed. Humanity and
civilisation, common justice and the laws of nations, demand that
a people who have battled against tyranny and usurpation for seven
successive centuries, and who have still preserved intact their
identity, their traditions and their altars, shall be no longer
subjected to the brute force and infamous exactions of a freebooter who
has so long played false to every principle of honor, and who has been
the highwayman of powers and principalities for countless generations.
The record of England in relation to Ireland, is one of the most
atrocious known to the history of mankind. It is fraught with the
blackest ingratitude, the vilest injustice, and the direst oppression.
Notwithstanding that Ireland first gave her an alphabet, and taught
her how to spell her name--notwithstanding that Irish missionaries
had nurtured her early educational institutions and reclaimed her from
Paganism, she misrepresented their religion and their learning in high
places, stole in upon them while they slept, and turning upon them like
the frozen snake in the fable, robbed them of their independence, and
loaded them with chains. Every year of her accursed dominion upon their
shores has been marked with some new and overwhelming oppression. She
has spit upon their creed, broken their altars, hunted them down with
blood-hounds, robbed them of their estates, exiled them penniless
to foreign shores, banned their language, murdered their offspring,
destroyed their trade and commerce, ruined their manufactures, plundered
their exchequer, robbed them of their flag, deprived them of their civil
rights, and left them, houseless wanderers, a prey to hunger, cold and
rags, upon their own soil. Of all this she stands convicted before the
world; and for all this she must alone, so sure as there is a God
above her. Ireland still lives, and so do her wrongs. The O’Neills and
thousands of brave scions of the past, are still with her, while the
rank and file of her sons are as bitterly opposed to English usurpation
to-day as they were seven hundred years ago. Besides, at the present
hour, the approaches to their final triumph are made luminous with the
generous countenance of free America, and the glorious conviction that
heaven bends benignly over them; and thus it is that they now stand
shoulder to shoulder in eager anticipation of the coming hour, when
their banners shall yet once more be flung to the winds, as, with a
cry that rends the very earth, they dash down upon their deadly and
relentless foe, and smite her hip and thigh as of yore; dealing her the
last fatal blow that forever seals her infamous doom.
In the order of Providence, a great corrective, or reactionary
principle, attends the misdoings of nations, that, sooner or later,
exerts itself in restoring the equilibrium of justice, and avenging the
infringement of any of those laws, human or divine, constituted for the
welfare and guidance of our race. Whether on the part of governments or
individuals, no act of palpable cruelty or barbarity, has ever escaped
the censure and reprobation of all good and true peoples since the world
became civilized; so that in this connection, the oppressed or injured
party has always had the countenance and sympathy of humanity, at least.
True, that an effective expression of this sympathy may have often been
chilled or embarrassed in individual cases by political considerations
or unworthy interests; but then the tendency to illustrate it was
there, and in this sense alone, it has often exerted a benign influence.
Hungary, Greece, Poland, &c., have all, in turn, had the sympathy of
mankind; and so have had the oppressed colonies and people of Great
Britain. The cruel treatment, treachery and fraud practiced in the
name of justice and religion upon the Sepoys of India, by England, have
awakened the deepest commiseration in the bosom of all good and true
governments, and aroused, at the same time, the strongest indignation
even on the part of nations not over-scrupulous of chains themselves. In
like manner, the condition of Ireland has, from time to time, commanded
the attention of the world; and, through the cruel expatriation of her
children, made itself felt more widely perhaps than that of any other
nation. When England perjured herself for the hundredth time, and
violated the Treaty of Limerick, she exiled to France a host of our
countrymen, who afterwards met her at Fontenoy, as the Irish Brigade,
and trailed her bloody and broken in the dust. The wrongs of the past
were with them. The cruelties of the Henrys, the murders of Elizabeth,
the confiscations of Cromwell, and the perfidy of William, so nerved
their arm at the period, that their charge upon the English is mentioned
as one of the most memorable and destructive on record. But if they had
more than sufficient grounds for dealing a death blow to the power of
the tyrant then, how must this debt of vengeance have accumulated since;
when, to the wrongs already enumerated are to be added the atrocities of
the Georges, as well as those of their worthy descendant--that traitress
to humanity, whose hands have been just imbrued in the innocent blood of
Allen, O’Brien and Larkin, and who now holds in thrall, within the gloom
of her noisome dungeons, some of the noblest spirits that have ever
breathed the vital air in this or any age of the world? How, we say,
must this debt of vengeance have been heaped up since; and may we
not, under its terrible pressure, the next time that we have a fair
opportunity of meeting the enemy face to face, anticipate a repetition
of that glorious charge in every individual descent we make upon her
ranks, until we shall have ground her into pulp, and avenged the blood
of our martyrs, which has for ages been crying aloud from the ground,
“how long, Oh! Lord?”
We have said that the misdoings of nations are, in the order of
Providence, attended with a corrective or reactionary principle, which,
sooner or later, exerts itself in restoring the equilibrium of justice;
and in no case has this been made more apparent than in that of Ireland.
