THE "TREASONABLE" LETTER.
The initials used throughout represent the titles in this order:
"V. C.," United Brotherhood; "F. C.," Executive Body; "U. S.," United Sons; "D.," Camps; "I. R. B.," Irish Republican Brotherhood; "R. D.," Revolutionary Directorate; "S. C.," Supreme Council.
Headquarters F. C. of V. C.,
Sep. 15, 1885.
To the Officers and Members of the V. C. and of the U. S.:
Brothers: In accordance with the call of the Committee of Safety a general convention of the V. C. was held in New York City, Aug. 3 and 4, for the purpose of taking the necessary measures to save the organization from the ruin which threatens it. A full account of its proceedings will be found in the printed report, to which we invite your attention.
Having been chosen by the convention to fill a position of great difficulty and responsibility in the organization during this, the supreme crisis of its existence, we feel it to be our duty to lay before you the plain facts of the present situation, and to ask the assistance of every honest man in bringing about a remedy. We make this appeal without regard to the side you may have taken in the recent and present troubles, knowing full well that nine-tenths of the organization are in a state of utter ignorance as to the actual facts, and that honest men have been led to sustain wrong. We make it more particularly to those who are supporting and yielding blind obedience to men who have turned their backs on the I. R. B., thereby ignoring the fundamental principal which is the cause and object of our organization. If that support is withdrawn an effective remedy can be at once applied. That there is trouble you will not now deny, and that it is serious enough to menace the existence of a once powerful organization, and to threaten the ruin of the hopes that have hitherto stimulated our efforts for Ireland, every day will make more clear to your understanding. The efforts at concealment made by the men who created this trouble, the withholding of information as to the wholesale suspension of D's, and the mendacious assertions made in recent circulars, have all failed of the desired effect; and in every D in the organization, to-day, there is gloom and discouragement and members are fast falling away. No official denials, a thousand times repeated, can any longer conceal this fact. Every member from Maine to California can see it for himself. The truth is beginning to filter through the barriers set up against its entrance to the D's, by desperate men, whose characters depend on its suppression. The frantic efforts and reckless statements of the army of paid organizers, sent around to counteract the progress of truth and avert the exposure of wrong doing, are useless and unavailing. Many of these are the men under accusation of complicity in the fraud, and they now use your money to deceive you and prolong the reign of dishonesty. Their prevarications, contradictions, and shuffling evasions are doing more to establish the truth of the charges, against which they are vainly struggling, than the strongest statement made in the interest of right and justice, and a spirit is gradually growing up in the organization which will produce one of two results—reform and punishment of the evildoers, or disruption of the organization and escape of the prisoners.
One or other of these results is inevitable. And whichever it is, it will be the clear and logical result of your action. Your withdrawal from the organization, in despair or disgust, will no more enable you to shake off your responsibility than if you give an active support to the criminals. Which result shall it be? The decision rests with you. If the men responsible for this wretched state of things cannot succeed in stifling all investigation into their misdeeds, they would prefer to see the organization smashed. "Dead men tell no tales." They know that an honest investigation would overwhelm them, and they are fighting for existence. Therefore they are determined there shall be none, and every D that demands one is suspended or left without communication. This conduct is capable of but one explanation. They cannot stand investigation. The question with them is, shall their personal reputations be destroyed, or the organization be ruined? and they have chosen the latter. Men with true instincts, and whose records were clean, would scorn to force themselves on any organization, to handle its funds and direct its policy, while under such accusations as have been leveled against the Triangle. Men with the real good of Ireland and of the V. C. at heart, would refuse to hold office at the expense of the unity and the efficiency of the organization. Looked at from any stand-point their conduct is indefensible and unpatriotic. No man fit for the duties of the high office, these men hold, would acquire it by such means or hold on to it when acquired. No men who honestly intended to aid the men at home to free Ireland—which is the fundamental principle of the V. C.—would begin their official careers by deceiving their colleagues in Ireland and persisting in carrying on any policy against their protest.
Since the disastrous gathering, miscalled a convention, which met in Boston twelve months ago, the organization has been going from bad to worse. The deceit and trickery by which three members of the F. C. were enabled to continue themselves in power, and so to change the whole form and object of the order, as to make it a convenient instrument for the furtherance of personal ambition, at the expense of the sacred cause of Ireland, have continued to play havoc in our ranks. The strength and vitality of the national movement have been shattered. The oldest and strongest D's are being driven out one by one, and a system of repression of free speech and sham trials, copied from the worst features of British tyranny in Ireland, is brought into requisition for the purpose of crushing all independence of thought, and stifling the voice of patriotism. No honest man in the V. C., who sees and hears what is going on around him, can fail to recognize that ruin and disintegration must speedily make shipwreck of our hopes, if a strong and vigorous remedy be not soon applied. No intelligent man can fail to see that every effort of the three men who have usurped the governing authority of the V. C., every dollar intrusted to them for the advancement of the cause is being devoted to the maintenance of their power, and to the work of driving from the organization every man who charges them with wrong-doing, or who advocates an investigation of the charges made.
That the aims and objects of the organization, and also its money, are being sacrificed to the necessities of the war of self-defense, waged by three desperate men, must be plain to every intelligent man, and it must be equally plain that an honest, impartial investigation of the serious charges, made against these men, would put a speedy end to all this trouble, by either convicting them of wrong-doing or their accusers of falsehood. In either case the organization would be freed from evil-doers and restored to harmony. Why, then, is such an investigation refused? The men who make the charges are ready to substantiate them and take the consequences. The accused men shirk an investigation, drive their accusers out of the organization, so that their evidence may not be available, and hold on with the grip of desperation to the positions they are accused of disgracing.