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RIDGEWAY.
AN HISTORICAL ROMANCE
OF THE
FENIAN INVASION OF CANADA
By SCIAN DUBH.
"_On our side is virtue and Erin; On theirs' is the Saxon and
guilt_."--MOORE.
1868.
INTRODUCTION.
In the dark, English crucible of seven hundred years of famine, fire
and sword, the children of Ireland have been tested to an intensity
unknown to the annals of any other people. From the days of the
second Henry down to those of the last of the Georges, every device
that human ingenuity could encompass or the most diabolical spirit
entertain, was brought to bear upon them, not only with a view to
insuring their speedy degradation, but with the further design of
accomplishing ultimately the utter extinction of their race. Yet
notwithstanding that confiscation, exile and death, have been their
bitter portion for ages--notwithstanding that their altars, their
literature and their flag have been trampled in the dust, beneath the
iron heel of the invader, the pure, crimson ore of their nationality
and patriotism still flashes and scintillates before the world; while
the fierce heart of "Brien of the Cow Tax," bounding in each and
every of them as of yore, yearns for yet another Clontarf, when
hoarse with the pent-up vengeance of centuries, they shall burst like
unlaired tigers upon their ancient, and implacable enemy, and, with
one, long, wild cry, hurl her bloody and broken from their shores
forever.
Had England been simply actuated by a chivalrous spirit of conquest,
alone, or moved by a desire to blend the sister islands into one
harmonious whole, even then her descent upon Ireland could not be
justified in any degree whatever. Ireland had been her _Alma Mater_.
According to the venerable Bode and others, her noble and second rank
flocked thither in the seventh century, where they were "hospitably
received and educated, and furnished with books _without fee or
reward_." Even at the present moment, the Irish or Celtic tongue is
the only key to her remote antiquities and ancient nomenclature. The
distinguished Lhuyd, in his Archaelogia Britannica, and the
celebrated Leibnitz himself, place this latter beyond any possible
shadow of doubt. Scarcely a ruined fane or classic pile of any remote
date within her borders but is identified with the name of some
eminent Irish missionary long since passed away. What would Oxford
have been without Joannes Erigena, or Cambridge, deprived of the
celebrated Irish monk that stood by the first stone laid in its
foundation? The fact is every impartial writer, from the "father of
English history" down to the present day, admits, that in the early
ages, when darkness brooded over the surrounding nations, Ireland,
learned, philanthropic and chivalrous, blazed a very conflagration on
the ocean, and stretched forth her jewelled and generous hand to
poor, benighted England, and fostered, in addition, the intellectual
infancy of Germany, France and Switzerland, as well as the early
civilization of regions more remote still. Then it was that the milk
and honey of her ancient tongue and lore flowed out from her in
rivers to wash the stains from the soul and brow of the stolid and
unintellectual Saxon. Then it was, that her very zone gave way in her
eagerness to pluck his Pagan life from gloom, and wed her day unto
his night. But what of all this now?--The sin that is "worse than
witchcraft" is upon him! His hands are stained with innocent blood!
He has spurned his benefactress with the foot of Nero, "removed her
candlestick", and left her in hunger, cold and darkness upon her own
hearthstone.
Had not Ireland, at the time of the invasion, been cut up through the
fierce pride and petty jealousies of her rulers, the English could
never have effected a permanent footing upon her shores. Contemptible
in numbers, shipping and appointments, the concentrated opposition of
even a few petty chiefs could have scattered them to the winds, or
sent them "howling to their gods". But, wanting in that homogeneity
without which a nation must always remain powerless, the invasion of
the territory of one individual ruler was often regarded as a matter
of no very grave importance to those who were not his immediate
subjects; so that from this cause, as well as from, the unhappy
dissentions which harrassed the country at the period, the new colony
found the means of establishing themselves upon the eastern borders
of the island, and of possessing themselves of some of the walled
towns, which they subsequently turned to such good account in
fortifying themselves against surprise and baffling the pursuit of
the natives, when worsted in the open field.
Whether the subtle influences of a common nationality moved Pope Adrian
the Fourth--who was an Englishman named Nicholas Breakspear,--to issue
the famous Bull granting Ireland to his fellow countryman, Henry the
Second of England, or whether, as it has been alleged, no such Bull was
ever issued, and that the one still extant is a forgery, it matters but
little now. The Pope's claims extended to the spiritual jurisdiction of
Ireland only; and even had he granted the Bull in question, and assumed
the right of conveying the whole island to the English king, the
transfer was obtained under false pretenses for, from the very wording
of the document itself, it is palpable that Henry led the Sovereign
Pontiff, to believe that Ireland was sunk in the grossest ignorance and
superstition, and that, in making a descent upon it, he had only the
glory and honor of the Church in view. So terrible a distortion of the
facts of the case on his part, necessarily rendered all action based
upon his statement morally invalid at least; and thus it is, that even
those who have confidence in the genuineness of this Bull, regard it as
utterly worthless, and at not all admissable into any pleadings which
ingenious English politicians may choose to advance on the subject.
So inveterate the hostility that manifested itself on the part of the
Irish towards the invader from the moment that his foul and sacrilegious
foot first desecrated their soil, a reign of terror was at once
inaugurated in the vicinage of his camp or stronghold, by those
chieftains with whom he came into more immediate contact, and upon whose
territories he more directly impinged. In the track of both peoples,
"death follows like a squire." Neither truce nor oath was kept by the
English; while their fiery adversaries, necessarily stung to frenzy at
the presence of yet another invader in their midst, made sudden
reprisals in a manner so unexpected and daring, that the laws of the
hour like those of Draco, were literally written in blood. While the
dash and chivalry of the Irish prevented them from adopting the stealthy
dagger of the assassin, and prompted them rather, to bold and open deeds
of death, the enactments of "The Pale" as the English patch or district
was termed, were absolutely of a character the most demonical. According
to their provisions, the murder of an Irish man or woman was no offence
whatever; while the slaughter of a native who had made submission to the
Pale, was visited with a slight fine only--not for the crime _per se_,
but for the murderer's having deprived the king of a servant. From this
it can be easily perceived, that a cowardly system of warfare obtained
on the part of the English, which, were it not for the quick eye and
fierce agility of the inhabitants, would soon have resulted in their
total annihilation.
This foul and dastardly system of assassination was but simply a
leading expression of the bastard nationality of the invader. Not
one, single drop of proud, pure blood coursed through his veins. His
degraded country had been in turn the mistress of the Roman, the
Saxon, the Dane and the Norman, and he was the hybrid offspring of
her incontinence. Consequently, he had neither a history nor a past
of his own, calculated to prompt even one exalted aspiration. He was
a mongrel of the most inveterate character, and was therefore, and
inevitably, treacherous, cowardly; and cunning. Not so the brave sons
of the land he so ardently coveted. Ere the mighty gnomon of "The
Great Pyramid" had thrown its gigantic shadow o'er the red dial of
the desert, they had filled the long gallery of a glorious past with
an array of portraits, the most superb presented by antiquity. Before
the Vocal Memnon poured forth his hidden melody at sunrise, or "The
City of a Hundred Gates" had sent forth her chariots to battle, they
had a local habitation and a name, and had stamped their impress
upon many a shore. No people in existence, to-day, can look back to
an origin more remote or clearly traceable through a countless lapse
of ages than the Irish: and hence it was, that at the period of the
Anglo-Norman descent upon their borders, the chivalry of a stupendous
past was upon them: and having its traditions and its glories to
maintain and emulate, and being, besides, inspired by the pure and
unadulterated crimson tide that had flowed in one uninterrupted
stream through their fiery veins for the space of two thousand years
previously, they shrank from the treacherous and dastardly system of
assassination introduced by the ignoble and cowardly Saxon, and
struck only to the dread music of their own war cry.
