That Col. Hamilton White is very likely the same White who got the title of Lord Bantry, fourteen years after, for making a show of resisting the landing of the French in Bantry Bay in 1796. The whole army of those volunteers of ’82 was officered by the English landlord garrison of Ireland—in every county of Ireland; and so much English were they, that they would not allow a Catholic Irishman into their ranks. Why, the great Henry Grattan himself opposed the admission of Catholic Irishmen into the ranks of the Irish Volunteers. In his opposition to a motion made in the Irish Parliament House in 1785, he said:
“I would now wish to draw the attention of the House to the alarming measure of drilling the lowest classes of the populace by which a stain had been put on the character of the volunteers. The old, the original volunteers, had become respectable because they represented the property of the nation. But attempts had been made to arm the poverty of the kingdom. They had originally been the armed property—were they to become ‘the armed beggary?’”
The words “the armed beggary” are italicized in the history I quote from. And who profited by that “beggary” of the unarmed people? The plunderers who made them beggars, and who assembled in Dungannon—not to free Ireland, but to fortify themselves in the possession of their plunder.
I don’t know how it is that on this subject of the volunteers of ’82, I think differently from other people. I can’t help it; ’tis my nature some way. And I’m cross and crooked other ways, too. I remember one day, thirty odd years ago, in The Irish People office in Dublin, the company in the editor’s room were talking of Tom Moore, the poet. I said there were some very bad things in his writings, and I did not care to laud to the skies an Irishman who would tell us to
“Blame not the bard,
If he try to forget what he never can heal.”
The editor remarked that I did not understand his writings.
I suppose I did not. Nor do I suppose I understand them to-day; for I cannot yet conceive how any Irishman can be considered an Irish patriot who will sing out to his people, either in prose or verse, that it is impossible to free Ireland from English rule. Show me that anything else is meant by the line,
“If he try to forget what he never can heal,”
and I will apologize to the memory of Moore. That is what England wants the Irish people to learn. That is what she wants taught to them. And that is what she is willing to pay teachers of all kinds for teaching them—teaching them it is better to forget the evils they never can heal—better forget all about Irish freedom, as they can never obtain it. That’s the meaning of the song, and while I have a high opinion of the poetic talent of the man who made it, I cannot laud the spirit of it, or laud the maker of it for his patriotism; I incline rather to pity him in the poverty and cupidity that forced him, or seduced him, to sing and play into the enemy’s hands.