When under the frightful pressure of famine, murder and robbery, her
children fled her shores, and sought refuge in the open arms of free
America, the tyrant who had caused their exile, never fancied, for a
moment, that she was laying the foundation stone of her own ultimate
destruction, and gradually forming an Irish Brigade on this continent,
which should, one day, with a terrible rebound, repay all the
cruelties and wrongs to which she had subjected them from generation to
generation. She little fancied, that in each individual Irishman that
she had driven from his native shores to seek an asylum beyond the seas,
she had sent forth an agent of her own destruction, that would colonize,
in common with his exiled brethren, the whole world with a sense of
her infamy, and build up, on this free continent, an opposition so
tremendous to her interests in every connection, that it should command
the attention of every civilized people under the sun, and shake her
institutions and existence to their very centre. As is invariable
in such cases, she administered the antidote with the poison; and
transformed the victims of her wrongs and cruelties into enemies and
soldiers; and now that, in the aggregate, they assume the proportions of
a powerful and antagonistic nation outside her borders, they only await
the hour when they shall descend upon her to the hoarse music of
their ancient war cry, and, on the banks of the Shannon, and by the
Blackwater, smite her hip and thigh, as of old; but this time without
generously escorting her broken and disabled ranks to the borders of
the Pale, or permitting them, in the hour of defeat, to recruit their
exhausted forces, so that the fight may become more equal.
From the landing of Strongbow, in 1171, at Port Largi, then on
subsequently called also the Harbor of the Sun, near Waterford, down to
the sacking and burning of Magdala, the capital of King Theodoras,
in the present year of grace 1808, the history of English rule and
conquests has been one of bloodshed, perjury and crime. Look where you
may, and you encounter continuous atrocities similar to the massacres of
Elizabeth and Cromwell, or the blowing of the Sepoys of India from the
mouth of the cannon of the invader. Well may the ensign of England wear
an encrimsoned hue; for, from time immemorial, it has been stooped in
the blood of the nations: and that too, without her people having ever
fought a proud or decisive battle single-handed. Her fame, in this
connection, rests solely upon the influence of her gold and the power
of foreign bayonets. Scotland and Ireland have been the main stay of her
armies; her native element, _per se_, affecting their composition in
but a secondary degree. The muster rolls of the Peninsula, and the
supplementary field of Waterloo, have attested this assertion to the
fullest. The fact is, her laurels, for the most part, have been gathered
by Irish hands. Taking advantage of the proud daring and chivalry of
our people, in connection with the poverty and oppression which she had
wrought among them, she shook her gold in their half-starved faces,
as she does to-day, and lured them into her service whenever she had
a point to attain in the field. Through this channel, and through it
alone, the fame of her arms became established; the true aspirations of
her own sons seldom exceeding the exalted limits of a bread riot, or
the sudden exploits incident to some poaching expedition. As a general
thing, the English are traders and diplomats, rather than soldiers.
Their character for bravery has been won through the lavish use of their
subsidizing gold, rather than through any innate warlike propensities
on their part. They have never fought for a myth, or an abstract,
chivalrous idea; but always for some bread and beef object, however
apparently unconnected with the project said to be had in view. In the
exemplification of their Christian missionary spirit, too, this feature
of their character is abundantly set forth. Wherever they have succeeded
in introducing the Gospel among the heathen, they have subsequently
inserted the wedge of civil discord, to be followed on their part by the
sword of conquest. No more forcible illustration of this can be found
than that presented by India, and other of their dependencies that we
could name. In Ireland, also, the same spirit has been evinced;
but under different circumstances. She was already civilized and
Christianized when the invader first landed upon her shores; but in no
way was he enabled to totally overthrow her independence, except through
the instrumentality of the brand of religious discord, which, for
upwards of two hundred years, he had kept flaming at the foundations
of her nationality. It was the hostility bitterly fomented between the
Protestants and the Catholics of Ireland, from 1782 to the year 1800,
that led to the so-called Union, and from this latter period left her,
to the present hour, at the mercy of one of the most relentless and
unprincipled despotisms that has ever disfigured the annals of the human
race.
Edmund Burk was right when he declared in his place in Parliament, if
we remember correctly, that the Penal Laws enacted by England against
Ireland, were characterized by an ingenuity the most fiendish on record,
and an attempt to oppress, degrade and demoralize a people, without a
parallel in the history of even the most barbarious ages. Within the
recollection of persons now living, nine-tenths of the population were
held in a condition of the most abject slavery, and treated as aliens
and enemies at their own doors. Add to this the fact, that, previous to
the granting of Emancipation, scarce a generation had passed away since
their priests were murdered at the altar, or hunted down with dogs, like
wild beasts; their goods and chattels seized upon by any emissary of
the government, and at a nominal valuation appropriated to his own use;
their creed and language denounced and outlawed; their children deprived
of the light of learning under a penalty the most fearful; and, wherever
the tyrant had the power, their lands confiscated and handed over to
their oppressors. The wonder has long been, that, under such a terrible
regime, Ireland had not sunk into the most hopeless barbarism, or that
England had not absorbed her, until, as Lord Byron once observed on the
subject, they had become one and indivisible, as “the shark with his
prey.” No more desperate attempt has ever been made to blot out a
nation, and none has ever failed more signally; for, notwithstanding
this dreadful cannonade of ages, backed up with the final and murderous
assault of the Reformation and the Georges, Ireland, to-day, is more
powerful and united than she has ever been since the sceptre of the Dane
was broken upon her historic shores. This fact is sustained by evidences
teeming upon us from every point of the compass. A great and mysterious
embodiment of her influence, and a vague and oppressive sense of
her unseen presence, hang ominously over all the councils of her
task-masters, and build up strange dynasties in the disturbed slumbers
of even royalty itself. Nor bolt nor bar can shut out the low mutterings
of her approaching thunder, or exclude her ubiquitous hand from tracing,
in letters of blood, the impending doom of her infamous oppressor upon
the wall. Heaven has decreed it; and thus it is, that, in more than
one quarter of the globe the exiled children of her matchless hills and
vales have multiplied into a positive power, that, inflamed with the
memories of her undeserved sufferings, shall, one day, be precipitated
upon her enemies with the most destructive and overwhelming effect, and
humble them forever in the dust.
To avert this blow has now become a desideratum so great with England,
that all her cunning and genius are brought to bear upon the subject.
So long as Ireland was dependent solely upon her own resources, and the
spirit of revolution confined strictly within her borders, England
felt herself competent to avert the evil day, for an indefinite period,
through the instrumentality of the rope and the bayonet; but now that
beyond the seas, the terrible war cloud of Fenianism fills the whole
west, surcharged with vengeance and the great, broad lightnings of
American freedom, she reels to her very centre, and begins to loosen her
hold, claw by claw, upon her victim, in the hope that her lacerated
and bleeding prey may be satisfied with a partial release from its
sufferings, and still permit her to hold it in her modified clutch. Here
she shall fail, however; for the people of Ireland know her too well
to permit her to breathe the same atmosphere with them, or preserve the
slightest footing on their soil. They know her to have been a traitor, a
perjurer, a robber and an assassin, throughout the whole of her infamous
career. Besides remembering her at Mullaghmaston and Limerick, they
had a taste of her quality in 1782, when, under the pressure of the
Protestant bayonets of the famous “Volunteers,” she, by a solemn act of
her King, Lords and Commons, in Parliament assembled, swept Poyning’s
despotic Law from her Statute Books, and relinquished FOREVER all right
and title to interfere in the local affairs of Ireland, only to perjure
herself subsequently, by creating rotten boroughs and dispensing titles
and millions of gold, for the purpose of controlling those very same
affairs, not only more effectually than ever, but with the further view
of diverting all the resources of the country out of their legitimate
channels into her own hands, so that she should be at once the tyrant,
and the purse and conscience keeper of our race. They remember all this,
we say, and now they are about to call upon her for an account of her
stewardship, and make her foot the bill, and that, too, to the very last
farthing.
Of course, we are aware that much of the elevated mind and strength
which invigorate the Irish element on this continent, in this
connection, is to be attributed, unquestionably, to the sublime lessons
of the great American people, and the generous sympathy they evince
invariably in regard to nations deprived of the blessings of freedom.
Time was, we are aware, when the children of Ireland had no such exalted
idea of human liberty as they possess to-day, and when they would have
hailed the return of kingcraft to their shores, on the restitution
of their independence, with every demonstration of pleasure; but that
period has passed away, and forever. Having once tasted the blessings,
and imbibed the idea of American institutions, they have now cast aside
every sentiment of barbarism in this relation, and stepped out on the
broad platform of justice and common sense; ignoring the mere accident
of birth, and paying homage only to those attributes and characteristics
which, in themselves, tend to the elevation of the human family, and
which are not confined to any peculiar class or people.
When it becomes understood, that ever since the introduction of
printing, and the consequent diffusion of book and newspaper literature
throughout Europe, the history and people of Ireland have been subjected
by the invader to every description of the grossest misrepresentation,
it will create no small degree of surprise, that the country
has survived the assault, or that she presents to-day a compact
individuality, that commands the sympathy and respect of most of the
nations of the earth. Heaven, itself, must have inspired the vigor,
truth and heroism which, through a lapse of seven hundred years, have
battled for the right against the most fearful odds, and that now arms
her, on both sides of the Atlantic, with the mighty resolve which cannot
fail to result in her final redemption from the chains of the oppressor.
Her vitality in this connection has scarcely a parallel in the history
of the past; from the fact, that she has been subjected to a twofold
persecution--that of semi-barbarism, and that of civilization also.
The atrocities of the hybrid freebooters that invaded her shores in the
twelfth century, were not more revolting than those which characterized
her rulers six hundred years subsequently, when they were engaged
in founding educational institutions, and printing whole cargoes of
ten-penny Bibles, for the purpose of pandering to the whims of the age,
and doing honor to the spirit of the royal Pacha who moulded his
creed to his lusts, and left his rottenness a loathsome legacy to his
successors. Yes, the wonder is, that she has survived all this, and,
instead of falling into the vortex prepared for her, now stands with her
uplifted arm, awaiting the propitious moment, when she can deal a final
and irresistible blow to the ingrate that, in days of yore, she had
warmed into intellectual life on her own hearthstone.