Still, although in detail hostile to the invader, no great, united
effort appears to have been made to rout him out root and branch,
until he had become so powerful as to make any attack upon him a
matter of the most serious moment, and had, in addition, enlarged
his borders through sundry reinforcements from his own shores. The
few more purely Norman leaders that were inspired with some desire
at least for a more honorable mode of warfare, were utterly powerless
among the overwhelming throng of their followers who had been long
brutalized on the other side of the channel. In this connection
the proud, revengeful and chivalrous natives were had at a sad
disadvantage; for then, as to-day, they were characterized by a spirit
of knight-errantry, which disdained to take an enemy unawares.
As an evidence that Henry had the spiritual welfare only of the people
of Ireland at heart, and that the building up of the Church there was
his sole object, no sooner did he land in that country, than he
parcelled out the entire island among ten Englishmen--Earl Strongbow,
Robert Fitzstephens, Miles de Cogan, Philip Bruce, Sir Hugh de Lacy, Sir
John de Courcy, William Burk Fitz Andelm, Sir Thomas de Clare, Otho de
Grandison and Robert le Poer. At one sweep, in so far as a royal grant
could go, he confiscated every foot of land from Cape Clear to the
Giant's Causeway, denied the right of the inhabitants to a single square
yard of their native soil, and made the whole country a present to the
persons just named. Perhaps history does not record another such
outrageous and infamous act, and one so antagonistic to every principle
of right and justice. Had there been a preceding series of expensive and
bloody wars between both countries, in which Ireland, after years of
fruitless resistance, fell at last beneath the yoke of the conqueror, it
could be readily understood, that the victor would seek to indemnify
himself for his losses, on terms the most exacting and relentless if
you will; but in the case under consideration, no animosity existed
between the two nations until the ruler of one, without even a shadow
of provocation on the part of the inhabitants of the other, made a
deliberate descent upon them, and ignoring the benefits conferred
gratuitously by them, previously, on his own ungrateful land, subjected
them to every barbarity and wrong known to the history of crime.
For upwards of four hundred years of the English occupation--that is,
from the landing of Strongbow down to the period of James the First,
there was no legal redress for the plunder or murder of an Irishman,
by any of the invaders, or for the violation of his wife or daughter.
The laws of the Pale, enacted under the sanction of the King and the
people of England, subsidized, in effect, a horde of ruthless
assassins and robbers, with a view to striking terror to the hearts
of the natives, and driving them into a recognition of the right of
the usurper to rule over them, and dispose as he saw fit of their
property and persons. This right, however, was never conceded in even
the most remote degree; for, notwithstanding that the colony of
foreign spears and battle-axes waxed stronger daily, the Irish
element, disunited though it was, fought it constantly. True, that an
occasional lull characterized the tempest as it swept and eddied
through each successive generation; but never did Ireland assume the
yoke of the oppressor voluntarily, or bow, for even a single moment,
in meek submission to his unauthorized sway.
It would require volumes to recount a tithe of the frightful atrocities
practiced by the invaders upon the rightful and unoffending owners of
the soil during the long period just referred to, and especially towards
its close, when that lewd monster, Elizabeth, disgraced her sex and the
age. No language can describe adequately the various diabolical modes of
extermination practiced against all those who refused to bow the knee
and kiss the English rod. No code of laws ever enacted in even the most
barbarous age of the world, could compare in fiendish cruelty with the
early penal enactments of the Pale--so forcibly supplemented in after
years by the perjured "Dutch boor" and the inhuman Georges. The foul
fiend himself could not have devised laws more diabolical in their
character or destructive in their application. So close were their
meshes and sweeping their folds, that the possibility of escape was
obviously out of the question; as their victim was met and entangled at
every turn, until at last the fatal blow descended, and the unequal
contest was ended. But more infamous and unjustifiable still, when "the
foul invader" found himself occasionally unable to cope successfully
with his brave and chivalrous antagonists, he had recourse to a darker
and deeper treachery than even that which characterized the stealthy and
unexpected stroke of his midnight dagger. He adopted the guise of
friendship; and professing to forget the past, lured into his power with
festive blandishments the chiefs of many a noble following, whom he
dared not meet in open fight, but who, at a given signal, and while the
brimming goblet circled through the feast, were suddenly set upon and
foully murdered ere they could draw a dagger or leap to their feet. In
corroboration of this assertion, we have only to refer to Mullaghmast,
where a deed of this description was perpetrated; and of a character so
cruel and dastardly, that the names of those concerned in the inhuman
plot are now desecrated by every individual raised above the brute, or
inspired with the hope of heaven.
Nor was there any mode of propitiating the satanic spirit which seemed
to actuate the English against their opponents, from the first moment
that they set their foot upon Irish soil; for, when, in the lapse of
years, a portion of the inhabitants in the vicinity of the Pale,
professed their readiness to conform to the manners, laws and customs
of the invader, their overtures were rejected, and they were still held
at the point of the sword, as "the Irish enemy," and denied the
protection of the laws that they were ready to obey. In short, every
move of the English, established beyond any possibility of doubt, that
their sole object was the utter and complete extirpation of the
natives, and the subsequent establishment upon their conquered shores
of a dynasty from which every drop of pure, Celtic blood should be
excluded forever.
But that day never arrived, and with God's help never shall. However
she might have suffered or failed through an occasional traitor,
Ireland, as a whole, fought against English usurpation from the moment
that she became aware of its ultimate aims, and felt its growing power
within her borders. There was, besides, in the two races, those
opposites of character--those natural antagonisms which repelled each
other with a force and vehemence not to be neutralized or unified by
any process within the reach of even the most humane or astute ruler.
They were too different peoples, with habits of thought, moral
perceptions, and ideas of chivalry at total variance with each other as
entertained by them individually. The great bulk of the English colony
was composed of unprincipled freebooters and degraded Saxon serfs; the
Conqueror having, a century previously, turned the masses of the
English into swine-herds, banished their language from court, and
reduced them to a condition of the most abject slavery. Hence their
stolid brutality, the low plane of their intelligence, and their
systematic murders. But, how different the condition of the Irish in
this respect. Far ages previous, both learning, refinement, and the
chivalrous use of arms, pervaded their shores. Evidences of the truth
of this assertion lie scattered around us in every direction. Girald
Barry--the English Cambrensis, William Camden, Archbishop Usher,
Vallancey, Lord Lyttleton, and a host of others, all bear witness to
the profound learning and noble chivalry of the Irish from the earliest
periods; while the various educational institutions throughout the
continent, founded shortly after the introduction of Christianity into
Ireland, establish, upon a basis the most immovable, the truth of an
assertion made by one of the authors just mentioned, namely, that "most
of the lights that illumined those times of thick darkness proceeded
out of Ireland". As may be presumed, then, a people so refined and
chivalrous--so sensitive to all that was noble and elevated--a people
who, as in the case of Alfred, had educated the very kings of the
invaders, as well as plucked their subjects from Paganism, were
averse to meeting the usurper on his own plane of warfare, and that
consequently, the very pride and dignity of their arms walled in, as
it were, the tyrant from any of those cold-blooded and dastardly
atrocities which so disfigured his own career.
