“Swords to back his words
Were ready, did he need them.
But that treaty of ’82 was broken as perfidiously as was the treaty of Limerick, and every other treaty or compact that was ever made between the two peoples. As a prelude, Ireland was incited by the enemy to premature rebellion; and as Archbishop Hughes, of New York, said when delivering a lecture on Irish starvation in ’46—‘Martial law for the people—a bayonet or a gibbet for the patriot who loved Ireland—a bribe for the traitor who did not—led to that act called the Union, in which the charter of Irish nationality was destroyed—I trust not forever.’ Irishmen have since experienced the happiness of being an integral portion of the disunited kingdom; they have been relieved from the cares and troubles of native manufactories and internal bustle, and they are now such an important people as to be saddled with an ‘integral’ portion of a thousand million pounds, as a national debt. If we were able to pay this debt for England, Ireland may have some chance of becoming a separate portion of this kingdom; but whoever would seriously endeavor to make her so without any stipulation, may experience the blessings of the ‘Glorious British Constitution’ through the agency of the halter, the dungeon, the convict ship, the gibbet or the jail. When I speak of these instruments of our tyrants, thoughts of blood and fiendish deeds connected with ’98 and the succeeding years visit my memory. The two Thomas street murders, within a few years and a few yards of each other, forcibly and brilliantly reveal to us the charms of that constitution, and particularly that circumstance connected with the murder of Lord Edward, where the bloodhounds pursued his spirit to the other world, and after the Universal Judge in heaven had passed sentence on him either as a traitor or a martyr, they retried him, and by a packed jury robbed and plundered his widow and orphan children. Excuse me, Mr. Chairman and Irishmen, for trespassing so far upon the property of my successor, who is to speak of the men of ’98. I have digressed much from my subject, but it is more of the heart than of the mind. A few other remarks and I will have ceased from tiring you farther. You will understand that I am not one of those individuals who believe in the regeneration of my country through the agency of a viceroy or vice-reine, through the propagation of high-blood cattle and the cultivation for their support of mangel-wurzel and yellow-bullock; the latter would be very well in their proper time and place, but I would reverse the order of things, and the comforts of human creation would be with me a primary consideration to the comforts of the brute species, or as my friend and neighbor, Michael Burke, says, I would rather see ‘stamina’ in the man than in the animal (laughter). To effect this, the existing relations of Irishman and Englishman should undergo a change, and now should be the time for the Irish nation to agitate for this change, and strive to obtain it by every proper means, so as to prevent a recurrence of the national disasters of ’46 and ’47, when England allowed thousands of our people to starve, and blasphemously charged God Almighty with the crime, while the routine of her misgovernment compelled the cereal produce of the country to be exported. A curse upon foreign legislation. A domestic government, no matter how constituted, would never have allowed it; even this terrible evil might have been averted, had the leaders in ’48 profited by the past history of their country; they ought to have known that an enemy never paid any attention to moral force, when not backed by physical force, and had the Repealers followed the example of the ’82 men, and had they presented their petitions with pikes and swords instead of with magic wands and brass buttons, the issue would have been different with them, and instead of injuring the cause of their country, they would occupy as prominent and proud a place in her future history as Grattan and his compatriots. To obtain a name and a position for our country, and the restoration of our plundered rights, we will need such an organization as that of ’82—nay such a one as ’48, if you will. Had Irishmen, or any one class of Irishmen, been united, bided their time, and embraced their opportunity, the future would be ours—no matter though there may be many difficulties before men who seek to establish a name and position for their country amongst the nations of the earth. But let me say, that as Irishmen here to-night—we have no foe—no enemy amongst any class or creed of our countrymen; politically speaking, the man who looks upon us, and men of our political profession, as his enemy, is our enemy. He must be a man who would have his country forever under the yoke of the foreigner; or, he must be a man who has profited by the plunder, or who is supported by the plunderer. I now conclude, thanking you for the honor you have done me, and the kindness you have shown me, assuring you wherever I am cast by fortune, it shall ever be my pride to stand, as I stand here to-night, amongst men who are prepared to assist in any and every agitation or undertaking to obtain their rights, or an instalment of their rights, which may ultimately result in qualifying them to write the epitaph of Robert Emmet.”
It isn’t that I say it—that wasn’t a bad speech at all, at a time when Ireland was dead or sleeping. People who write about the origin of that particular movement called Fenianism—knowing nothing about that speech, or about the Phœnix Society men, know nothing as to what they write about. If the license of a little pleasantry may be given me, I may say that several of my early-day acquaintances would often lament that I would not bind myself to the speech-making business, to free Ireland.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE START OF FENIANISM.