If there had been anything in the climate, soil, people or geographical
position of Ireland, to operate against her prosperity as a nation,
or calculated to retard her progress in any connection whatever, there
might be some misgivings in relation to the causes of her poverty and
degradation; but as the most reliable political economists, and
even those unfriendly to the Irish name and race, admit that no such
drawbacks exist, we look, of course, to the system of government to
which the country has been so long subjected, as the source of all the
evils that have so cruelly and pertinaciously beset it. McCollough,
Wakefield, Foster, and other English writers, bear the highest testimony
to the richness of its soil, the salubrity of its air, and its other
great natural advantages. Its harbors, bays, lakes and rivers are among
the finest in the world, while its neglected mineral wealth is presumed
to be all but inexhaustible. In addition to this, it is stated by
Dr. Forbes--one of the Court physicians, who had made a tour of the
kingdom--that the inhabitants are of a character the most industrious,
and bear up under the oppressive system which weighs upon them in a
manner the most heroic. It is to opinions from such sources as these we
point, with every degree of confidence, as they cannot be charged with
being prejudiced in our favor; and were we inclined to be more diffuse
upon the subject, we might quote author after author, and all of English
proclivities too, who bear evidence to the suggestive character of the
elements of material wealth which we possess in every relation, and
which, through the disastrous policy pursued towards us from generation
to generation, have been paralyzed and prostituted to an extent that
almost defies comprehension.
Why did England violate a solemn pledge, given in 1782, to the effect,
that she relinquished all claim to interfere in the management of the
local affairs of Ireland, and conceded to the people of that country the
undoubted and inalienable right of conducting their own internal
affairs upon any basis they thought proper? After having experienced the
beneficial results of this policy upon the sister kingdom for a space
of eighteen years, why did she revoke the act establishing it, and
force the hated Union upon a people, a majority of whom were not free to
express an opinion upon the subject, or to resist a measure thrust upon
them through perjury, intimidation, bribery and fraud? The reason has
long been quite obvious to the world--the manufacturing interests and
the trade and commerce of Ireland have ever been and must ever remain
antagonistic to those of England. This fact has always influenced the
legislation of the latter country, and brought it to bear heavily and
unjustly upon almost every Irish project that has been undertaken for
the last three hundred years. When any particular Irish manufacture
was found to interfere with the interests of a similar one in England,
instantly devices were set on foot by the enemy to crush it, or so
embarrass it that its destruction could not fail to follow. It was
banned and taxed out of the market until it died. In this way, the silk,
glass and woolen manufactures of the country were destroyed; the latter
having so injured the English manufacturers in the time of William the
Third, that they presented a memorial to this dignified and affectionate
son-in-law of James, praying that the manufacture in Ireland might be
suppressed, as it was interfering with the success of the woolen trade
in England; which prayer the king entertained favorably, and promised
to grant. In this way, from the earliest days of the invasion, the
interests of Ireland have been trodden under the feet of the oppressor;
while, in a religious point of view, her people have been held for
generations in the most frightful bondage, and constrained to contribute
to the maintenance of a Church which nineteen-twentieths of them
believed to be heretical, and which had been thrust upon them in
violation of every right, human and divine.
Now, however, it is brightening up on the verge of the horizon, and,
like chickens, England’s untold acts of infamy and oppression, in
regard to Ireland, are coming home to roost. In every city and hamlet,
throughout the great Republic of the United States, and in every town
and village in Ireland, as well as throughout the rural districts, there
exists a regiment or detachment of the vast army of the Irish Republic.
No matter how invisible the force may be at any particular point, yet
there it exists, awaiting the signal to pounce upon the enemy, and
avenge the wrongs of ages; each member of it feeling, within his heart
of hearts, that those injuries have reached him individually, and that,
without the opportunity of wiping them out, even at the expense of the
last drop of his heart’s blood, the conquest, when achieved, would be
almost worthless in his eyes. It is with this element that England, at
the present juncture, has to deal at home and abroad; and now that the
avalanche, after rolling down the steep of seven successive centuries,
has accumulated in magnitude and force most tremendously, and
sufficiently to overcome every obstacle that happens to lie in its
path, ere long we shall find it leaping in thunder upon the plain, and
overwhelming those who so long mocked at its approach, and who now so
vainly attempt to stay its resistless course.
RIDGEWAY
AN HISTORICAL ROMANCE OF THE FENIAN INVASION OF CANADA.
CHAPTER I.
