Coroners’ juries would hold inquests on Irish people who were found dead in the ditches, and would return verdicts of “murder” against the English government, but England cared nothing for that; her work was going on splendidly; she wanted the Irish race cleared out of Ireland—cleared out entirely, and now something was doing for her what her guns and bayonets had failed to do. She gave thanks to God that it was so; that the Irish were gone—“gone with a vengeance”—“that it was going to be as hard to find a real Irish man in Ireland as to find a red Indian in New York,”—“that Ireland was nothing but a rat in the path of an elephant, and that the elephant had nothing to do but to squelch the rat.”
What wonder is it if the leading Irishman to day, in New York or anywhere else, would do all that he could do to make a return of that “vengeance” to England! We adopt the English expression and call those years the “famine years”; but there was no famine in the land. There is no famine in any land that produces as much food as will support the people of that land—if the food is left with them. But the English took the food away to England, and let the people starve.
With their characteristic duplicity, they cried out that there was a famine in Ireland, and they appealed to the nations of the earth to help the starving people. Ships laden with food were sent from America, from Russia and from other nations, and while these ships were going into the harbors of Ireland, English ships laden with Irish corn and cattle and eggs and butter were leaving the harbors, bound for England. Ireland those three years of ’45, ’46 and ’47, produced as much food as was sufficient to support three times the population of Ireland. What I say is historical truth, recorded in the statistics of the times. It is English history in Ireland all the time during England’s occupation of the country.
In the Year 1846, the blight struck the potato crop in the month of June. The stalks withered away before the potatoes had grown to any size at all. There was no potato crop. In fact many of the fields had remained untilled, and grew nothing but weeds. It was the same way in the year 1847. The weeds had full possession of the soil, and drew from it all the nourishment it could yield. They blossomed beautifully. Though sad, it was a beautiful picture to look at—the land garlanded in death. Standing on one of the hills of our old-chapel field one day, and looking across the bay, at the hillside of Brigatia, the whole of that hillside—a mile long and a half a mile broad was a picture of beauty.
The priseach-bhuidhe weed had grown strong, and with its yellow blossoms rustled by the gentle breeze, glistening in the sun, it made a picture in my mind that often stands before me—a picture of Death’s victory, with all Death’s agents decorating the fields with their baleful laurels.
Any picture of baleful beauty like it in America? Yes, there is, and I have seen it; seen it in the fields of Irish patriotism.
Gladstone the English governor of Ireland is after putting thousands of Irishmen into his prisons; his Irish governors are killed by the Irish; his castles in London are leveled by the Irish; his policy makes him play hypocrite, and he talks of “Home rule for Ireland.” The Irish in America dance with delight. They get up a monster meeting in one of the finest halls of the chief city of the nation, and they get the governor of the State to preside at the meeting. The representatives of all the Irish societies, and of all the Irish Counties and Provinces are there, arrayed in their finest and best; the large platform is sparkling with diamonds; every man, every woman is a sparkling gem. The governor of the State of New York tells the world, represented there, that the thanks of the whole Irish race is there transmitted to Mr. Parnell and to Mr. Gladstone, for the freedom of Ireland. Handkerchiefs and hats are waved, and twirled in every circle that hands can motion; diamonds and rubies sparkle and dance with the electric lights of the hall; the O’Donnells of Donegal, the O’Neills of Tyrone, the MacMahons of Monaghan, the McGuires of Fermanagh, the O’Briens of Arra, the O’Sullivans of Dunkerron, the McCarthys of the Castles, the O’Donoghues of the Glens, and all the other Clans are wild with delight.
Yes, that was the other field of priseachh-bhuidhe I saw in America, that equalled in dazzling splendor the field I saw in Ireland, but it was one that was just as fruitless of food for Ireland’s freedom, as the Brigaysha field was fruitless of food for Ireland’s people. There was no home rule for Ireland. Gladstone, or any other Englishman, may humbug Irishmen to their hearts’ content, but he is not going to give them Irish freedom until they pay for it the price of freedom. They are able to pay that price, and they are able to get it in spite of England.
It is not to vex Irishmen that I talk this way; I don’t want to vex them. My faith is strong that they are able to free Ireland, but I want to get them out of the priseachh-bhuidhe way of freeing it. But I cannot blame myself for being vexed; nor should you blame me much either. Look at this proclamation that was issued against our people from Dublin Castle by the English invaders, one time: