Although delivered in a style somewhat uncouth, there was a great deal
of truth and native eloquence about these observations of O’Brien. There
is no doubt but the St. Patrick Societies of this continent, and perhaps
of the world, are characterized, in no ordinary degree, by the spirit
and design to which he alluded. In so far as those belonging to the
British empire are concerned, he was right, almost without an exception;
for it must be admitted, that these societies are, for the most part,
filled with pseudo patriots, who discard all revolutionary theories, and
are of the opinion, that the independence of their country, if they
ever cast a glance in that direction, ought to be achieved in the most
lady-like manner, and with “white kids.” Look, for instance, at some of
the members of these associations and kindred bodies in New York and
in various other parts of the Union, and analyze the spirit which finds
expression in their observance of the anniversary of Ireland’s tutelar
Saint. From the moment that the cloth is removed, until the last of the
company gyrates out of the room to his carriage, we have nothing but
a war of eloquence between rival politicians who are candidates for
municipal or other lucrative honors, or a subtle bid for Irish support
through some adroit manoeuvre, by which an adversary is, for the time
being, thrown into the shade. To be sure, Mr. Richard This or Mr. John
That, may occasionally give us a taste of his research and learning,
in a re-hash from the “Annals of the Four Masters,” or from some of the
leading periodicals of the day; and we may, in addition, be treated
to an _original_ poem touching Ireland from some of the various
up-hill-workers of the Muses, with whom the great mercantile centre
abounds; but as to anything practical relative to the amelioration of
the wretched condition of the country in whose name they assemble upon
such occasions, that is simply out of the question; all parties, as a
general thing, satisfying themselves with a hacknied and stereotyped
enumeration of her wrongs, and the usual bland denunciations of her
oppressors.
And here we give an illustration of St. Patrick Societies under their
most patriotic aspect; for the power of speech which characterizes, this
great Commonwealth, and our total immunity from English persecution,
enable the spirit which actuates these societies, beneath the skull and
cross bones of St. George, to be a little more patriotic here, in its
language at least, than it dares to be in any portion of the dominions
of England. Still, its positive antagonism to Irish independence, under
the British flag, is scarcely more reprehensible than its negative
influence in the same direction under the Stars and Stripes; so that
Ireland, suffering at their hands alike, might with every degree of
justice place them in the same category.
After all, it is the masses that free a nation, and thank God for it.
A leader may in vain look for a host to follow him, but a host never in
vain for a leader, and hence the defection of a few prominent men from
the great, Irish national idea which now so moves this continent, and
commands the attention of the world, amounts to but little save sorrow
at the stigma it casts upon our race. The rank and file of our people
are true to the spirit that fired the O’Neill’s and the Geraldines of
old; and this being the case, the freedom of Ireland is secured beyond
any possible contingency--England is brought to bay at home and abroad.
The mighty embodiments of Irish power and patriotism, yclept Fenianism,
stalks forth through the empire with an uplifted glaive in its hand, and
no one can say how soon or where the swift stroke of destruction shall
fall. Its presence fills with gloomy alarm every nook and corner of
the land, and paralyzes all the energies of the oppressor. Through its
overwhelming influence, the most cherished institutions of the usurper
are being overthrown, and the crown and mace all but converted into
baubles. It has destroyed the power and prestige of a hereditary
aristocracy, and thrown, in a measure, the whole government of the land
into the hands of Commoners. The privileged classes, no longer oracular,
recede before it, and a great democratic idea occupies the ground upon
which they stood--in short, illuminated and impelled by the glorious
spirit and impulses which moved the immortal founders of this grand
Republic of the West, it has gone forth to avenge and to conquer, and
to build up upon the shores of the Old World such a grateful monument
to the genius of American freedom, as shall, from its lofty summit,
pour its radiance over the darkest valleys of Central Europe, until the
frozen grasp of despotism yields to its magic touch and the chains
shall fall from the bleeding limbs of millions, who on emerging from the
valley and shadow of death into the pure sunlight of liberty, shall sing
paeans in honor of the great American people who first taught humanity
to the nations of the earth.
