Sovereign's venerated name with such a piece of jocular impertinence. The Queen was received with the respect and courtesy due to her position and character. After staying a few days, she went away. CHAPTER XXV. "How thrive we by the Union? Our substance drained away A wretched province trampled on, Is all we've left to-day. Then curse with me the Union, That juggle foul and base, The baneful root that bore such fruit SPIRIT OF THE NATION. THE disturbed state of Italy, the prevalence of insurrection, the movements especially which menaced the temporal power of the Pope, elicited from statesmen and journalists in England the most fervid declarations of the right of all nations to choose their own governments. Said Lord John Russell, "I think, with regard to this matter of states and nations regulating their own governments, that it is not very different from that of a man in a city-say the city of Aberdeen-regulating his own house. I think we are bound to say, and we do say, and we have said, that against any interference by foreign force to prevent those peoples having their own government, and conducting their affairs as they like, we do loudly and solemnly protest." During the year 1860, the doctrine thus proclaimed by Lord John, was preached by English journalists, who of course overlooked its manifest application to Ireland. Said the Times, "That government should be for the good of the governed, and that whenever rulers wilfully and persistently postpone the good of their subjects, either to the interest of foreign states or to abstract theories of religion or politics, the people have a right to throw off the yoke, are principles too often admitted and acted upon to be any longer questioned." 66 'Europe," said the Daily News, has over and over again affirmed that one principle on which the Italian question depends, and to which the inhabitants of Central Italy appealthe right of a people to choose its own rulers." Another utterance of the Times: "The goodness or badness of a government should be estimated with reference, not to abstract rules, but to the opinions and feelings of the governed." "As free Englishmen," said the Sun, "we assert the right of the Romans, and of all nations, to have governors of their own choice." "England," said the Times, "has not scrupled to avow her opinion that the people of the Roman States, like every other people, have a right to choose their own government, and the persons in whose hands that government shall be placed." Again, the Times told its readers that "The destiny of a nation ought to be determined, not by the opinions of other nations, but by the opinion of the nation itself. To decide whether they are well governed or not, or rather whether the degree of extortion, corruption, and cruelty to which they are subject, is sufficient to justify armed resistance, is for those who live under that government—not for those who, being exempt from its oppression, feel a sentimental or a theological interest in its continuance."* Now here are political canons which more than sustain the demand of the Irish for a Repeal of the Union. Applying to Ireland, for instance, with a slight verbal alteration, the Italian doctrine of the Times, the dictum of the leading journal teaches us that "the destiny of Ireland ought to be determined, not by the opinion of England, but by the opinion of the nation itself. To decide whether the Irish are well governed or not, or rather whether the degree of extortion, corruption, and cruelty to which they are subject, is sufficient to justify armed resistance, is for those who live under that government, not for those who, being exempt from its oppression, feel a sentimental or a theological interest in its continuance." Smith O'Brien decided that the degree of extortion, corruption, and cruelty to which his countrymen were subject, was sufficient to justify armed resistance. The extortion consists in an annual tribute of many millions sterling drained out of the kingdom to England. The corruption consists of *The above extracts, with many others from different authorities bearing upon Irish questions, have been collected by A. M. Sullivan, proprietor of the Nation, in the "Irish National Almanac and Historical Remembrancer," a most useful and well-compiled publication, in which the anniversaries of Irish events of personal, political, or historical importance are substituted for the anniversaries of English and other foreign incidents, in which other almanacs abound, and in which the Irish reader cannot take much interest. bribes, whether in places or in exclusive institutions, with which educated men are purchased to uphold the giant wrong, or at least to be silent respecting it. The cruelty consists in the sufferings necessarily sustained by the multitude from the enormous pecuniary extortion which defrauds them of the natural fund which Providence has given for their support. Were there such a state of things in any continental country, Earl Russell and the Times would of course preach the right of the oppressed to resist, and to be the sole judges not only of the necessity for resistance, but of the precise mode of resisting. But when Ireland is in question, the English friends of continental liberty take a different view of duties and responsibilities. In the days of O'Connell's agitation the Times declared that even were the Union gall to Ireland, it should be maintained. And no doubt the Times, and all the other British sympathisers with continental insubordination, would at any time renew that declaration. Politics in Ireland had apparently gone to sleep. A Conservative friend said to me, "How completely politics have died out there are no political parties now." A Protestant clergyman said, "The people only care about their turnips; they don't care now for politics." In both cases the wish was probably father of the thought; but it is true that the surface was as calm as it could be made by pinching want and by dire anxiety to obtain the bare means of existence. During Mr. Smith O'Brien's banishment he composed a work entitled, "Thoughts on Government, by an