“And they whom God has set asunder let no man join.
“But you have joined us to yourself in the union of bondage and oppression, and when we cry out under our bondage—a bondage which, were the cases reversed, England would be as little ready to tolerate as Ireland—how do you meet our righteous demands?
“By trying to humour us as a woman seeks to humour a troublesome child to whom she tosses a toy. By sending us what you dare not insult the Scotch by sending to Scotland—a sawdust figure, of which you hold the strings, who is to play at being king and holding court to please us. But we—ah God! was ever so unreasonable a people?—we do not simper and dance to the fiddling of this dummy king who is not even of our own choosing, for we are ungracious enough to remember that we have in our midst men of older lineage and nobler blood than he.
“And then you cast about in your mind for some other means by which you can make us loyal under subjection. And when there is born to that ‘Queen of Ireland’ whom Ireland never sees—though she can journey far afield to southern France or Italy—another princeling, for whom royal provision must be made out of the pockets of the people, who can scarce find their own children in bread, you say, ‘Go to, here is our opportunity; we will make Ireland loyal for ever by giving this princeling Patrick as one of his many names and by dubbing him Duke of Connaught.’
“But Ireland, graceless, thankless, stubborn Ireland, is not one whit more loyal after receiving this royal boon, for she knows that you rule over her by the coward’s right—the right of the strong to oppress and make subject the weak.
“You call her your sister while you seek to make her your slave, even as you call Irishmen your brothers while you have sought to make their very name a reproach and a fitting subject for your sorry jests.
“You hold Ireland in the thrall of cruel oppression—for cowardice is always cruel—not because of any sisterly feeling for her or love for her people, whom you hate and who hate you with an undying hate, but because you are afraid to let her go free.
“But that which you fear shall assuredly come to pass, and Ireland, which might and would have been your friend and ally were she free, is but waiting till you are involved in war to prove herself your deadliest and bitterest enemy and the friend and ally of every country which calls itself your foe.
“By order.
“Captain Shannon.”