On a gloomy evening in the early part of May, 1866, and while astute
politicians were struck with the formidable aspect of Fenianism in both
hemispheres, a solitary soldier, in the muddy, red jacket of a private
in the English army, might be seen hastily wending his way across a
bridge which led from one of the most important strongholds in Canada,
to a town of considerable pretensions, that lay directly opposite, and
to which he was now bending his steps. Although the weather, from the
season of the year, might be presumed to be somewhat genial, yet it
was raw and gusty; and as the pedestrian was without an overcoat, the
uncomfortable and antagonistic shrug of his shoulders, as the chill,
fitful blast swept past him, was quite discernible to any eye that
happened to catch his figure at the period. Soon, however, he left
the bridge and river behind him, and, stepping on terra firma, turned
hastily down one of the unpretending streets of the town, and entered a
restaurant, out of the drinking saloon of which, several narrow passages
led to small convivial apartments, or rather compartments, in which the
landlord, or “mine host” professed to work culinary miracles, of every
possible shade, in the interest of his patrons. The establishment,
although not the most fashionable in the place, was still regarded
as respectable, and was, consequently, the frequent resort of many
well-to-do tradesmen, and others, who, after the cares of the day had
been laid by, generally repaired thither to slake their thirst with a
flowing tankard, or indulge in “a stew,” a quiet game of billiards or
a cigar, as the case might be. From the description of the various
pictures which adorned or decorated the bar-room, the nationality of the
proprietor was easily discerned. Just over a goodly and shining away of
handsome mirrors that, inside the counter, reflected a maze of graceful
bottles, cut glass and various ornaments appropriate to the profession,
hung a large map of Ireland, very beautifully gotten up: while on either
side of it, a neat, gilt frame, enclosing a most excellent likeness of
Daniel O’Connell and Robert Emmet, respectively, harmonized in every
relation with the map itself. Around the walls of the room, and
throughout the whole establishment, kindred prints and paintings were
somewhat profusely scattered; presenting unmistakable evidences, that
the proprietor hailed from the Emerald Isle, and had no inclination,
whatever, to disguise the fact from either his customers or the world.
At the period that the soldier entered the premises, there were some
half dozen persons seated in the bar; each discussing his favorite
beverage or enjoying his peculiar “weed.” Among these there was one
individual, however, whose appearance was singularly striking, and who
was taking part in the general conversation with an easy flippancy
and keenness of observation that showed he was a person of no ordinary
information or experience. There was something about him, nevertheless,
that, notwithstanding all his efforts to be attractive, was strangely
repellent. His small, grey eyes, thin, blue lips and hooked nose, gave
an expression to his countenance which was far from prepossessing; while
his soft, low, purring chuckle of a laugh, whenever he made a point
in his favor through some facile observation that interfered with the
deductions of those around him, evoked the idea, that he was some huge,
human mouser that was congratulating himself on having disposed of some
unfortunate and unsuspecting canary. He was, withal, shapely, and had
an air of refinement about him, the most decided, and, quite beyond the
ordinary run of saloon habitues. His complexion though somewhat dark and
out of keeping with the color of his eyes, was yet pure; while his teeth
were remarkably white and brilliant, and apparently as sharp as lancets.
In height he was about five feet ten inches; and in age, somewhere in
the vicinity of thirty. He was dressed in plain gray clothes; and,
from all one might gather from his external appearance, was a person in
comfortable circumstances. He was unknown not only to “mine host,” but
to every one present; having, as he informed them in the ordinary flow
of conversation, but just arrived in town, where he had business to
transact which might detain him for a few days, or possibly longer. This
information had been volunteered before the arrival of the soldier;
so that when the latter had taken his seat, he was literally a greater
stranger as to the name or intentions of the hook-nosed gentleman than
any one present--the former having been communicated to the landlord
as Philip Greaves, and the latter, as already intimated, quite freely
disclosed during the natural flow of the conversation in which he had
taken and still took part.
Perhaps there were no two beings on earth so dissimilar in every
relation, as were he and the red coat who now ensconsed himself in one
of the chairs, and accepted the invitation to take a friendly glass with
the stranger. He, humble as the rank he bore in the service, was a young
man of most prepossessing appearance and excellent address. His figure,
although slight, was beautifully symmetrical and finely knit. In stature
he was about five feet eleven inches, and was apparently as agile as a
leopard. The whole volume of his heart was laid open in his broad, manly
brow and clear dark eyes; and his laughter rang out now and then, at
the brilliant wit or searching sarcasm of his neighbor, in such pure and
joyous tones, as to be infectious even amongst those who were paying
but little attention to what had provoked it. He could not have numbered
more than twenty-five or twenty-six summers; and it was almost painful,
in the presence of such manly beauty and so light a heart, to dwell
on the fact, that the possessor of both, was in absolute slavery, how
carelessly soever he wore his shackles. While both these individuals
differed the one from the other to the extent already mentioned, the
proprietor of the saloon, in turn, presented an appearance as dissimilar
to that of either of his customers as did that of the one to the other.
He was a man of herculean proportions, and blessed with as commonplace
features as you could find in a day’s walk. Every fibre of his frame
bespoke the most gigantic strength, while his full, round face glowed
with the most refreshing health, and presented at the same time as
stolid an expression as could well be imagined in connection with his
vocation. Still, there was something in his keen, gray eye and about his
mouth, that bid you beware of taking the book by the cover; while an odd
word of the conversation that now and then reached his ear, called up a
strange expression of intelligence which swept across his features
with the speed of light, and then left them as quiescent and apparently
unintellectual as before. This individual whom we shall name Thomas
O’Brien, or Big Tom, as his friends were wont to call him, although
never regarded as being over brilliant, there were those who averred
that he not only possessed a fund of good, common sense, but who
stated further, that he was a man of great influence not only among the
soldiers in the fort, but among many of his countrymen both in town and
out of it. Tom spoke very slowly and always in an oracular manner; nor
were his movements behind his bar of a very demonstrative character;
as no press of custom, whatever, seemed to possess the power of
accelerating his motions or inducing him to exceed the steady formula
that he appeared to have adopted in relation to serving his customers;
still he possessed the jewel of honesty and urbanity as an offset to
all this; and, like most large men, was, on the whole, of a kind and
excellent temper. When seen standing by the river or in any elevated
position, he conveyed the idea of a sort of human lighthouse, or a
chimney on fire, so fiercely red was the tremendous shock of hair that
covered his towering head. He was still a young man, and, like the
soldier, unmarried; although the heart of the latter had gone forth and
was in the safe keeping of a charming young cousin of “mine host,” who
had emigrated to America some time previously, and who now resided with
her friends in the city of Buffalo. Tom had preceded his relatives by
some years, and had sojourned, up to the period of their landing, in
the United States also; but taking a sudden notion, as it would seem,
he pulled up his stakes, and, like other adventurers, settled down,
apparently haphazard, in the town in which he now lived; and where he
had already been upwards of two years; having bought out the “Sign of
the Harp,” as we shall call it, with all its appointments, from another
Son of the Sod, who had made up his mind to go West.
