SKETCHES IN GALWAY.
CHAPTER XXVII.
AN IRISH MASS MEETING.
MR. CHARLES STEWART PARNELL, lately in Kilmainhaim Jail for the crime of lifting up his voice in behalf of an oppressed people, represents Cork in the British Parliament, and his constituents determined to give him a reception.
In Catholic countries political demonstrations take place on Sunday, always, the Catholic having attended services in the morning, devoting the rest of the day to recreation and public business. And besides this reason for Sunday demonstrations in any country under British rule, the citizen does not have time enough on any other day to make any demonstrations, political or otherwise. He has to earn his two meals of potatoes a day, and his landlord has a mortgage upon the remainder of his time. Sunday is his only day, and it is a blessed thing for him that the Church of England stands between him and his landlord. Were not labor on the Sabbath illegal, My Lord would raise his rent to the point of making Sunday labor necessary.
I had always supposed that America was the country for demonstrations of a public nature, and indeed we do get up some monsters in this way, but the Irish, in 1881, did things, compared with which our largest are but pigmies.
Early in the morning the city began filling with people. They came singly and in pairs, and in processions. They came from down the river, from up the river, from the east, west, north and south; they came in steamboats, by rail, on horses and donkeys, in wagons and donkey carts, and on foot. By nine o’clock Cork was swarming with people, literally swarming.