Notwithstanding that, after four hundred and twenty years of outlawry
the most cruel and unrelenting, the Irish were, (12th James I. 1614.)
at last, admitted within the pale of English law, and recognized
nominally as subjects at least, so long had they been subjected to the
grinding heel of oppression, and the baneful influences of continuous
warfare, and so long, also, had the usurper been accustomed to treat
them as enemies, that this recognition of their claims upon humanity
availed them but very little. Under the new regime, their freedom was
merely technical only; for now the terrible ban of the Reformation,
intensified by the cruel spirit evinced throughout the whole of
Elizabeth's infamous reign, was upon them, and their persecution, which
had so long been regarded as a matter of course, experienced but little
diminution through the attempted toleration of her weak and pedantic
successor. Still, frightful and unprecedented as was the ordeal through
which they had passed, they preserved their nationality, and clung to
their traditions, hoping one day to rid themselves of their oppressors,
as they had already done in the case of the Danes; and in this way has
the case stood between both parties up to the present hour.
Although long previous to the Reformation, the atrocities practiced
upon Catholic Ireland by Catholic England were of a character the most
revolting, and although the murderous hand of the invader was never
stayed by the knowledge or conviction, that both parties professed a
common creed and knelt at a common altar, yet the intensity of the
sufferings of the Irish, or what may be termed their studious, refined,
and systematic persecution, began with the _civilisation_ of Elizabeth.
The new creed of the three preceding reigns had not, up to that period,
acquired sufficient strength to exert its deadliest influence against
the ancient faith of the people, or to be introduced as a new agency of
oppression in the case of Ireland; but now, no sooner had the "Virgin
Queen" ascended the throne, than the heart of the tigress leaped within
her; and, breaking loose from every restraint, human and divine, she at
once pounced upon the unfortunate Irish, and sought to bury her
merciless fangs, with one deadly and final crash, in their already
bleeding and lacerated vitals. The coarse, cruel fibre of an apostate
and libertine father, and the impure blood of a lewd mother, had done
their work in her case. From the first to the last moment of her reign,
she combined the courtesan with the assassin. She was the murderer of
Essex, said to have been her own son and paramour; and was, at the same
time, the mistress of more than one noble besides Leicester. According
to her own countryman, Cobbett, she spilled more blood during her
occupancy of the throne, than any other single agency in the world for
a commensurate period; while her treatment of Ireland, under the
"humane guidance" and advice of such cruel wretches as Spenser, was
neither more nor less than absolutely satanic. For fifteen long years
she never ceased to subject that unhappy land to famine, fire and
sword. Every device that her hellish nature or that of her agents could
concoct for the total extirpation of the people, was put into the most
relentless requisition by her. Under the guise of the most sincere
friendship, her deputies, times without number, betrayed many of the
leaders of the Irish into accepting their hospitality, and then foully
set upon them and murdered them while they sat unsuspecting guests at
their festive board. And yet, notwithstanding her penal laws, her
blood-thirsty soldiery, and all her revolting persecutions, the Irish
were more than a match for her in the open field, and ultimately
embittered the closing years of her life. From the first moment of the
invasion, the O'Neills--Kings and Princes of Aileach, Kings of Ulster
and Princes of Tir-Eogain--as well as other chiefs and leaders, fought
the Pale incessantly: and now, after a lapse of nearly four hundred
years, again evinced to the world, that Ireland was still unconquered,
and regarded England as a tyrant and usurper. And yet the opposition of
those chiefs and rulers to the hirelings and paid assassins of this
infamous woman and her corrupt associates, was of a character the most
chivalrous. Unaccustomed to cowardly deeds of blood, these proud
warriors preferred to meet the enemy face to face, and decide the
issues of the hour in fair, open fight. They could not entertain the
Saxon idea of disposing of an adversary by the stealthy knife of the
professional murderer; and hence it was that their pride and chivalry
had ever been taken advantage of: the invaders being convinced that no
reprisals of a character sufficiently dastardly or atrocious to meet
their own depredations, would be indulged in by their chivalrous
opponents. In evidence of the spirit that actuated both parting
individually in this connection, we may refer to the massacre of
Mullaghmast, on the one hand, where the English, under professions of
the purest friendship, lured many of the Irish chiefs and nobles to a
conference or council, and then suddenly pouncing on them, murdered
every, single soul of them in cold blood; while, on the other hand, we
may contrast with this cowardly act--which is but one of a series of
the same sort--the noble and generous conduct of Tir-Oen, at the battle
of the Yellow Ford, in 1598, where, after defeating the Queen's troops
with terrible slaughter, taking all their artillery and baggage, as
well as twelve thousand pieces of gold, the remainder of the shattered
army was totally at his mercy, when he might have put every soul that
composed it to death. Unlike the cowardly invader, the field once won,
he sheathed his sword, and ordered the remnant of the enemy to be
spared, as they were unable to fight longer, and commanded that they
should be conducted in safety to the Pale. In these two instances we
have a thorough insight into the character of the invader and the
invaded: so that not another word need be said upon this part of the
subject.
And in this manner have the O'Neills and the Irish fought the English
up to the present hour. Circumstances have, we know, from time to
time, caused a lull in the tempest of arms, but the moment
opportunity served the smouldering fires burst forth anew. Not a
single day of pure and happy sunshine has ever obtained between
England and Ireland, since the flag of the former first flew over the
latter. Throughout every single hour of seven hundred long years,
Ireland has been secretly plotting or openly fighting against
England. Not one solitary reign, from Henry II down to Victoria I,
but has been marked with Irish dissatisfaction of English rule.
Either in the aggregate or in detail, the Irish people have,
throughout that long period, been constantly asserting their right to
independence, and their unalterable antipathy to the presence of a
foreign power upon their shores. And the same spirit that fought the
Henrys, Elizabeth, William and the Georges, is alive still, and
lighting their descendants to-day; 1688, 1798, 1848, and 1868 are all
episodes of the same history; and the volume now must soon be closed.
Humanity and civilisation, common justice and the laws of nations,
demand that a people who have battled against tyranny and usurpation
for seven successive centuries, and who have still preserved intact
their identity, their traditions and their altars, shall be no longer
subjected to the brute force and infamous exactions of a freebooter
who has so long played false to every principle of honor, and who has
been the highwayman of powers and principalities for countless
generations.
