“And I’m thinking,” said Donald, “that you are going a bit too fast with your talk about dying. I’ve fought just such a fight as my brother is thinking of. I’m through with it now, and I’m not dead. By God, we saw to it that it was the other men who died. We won, sir. Mark my words, we won. It was the people that carried the day in America. They carried the day in France. What’s to hinder us from carrying the day in Ireland, too?”
Lord Dunseveric looked at Donald during this speech and kept his eyes fixed upon him for some minutes afterwards. He was considering whether it was worth while replying to this boastful American Irishman. At last he turned again to Micah Ward.
“I have still one more appeal to make to you, Mr. Ward. You care for Ireland. Is it not so? I believe you do. Believe, me, I care for Ireland, too.”
“Yes,” said Micah, “you care for Ireland, but what do you mean by Ireland? You mean a bloodthirsty, supercilious, unprincipled ascendancy, for whom the public exists only as a prey to be destroyed, who keep themselves close and mark men’s steps that they may lay in wait for them; who forge chains for their country, who distrust and belie the people, who scoff at the complaints of the poor and needy, and who impudently call themselves Ireland. You have made the sick and the lame to go out of their way. You have eaten the good pastures and trodden down the residue with your feet. You care for Ireland, and you mean by Ireland the powers and privileges of a class. I care for Ireland, but I mean Ireland, not for certain noblemen and gentlemen, but Ireland for the Irish people, for the poor as well as the rich, for the Protestant, Dissenter, and Roman Catholic alike.”
“I have never denied, nor do I wish to deny, the need of reform,” said Lord Dunseveric, “but I see before all the necessity of loyalty to the constitution.”
“Ay, to the constitution which gives the whole power of the country to a few proud aristocrats, which excludes three-fourths of the people from its benefits, which allows eight hundred thousand Northerns to be insulted and trampled on because they speak of emancipation, which uses forced oaths, overflowing Bastilles and foreign troops for extorting the loyalty of the Irish people.”
“I will not argue these things with you now,” said Lord Dunseveric, “my time is short. I would rather pray you to consider what the end of your conspiracy must be. If you succeed, and I do not believe you can succeed, you will deluge the country in blood. If your best hopes are realised, and you receive the help you hope for from abroad, you will make Ireland the cockpit of a European war. Our commerce and manufactures, reviving under the fostering care of our own Irish Parliament, will be destroyed. Our fields, which none will dare to till, will be fouled with the dead bodies of our sons and daughters. But why should I complete the picture? If you fail—and you must fail—you will fling the country into the arms of England. Our gentry will be terrified, our commons will be cowed. Designing Englishmen will make an easy prey of us. They will take from us even the hard-earned measure of independence we already possess. We shall become, and we shall remain, a contemptible province of their Empire instead of a sovereign and independent nation. The English are wise enough to see this, though you cannot see it. Man, they want you to rebel.”
“Is that all you have to say?” said Micah.
“That is all.”
“Then I bid you farewell, Eustace St. Clair, Lord of Dunseveric. You have spoken well and pleaded speciously for yourself and your class. I might listen to you if I had not seen your armed ruffians break into our meeting-houses; if I had not in memory stories of burnt homesteads, outraged women, tortured men; you might persuade me if I did not know that to-night you have taken my friends, that you will drag them before unjust judges, and condemn them on the evidence of perjured informers, as you condemned William Orr. Human endurance can bear no more. Patience is a virtue of the Gospel, but it becomes cowardice in the face of certain wrongs. Go, I have done with you. Go, torture, burn, shed innocent blood, and then, like the adulterous woman, eat and wipe your mouth, and say ‘I have done no wickedness.’”