Before the soldier, whom we shall name Nicholas, or Nick Barry, had
finished his glass, Greaves entered into conversation with him in
relation to the strength of the fort, and the nationality of the
regiment that garrisoned it; observing, at the same time, that, of
course, as usual, a fair sprinkling from the Emerald Isle was to be
found among them.
“Yes,” said Barry, “go where you may throughout the empire, and whenever
you meet a red coat you will be right in four cases out of six in
putting it down as belonging to an Irishman; that is, provided its
precise color and texture are like mine; but you would not be so safe
in applying the same rule wherever you chanced to encounter the clear,
bright flash of the genuine scarlet.”
“And why?” returned Greaves, with an inquiring air which seemed to
be quite at sea upon the subject; although up to that moment, his
conversation was such as to lead one to infer that he could scarcely be
in the dark upon a subject so generally understood.
“Because,” said Nick, “the Irish are only fit to do the fighting; and
that’s always done, you know, by the rank and file.”
This reply, although not over satisfactory to the interrogator, seemed
to afford infinite amusement to Big Tom, who, with a perfect sledge
hammer of a laugh, exclaimed when Barry had finished:
“Well done Nick, and the divil a betther could it be said if I said it
myself.”
This unusual and lively demonstration on the part of O’Brien, seemed
to attract the notice of Greaves, who, with the utmost good humor,
observed, while glancing in the direction of the bar:
“From Ireland, too, I’ll bet my head!”
“Seven miles out of it,” returned Tom with a slight twinkle of his eye,
“and, of coorse, a gintleman so larned as you will be able to tell where
that is.”
“Well, for the life of me,” observed Greaves, “I cannot divine what you
are at, with your ‘seven miles out,’ but as I’m an Englishman, I suppose
that accounts for it.”
“He means by what he has said,” interrupted Barry, “that he is from
Connaught, which, for some reason or other, is regarded as seven miles
out of Ireland.”
“For some raison or other did you say,” returned Tom. “Faith and its
raison enough there is for that same; for it was to Connaught that
Cromwell and the rest of the blaggards banished or confined the Irish
hayros that gave the Sassenach such throuble in oulden times, and that’s
the raison, you know, that the sayin, ‘to h--l or Connaught,’ first
got a futtin in the world, and that Connaught is regarded as bein seven
miles out, by the people who know the ins and outs of it.”
This was delivered in a quiet, oracular manner from which there was
no appeal; so the conversation continued to flow in a kindred
channel--Barry observing that the regiments then stationed in Canada
were largely _adulterated_, as he humorously termed it, with the Irish
element, which, during such times of commotion, was considered by
England safer abroad than at home.
“How is that?” said Greaves, casting a searching glance towards the
speaker. “I should fancy that the British soldier was safe, and true to
the crown whether at home or abroad; although I am free to confess, that
the Irish, as a nation, have much to complain of.”
“And how can you separate the man from the nation; and if a people are
oppressed and wronged as a whole, are they not oppressed and wronged
individually?” replied O’Brien.
“The inference is reasonable,” returned the other; “but as England seems
sensible that something ought to be done for the amelioration of the
condition of Ireland no doubt the two nations will soon settle down in
the bonds of amity and love, and, in a better state of things, forget
all their bickerings and heartburnings.”
“There was a payriod,” retorted Tom, “when England could have done
somethin to appase Ireland, but that payriod is past and gone forever!