The record of England in relation to Ireland, is one of the most
atrocious known to the history of mankind. It is fraught with the
blackest ingratitude, the vilest injustice, and the direst
oppression. Notwithstanding that Ireland first gave her an alphabet,
and taught her how to spell her name--notwithstanding that Irish
missionaries had nurtured her early educational institutions and
reclaimed her from Paganism, she misrepresented their religion and
their learning in high places, stole in upon them while they slept,
and turning upon them like the frozen snake in the fable, robbed them
of their independence, and loaded them with chains. Every year of her
accursed dominion upon their shores has been marked with some new and
overwhelming oppression. She has spit upon their creed, broken their
altars, hunted them down with blood-hounds, robbed them of their
estates, exiled them penniless to foreign shores, banned their
language, murdered their offspring, destroyed their trade and
commerce, ruined their manufactures, plundered their exchequer,
robbed them of their flag, deprived them of their civil rights, and
left them, houseless wanderers, a prey to hunger, cold and rags, upon
their own soil. Of all this she stands convicted before the world;
and for all this she must alone, so sure as there is a God above her.
Ireland still lives, and so do her wrongs. The O'Neills and thousands
of brave scions of the past, are still with her, while the rank and
file of her sons are as bitterly opposed to English usurpation to-day
as they were seven hundred years ago. Besides, at the present hour,
the approaches to their final triumph are made luminous with the
generous countenance of free America, and the glorious conviction
that heaven bends benignly over them; and thus it is that they now
stand shoulder to shoulder in eager anticipation of the coming hour,
when their banners shall yet once more be flung to the winds, as,
with a cry that rends the very earth, they dash down upon their
deadly and relentless foe, and smite her hip and thigh as of yore;
dealing her the last fatal blow that forever seals her infamous doom.
In the order of Providence, a great corrective, or reactionary
principle, attends the misdoings of nations, that, sooner or later,
exerts itself in restoring the equilibrium of justice, and avenging
the infringement of any of those laws, human or divine, constituted
for the welfare and guidance of our race. Whether on the part of
governments or individuals, no act of palpable cruelty or barbarity,
has ever escaped the censure and reprobation of all good and true
peoples since the world became civilized; so that in this connection,
the oppressed or injured party has always had the countenance and
sympathy of humanity, at least. True, that an effective expression of
this sympathy may have often been chilled or embarrassed in
individual cases by political considerations or unworthy interests;
but then the tendency to illustrate it was there, and in this sense
alone, it has often exerted a benign influence. Hungary, Greece,
Poland, &c., have all, in turn, had the sympathy of mankind; and so
have had the oppressed colonies and people of Great Britain. The
cruel treatment, treachery and fraud practiced in the name of justice
and religion upon the Sepoys of India, by England, have awakened the
deepest commiseration in the bosom of all good and true governments,
and aroused, at the same time, the strongest indignation even on the
part of nations not over-scrupulous of chains themselves. In like
manner, the condition of Ireland has, from time to time, commanded
the attention of the world; and, through the cruel expatriation of
her children, made itself felt more widely perhaps than that of any
other nation. When England perjured herself for the hundredth time,
and violated the Treaty of Limerick, she exiled to France a host of
our countrymen, who afterwards met her at Fontenoy, as the Irish
Brigade, and trailed her bloody and broken in the dust. The wrongs of
the past were with them. The cruelties of the Henrys, the murders of
Elizabeth, the confiscations of Cromwell, and the perfidy of William,
so nerved their arm at the period, that their charge upon the English
is mentioned as one of the most memorable and destructive on record.
But if they had more than sufficient grounds for dealing a death blow
to the power of the tyrant then, how must this debt of vengeance have
accumulated since; when, to the wrongs already enumerated are to be
added the atrocities of the Georges, as well as those of their worthy
descendant--that traitress to humanity, whose hands have been just
imbrued in the innocent blood of Allen, O'Brien and Larkin, and who
now holds in thrall, within the gloom of her noisome dungeons, some
of the noblest spirits that have ever breathed the vital air in this
or any age of the world? How, we say, must this debt of vengeance
have been heaped up since; and may we not, under its terrible
pressure, the next time that we have a fair opportunity of meeting
the enemy face to face, anticipate a repetition of that glorious
charge in every individual descent we make upon her ranks, until we
shall have ground her into pulp, and avenged the blood of our
martyrs, which has for ages been crying aloud from the ground, "how
long, Oh! Lord?"
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.
* * * * *
RIDGEWAY.
AN HISTORICAL ROMANCE
OF THE
FENIAN INVASION OF CANADA.
CHAPTER I.
On a gloomy evening in the early part of May, 1866, and while astute
politicians were struck with the formidable aspect of Fenianism in
both hemispheres, a solitary soldier, in the muddy, red jacket of a
private in the English army, might be seen hastily wending his way
across a bridge which led from one of the most important strongholds
in Canada, to a town of considerable pretensions, that lay directly
opposite, and to which he was now bending his steps. Although the
weather, from the season of the year, might be presumed to be
somewhat genial, yet it was raw and gusty; and as the pedestrian was
without an overcoat, the uncomfortable and antagonistic shrug of his
shoulders, as the chill, fitful blast swept past him, was quite
discernible to any eye that happened to catch his figure at the
period. Soon, however, he left the bridge and river behind him, and,
stepping on terra firma, turned hastily down one of the unpretending
streets of the town, and entered a restaurant, out of the drinking
saloon of which, several narrow passages led to small convivial
apartments, or rather compartments, in which the landlord, or "mine
host" professed to work culinary miracles, of every possible shade,
in the interest of his patrons. The establishment, although not the
most fashionable in the place, was still regarded as respectable, and
was, consequently, the frequent resort of many well-to-do tradesmen,
and others, who, after the cares of the day had been laid by,
generally repaired thither to slake their thirst with a flowing
tankard, or indulge in "a stew," a quiet game of billiards or a
cigar, as the case might be. From the description of the various
pictures which adorned or decorated the bar-room, the nationality of
the proprietor was easily discerned. Just over a goodly and shining
away of handsome mirrors that, inside the counter, reflected a maze
of graceful bottles, cut glass and various ornaments appropriate to
the profession, hung a large map of Ireland, very beautifully gotten
up: while on either side of it, a neat, gilt frame, enclosing a most
excellent likeness of Daniel O'Connell and Robert Emmet,
respectively, harmonized in every relation with the map itself.
Around the walls of the room, and throughout the whole establishment,
kindred prints and paintings were somewhat profusely scattered;
presenting unmistakable evidences, that the proprietor hailed from
the Emerald Isle, and had no inclination, whatever, to disguise the
fact from either his customers or the world.