When all present had done justice to O’Brien’s proffered “treat,” and
when Greaves seemed to be moved to a friendly view of Irish nationality,
in a gap in some desultory conversation that happened to occur casually,
this latter worthy asked whether he could be accommodated with a room at
“The Harp,” while he remained in town, as he was a stranger in a great
measure, and having accidentally, as he said, made the acquaintance
of one he believed to be an agreeable landlord. Tom replied in the
affirmative; for, in connection with the saloon business, he kept a
few boarders and had, besides, ample accommodation for more than one
occasional guest. Soon then, Greaves, who was to send the following
morning to the railroad station for his luggage, picked up a small
traveling bag by his side, asked to be shown to his room, as he
professed to be somewhat tired, and bidding the company “good night,”
while shaking hands with Barry, disappeared with Tom down the long
passage which led to his sleeping apartment on the floor above.
When O’Brien returned to the bar, half a dozen more of his usual
customers had dropped in to exchange a kindly word with him, and taste
his newest “on tap.” Before reaching the counter, however, and just as
he was passing Barry, he whispered something in the ear of the latter,
which seemed to arrest his attention, and to which he appeared to answer
with a significant nod and peculiar expression of countenance. Barry
being off duty, and having received permission to remain in town all
night, paid no regard to the nine o’clock drums and fifes audible from
the garrison; and although quite an abstemious young fellow, he made
himself sufficiently social with the new comers, most of whom were
acquaintances. The remainder of the evening was passed in the usual
bar-room style; although the conversation for the most part, turned upon
the wrongs of Ireland and the mode of redressing them. Now that Greaves
had retired, there appeared to be less restraint upon the few who had
been a witness of the observations he had made upon the subject, for
they one and all seemed to flow into the common channel of sympathy, so
largely occupied by O’Brien in this connection. In addition, one of them
ventured to remark, that although Greaves pretended to be an Englishman,
he was evidently no such thing; for on more than one occasion, he gave
utterance to expressions that were not only purely Irish, but tinged
with a genuine Irish accent and native peculiarity, that no mere
accident could account for, and which was, without doubt, the genuine
thing itself peeping out at the elbows of a foreign dress. This idea
seemed to find favor with O’Brien, although Barry was not impressed
with its correctness, from the fact, no doubt, of his constant
intercommunication with the English and Irish element that was so
jumbled up in his company.
As it became later, the party began to drop off, until about twelve
o’clock, up went the shutters and round went the heavy key in the
bar-room door--all having disappeared at the latter period, save Barry
and one of his most intimate friends who seemed loath to leave, and
inclined to take another glass. No sooner then, were the doors and
windows securely fastened, and the gas extinguished, than both these
parties accompanied by Tom with a bed-room lamp in his hand, proceeded
to a small and comfortable apartment which was sacred to the foot of
every individual who was not a tried friend of O’Brien. Here all three
seated themselves beside a comfortable coal fire that burned brightly in
the grate: when Tom, on extinguishing the lamp, after having lit the jet
of gas that hung in the centre of the room, exclaimed:--
“Nick, my name’s not Tom O’Brien, or we have got the divil
up-stairs!--but what he’s up to it’s hard to say: although I thought it
was jist as well to let him take up his quarthers here, seem that I’ll
be able to keep an eye on him--now that the times are becomin sarious.”
“Certainly,” replied Barry, “his appearance is far from prepossessing,
but you know, Tom, it’s not always safe to judge a man by this
criterion.”
“That’s thrue,” returned the other, “but didn’t you hear the fella how
he wanted to sift you about the Irish sintiment of the garrison, as well
as lade us out upon the feelins of the Irish in gineral throughout the
Province?”
“I did, of course,” answered Nick, “but really thought that the
gentleman, being a stranger, was simply asking for information’s sake
only, and had no ulterior object in view.”
“I agree with you, O’Brien,” interrupted the third party, who was named
Burk, and who had been in the saloon during the period Greaves was
present, “there can be nothing good in so cunning a face; but what is
the real news to-night, and have you heard from New York or Buffalo?”
