We have said that the misdoings of nations are, in the order of Providence, attended with a corrective or reactionary principle, which, sooner or later, exerts itself in restoring the equilibrium of justice; and in no case has this been made more apparent than in that of Ireland. When under the frightful pressure of famine, murder and robbery, her children fled her shores, and sought refuge in the open arms of free America, the tyrant who had caused their exile, never fancied, for a moment, that she was laying the foundation stone of her own ultimate destruction, and gradually forming an Irish Brigade on this continent, which should, one day, with a terrible rebound, repay all the cruelties and wrongs to which she had subjected them from generation to generation. She little fancied, that in each individual Irishman that she had driven from his native shores to seek an asylum beyond the seas, she had sent forth an agent of her own destruction, that would colonize, in common with his exiled brethren, the whole world with a sense of her infamy, and build up, on this free continent, an opposition so tremendous to her interests in every connection, that it should command the attention of every civilized people under the sun, and shake her institutions and existence to their very centre. As is invariable in such cases, she administered the antidote with the poison; and transformed the victims of her wrongs and cruelties into enemies and soldiers; and now that, in the aggregate, they assume the proportions of a powerful and antagonistic nation outside her borders, they only await the hour when they shall descend upon her to the hoarse music of their ancient war cry, and, on the banks of the Shannon, and by the Blackwater, smite her hip and thigh, as of old; but this time without generously escorting her broken and disabled ranks to the borders of the Pale, or permitting them, in the hour of defeat, to recruit their exhausted forces, so that the fight may become more equal.
From the landing of Strongbow, in 1171, at Port Largi, then on subsequently called also the Harbor of the Sun, near Waterford, down to the sacking and burning of Magdala, the capital of King Theodoras, in the present year of grace 1808, the history of English rule and conquests has been one of bloodshed, perjury and crime. Look where you may, and you encounter continuous atrocities similar to the massacres of Elizabeth and Cromwell, or the blowing of the Sepoys of India from the mouth of the cannon of the invader. Well may the ensign of England wear an encrimsoned hue; for, from time immemorial, it has been stooped in the blood of the nations: and that too, without her people having ever fought a proud or decisive battle single-handed. Her fame, in this connection, rests solely upon the influence of her gold and the power of foreign bayonets. Scotland and Ireland have been the main stay of her armies; her native element, per se, affecting their composition in but a secondary degree. The muster rolls of the Peninsula, and the supplementary field of Waterloo, have attested this assertion to the fullest. The fact is, her laurels, for the most part, have been gathered by Irish hands. Taking advantage of the proud daring and chivalry of our people, in connection with the poverty and oppression which she had wrought among them, she shook her gold in their half-starved faces, as she does to-day, and lured them into her service whenever she had a point to attain in the field. Through this channel, and through it alone, the fame of her arms became established; the true aspirations of her own sons seldom exceeding the exalted limits of a bread riot, or the sudden exploits incident to some poaching expedition. As a general thing, the English are traders and diplomats, rather than soldiers. Their character for bravery has been won through the lavish use of their subsidizing gold, rather than through any innate warlike propensities on their part. They have never fought for a myth, or an abstract, chivalrous idea; but always for some bread and beef object, however apparently unconnected with the project said to be had in view. In the exemplification of their Christian missionary spirit, too, this feature of their character is abundantly set forth. Wherever they have succeeded in introducing the Gospel among the heathen, they have subsequently inserted the wedge of civil discord, to be followed on their part by the sword of conquest. No more forcible illustration of this can be found than that presented by India, and other of their dependencies that we could name. In Ireland, also, the same spirit has been evinced; but under different circumstances. She was already civilized and Christianized when the invader first landed upon her shores; but in no way was he enabled to totally overthrow her independence, except through the instrumentality of the brand of religious discord, which, for upwards of two hundred years, he had kept flaming at the foundations of her nationality. It was the hostility bitterly fomented between the Protestants and the Catholics of Ireland, from 1782 to the year 1800, that led to the so-called Union, and from this latter period left her, to the present hour, at the mercy of one of the most relentless and unprincipled despotisms that has ever disfigured the annals of the human race.
