“It did not represent anything like the full force of Irish patriotism, or even, indeed, a considerable portion of it. The bulk of the millions who believed in O’Connell and Smith O’Brien stood with folded arms outside this movement. Its policy was disbelieved in, although the Fenians worked with an energy worthy of the highest admiration, while an honest, manly, self-sacrificing spirit of patriotism marked the men who were its martyrs. Never did braver men stand in the dock; and to the Fenians Ireland owes that stirring up of public opinion upon Irish subjects which hitherto had slumbered in a masterly inactivity. You see, Mr. Hawthorne, as we say at whist, I am leading up to your strong suit, and if I have been a little prolix—”
“My dear sir, I am receiving more information than the Bodleian Library or all the blue-books could possibly give me.”
“Sorra a lie in that! Ah! wud ye?” The latter addressed to the horse, in order to parry my inevitable censure.
“Well, sir,” continued the priest after he had duly acknowledged the compliment bestowed upon him by my guest, “we had arrived at that stage when, as Phædrus says:
Gratis anhelans, multo agendo nihil agens.
We had been checkmated, and Britannia smiled contemptuously at us from behind the glistening bayonets of the regiments with which she flooded the country. It was again the horrors of the lash and triangle, loathsome details of the treachery of informers and prosecutors, the chain-gangs at Portland and Chatham, and the terrible outrages inflicted upon men whose only fault lay in loving Ireland not wisely but too well. I shall pass over that, because there is a wicked beat underneath my waistcoat, and curæ leves loquuntur, ingentes stupent. I shall come at once to the question of Home Rule and dismiss it briefly; for there is the stable dome of Kilkenley right over beyond that group of firs.”
“Yev more nor a quarther av an hour, yer riverince, for the baste’s purty well bet up.”
“Five minutes will do me, Peter,” laughed Father O’Dowd. “The Irish passion for national existence still glowed in our bosoms, and we cried for light. A field for Irish devotion and heroism was what was wanted. We were sick of the hecatombs of victims offered up by the last sad effort. As you are well aware, Mr. Hawthorne, the Tory party came into power during the Fenian scare, and they went to their work in a spirit which would have shamed Oliver Cromwell himself. They fined, fettered, imprisoned, and hanged, until a glut of vengeance seemed an impossibility. ‘This is my chance,’ says Mr. Gladstone. ‘I’ll make capital out of this Fenian scare, and, dashing at the Church Establishment, I’ll gather in the straying bands which once formed the rank and file of the liberal party. England wants a salve, and when she finds herself doing a virtuous thing she will purge her conscience of all her recent evil-doing.’”
“I never heard of Mr. Gladstone’s having used those words,” exclaimed the member for Doodleshire pompously. “If he had used them in the House, they would have been ordered to be taken down by the Speaker.”
“They are my words, not Mr. Gladstone’s.”