“I have harde from both places,” returned Tom, “and everythin looks
well; but how are things here, and are you all prepared to assist the
invading army when they cross the lines; and what number of men can we
fairly count upon?”
“It has, I believe, been ascertained beyond a shadow of doubt,” replied
Burk, “that there are upwards of one hundred thousand men throughout the
Provinces who would at once rush to arms if they found the flag of the
Irish Republic firmly planted at any one point within our borders; while
it is known or believed, that more than twice that number would follow
in their wake, if Toronto was once in the hands of the invaders. In
fact, Toronto and Montreal once taken, the day is ours, for we should
have the French almost to a man, no matter what Monsieur George Etienne
or Master John Alexander may say to the contrary. Canada is evidently
tired of British rule, and is only kept from kicking over the traces
by a pack of government officials who hold the purse strings, and a
subsidized press that destroys the homogeneity of the people, by making
them doubt each other, and impressing every man disaffected to the
Crown, with the idea that every other individual Colonist, or nearly
so, is opposed to him. In this way, the sentiment of independence
which underlies the nine tenths of our population is obstructed and
embarrassed, and one man prompted to look with distrust upon another,
although both may entertain precisely the same sentiments in relation
to the desirability of throwing off the British yoke. As to how the army
stands, Nick here can tell you more about that than I can.”
“The army,” said Barry, “is just as you might expect it to be. The Irish
who compose it in part, are, as you know, not British soldiers from
choice, but from necessity. They had no resource between starvation and
a red coat; so that their oath of allegiance to the English Crown may be
said to have been exacted from them under pain of death. For ages, their
country had been devastated and plundered by the power that now holds
them in special thrall, and the means of existence wrested from them
through the inhuman exactions of a tyrannical government. Their name and
race had been banned, their humble homesteads razed to the ground, and
their families scattered, naked and hungry, throughout the length and
breadth of the land, or exiled to foreign shores. The stranger had
stolen in on their hearthstone, robbed them of their lands, goods and
chattles, usurped their powers of local legislation, and then closed
every door to preferment against them, leaving them without a hope or a
crust for the future, on their own shores. Under this horrible pressure,
thousands of them necessarily gave way and fell victims to those gaunt
recruiting sergeants of the government--Hunger and Rags. Unable to earn
wherewithal to keep body and soul together at their own doors, or within
their own borders, and perceiving that the commerce, the manufactures
and all the native resource of their country were crushed to the
earth, beneath the relentless heel of the oppressor, they fell into
the pit-fall dug for them by an accursed perjurer and traitor, and,
in obedience to the first law of nature, assumed her livery, and swore
allegiance to her flag. But think you that either God or man attaches
the slightest importance to an oath exacted under such circumstances?
Here am I, Nick Barry, now in the service of the usurper, and driven
into it with tears in my eyes and rebellion in my heart, and do you
suppose that I regard my oath as other than an additional incentive to
plot the downfall of the infamous tyrant and robber who hounded me
into swallowing it, and who, to-day, keeps the girl I love out of her
mother’s property, that, on a mere technicality, was laid hold of, and
thrown into chancery, by a villainous and traitorous relative, long in
the secret service of the government at home, when he found the poor,
young thing an orphan, and without a wealthy friend in the world to
back her, and that too, upon a claim that hadn’t a leg to stand upon, as
everybody knew? My soldier-life, and his continued absence in England,
prevented my meeting the villain before he died; but as he has left the
suit to his son, who, I learn, is no better than he was himself, and is
also a great hanger on about the Castle of Dublin, I am in hopes of one
day or other meeting this same gentleman, who purports to represent the
old villain in this case, when, no matter how the chancery suit may go,
I shall hold him to a severe reckoning for the injustice and
hardships to which she has been so long subjected through their joint
instrumentality. But why should she complain any more than Tom there,
whose father’s side of the house, once powerful and wealthy, in the
west of Ireland, have been all but beggared through the same infamous
government, and their accursed agents, who had plundered them of every
acre they possessed, and exiled the bravest and best of them to these
distant shores?”