Edmund Burk was right when he declared in his place in Parliament, if we remember correctly, that the Penal Laws enacted by England against Ireland, were characterized by an ingenuity the most fiendish on record, and an attempt to oppress, degrade and demoralize a people, without a parallel in the history of even the most barbarious ages. Within the recollection of persons now living, nine-tenths of the population were held in a condition of the most abject slavery, and treated as aliens and enemies at their own doors. Add to this the fact, that, previous to the granting of Emancipation, scarce a generation had passed away since their priests were murdered at the altar, or hunted down with dogs, like wild beasts; their goods and chattels seized upon by any emissary of the government, and at a nominal valuation appropriated to his own use; their creed and language denounced and outlawed; their children deprived of the light of learning under a penalty the most fearful; and, wherever the tyrant had the power, their lands confiscated and handed over to their oppressors. The wonder has long been, that, under such a terrible regime, Ireland had not sunk into the most hopeless barbarism, or that England had not absorbed her, until, as Lord Byron once observed on the subject, they had become one and indivisible, as “the shark with his prey.” No more desperate attempt has ever been made to blot out a nation, and none has ever failed more signally; for, notwithstanding this dreadful cannonade of ages, backed up with the final and murderous assault of the Reformation and the Georges, Ireland, to-day, is more powerful and united than she has ever been since the sceptre of the Dane was broken upon her historic shores. This fact is sustained by evidences teeming upon us from every point of the compass. A great and mysterious embodiment of her influence, and a vague and oppressive sense of her unseen presence, hang ominously over all the councils of her task-masters, and build up strange dynasties in the disturbed slumbers of even royalty itself. Nor bolt nor bar can shut out the low mutterings of her approaching thunder, or exclude her ubiquitous hand from tracing, in letters of blood, the impending doom of her infamous oppressor upon the wall. Heaven has decreed it; and thus it is, that, in more than one quarter of the globe the exiled children of her matchless hills and vales have multiplied into a positive power, that, inflamed with the memories of her undeserved sufferings, shall, one day, be precipitated upon her enemies with the most destructive and overwhelming effect, and humble them forever in the dust.
To avert this blow has now become a desideratum so great with England, that all her cunning and genius are brought to bear upon the subject. So long as Ireland was dependent solely upon her own resources, and the spirit of revolution confined strictly within her borders, England felt herself competent to avert the evil day, for an indefinite period, through the instrumentality of the rope and the bayonet; but now that beyond the seas, the terrible war cloud of Fenianism fills the whole west, surcharged with vengeance and the great, broad lightnings of American freedom, she reels to her very centre, and begins to loosen her hold, claw by claw, upon her victim, in the hope that her lacerated and bleeding prey may be satisfied with a partial release from its sufferings, and still permit her to hold it in her modified clutch. Here she shall fail, however; for the people of Ireland know her too well to permit her to breathe the same atmosphere with them, or preserve the slightest footing on their soil. They know her to have been a traitor, a perjurer, a robber and an assassin, throughout the whole of her infamous career. Besides remembering her at Mullaghmaston and Limerick, they had a taste of her quality in 1782, when, under the pressure of the Protestant bayonets of the famous “Volunteers,” she, by a solemn act of her King, Lords and Commons, in Parliament assembled, swept Poyning’s despotic Law from her Statute Books, and relinquished FOREVER all right and title to interfere in the local affairs of Ireland, only to perjure herself subsequently, by creating rotten boroughs and dispensing titles and millions of gold, for the purpose of controlling those very same affairs, not only more effectually than ever, but with the further view of diverting all the resources of the country out of their legitimate channels into her own hands, so that she should be at once the tyrant, and the purse and conscience keeper of our race. They remember all this, we say, and now they are about to call upon her for an account of her stewardship, and make her foot the bill, and that, too, to the very last farthing.
Of course, we are aware that much of the elevated mind and strength which invigorate the Irish element on this continent, in this connection, is to be attributed, unquestionably, to the sublime lessons of the great American people, and the generous sympathy they evince invariably in regard to nations deprived of the blessings of freedom. Time was, we are aware, when the children of Ireland had no such exalted idea of human liberty as they possess to-day, and when they would have hailed the return of kingcraft to their shores, on the restitution of their independence, with every demonstration of pleasure; but that period has passed away, and forever. Having once tasted the blessings, and imbibed the idea of American institutions, they have now cast aside every sentiment of barbarism in this relation, and stepped out on the broad platform of justice and common sense; ignoring the mere accident of birth, and paying homage only to those attributes and characteristics which, in themselves, tend to the elevation of the human family, and which are not confined to any peculiar class or people.
When it becomes understood, that ever since the introduction of printing, and the consequent diffusion of book and newspaper literature throughout Europe, the history and people of Ireland have been subjected by the invader to every description of the grossest misrepresentation, it will create no small degree of surprise, that the country has survived the assault, or that she presents to-day a compact individuality, that commands the sympathy and respect of most of the nations of the earth. Heaven, itself, must have inspired the vigor, truth and heroism which, through a lapse of seven hundred years, have battled for the right against the most fearful odds, and that now arms her, on both sides of the Atlantic, with the mighty resolve which cannot fail to result in her final redemption from the chains of the oppressor. Her vitality in this connection has scarcely a parallel in the history of the past; from the fact, that she has been subjected to a twofold persecution—that of semi-barbarism, and that of civilization also. The atrocities of the hybrid freebooters that invaded her shores in the twelfth century, were not more revolting than those which characterized her rulers six hundred years subsequently, when they were engaged in founding educational institutions, and printing whole cargoes of ten-penny Bibles, for the purpose of pandering to the whims of the age, and doing honor to the spirit of the royal Pacha who moulded his creed to his lusts, and left his rottenness a loathsome legacy to his successors. Yes, the wonder is, that she has survived all this, and, instead of falling into the vortex prepared for her, now stands with her uplifted arm, awaiting the propitious moment, when she can deal a final and irresistible blow to the ingrate that, in days of yore, she had warmed into intellectual life on her own hearthstone.