Durin the airly days of O’Connell, the repale of the Union and the
abolition of the Church Establishment would have worked merricles. These
measures would have done away with absenteeism, an unjust and gallin
taxation, and would have given Ireland the conthrol, in some degree at
laste, of her own local affairs. If the Act of 1782 previntin England
from intherfarin in any degree in those affairs was revived, it would
have given the Irish a chance to build up their manufactures and recruit
their ruined thrade and commerce. It would have recalled the landlord to
his estates, from forrin parts, and re-inthroduced a native parliament
that understood the wants and wishes of the people, and that was
intherested in carryin them out, and givin the masses an opportunity of
developin their resources and turnin their soil to account, that is
acre for acre more fertile than that of England, to-day. It would have
gathered home from the four winds of the earth the scatthered wealth
that has followed the absentee to distant lands and made Dublin and Cork
and every city in the counthry alive with min and wimmin, that were able
to pathronise Irish manufactures, aye, and pay for them too. All this it
would have done and a thousand times more; but as I have already said,
the chance has been thrown away by England, never to be recovered by
her durin _secula seculorum_; for now the light of American freedom
has fallen upon Ireland, and, pointed out what ought to be her thrue
standin, and the insufficiency of what she once would have been
satisfied with. In the broad effulgence of its glory, the people of
Ireland now persave that so if long as they attached any importance to
the mere accident of birth, or bent the knee to hereditary monarchy,
they were but walking in the valley and shadow of death. The great moral
spectacle of American freedom built upon the broad and imperishable
basis of the voluntary and intelligent consint of a whole people, has so
upset their household gods and desthroyed the prestige of kingcraft
in their eyes, that they now look forward to the total overthrow of
monarchical institutions in their midst, and the establishment, on their
shores, of a Republic in every particular the counterpart of that which
now commands the admiration of the world, across the lines there, and
which is gradually sappin the foundation of British rule on this side of
the lakes, as well as litherally swallowin us up unknownst to ourselves.
This is how the case stands now; so that we can aisily persave, that
England has lost the power and opportunity of conciliatin the Irish
race; bekase they have no longer a feelin or sintiment in common with
her.”
These observations, which were made with a degree of ease and eloquence
regarded as totally foreign to Tom, actually electrified his hearers,
and drew a compliment from Greaves; while Barry, who knew a good deal
of him, was so astonished at his sudden and earnest volubility, he could
not resist the temptation of assuring him that he was an honor to
his country, if not to humanity at large. The other three or four
individuals present joined in the sentiment, so that, for the time
being, O’Brien was no ordinary personage in their minds, while a quiet
wink from one to the other seemed to place it beyond a shadow of doubt,
that, in their estimation, Big Tom knew more than he ever got credit
for.
When the conversation again began to flow freely, the gentleman, with
the hooked nose, turned it imperceptibly upon Fenianism, and the rumored
intention of the Organization, in the United States, to make a descent
upon Canada at no distant day. At this point, O’Brien put in a word
or two, to the effect, that he was not so sure of the propriety of the
Brotherhood invading the Province, as its inhabitants were not in any
way answerable for the wrongs which had been inflicted by England upon
Ireland. Here Barry observed, that although he was not competent to
speak on the matter, and had no desire to endorse or countenance such an
invasion, he regarded a Fenian attack upon Canada fully as justifiable
as an assault of the same character upon England, or any other portion
of her majesty’s dominions. The empire, he contended, was a unit and
no part of it could be assailed, that did not possess, in relation to
Ireland, just as inoffensive people as the Canadians were. Fenianism,
he presumed, did not pretend to make war upon individuals, but upon a
government, in any or all of its ramifications, that was alleged to be
oppressive and an enemy to civil and religious freedom; and so long as
any people chose to endorse the acts of such a government by defending
them, and adhering to the flag under which they were said to have been
committed, so long were they amenable to the party who assumed to be
aggrieved in the premises, as aiders and abettors of the offence.
This position was so reasonable and so logical that there was but little
room for dispute upon the subject. And hence the absurdity of certain
squeamish gentlemen who, before and since the invasion of 1866, have
denounced a descent upon Canada as not so justifiable as an attack upon
the more central parts of the empire, from the assumed fact, that the
Canadians are in no way chargeable with the wrongs inflicted by the
British Government upon Ireland. Such an argument to a military man, or
astute politician, would be the very height of absurdity. The outworks
are always stormed and taken before the citadel falls; nor are those
who occupy or defend them regarded with any personal ill feeling by
the assailing party, and are only enemies in so far as they choose to
espouse the cause and defend, at the point of the sword, the acts and
existence of a government held to be corrupt and oppressive. From the
difference in population and other circumstances, there are a greater
number of inoffensive persons in England, in relation to Irish
grievances, than there are in Canada; so that, adopting the very style
of argument used by those gingerly or subsidized cavillers, there are
more causes for justifying a descent, at any time, upon the latter
than upon the former country. The truth is, the masses or people of any
country are, for the most part, inoffensive on the whole, and are merely
wielded by governments with a view to maintaining a power for good or
evil, having in many cases themselves no very clear idea of the grounds
upon which the field may have been taken; and laying down their arms
at a moment’s notice, without being concerned as to the expediency
or justice of a cessation of hostilities. In truth, even amid armies
thundering down upon each other at the word of command, there are
necessarily thousands of unoffending persons who entertain not a single
feeling of animosity against their opponents individually, and who are
but simply the exponents of an idea that their rulers deem necessary to
maintain at the point of the bayonet; although they themselves may not
sympathize with it to any extent whatever. So that it is apparent, that
the invasion of Canada was never undertaken with a view to despoiling or
injuring the people _per se_ of that country; but for the simple purpose
of making a descent upon a point of the British empire most accessible
to the arms of the Republic of Ireland on this continent, in the hope
of establishing a basis that would enable Irish Nationalists to operate
successfully against a government that had for seven hundred years
subjected their country, name and race, to every injustice and
persecution known to the history of crime. Such are the contingencies
of war, that the innocent are dragged into the vortex by the guilty,
and that those who choose to adopt a flag and are found armed in its
defence, are constructively the enemies of the invaders, and according
to the usages of all nations amenable in the field for the conduct of
their rulers. Whatever may be said to the contrary, then, by English
sympathizers or weak-kneed patriots, so long as Canada is a portion of
the British empire, so long is she a legitimate point of attack for the
enemies of that empire, and no description of special pleading can make
it otherwise. And here we would advise the people of the New Dominion to
look into this matter and weigh the consequences of being influenced
by any seeming or real hostile attitude to the government of the United
States, or the mighty hosts which are now gathering in battle array in
the cause of Irish freedom. England is fallen! Her power and prestige
are gone forever! The star of Irish liberty has already emerged from the
clouds that have so long lain piled up along the horizon of the land of
the enslaved Celt, and no power on earth can obscure its growing
Lustre, until it blazes forth in the full meridian, splendor of Irish
nationality and independence! Let our neighbors, therefore, we say, not
be betrayed into raising a puny arm against the tremendous force
that cannot fail to be exerted ere long in this connection, or their
redemption from the British yoke and their consequent absorption by the
great American Commonwealth may be reddened with more blood than the
circumstances of the case really require.
