During this week in Dublin I attended a banquet given to Colonel Smith, Colonel O’Reilly, Colonel Doheny, Michael Cavanagh, Jerrie Cavanagh, and Captain Frank Welpley, the members of the American delegation, and I called upon some friends I had been in correspondence with. The dinner had been at Coffey’s or Carey’s Hotel in Bridge street. Father Conway, of Mayo, who was staying at the hotel, attended it. When the toasts and speech-making commenced, he was called upon to speak. He spoke of the sad state of his part of the country, and said that he was then traveling on a mission to collect funds for some parishioners of his who were under sentence of eviction—dwelling particularly upon one case, that of a man and his wife who had eight young children. “Put my name down for ten pounds,” said Michael Doheny. The priest taking his notebook, commenced to write. “Hold,” said Doheny. “The ten pounds is to buy a gun, powder and ball for the man who is to be evicted, that he may shoot whoever comes to put him out of his house.” The priest shut up his notebook.
I had been for five or six years previously in correspondence with Professor John O’Donovan, the Irish scholar, and I called in to Trinity College to see him. In the room with him was Professor Eugene O’Curry. I had a long talk with them. John O’Donovan asked me to tea next night at his home, No. 136 North Buckingham street; “and you,” said he to O’Curry, “you try and come up.” “No,” said O’Curry, “but let Rossa come to my house the night after.” I told him I would not be in Dublin the night after, as I should leave for home. O’Curry was a big, stout man, over six feet tall. O’Donovan was a small man. Those two men were dead, one year after that day I was speaking to them. They were married to two sisters of the name of Broughton—“of Cromwellian descent,” as John O’Donovan says to me in one of his letters, wherein he speaks of the mother of his seven sons—Mary Anne Broughton.
I went to John O’Donovan’s house that evening, and met there Father Meehan, the author of that book called “The Confederation of Kilkenny.” We talked of Fenianism, or of the cause for which I had been lately in Cork Jail. I, as well as I could, justified my belonging to that cause—not that my host or the priest said anything in condemnation of the cause—but I was surprised when I heard John O’Donovan say in the priest’s presence—“the priests won’t let the people fight.” The priest said nothing.
About twelve o’clock a coach came to take him home. I went in the coach with him, and he let me down at my hotel in Lower Bridge street. His chapel in the parish of Sts. Michael and John is near that street.
I had been at John O’Donovan’s house on some other occasions on which I visited Dublin before this time of the McManus funeral. The seven sons would be around us. He would send John and Edmond to the library to bring some rare Irish books to show me. “Are those boys studying the Irish language?” said I. “No,” said he. “I cannot get them to care anything about it, though they are smart enough at Greek and Latin.” I fear that my early acquaintanceship with those boys had something to do with disturbing the serenity of their lives in after years; because when I came to live in Dublin in 1863 I used to visit their house, and they used to come to the Irish People office to see me. They got initiated into the I. R. B. movement, and got into prison the time of the arrests. John, the eldest was drowned in St. Louis; Edmond, the second, the famed war correspondent, was lost in Asia or Africa; and I saw William, the third son, buried in Calvary Cemetery, New York.
I have among my papers twenty or thirty of the letters of John O’Donovan, that I received from him between the years of 1853 and 1863. They are among my old papers. I cannot get them now. I may get them before I put these “Recollections” in book form. If I do, I will print a few of them in the book. One letter in particular has some passages in it that I cannot thoroughly understand. It speaks of the Irish people and the Irish cause; of Daniel O’Connell and of Doctor Doyle, and it says:
“There have been no two Irishmen of this century that despised the Irish race and the Irish character more than did Daniel O’Connell and the late Doctor Doyle, bishop of Kildare and Leighlin. Doctor Miley, in whose hands O’Connell died, told me this at this table, and I firmly believe it.”
Now, the puzzle to me is: Why was that so? Why did they despise the Irish race and the Irish character? I make many guesses at answering the question, and the only answer reasonable to myself, that I can get, is, that the Irish people made it a sin to themselves to do anything that could be done in the way of striking down English rule, and striking down everything and every one that belonged to English rule in Ireland.
The McManus funeral tended very much to increase the strength of the Fenian movement. Men from Leinster, Ulster, Munster and Connaught met in Dublin who never met each other before. They talked of the old cause, and of the national spirit in their respective provinces, and each went back to his home, strengthened for more vigorous work. England’s eyes were somewhat opened, too, to the increasing danger to her rule in Ireland, and shaped herself accordingly. In the policy of government she is not blind to what passes before her eyes, she knows how averse to the interests of her rule it is to allow the people to come together and understand each other, and hence, those many Convention or anti-Convention laws that she passed for Ireland in her day. In the days of the United Irishmen, secret committees of the Houses of Lords and Commons were appointed to make inquiries into the state of Ireland. A committee of the Lords sat in 1793, and a joint committee of Lords and Commons sat in 1897. They summoned before them every one they thought could give information, and every one who refused to answer their questions was sent to jail.
On the 17th of May, 1797, the English governors at Dublin Castle issued a proclamation in which they said: “Whereas, within this Kingdom a seditious and traitorous conspiracy, by a number of persons styling themselves United Irishmen exists, and whereas, for the execution of their wicked designs, they have planned means of open violence, and formed secret arrangement for raising, arming, and paying a disciplined force, and, in furtherance of their purposes, have frequently assembled in great and unusual numbers, under the colorable pretext of planting or digging potatoes, attending funerals and the like,” etc. “And we do strictly forewarn persons from meeting in any unusual numbers, under the plausible or colorable pretext as aforesaid, or any other whatsoever.”