At the period that the soldier entered the premises, there were some
half dozen persons seated in the bar; each discussing his favorite
beverage or enjoying his peculiar "weed." Among these there was one
individual, however, whose appearance was singularly striking, and
who was taking part in the general conversation with an easy
flippancy and keenness of observation that showed he was a person of
no ordinary information or experience. There was something about him,
nevertheless, that, notwithstanding all his efforts to be attractive,
was strangely repellent. His small, grey eyes, thin, blue lips and
hooked nose, gave an expression to his countenance which was far from
prepossessing; while his soft, low, purring chuckle of a laugh,
whenever he made a point in his favor through some facile observation
that interfered with the deductions of those around him, evoked the
idea, that he was some huge, human mouser that was congratulating
himself on having disposed of some unfortunate and unsuspecting
canary. He was, withal, shapely, and had an air of refinement about
him, the most decided, and, quite beyond the ordinary run of saloon
habitues. His complexion though somewhat dark and out of keeping with
the color of his eyes, was yet pure; while his teeth were remarkably
white and brilliant, and apparently as sharp as lancets. In height he
was about five feet ten inches; and in age, somewhere in the vicinity
of thirty. He was dressed in plain gray clothes; and, from all one
might gather from his external appearance, was a person in
comfortable circumstances. He was unknown not only to "mine host,"
but to every one present; having, as he informed them in the ordinary
flow of conversation, but just arrived in town, where he had business
to transact which might detain him for a few days, or possibly
longer. This information had been volunteered before the arrival of
the soldier; so that when the latter had taken his seat, he was
literally a greater stranger as to the name or intentions of the
hook-nosed gentleman than any one present--the former having been
communicated to the landlord as Philip Greaves, and the latter, as
already intimated, quite freely disclosed during the natural flow of
the conversation in which he had taken and still took part.
Perhaps there were no two beings on earth so dissimilar in every
relation, as were he and the red coat who now ensconsed himself in
one of the chairs, and accepted the invitation to take a friendly
glass with the stranger. He, humble as the rank he bore in the
service, was a young man of most prepossessing appearance and
excellent address. His figure, although slight, was beautifully
symmetrical and finely knit. In stature he was about five feet eleven
inches, and was apparently as agile as a leopard. The whole volume of
his heart was laid open in his broad, manly brow and clear dark eyes;
and his laughter rang out now and then, at the brilliant wit or
searching sarcasm of his neighbor, in such pure and joyous tones, as
to be infectious even amongst those who were paying but little
attention to what had provoked it. He could not have numbered more
than twenty-five or twenty-six summers; and it was almost painful, in
the presence of such manly beauty and so light a heart, to dwell on
the fact, that the possessor of both, was in absolute slavery, how
carelessly soever he wore his shackles. While both these individuals
differed the one from the other to the extent already mentioned, the
proprietor of the saloon, in turn, presented an appearance as
dissimilar to that of either of his customers as did that of the one
to the other. He was a man of herculean proportions, and blessed with
as commonplace features as you could find in a day's walk. Every
fibre of his frame bespoke the most gigantic strength, while his
full, round face glowed with the most refreshing health, and
presented at the same time as stolid an expression as could well be
imagined in connection with his vocation. Still, there was something
in his keen, gray eye and about his mouth, that bid you beware of
taking the book by the cover; while an odd word of the conversation
that now and then reached his ear, called up a strange expression of
intelligence which swept across his features with the speed of light,
and then left them as quiescent and apparently unintellectual as
before. This individual whom we shall name Thomas O'Brien, or Big
Tom, as his friends were wont to call him, although never regarded as
being over brilliant, there were those who averred that he not only
possessed a fund of good, common sense, but who stated further, that
he was a man of great influence not only among the soldiers in the
fort, but among many of his countrymen both in town and out of it.
Tom spoke very slowly and always in an oracular manner; nor were his
movements behind his bar of a very demonstrative character; as no
press of custom, whatever, seemed to possess the power of
accelerating his motions or inducing him to exceed the steady formula
that he appeared to have adopted in relation to serving his
customers; still he possessed the jewel of honesty and urbanity as an
offset to all this; and, like most large men, was, on the whole, of a
kind and excellent temper. When seen standing by the river or in any
elevated position, he conveyed the idea of a sort of human
lighthouse, or a chimney on fire, so fiercely red was the tremendous
shock of hair that covered his towering head. He was still a young
man, and, like the soldier, unmarried; although the heart of the
latter had gone forth and was in the safe keeping of a charming young
cousin of "mine host," who had emigrated to America some time
previously, and who now resided with her friends in the city of
Buffalo. Tom had preceded his relatives by some years, and had
sojourned, up to the period of their landing, in the United States
also; but taking a sudden notion, as it would seem, he pulled up his
stakes, and, like other adventurers, settled down, apparently
haphazard, in the town in which he now lived; and where he had
already been upwards of two years; having bought out the "Sign of the
Harp," as we shall call it, with all its appointments, from another
Son of the Sod, who had made up his mind to go West.
Before the soldier, whom we shall name Nicholas, or Nick Barry, had
finished his glass, Greaves entered into conversation with him in
relation to the strength of the fort, and the nationality of the
regiment that garrisoned it; observing, at the same time, that, of
course, as usual, a fair sprinkling from the Emerald Isle was to be
found among them.
"Yes," said Barry, "go where you may throughout the empire, and
whenever you meet a red coat you will be right in four cases out of
six in putting it down as belonging to an Irishman; that is, provided
its precise color and texture are like mine; but you would not be so
safe in applying the same rule wherever you chanced to encounter the
clear, bright flash of the genuine scarlet."
"And why?" returned Greaves, with an inquiring air which seemed to be
quite at sea upon the subject; although up to that moment, his
conversation was such as to lead one to infer that he could scarcely
be in the dark upon a subject so generally understood.
"Because," said Nick, "the Irish are only fit to do the fighting; and
that's always done, you know, by the rank and file."
This reply, although not over satisfactory to the interrogator,
seemed to afford infinite amusement to Big Tom, who, with a perfect
sledge hammer of a laugh, exclaimed when Barry had finished:
"Well done Nick, and the divil a betther could it be said if I said
it myself."
This unusual and lively demonstration on the part of O'Brien, seemed
to attract the notice of Greaves, who, with the utmost good humor,
observed, while glancing in the direction of the bar:
"From Ireland, too, I'll bet my head!"
"Seven miles out of it," returned Tom with a slight twinkle of his
eye, "and, of coorse, a gintleman so larned as you will be able to
tell where that is."
"Well, for the life of me," observed Greaves, "I cannot divine what
you are at, with your 'seven miles out,' but as I'm an Englishman, I
suppose that accounts for it."
"He means by what he has said," interrupted Barry, "that he is from
Connaught, which, for some reason or other, is regarded as seven
miles out of Ireland."
"For some raison or other did you say," returned Tom. "Faith and its
raison enough there is for that same; for it was to Connaught that
Cromwell and the rest of the blaggards banished or confined the Irish
hayros that gave the Sassenach such throuble in oulden times, and
that's the raison, you know, that the sayin, 'to h--l or Connaught,'
first got a futtin in the world, and that Connaught is regarded as
bein seven miles out, by the people who know the ins and outs of it."
This was delivered in a quiet, oracular manner from which there was
no appeal; so the conversation continued to flow in a kindred
channel--Barry observing that the regiments then stationed in Canada
were largely _adulterated_, as he humorously termed it, with the
Irish element, which, during such times of commotion, was considered
by England safer abroad than at home.
"How is that?" said Greaves, casting a searching glance towards the
speaker. "I should fancy that the British soldier was safe, and true
to the crown whether at home or abroad; although I am free to
confess, that the Irish, as a nation, have much to complain of."