When Barry had finished his few observations on this topic, Greaves,
in further pursuance of the subject, and with the apparent view of
gathering the tone of Canadian opinion upon it, observed, that if all
the Irish population of the Provinces were as true to the sentiment of
the independence of their country, as O’Brien and his military friend,
there might be some reason for apprehending that the intended invasion
of the Canadas by the Fenian organization of the United States, would
tend to more alarming results to England than were anticipated by the
friends of that country; remarking, in addition, that the Irish element
must be very large in her majesty’s Canadian possessions, if one might
judge from the recent St. Patrick’s Day demonstration throughout them,
and the various St. Patrick’s Societies to be found scattered from one
end of the colony to the other; all of which were, no doubt, more or
less tinged with opinions and aspirations similar to those held by the
two individuals who had just spoken.
“Oh, yes,” rejoined Big Tom, “there are St. Patrick Societies in
abundance, but let me inform you, that instead of bein national
associations, as they purport to be, they are the very sthrongholds of
England in this country, and, with scarce an exception, the deadliest
opponents to the very indepindence that we have benn jist spakin about.
For the most part, they are filled chock full of a pack of miserable
toadies to the governmint, which manages to gather into them a pack of
rottin, ladin Irishmin who can make speeches, dhrink ‘the day and all
who honor it,’ sing ‘God save the Queen,’ and talk English blatherskite
about the glory of the impire, the army and navy, and everythin else in
the world save and except the wrongs of poor, ould Ireland, and the way
to redhress them. Why, sir, barrin a word dhropped here and there, you’d
think it was in an Orange Lodge you were, if you happened to step in on
one of those societies while engaged in celebrating, as they call it,
the anniversary of their pathron Saint; for it’s nothin you’d hear but
‘Rule Britannia,’ ‘The Red, White and Blue,’ and kindhered sintiments,
and if a chap did happen to give ‘The harp that wanst,’ why, its the
sweet, soft air they’d be admirin, and the poethry of Tom Moore, rather
than the low wail for vingeance that was smothered in the heart of the
song itself. What could you expect from sich a St Patrick’s Society as
that of Toronto, with a gintleman at its head with the freedom of an
English city in his breeches pocket, and a desire to emulate English
statesmen and English institutions in his heart! Look, also, at the able
and larned Irishman who stands at the head of the University of that
same methropolis of the West, and whose eloquence so mystifies his
faithlessness to Ireland as to confuse you, and almost lade you captive,
until, on cooler deliberation, you find that his response to ‘the toast
of the evenin,’ is naither more nor less than a superb burst of oratory,
robed in green and goold, but with a heart as purely English as that
which throbbed within the breast of the renegade Wellington or the late
wily Lord Palmerston. Oh, no! the St. Patrick Societies of America, and
of every other portion of the globe, are simply whited sepulchres, or
false beacons erected or fosthered by the English governmint to mislade
the unsuspectin portions of our race from the allagiance due to their
own counthry, by studiously inculcatin sintimints and ideas favorable
to English supremacy, which can be paraded before the world as the thrue
expression of the Irish people, in relation to the red that governs
them, and their willinness to remain as they are, part and parcel of the
impire. Sich min as the two I have jist mintioned do more to perpetuate
the thraldom of our country than the most unfrindly and subtle statesman
that exists on the other side of the Atlantic to-day; bekase they are
powerful inemies, by their example in our own camp, and bekase there are
those amongst us who are aisily led, and who consequintly fall a victim
to their influence and example.”
“Sure, we all know, that the Scotch thricksther at the head of the
govermint here, could do but little if it was not for such people
as Ogle R., George. L., Darcy and ‘the docther,’ as he is called in
Toronto; and thus it is, that although the three Toronto gintlemen that
I now name, are, I honestly believe, deservedly respected and esteemed
in every other relation of life, they belong body and sowl to the
English sintimint of the counthry; and if the most favorable opportunity
was offered them to-morrow, would never raise a helpin hand to place the
green above the red. But, as this is dhry work, and as I have not had
sich a bout at it since I opened here, come, one and all, and let us
wet our whistles, for I see you have jist made spy-glasses of your
tumblers.”