In these times preceding the Phœnix arrests—from 1852 to 1858—the time of the Sadlier and Keogh Tenant Right movement, the time of the Crimean war, and the time of the Indian mutiny, the Irish National cause was in a swoon. But England was playing one of her tricks, endeavoring to get the people to put trust in Parliamentary agitation and petitions to Parliament, for the redress of their grievances. Men who had no faith in these petitions would join in, saying, “We will try once more; but this is to be the last.” I suppose a dozen Tenant-Right bills have been given to Ireland since 1852; but to-day (1897), England and England’s landlords have the right to root out the Irish people still, and mercilessly do they exercise that right—so much so, that the population of Ireland is two millions less to-day than it was in 1852.
When James Stephens came to Skibbereen in May, 1858, and started the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood, we commenced to work in that line of labor, and we were not long working, when a great change was noticeable in the temper of the people. In the cellars, in the woods, and on the hillsides, we had our men drilling in the night-time, and wars and rumors of wars were on the wings of the wind. The lords and the landlords were visibly becoming alarmed. No wonder, for their tenants who used to flock to Tenant-Right meetings cared very little about attending such meetings now. It has been said—it is said to-day by some men of the cities, that the farmers were opposed to the movement. I could not say that; I could say to the contrary, because I enrolled into the movement many of the most influential farmers in the parishes of Kilcoe, Aughadown, Caheragh, Drimoleague, Drinagh, Kilmacabea, Myross and Castlehaven. Dan McCartie and Morty Moynahan, two other “Centres” did the same. We set our eyes on the men who could carry their districts, in case of a rising—just as England sets her eye on the same class of men to-day, and swears them in as “New Magistrates.” It is to counteract this Fenian work of ours that England is now giving the “Commission of the Peace” to the sons and brothers of the men that we had in the Fenian organization. I could here name a dozen of these new magistrates that I met in Ireland a few years ago, whose fathers and whose brothers were with us in the Fenian movement of thirty odd years ago. I will not name them, as it may be said I was unwarrantably saying something to their injury. But England knows them, and knows with what aim she swore them into her service. She knows that Pat and Jerrie Cullinane were in prison with me in the Phœnix time, and she knows why it is that she makes their brother, Henry, a magistrate. She knows that William O’Sullivan, of Kilmallock, was put to prison by her in the Fenian times, and she knows why it is that she makes a magistrate of his son, John, who presided at my lecture at Kilmallock two years ago. And, sad I am to-day (July 12, ’98,) as I am reading this proof-sheet, to read in the Irish newspapers, that John O’Sullivan of Kilmallock died last week. English work of this kind I found all over Ireland when I was over there lately. In the district of Belfast I found eleven of those new magistrates whose families, thirty years ago, gave volunteers to the Fenian movement. I do not say they are worse Irishmen now than they were thirty years ago; but England has sworn them into her service; has “bound them to the peace.” It is not for love of them, or love of their race or religion she has done so. She has done it to wean them away from the National movement, and to paralyze that movement. “Beware of the cockatrice! trust not the wiles of the serpent; for perfidy lurks in his folds”—So spoke the Bishop of Ross, when the Sassenach was hanging him at Carrigadrohid. But we are taking little heed of his advice; the Sassenach is getting the better of us every way. I will now return to my story.
Every Sunday, Morty Moynahan, Dan McCartie and myself would drive to some country chapel, and attend mass. After mass we got into conversation with the trustworthy men of the place, and we generally planted the seed of our mission there. One Sunday, going to Clonakilty, we fell in with Father Tim Murray, of Ross, who was going to say mass at the chapel of Lissavard. We went to mass there. We were in the gallery. Father Tim was preaching in Irish. I was startled, as a man sitting by me, said in a loud voice, “Anois, athair Teige, ni doith liom gur ceart e sin”—“Now Father Tim I don’t think that’s right.” The priest had to address him personally, and tell him he’d have to go out in the yard to hear mass unless he held his tongue. He was a harmless simpleton, well known in the parish. After mass, McCartie, Moynahan and I went to Clonakilty. I had made an appointment to meet a farmer from the country, a cousin of mine. I settled matters with him. There are magistrates in his family now. Then, there were in the town two of the men of ’48 we meant to call upon—John Callanan and Maxwell Irwin. We went to John Callanan’s house, and he was not at home; we went to Maxwell Irwin’s, and he was not at home; he had gone to Crookhaven to attend the auction of a cargo of a shipwreck; so the little girl told me who came to the door after I had telephoned on the bright brass knocker outside. She was a pretty little girl, too, about twelve years of age, with twinkling eyes, and red rosy cheeks and coal-black hair. She is my wife to-day. Five or six years afterward, I met Mr. Irwin’s entire family—not for their welfare, I fear, as the boys of it found their way to prison and to exile through acquaintance with me.