CHAPTER XXVI. "Can the depths of the ocean afford you not graves, THE reader who has accompanied me thus far will have seen that ample provocatives exist in Ireland for that discontent which, when coloured by American connexion, assumes the shape of Fenianism. I have elsewhere examined the causes of the Fenian phenomenon ;* which is in my judgment the direct result of the Legislative Union. The popular discontent I regard as not only legitimate, but inevitable. The Fenian attempts at redressing the national wrong were absurd, ill-conceived, ill-contrived, treasonable, and impracticable. The National Association, which comprises all, or nearly all, the Catholic bishops and a large number of clergymen, earnestly invited the people to support it. The National League, instituted by Mr. Martin and The O'Donoghoe, sent forth a similar invitation. The objects of both those societies are in the highest degree popular. Yet the great body of the people held aloof, because they were destitute of confidence in the imperial parliament, to which the appeals for removal of wrongs were to be addressed by the two societies I have named; and because they had taken up a vague idea that conquering hosts were speedy to come from America and set all right. This idea was very prevalent, and in my intercourse with the peasantry I found it extremely difficult to dispel the delusion. A particular day would be fixed by Fenian agents for the landing of the armament; and when the day would arrive, bringing win it no armament, another day would be named, and another, and another; eno cessive postponements sui leaving the poplar astity undiminished. The number of signatures to petitions for dandowing run State Church amoted in 1998 to no keus than 2012, 8862. This number does not represent the viola, ka many pada vid were rejected in consequence A normaly. Tus hautar would have bee aut gan & sa prih ih matinske in the imperial leiam adpana v ya Suma link w change in the and avi mosse, extung, dies, Watteby jhak, Y, * In a spanies Get a tread tirannamal, lished by Mary, Dinin prez 233,766. Such numbers, under circumstances of considerable discouragement, must be allowed to indicate great earnestness in the petitioners. Sir John Gray, M.P. for Kilkenny, has taken charge of the question of ecclesiastical disendowment in parliament. Of his speech, delivered 11th April, 1866, the Times of the next day said, "Whoever doubts the anomaly or the failure of the Irish Church, may be recommended, once for all, to peruse the speech of Sir John Gray." It is indeed a very able statement. The Fenian organisation proceeded apace. Of course the government had full and early information of the secret doings of the Fenians; for there never was, and there never will be, an illegal conspiracy in Ireland in which spies and false brethren will not swarm. The very existence of such a conspiracy is certain to invite pretended enthusiasts, whose sole object in swearing themselves into the society is to betray its members to the government for payment. Pierce Nagle, Pettit, and Warner in 1866 were mere reproductions of John Donnellan Balfe in 1848, and of Reynolds, Newell, and Armstrong in 1798. The useful though infamous services of informers placed the Viceroy, Lord Wodehouse, in possession of every detail of the conspiracy; and it is due to him to say that he used his powers not only with firmness and discretion, but with as much clemency as consisted with the performance of duties in themselves severe. He proclaimed in parliament that Ireland had grievances to be redressed, amongst which he gave the alien State Church a prominent position. When the first batch of Fenian prisoners had been tried, convicted, and sentenced, it was fondly hoped, by persons who could not see beneath the surface, that Fenianism was extinguished. The Earl of Derby knew better; he said it had only been scotched, not killed. Lord Wodehouse was created Earl of Kimberley to reward him for having killed or scotched it. From his early and accurate knowledge, derived from the informers, he was able to anticipate and counteract every movement projected by the conspirators. The English journals had for some time been amusing the world with statements that Ireland was prosperous and contented; that she had cordially accepted the Union, and had at length become sensible of its benefits. Fenianism came into awkward collision with those statements. Here was a conspiracy against English connexion, extending nobody could tell how far among the population. Persons who knew nothing about the matter imagined that it was an integral conspiracy, confined to the men who were actually enrolled in it. But in truth it is no more than a symptom of a far more extensive disease of that national discontent inevitably flowing from. the Union and its evil consequences, and of which the Fenian exhibition is merely the accident of special circumstances. It is well to recall the solemn warnings given in 1799 and 1800 by the parliamentary friends of the Irish Constitution, that the Union necessarily tended to promote the ultimate separation of the countries. Mr. Saurin said, "It will endanger the present happy constitution and connexion with Great Britain." Colonel Barry-" It will impair the connexion." Right Hon. John Foster-" The ruinous measure of an Union-a measure calculated to disturb the harmony and threaten the existence of the empire."