These few observations were made with an earnestness and vehemence that
showed how fierce and hostile the blood that boiled in the veins of
the speaker. Nor was there any appeal from the inexorable logic of
his remarks. From the inhuman manner in which England has, for
seven centuries preyed upon the vitals of Ireland, and plundered and
expatriated her children, the latter are morally absolved from all
allegiance or fidelity to her, no matter what the circumstances of
their plighted faith. No man should be bound by oaths or obligations,
to maintain the supremacy or defend the interests of a tyrant, exacted
under an inhuman pressure or in the presence of such an alternative
as the poor Irish recruit is subject to, namely, that of enlisting or
starving. How can any Irish soldier, possessed of a single spark of
pride or patriotism, and wearing the queen of England’s livery to-day,
be other than the deadly enemy of the representative of a people who
have laid his country waste, murdered his kindred and left him and
millions of his race without a roof to cover them on their own native
shores? How can he gaze with any degree of enthusiasm or pleasure upon
the blood-stained rag that waved over Mullaghmast, that was perjured at
Limerick, and that endorsed with its baleful glare all the demoniacal
atrocities of the Penal Laws? “Resistance to tyrants is obedience to
God”--therefore the children of Ireland who have been so long trodden in
the dust under the feet of an usurper, are but obeying the dictates of
heaven and of humanity, when, by every means within the boundaries of
civilization, they endeavor to encompass not only their own redemption
from the bonds of the oppressor, but the total destruction of his power
in every connection. Ireland owes no allegiance to England. For seven
hundred years she has been crying out against the colony of foreign
bayonets that have kept her in bondage and reduced her to beggary. For
one single hour, throughout the whole of that long period, she has
never voluntarily accepted the condition of her thraldom, or bowed
submissively beneath the British yoke. She therefore cannot be regarded
in the light of a conquered nation, but must be looked upon as still
engaged in the deadly and mortal contest, whose first field was fought
long years ago, between the Anglo-Norman freebooters and the Fenians
of Cuan-na-Groith, or the Harbor of the Sun, when Strongbow, at the
instance of the second Henry, made an unprovoked descent upon her
shores.
“Yes,” replied Tom, when Barry had finished, “both I and mine have felt
the cruel fangs of the despoiler; but, sure, where is the use of singlin
out ourselves, when the whole of the thrue native Irish--which manes the
nineteenth twintieths of the kingdoms-are jist as badly off. The quarrel
is not yours nor mine, nor the grievances naither. Both belong to every
man, woman and child possessed of a pure dhrop of Irish blood in their
veins; for all have suffered alike, as far as that is consarned. And,
now, all that has to be done on the head of it, is jist to wait the nick
of time that we are all expectin, and then, with one well directed and
united blow, dash the tyrant to the ground on this side of the Atlantic,
and thrust to Providence, the sympathy of the great American people and
our own sthrong arms and hearts for the rest.”