"And how can you separate the man from the nation; and if a people
are oppressed and wronged as a whole, are they not oppressed and
wronged individually?" replied O'Brien.
"The inference is reasonable," returned the other; "but as England
seems sensible that something ought to be done for the amelioration
of the condition of Ireland no doubt the two nations will soon settle
down in the bonds of amity and love, and, in a better state of
things, forget all their bickerings and heartburnings."
"There was a payriod," retorted Tom, "when England could have done
somethin to appase Ireland, but that payriod is past and gone
forever! Durin the airly days of O'Connell, the repale of the Union
and the abolition of the Church Establishment would have worked
merricles. These measures would have done away with absenteeism, an
unjust and gallin taxation, and would have given Ireland the
conthrol, in some degree at laste, of her own local affairs. If the
Act of 1782 previntin England from intherfarin in any degree in those
affairs was revived, it would have given the Irish a chance to build
up their manufactures and recruit their ruined thrade and commerce.
It would have recalled the landlord to his estates, from forrin
parts, and re-inthroduced a native parliament that understood the
wants and wishes of the people, and that was intherested in carryin
them out, and givin the masses an opportunity of developin their
resources and turnin their soil to account, that is acre for acre
more fertile than that of England, to-day. It would have gathered
home from the four winds of the earth the scatthered wealth that has
followed the absentee to distant lands and made Dublin and Cork and
every city in the counthry alive with min and wimmin, that were able
to pathronise Irish manufactures, aye, and pay for them too. All this
it would have done and a thousand times more; but as I have already
said, the chance has been thrown away by England, never to be
recovered by her durin _secula seculorum_; for now the light of
American freedom has fallen upon Ireland, and, pointed out what ought
to be her thrue standin, and the insufficiency of what she once would
have been satisfied with. In the broad effulgence of its glory, the
people of Ireland now persave that so if long as they attached any
importance to the mere accident of birth, or bent the knee to
hereditary monarchy, they were but walking in the valley and shadow
of death. The great moral spectacle of American freedom built upon
the broad and imperishable basis of the voluntary and intelligent
consint of a whole people, has so upset their household gods and
desthroyed the prestige of kingcraft in their eyes, that they now
look forward to the total overthrow of monarchical institutions in
their midst, and the establishment, on their shores, of a Republic in
every particular the counterpart of that which now commands the
admiration of the world, across the lines there, and which is
gradually sappin the foundation of British rule on this side of the
lakes, as well as litherally swallowin us up unknownst to ourselves.
This is how the case stands now; so that we can aisily persave, that
England has lost the power and opportunity of conciliatin the Irish
race; bekase they have no longer a feelin or sintiment in common with
her."
These observations, which were made with a degree of ease and
eloquence regarded as totally foreign to Tom, actually electrified
his hearers, and drew a compliment from Greaves; while Barry, who
knew a good deal of him, was so astonished at his sudden and earnest
volubility, he could not resist the temptation of assuring him that
he was an honor to his country, if not to humanity at large. The
other three or four individuals present joined in the sentiment, so
that, for the time being, O'Brien was no ordinary personage in their
minds, while a quiet wink from one to the other seemed to place it
beyond a shadow of doubt, that, in their estimation, Big Tom knew
more than he ever got credit for.
When the conversation again began to flow freely, the gentleman, with
the hooked nose, turned it imperceptibly upon Fenianism, and the
rumored intention of the Organization, in the United States, to make
a descent upon Canada at no distant day. At this point, O'Brien put
in a word or two, to the effect, that he was not so sure of the
propriety of the Brotherhood invading the Province, as its
inhabitants were not in any way answerable for the wrongs which had
been inflicted by England upon Ireland. Here Barry observed, that
although he was not competent to speak on the matter, and had no
desire to endorse or countenance such an invasion, he regarded a
Fenian attack upon Canada fully as justifiable as an assault of the
same character upon England, or any other portion of her majesty's
dominions. The empire, he contended, was a unit and no part of it
could be assailed, that did not possess, in relation to Ireland, just
as inoffensive people as the Canadians were. Fenianism, he presumed,
did not pretend to make war upon individuals, but upon a government,
in any or all of its ramifications, that was alleged to be oppressive
and an enemy to civil and religious freedom; and so long as any
people chose to endorse the acts of such a government by defending
them, and adhering to the flag under which they were said to have
been committed, so long were they amenable to the party who assumed
to be aggrieved in the premises, as aiders and abettors of the
offence.
This position was so reasonable and so logical that there was but
little room for dispute upon the subject. And hence the absurdity of
certain squeamish gentlemen who, before and since the invasion of
1866, have denounced a descent upon Canada as not so justifiable as
an attack upon the more central parts of the empire, from the assumed
fact, that the Canadians are in no way chargeable with the wrongs
inflicted by the British Government upon Ireland. Such an argument to
a military man, or astute politician, would be the very height of
absurdity. The outworks are always stormed and taken before the
citadel falls; nor are those who occupy or defend them regarded with
any personal ill feeling by the assailing party, and are only enemies
in so far as they choose to espouse the cause and defend, at the
point of the sword, the acts and existence of a government held to be
corrupt and oppressive. From the difference in population and other
circumstances, there are a greater number of inoffensive persons in
England, in relation to Irish grievances, than there are in Canada;
so that, adopting the very style of argument used by those gingerly
or subsidized cavillers, there are more causes for justifying a
descent, at any time, upon the latter than upon the former country.
The truth is, the masses or people of any country are, for the most
part, inoffensive on the whole, and are merely wielded by governments
with a view to maintaining a power for good or evil, having in many
cases themselves no very clear idea of the grounds upon which the
field may have been taken; and laying down their arms at a moment's
notice, without being concerned as to the expediency or justice of a
cessation of hostilities. In truth, even amid armies thundering down
upon each other at the word of command, there are necessarily
thousands of unoffending persons who entertain not a single feeling
of animosity against their opponents individually, and who are but
simply the exponents of an idea that their rulers deem necessary to
maintain at the point of the bayonet; although they themselves may
not sympathize with it to any extent whatever. So that it is
apparent, that the invasion of Canada was never undertaken with a
view to despoiling or injuring the people _per se_ of that country;
but for the simple purpose of making a descent upon a point of the
British empire most accessible to the arms of the Republic of Ireland
on this continent, in the hope of establishing a basis that would
enable Irish Nationalists to operate successfully against a
government that had for seven hundred years subjected their country,
name and race, to every injustice and persecution known to the
history of crime. Such are the contingencies of war, that the
innocent are dragged into the vortex by the guilty, and that those
who choose to adopt a flag and are found armed in its defence, are
constructively the enemies of the invaders, and according to the
usages of all nations amenable in the field for the conduct of their
rulers. Whatever may be said to the contrary, then, by English
sympathizers or weak-kneed patriots, so long as Canada is a portion
of the British empire, so long is she a legitimate point of attack
for the enemies of that empire, and no description of special
pleading can make it otherwise. And here we would advise the people
of the New Dominion to look into this matter and weigh the
consequences of being influenced by any seeming or real hostile
attitude to the government of the United States, or the mighty hosts
which are now gathering in battle array in the cause of Irish
freedom. England is fallen! Her power and prestige are gone forever!
