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