“Quebec and the fort beyond there,” observed Burk, “may give us some
trouble; but further than this, from what has been ascertained of the
Province generally, there is little to be apprehended. The intimate
business relations and the intermarriages between the Canadians and the
people of the United States, will exercise a most powerful influence
in the case, while the manner in which both the English and Canadian
Governments fomented the recent civil war on the other side of the
lines, cannot fail to have embittered the American people against the
British Flag, wherever it is to be found. The treacherous attack of
England upon the existance of the Republic, in subsidizing the South
with arms and money, and in destroying, as she did for a considerable
period, the American carrying trade, through the instrumentality of
pirates built and fitted out in her own ship-yards and docks, will now
afford the American government an opportunity of paying her off in kind,
through permitting Fenianism to pursue its course without interruption,
until the Provinces become part and parcel of the Union, when they
have served as a basis of operation for the purpose of fitting out
expeditions against the arch enemy of Ireland and of human freedom, and
contributed to the final redemption of that oppressed country from the
bonds in which it has so long lain. Surely, what is sauce for the goose
is sauce for the gander; and if England, through the House of Commons,
cheered the Alabama when her destructive qualities were described before
that body by Mr. Laird, and, after having built the pirate, sent her out
to make war upon the North when it was in sore trouble--surely, I say,
America will not be over anxious to throw obstructions in the way of any
party who may take in hand the chastisement of such an infamous power,
no matter what the grounds of the quarrel. But when it comes to be
understood that for the last ninety years, and up to a very recent
period, England has been the deadly defamer and the secret or avowed
enemy of America and American institutions--when it comes to be
understood, that the statesmen, the business men and the wives and
daughters of the citizens of the American Commonwealth, ever since the
immortal Washington won the day for the oppressed of the whole world,
have been subjected to the sneers and jibes of the English aristocracy
and press, and held up to the ridicule of despotic Europe--when this
comes to be understood, I repeat, in connection with the fact, that
the cause of Ireland is the cause of human liberty and of republican
institutions, there will be but little fear of America stepping out of
her way to uphold the skull and cross-bones of St. George, either on
this or on the other side of the Atlantic ocean, or, in fact, in any
portion of the globe.”
“Nor will the clear-sighted children of the Republic be cajoled into a
friendly attitude towards this blood-thirsty dastard, because that, in
the feebleness and fear that have now overtaken her, she essays to gloze
over the infamous acts of which she stands convicted before the nations,
and assumes an air of friendship towards them. Had the Union fallen,
through her infernal machinations, not a city throughout her dominions
but would have blazed with joyful illuminations at the result; while her
government would again introduce the impressments of 1812. Even when the
slightest reverse was suffered by the arms of the North, the news was
heralded throughout the whole of England with tokens of the most intense
satisfaction; while both her people and statesmen took a fiendish
delight in referring to the Commonwealth as “the late United States!”
All this, I say, will influence, and ought to influence, America in
favor of the independence of Ireland, and prevent the American people
from regarding the present pusillanimous blandishments of John Bull as
other than simply the result of cowardice, and an attempt to propitiate
a great power that had survived his infernal machinations, and now looms
up a just and mighty avenger before him. So long then, as England is
permitted to hold Ireland, that is battling for her rights, in chains,
or to taint permanently the pure atmosphere of this free continent,
so long will the Stars and Stripes shine with subdued lustre, and the
memory of the immortal heroes of ‘76 be but half honored, by those who
are pledged to defend it to the death in the sight of both God and man.”
“As to Quebec and the other garrisons down this way,” observed Barry,
“when Hamilton and Toronto are in the hands of the Army of the Irish
Republic, they will be easily managed. None of the strongholds are proof
against Irish sympathizers, in their vicinity. This I know to be true.
Every genuine Irishman within easy hailing distance of the garrison at
Quebec, has more than one tried friend within its walls; and so of the
other strongholds along the St. Lawrence and lakes. But supposing, for
argument’s sake, that any of those forts should take it into its head
to stand a siege, where would it be when invested with such an army
as Fenianism can now put into the field, composed of thousands upon
thousands of veterans who are still grim with blood and smoke from the
terrible fields of the South? What, too, would your militia do, with
their holiday legs and maiden swords, against the men who fought at Cold
Harbor, Gettysburg or Bull Run? Why the one-fourth of the force which it
is said Fenianism has at its command, would sweep Canada like a tornado
from Sanwich to Gaspe, and be recruited every yard of the road, besides;
while the instant one signal victory was won by them, the government of
the United States would at once acknowledge them as belligerants. This,
I believe, is the true state of the case; and if the Fenian organization
across the lines, and here amongst us, possess honest, brave and
competent leaders, the overthrow of England in the Provinces cannot fail
to be achieved; for, after all, she has no secure footing in the hearts
of the masses, and enjoys nothing but a mere official existence here,
under the protection of her guns, and through the instrumentality of a
corrupt government and a hireling press. But as it is getting well up
in the small hours, and as I feel I need some rest, I think I’ll take
another tumbler, if you only join me, and then turn in.”