“Many another Irish exile,” did I say?—did I call myself an “exile”?—an Irishman in New York, an “exile”! Yes; and the word, and all the meanings of the word, come naturally to me, and run freely from my mind into this paper. My mother buried in America, all my brothers and sisters buried in America; twelve of my children born in America—and yet I cannot feel that America is my country; I am made to feel that I am a stranger here, and I am made to see that the English power, and the English influence and the English hate, and the English boycott against the Irish-Irishmen is to-day as active in America as it is in Ireland. I am also made to see England engaged in her old game of employing dirty Irishmen to do some of the dirty work that she finds it necessary to have done, to hold Ireland in thrall.
At the opening of this chapter I said something about Father John O’Brien in connection with secret societies, and his telling me that bad men generally got to the head of them, who did not use them for good, but for bad. Whatever more I am to say in this book on that subject, I preface it here by saying I am strongly of the opinion that much of the preparatory work that is necessary to be done to make Ireland free must be done in secret; and I am also strongly of the opinion that that work can be done successfully in spite of all the false and infamous Irishmen that England can buy into her service. My eyes are not at all shut to the fact that the spy service is one branch of the English service into which England recruits Irishmen for the purpose of maintaining her hold on Ireland. That branch has to be taken into consideration by revolutionary Irishmen, just as much as the police branch, or the soldier branch of the English service in Ireland has to be taken into consideration. No, I am not at all blind in that light. I have seen too many of those spies during the past fifty years, and have too many times been marked by their employers for one of their victims, to doubt their ubiquity or make light of their labors. Some of them intrigued themselves into very close companionship with me in Irish societies. I caught them trying to kill the work I was trying to do, and trying to kill myself. That doesn’t frighten me, though there is something disheartening in the situation of things during the past twenty years. The paralyzation of the Irish revolutionary movement, has been developed to such an extent, the work connected with its resolves has been shunted so far aside, that I cannot help asking myself is it the hand of England that is doing all this; is it the will of England that is working to have nothing done that will hurt or harm England.
I see the hand of England at work during those twenty years to kill myself out of Irish life, and I see very efficient aid to that end given by some men in Irish societies in America. I see the Dudley woman sent out to assassinate me. I see Labouchere employed to ask questions in the English House of Commons that proclaim me through the world an English spy in the pay of England. That is the English side of the work. The Irish side of the work is this: I have been three times expelled from the membership in the Irish revolutionary societies of America by the controlling powers of those societies. No charges preferred against me, no trial, or no summons to appear for trial. A simple announcement made that O’Donovan Rossa is “expelled” or suspended. That announcement, virtually declaring me a traitor, is sent to every club of the organization throughout the nation, and to every affiliation it has in foreign lands. I met it in many places in England and Ireland. I met it in many places in America. The assassin bullet in my body bespeaks an agency less infamous than the agency that would so assassinate my character—a character that has come to me through some unselfish labor—and much suffering therefor—for Ireland’s freedom. I do not see that the moral assassins have done anything for the last twenty years that would enable me to give them the benefit of thinking they are not in the same employment as the Dudley assassins. I print the following two letters as samples of the product of their work:
San Juan, January 1, 1887.
O’Donovan Rossa—Enclosed find $2 in payment for your paper. Don’t send it after the receipt of this letter, for I think you are a traitor, and a British spy.
M. Sullivan.
Rochester, N. Y., Aug. 13, 1888.
O’Donovan Rossa:
Sir—For some time past you have been sending your papers to my brother. He says he has notified you to cut them off. He says, and I say with him, that your sheet has never done any good for Ireland, and you are a delusion and a fraud. You don’t go much on Parnell, do you? Why don’t you do up bloody Balfour, and bring him to his knees? Why? Because a coward always hoots, he don’t fight for a cent.
Martin J. Ryan.