Exile." In 1856 he was permitted to return to Ireland. He expressed great delight at beholding his native land once more. His return was hailed with hearty satisfaction by all classes of his countrymen. For his high and unsullied character and the genial kindness of his disposition had won the respect and regard of even his political opponents. In 1860 some gentlemen who were considerably struck with the fervid enthusiasm for the Rights of Nations which glowed in the columns of the English press, considered that it was a good opportunity to take the English apostles of liberty at their word, and to put in a claim on behalf of Ireland. A Declaration was drawn up by a committee in Dublin, and circulated through Ireland for signatures. It suggested a plebiscite, and asserted the immortal principles of 1782. It received between 400,000 and 500,000 signatures. It was forwarded with a loyal and respectful address to the Queen, and entrusted to the care of Sir George Grey for presentation to her Majesty. I am not aware that Sir George so much as acknowledged the receipt of the document. On the 4th December, 1860, a meeting was held at the Rotundo in connexion with the movement; The O'Donoghoe, M.P., was in the chair. The Round Room was filled to inconvenience, and the meeting showed that the spirit which had animated the vast gatherings in O'Connell's day was yet alive and vigorous. Excellent speeches were made by John Francis Maguire and John Martin. One of the secretaries of the meeting was an intelligent young man named Joyce, about two or three-and-twenty years of age. I said to him, "You are so young that you cannot have had any part in O'Connell's movement; whence do you derive your Repeal principles ?" They are born with us," was his answer. The Irish political movements since 1860 have been chiefly an attempt by Mr. Martin of Kilbroney, a Presbyterian gentleman of the county Down, and The O'Donoghoe, to establish a National League for the recovery of our national constitution of 1782. The League was formed in January, 1864. It published in the Irish, English, French German, Italian and Spanish languages a brief abstract of some of the most flagrant wrongs resulting from the Union. The French version of that document has recently been republished in Paris at the expense of the Marquis de Nettancour. The First Annual Report of the League was issued in February, 1865. The Second Annual Report, which was issued in February, 1866, records that, owing to a concurrence of adverse circumstances, the Irish nationalists at home did not gather in large numbers round the centre formed by Mr. Martin and The O'Donoghoe, but that in Australia a generous movement in support of the League had been commenced, and was still continued. The Report announces the sympathy of the Irish settlers and of the descendants of Irish settlers throughout New South Wales. The movement had spread into Queensland also. "If the Irish people at home," the document proceeds to say, "could be persuaded to declare frankly and openly the truth of their convictions and their wishes, and to present themselves before the world as a people robbed of their national right and seeking its restoration, we are confident that not only the Irish of all the Australian colonies, but the Irish of Canada and all the other American colonies, and the millions of Irish of the United States, would cordially give us their aid." Unluckily the Irish of the United States had at that time embarked in the Fenian experiment, and their emissaries in this country had succeeded in destroying to a large extent the faith of our countrymen at home in constitutional agitation. Many, whose feelings and principles were identical with ours, were saddened into inaction. Many were seduced by sheer desperation into the Fenian ranks. Many were led to unite, not with the League, but with the National Association, inaugurated 29th December, 1864, and embracing in its programme the improvement of the land-laws, the disendowment of the State Church, and the freedom of Catholic education. Let me here respectfully repeat the appeal I have made in a previous chapter to the Irish in America. I implore them to discard from their policy the republican element. There is not, I am certain, a single man amongst them who would not hail with delight the re-establishment of the constitution of 1782. We have the strongest possible demonstration of the ample efficacy of that constitution in making Ireland prosperous. Millions of the Irish at home desire its restoration beyond all other earthly objects. One of its essential conditions is the identity of the Sovereign of these two islands. Do not, then, needlessly augment the difficulties in our path by introducing a project which would assuredly enlist against you a majority of the Irish at home. Adopt a legal and constitutional policy-a policy which, if wisely administered, is capable of welding the Irish at home and their dispersed compatriots into one compact mass, formidable in their numbers; formidable in the truth and justice of their cause; formidable in the legal safety of their position; formidable in the magical strength of being, both in principle and in practice, thoroughly in the right. For republicanism in America I entertain the highest respect. But whoever is conversant with the actual political condition of the various Irish parties, must know that any attempt to embody the republican principle with a scheme to restore to Ireland self-government, bespeaks its own failure at the outset. It is simply and inevitably self-destructive. There is an influential portion of the British press incessantly engaged in the diffusion of false and calumnious statements about Ireland. An immense circulation sends these statements to the ends of the earth. The Irish scattered over the globe could effectually repel the misrepresentations of the enemy by uniting with a central institute in Dublin in our claim of right and in our peaceful protest against the monsterwrong of 1800, so as to enlist in our behalf the public opinion of the civilized world. Such a protest and demand, made by |