If there had been anything in the climate, soil, people or geographical position of Ireland, to operate against her prosperity as a nation, or calculated to retard her progress in any connection whatever, there might be some misgivings in relation to the causes of her poverty and degradation; but as the most reliable political economists, and even those unfriendly to the Irish name and race, admit that no such drawbacks exist, we look, of course, to the system of government to which the country has been so long subjected, as the source of all the evils that have so cruelly and pertinaciously beset it. McCollough, Wakefield, Foster, and other English writers, bear the highest testimony to the richness of its soil, the salubrity of its air, and its other great natural advantages. Its harbors, bays, lakes and rivers are among the finest in the world, while its neglected mineral wealth is presumed to be all but inexhaustible. In addition to this, it is stated by Dr. Forbes—one of the Court physicians, who had made a tour of the kingdom—that the inhabitants are of a character the most industrious, and bear up under the oppressive system which weighs upon them in a manner the most heroic. It is to opinions from such sources as these we point, with every degree of confidence, as they cannot be charged with being prejudiced in our favor; and were we inclined to be more diffuse upon the subject, we might quote author after author, and all of English proclivities too, who bear evidence to the suggestive character of the elements of material wealth which we possess in every relation, and which, through the disastrous policy pursued towards us from generation to generation, have been paralyzed and prostituted to an extent that almost defies comprehension.
Why did England violate a solemn pledge, given in 1782, to the effect, that she relinquished all claim to interfere in the management of the local affairs of Ireland, and conceded to the people of that country the undoubted and inalienable right of conducting their own internal affairs upon any basis they thought proper? After having experienced the beneficial results of this policy upon the sister kingdom for a space of eighteen years, why did she revoke the act establishing it, and force the hated Union upon a people, a majority of whom were not free to express an opinion upon the subject, or to resist a measure thrust upon them through perjury, intimidation, bribery and fraud? The reason has long been quite obvious to the world—the manufacturing interests and the trade and commerce of Ireland have ever been and must ever remain antagonistic to those of England. This fact has always influenced the legislation of the latter country, and brought it to bear heavily and unjustly upon almost every Irish project that has been undertaken for the last three hundred years. When any particular Irish manufacture was found to interfere with the interests of a similar one in England, instantly devices were set on foot by the enemy to crush it, or so embarrass it that its destruction could not fail to follow. It was banned and taxed out of the market until it died. In this way, the silk, glass and woolen manufactures of the country were destroyed; the latter having so injured the English manufacturers in the time of William the Third, that they presented a memorial to this dignified and affectionate son-in-law of James, praying that the manufacture in Ireland might be suppressed, as it was interfering with the success of the woolen trade in England; which prayer the king entertained favorably, and promised to grant. In this way, from the earliest days of the invasion, the interests of Ireland have been trodden under the feet of the oppressor; while, in a religious point of view, her people have been held for generations in the most frightful bondage, and constrained to contribute to the maintenance of a Church which nineteen-twentieths of them believed to be heretical, and which had been thrust upon them in violation of every right, human and divine.
Now, however, it is brightening up on the verge of the horizon, and, like chickens, England’s untold acts of infamy and oppression, in regard to Ireland, are coming home to roost. In every city and hamlet, throughout the great Republic of the United States, and in every town and village in Ireland, as well as throughout the rural districts, there exists a regiment or detachment of the vast army of the Irish Republic. No matter how invisible the force may be at any particular point, yet there it exists, awaiting the signal to pounce upon the enemy, and avenge the wrongs of ages; each member of it feeling, within his heart of hearts, that those injuries have reached him individually, and that, without the opportunity of wiping them out, even at the expense of the last drop of his heart’s blood, the conquest, when achieved, would be almost worthless in his eyes. It is with this element that England, at the present juncture, has to deal at home and abroad; and now that the avalanche, after rolling down the steep of seven successive centuries, has accumulated in magnitude and force most tremendously, and sufficiently to overcome every obstacle that happens to lie in its path, ere long we shall find it leaping in thunder upon the plain, and overwhelming those who so long mocked at its approach, and who now so vainly attempt to stay its resistless course.