-" Which, if persevered in, must threaten separation." Mr. Saunderson-"It will endanger, perhaps dissolve, the connexion." Lord Powerscourt (moving an amendment)" It would tend, in our opinion, more than any other cause, ultimately to a separation of this kingdom from Great Britain.". Mr. Waller—“ It will weaken, if not dissolve, the connexion." Lord Mathew-"The Union will tend more to weaken than to fortify the connexion." Lord Cole-" The strongest abhorrence of the Union is compatible with the most unshaken attachment to the connexion." Mr. John Claudius Beresford-"It will undermine the welfare and subvert the liberties of Ireland, and endanger the connexion." Right Hon. W. B. Ponsonby-"I oppose the Union from an anxious desire to maintain the connexion." Right Hon. George Ogle-" A rejection of the Union is the only mode by which the connexion can be preserved." Mr. R. French-" The preservation of the Irish Parliament will encourage and maintain the connexion." Mr. Gorges-"The happy communion with Great Britain is best maintained by the constitution of 1782.” Mr. George Ponsonby-" The parliament which so recently protected the Irish crown is the firm and saving bond of British connexion." Colonel Vereker-" The Union will effect the downfall of Ireland, the annihilation of her independence, and separation from British connexion." Mr. Bushe "Union is alienation from British connexion." Mr. Peter Burrowes-"This Union not only menaces the connexion, but the constitution itself." Mr. Plunket "This bill I oppose, not as a bill of union, but of separation; as a bill calculated to dismember the empire." Mr. Grattan-"The two nations are not identified, though the Irish legislature be absorbed; and by that absorption the feeling of one of the nations is not identified but alienated. Union is Irish alienation." In truth any other result than Irish alienation was out of the question. That alienation rankles and festers in the nation's heart. How could it be otherwise? The Union seems pre-eminently calculated to destroy the attachment of Irishmen to British connexion, and to render them indifferent to the conquest of their country by a foreign force. If Ireland's destiny is to be robbed, degraded, and dispeopled, Irishmen may, not unnaturally, ask what can it matter whether the robbery, the degradation, the dispeopling, are achieved by Great Britain or by any other power? How different the case if the Union had never been enacted! Had the policy of equal laws which Earl Fitzwilliam believed he was commissioned to effect in 1795 been fairly carried out; had the country been suffered by England to advance in the career of prosperity she enjoyed under her domestic legislature; we should have seen her own resources expanding into national wealth and employed for the support of her own people; we should have seen, deeply rooted in the nation's heart, the loyalty that springs from national happiness and from an honourable pride in domestic institutions adapted to the people's wants and dear to their affections; we should have seen no vast exodus of impoverished millions from a land to which God has given plenty; we should have seen no Fenianism. The Times now and then tells truth. "There is nothing," said the leading journal (30th June, 1863), "about which we Englishmen know so little as Ireland. We are often told this, and no doubt very justly." The connexion of the countries has now lasted well nigh seven centuries; the Union has lasted for sixty-six years. If at the end of more than two generations of legislative connexion, and seven hundred years of imperial connexion, Englishmen avowedly know less about Ireland than about anything else, we may safely conclude that their crassa ignorantia is incurable. The legislation of ignorance can neither be intelligent nor beneficial. If Fenianism includes, like every other secret society, its rascals and its traitors, it has also its better representatives. Luby, the son of a Protestant clergyman, appears to be a sincere and respectable enthusiast. Kickham is a man of considerable education and mental refinement. But if Fenianism has its special hero, I would say that hero is Thomas Burke. His address to the court after conviction was marked by calmness, earnestness, dignity, and resignation. The following passages of his eloquent speech are worth preserving: "I, my lords, have no desire for the name of a martyr-I ask not the death of a martyr; but if it is the will of the Almighty and Omnipotent God that my devotion for the land of my birth shall be tested on the scaffold, I am willing there to die in defence of the rights of man to free government—the rights of an oppressed people to throw off the yoke of thraldom. I am an Irishman by birth; an American by adoption; by nature a lover of freedom, and an enemy to that power that holds my native land in the bonds of tyranny. It has no godly structure of self-government. Before I go any further I have an important duty that I wish to dispose of. To my learned, talented, and eloquent counsel I offer them the poor gift of thanks-the sincere and heartfelt thanks of an honest man. I offer them, too, in the name of America, the thanks of the Irish people. I know that, although I am here without a friend, without a relative-in fact, three thousand miles away from my family, I am not forgotten there. The great and generous Irish heart of America to-day feels for, to-day sympathises with, and does not forget the man who is willing to tread the scaffold-aye, defiantly, proudly, conscious of no wrong-in defence of American principles, in defence of liberty. I shall now, my lords, as no doubt you will suggest to me the propriety of doing, turn my attention to the objects beyond the grave. I shall now look only to that home where sorrows are at an end-where joy is eternal. I shall hope and pray that freedom may yet dawn on this poor downtrodden country. It is my hope-it is my prayer; and the last words that I shall utter will be a prayer to God for forgiveness, and a prayer for poor old Ireland. True, I ask for no mercy. My present emaciated form, my constitution somewhat shattered, it is better that my life should be brought to an end than to drag out a miserable existence in the prison pens of Portland. Thus |