The star of Irish liberty has already emerged from the clouds that
have so long lain piled up along the horizon of the land of the
enslaved Celt, and no power on earth can obscure its growing Lustre,
until it blazes forth in the full meridian, splendor of Irish
nationality and independence! Let our neighbors, therefore, we say,
not be betrayed into raising a puny arm against the tremendous force
that cannot fail to be exerted ere long in this connection, or their
redemption from the British yoke and their consequent absorption by
the great American Commonwealth may be reddened with more blood than
the circumstances of the case really require.
When Barry had finished his few observations on this topic, Greaves,
in further pursuance of the subject, and with the apparent view of
gathering the tone of Canadian opinion upon it, observed, that if all
the Irish population of the Provinces were as true to the sentiment
of the independence of their country, as O'Brien and his military
friend, there might be some reason for apprehending that the intended
invasion of the Canadas by the Fenian organization of the United
States, would tend to more alarming results to England than were
anticipated by the friends of that country; remarking, in addition,
that the Irish element must be very large in her majesty's Canadian
possessions, if one might judge from the recent St. Patrick's Day
demonstration throughout them, and the various St. Patrick's
Societies to be found scattered from one end of the colony to the
other; all of which were, no doubt, more or less tinged with opinions
and aspirations similar to those held by the two individuals who had
just spoken.
"Oh, yes," rejoined Big Tom, "there are St. Patrick Societies in
abundance, but let me inform you, that instead of bein national
associations, as they purport to be, they are the very sthrongholds
of England in this country, and, with scarce an exception, the
deadliest opponents to the very indepindence that we have benn jist
spakin about. For the most part, they are filled chock full of a pack
of miserable toadies to the governmint, which manages to gather into
them a pack of rottin, ladin Irishmin who can make speeches, dhrink
'the day and all who honor it,' sing 'God save the Queen,' and talk
English blatherskite about the glory of the impire, the army and
navy, and everythin else in the world save and except the wrongs of
poor, ould Ireland, and the way to redhress them. Why, sir, barrin a
word dhropped here and there, you'd think it was in an Orange Lodge
you were, if you happened to step in on one of those societies while
engaged in celebrating, as they call it, the anniversary of their
pathron Saint; for it's nothin you'd hear but 'Rule Britannia,' 'The
Red, White and Blue,' and kindhered sintiments, and if a chap did
happen to give 'The harp that wanst,' why, its the sweet, soft air
they'd be admirin, and the poethry of Tom Moore, rather than the low
wail for vingeance that was smothered in the heart of the song
itself. What could you expect from sich a St Patrick's Society as
that of Toronto, with a gintleman at its head with the freedom of an
English city in his breeches pocket, and a desire to emulate English
statesmen and English institutions in his heart! Look, also, at the
able and larned Irishman who stands at the head of the University of
that same methropolis of the West, and whose eloquence so mystifies
his faithlessness to Ireland as to confuse you, and almost lade you
captive, until, on cooler deliberation, you find that his response to
'the toast of the evenin,' is naither more nor less than a superb
burst of oratory, robed in green and goold, but with a heart as
purely English as that which throbbed within the breast of the
renegade Wellington or the late wily Lord Palmerston. Oh, no! the St.
Patrick Societies of America, and of every other portion of the
globe, are simply whited sepulchres, or false beacons erected or
fosthered by the English governmint to mislade the unsuspectin
portions of our race from the allagiance due to their own counthry,
by studiously inculcatin sintimints and ideas favorable to English
supremacy, which can be paraded before the world as the thrue
expression of the Irish people, in relation to the red that governs
them, and their willinness to remain as they are, part and parcel of
the impire. Sich min as the two I have jist mintioned do more to
perpetuate the thraldom of our country than the most unfrindly and
subtle statesman that exists on the other side of the Atlantic
to-day; bekase they are powerful inemies, by their example in our own
camp, and bekase there are those amongst us who are aisily led, and
who consequintly fall a victim to their influence and example."
"Sure, we all know, that the Scotch thricksther at the head of the
govermint here, could do but little if it was not for such people as
Ogle R., George. L., Darcy and 'the docther,' as he is called in
Toronto; and thus it is, that although the three Toronto gintlemen
that I now name, are, I honestly believe, deservedly respected and
esteemed in every other relation of life, they belong body and sowl
to the English sintimint of the counthry; and if the most favorable
opportunity was offered them to-morrow, would never raise a helpin
hand to place the green above the red. But, as this is dhry work, and
as I have not had sich a bout at it since I opened here, come, one
and all, and let us wet our whistles, for I see you have jist made
spy-glasses of your tumblers."
CHAPTER II.
Although delivered in a style somewhat uncouth, there was a great
deal of truth and native eloquence about these observations of
O'Brien. There is no doubt but the St. Patrick Societies of this
continent, and perhaps of the world, are characterized, in no
ordinary degree, by the spirit and design to which he alluded. In so
far as those belonging to the British empire are concerned, he was
right, almost without an exception; for it must be admitted, that
these societies are, for the most part, filled with pseudo patriots,
who discard all revolutionary theories, and are of the opinion, that
the independence of their country, if they ever cast a glance in that
direction, ought to be achieved in the most lady-like manner, and
with "white kids." Look, for instance, at some of the members of
these associations and kindred bodies in New York and in various
other parts of the Union, and analyze the spirit which finds
expression in their observance of the anniversary of Ireland's
tutelar Saint. From the moment that the cloth is removed, until the
last of the company gyrates out of the room to his carriage, we have
nothing but a war of eloquence between rival politicians who are
candidates for municipal or other lucrative honors, or a subtle bid
for Irish support through some adroit manoeuvre, by which an
adversary is, for the time being, thrown into the shade. To be sure,
Mr. Richard This or Mr. John That, may occasionally give us a taste
of his research and learning, in a re-hash from the "Annals of the
Four Masters," or from some of the leading periodicals of the day;
and we may, in addition, be treated to an _original_ poem touching
Ireland from some of the various up-hill-workers of the Muses, with
whom the great mercantile centre abounds; but as to anything
practical relative to the amelioration of the wretched condition of
the country in whose name they assemble upon such occasions, that is
simply out of the question; all parties, as a general thing,
satisfying themselves with a hacknied and stereotyped enumeration of
her wrongs, and the usual bland denunciations of her oppressors.
And here we give an illustration of St. Patrick Societies under their
most patriotic aspect; for the power of speech which characterizes,
this great Commonwealth, and our total immunity from English
persecution, enable the spirit which actuates these societies,
beneath the skull and cross bones of St. George, to be a little more
patriotic here, in its language at least, than it dares to be in any
portion of the dominions of England. Still, its positive antagonism
to Irish independence, under the British flag, is scarcely more
reprehensible than its negative influence in the same direction under
the Stars and Stripes; so that Ireland, suffering at their hands
alike, might with every degree of justice place them in the same
category.
After all, it is the masses that free a nation, and thank God for it.
