Address of Rev. S. Banks Nelson.
Rev. S. Banks Nelson, pastor of the First Presbyterian church, Woonsocket, R. I., a native of Belfast, Ireland, said in substance:
Fellow-countrymen and Fellow-citizens:
It is a rare pleasure to me thus to address an assembly of this character for the first time in my seven years and a half of residence in the United States, my adopted country. Lexington marked the birth of American Independence and the Republic.
The contiguity of Ireland to England accounts for the comparative ease of conquest owing to the small area of the island, as compared with the huge territory of the United States—absorption of Scotland, almost certain to be followed by absorption of Ireland. The religious oppression under Cromwell and William III, might soon have given way to mutual toleration and freedom of conscience had it not been intensified by economic oppression.
Irishmen who know how the English merchant, manufacturer, landowner, mine-owner, and farmer, were combined by common jealousies to suppress competition in Ireland; how in cold blood, laws were enacted to hinder the development, and paralyze the energies of Ireland, can never naturally be found strengthening, either at home or abroad, a policy which makes for the aggrandizement of the few by the plunder of the many. The early history of our race developed to a remarkable degree, to a degree unattained, I believe, even in continental or oriental societies, the tribal life and the interdependencies of men in social and family relations.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the political genius of our countrymen has been so splendidly manifested in municipal politics. Nor is it surprising again that through jealousy of the eminent success of Irishmen in local politics, men of other nationalities sneer at us as the world’s policemen. The jibe of jealousy is the best compliment of character. We are the world’s policemen, and that sarcasm has no sting for us which, wagging its head, says, “Irishmen rule every country but their own,” for we make bold to say, that no other race, not even the Jew excepted, against such overwhelming odds, suffering poverty so grinding and so protracted, could have preserved its spirit of patriotism through so many and so terrible baptisms of fire and blood. And, grandest triumph of all, we conserved its manhood, its physical and spiritual energy so full, that, instead of a race crippled by conquest, dwarfed by oppression and inapt through inexperience of self-government, the Irishman to-day, whether in the pulpit or the parliament, in the court-house or congress, on the highway or in the home, as a soldier or a statesman, is facile princeps, both in the East and in the West.
It is impossible for Irishmen to think of Lexington without the associated thought of the United Irishmen,
“Who fears to speak of ’98?”
We remember those noble souls who banded themselves in 1798 for “the purpose of obtaining the repeal of the penal laws against Roman Catholics and for the right of the electoral franchise” and who, after the illustrious Grattan’s modest reform bill had been rejected, and the tyranny of coercive laws had changed whips for scorpions, gave their lives for freedom of conscience and civil liberty. As an Irish Protestant I claim in the loftiest pride, kinship with the chivalrous Wolfe Tone, the memorable Simon Butler, the daring Napper Tandy, with James Nelson, the owner and fearless editor of the organ of the United Irishmen in Belfast; with McCracken the Presbyterian minister, who was hanged by the neck in Belfast’s High street by the British because of his scholarly influence in the cause of freedom, and last, yet ever first, with the glorious, pious and immortal Robert Emmet,—God haste the day when we may be able to write the epitaph for which he prayed in the hour of his sacred martyrdom.