A leader may in vain look for a host to follow him, but a host never
in vain for a leader, and hence the defection of a few prominent men
from the great, Irish national idea which now so moves this
continent, and commands the attention of the world, amounts to but
little save sorrow at the stigma it casts upon our race. The rank and
file of our people are true to the spirit that fired the O'Neill's
and the Geraldines of old; and this being the case, the freedom of
Ireland is secured beyond any possible contingency--England is
brought to bay at home and abroad. The mighty embodiments of Irish
power and patriotism, yclept Fenianism, stalks forth through the
empire with an uplifted glaive in its hand, and no one can say how
soon or where the swift stroke of destruction shall fall. Its
presence fills with gloomy alarm every nook and corner of the land,
and paralyzes all the energies of the oppressor. Through its
overwhelming influence, the most cherished institutions of the
usurper are being overthrown, and the crown and mace all but
converted into baubles. It has destroyed the power and prestige of a
hereditary aristocracy, and thrown, in a measure, the whole
government of the land into the hands of Commoners. The privileged
classes, no longer oracular, recede before it, and a great democratic
idea occupies the ground upon which they stood--in short, illuminated
and impelled by the glorious spirit and impulses which moved the
immortal founders of this grand Republic of the West, it has gone
forth to avenge and to conquer, and to build up upon the shores of
the Old World such a grateful monument to the genius of American
freedom, as shall, from its lofty summit, pour its radiance over the
darkest valleys of Central Europe, until the frozen grasp of
despotism yields to its magic touch and the chains shall fall from
the bleeding limbs of millions, who on emerging from the valley and
shadow of death into the pure sunlight of liberty, shall sing paeans
in honor of the great American people who first taught humanity to
the nations of the earth.
When all present had done justice to O'Brien's proffered "treat," and
when Greaves seemed to be moved to a friendly view of Irish
nationality, in a gap in some desultory conversation that happened to
occur casually, this latter worthy asked whether he could be
accommodated with a room at "The Harp," while he remained in town, as
he was a stranger in a great measure, and having accidentally, as he
said, made the acquaintance of one he believed to be an agreeable
landlord. Tom replied in the affirmative; for, in connection with the
saloon business, he kept a few boarders and had, besides, ample
accommodation for more than one occasional guest. Soon then, Greaves,
who was to send the following morning to the railroad station for his
luggage, picked up a small traveling bag by his side, asked to be
shown to his room, as he professed to be somewhat tired, and bidding
the company "good night," while shaking hands with Barry, disappeared
with Tom down the long passage which led to his sleeping apartment on
the floor above.
When O'Brien returned to the bar, half a dozen more of his usual
customers had dropped in to exchange a kindly word with him, and
taste his newest "on tap." Before reaching the counter, however, and
just as he was passing Barry, he whispered something in the ear of
the latter, which seemed to arrest his attention, and to which he
appeared to answer with a significant nod and peculiar expression of
countenance. Barry being off duty, and having received permission to
remain in town all night, paid no regard to the nine o'clock drums
and fifes audible from the garrison; and although quite an abstemious
young fellow, he made himself sufficiently social with the new
comers, most of whom were acquaintances. The remainder of the evening
was passed in the usual bar-room style; although the conversation for
the most part, turned upon the wrongs of Ireland and the mode of
redressing them. Now that Greaves had retired, there appeared to be
less restraint upon the few who had been a witness of the
observations he had made upon the subject, for they one and all
seemed to flow into the common channel of sympathy, so largely
occupied by O'Brien in this connection. In addition, one of them
ventured to remark, that although Greaves pretended to be an
Englishman, he was evidently no such thing; for on more than one
occasion, he gave utterance to expressions that were not only purely
Irish, but tinged with a genuine Irish accent and native peculiarity,
that no mere accident could account for, and which was, without
doubt, the genuine thing itself peeping out at the elbows of a
foreign dress. This idea seemed to find favor with O'Brien, although
Barry was not impressed with its correctness, from the fact, no
doubt, of his constant intercommunication with the English and Irish
element that was so jumbled up in his company.
As it became later, the party began to drop off, until about twelve
o'clock, up went the shutters and round went the heavy key in the
bar-room door--all having disappeared at the latter period, save
Barry and one of his most intimate friends who seemed loath to leave,
and inclined to take another glass. No sooner then, were the doors
and windows securely fastened, and the gas extinguished, than both
these parties accompanied by Tom with a bed-room lamp in his hand,
proceeded to a small and comfortable apartment which was sacred to
the foot of every individual who was not a tried friend of O'Brien.
Here all three seated themselves beside a comfortable coal fire that
burned brightly in the grate: when Tom, on extinguishing the lamp,
after having lit the jet of gas that hung in the centre of the room,
exclaimed:--
"Nick, my name's not Tom O'Brien, or we have got the divil up-stairs!--but
what he's up to it's hard to say: although I thought it was jist as
well to let him take up his quarthers here, seem that I'll be able to
keep an eye on him--now that the times are becomin sarious."
"Certainly," replied Barry, "his appearance is far from prepossessing,
but you know, Tom, it's not always safe to judge a man by this criterion."
"That's thrue," returned the other, "but didn't you hear the fella how
he wanted to sift you about the Irish sintiment of the garrison, as
well as lade us out upon the feelins of the Irish in gineral throughout
the Province?"
"I did, of course," answered Nick, "but really thought that the
gentleman, being a stranger, was simply asking for information's sake
only, and had no ulterior object in view."
"I agree with you, O'Brien," interrupted the third party, who was
named Burk, and who had been in the saloon during the period Greaves
was present, "there can be nothing good in so cunning a face; but
what is the real news to-night, and have you heard from New York or
Buffalo?"
"I have harde from both places," returned Tom, "and everythin looks
well; but how are things here, and are you all prepared to assist the
invading army when they cross the lines; and what number of men can
we fairly count upon?"
"It has, I believe, been ascertained beyond a shadow of doubt,"
replied Burk, "that there are upwards of one hundred thousand men
throughout the Provinces who would at once rush to arms if they found
the flag of the Irish Republic firmly planted at any one point within
our borders; while it is known or believed, that more than twice that
number would follow in their wake, if Toronto was once in the hands
of the invaders. In fact, Toronto and Montreal once taken, the day is
ours, for we should have the French almost to a man, no matter what
Monsieur George Etienne or Master John Alexander may say to the
contrary. Canada is evidently tired of British rule, and is only kept
from kicking over the traces by a pack of government officials who
hold the purse strings, and a subsidized press that destroys the
homogeneity of the people, by making them doubt each other, and
impressing every man disaffected to the Crown, with the idea that
every other individual Colonist, or nearly so, is opposed to him. In
this way, the sentiment of independence which underlies the nine
tenths of our population is obstructed and embarrassed, and one man
prompted to look with distrust upon another, although both may
entertain precisely the same sentiments in relation to the
desirability of throwing off the British yoke. As to how the army
stands, Nick here can tell you more about that than I can."
"The army," said Barry, "is just as you might expect it to be. The
Irish who compose it in part, are, as you know, not British soldiers
from choice, but from necessity. They had no resource between
starvation and a red coat; so that their oath of allegiance to the
English Crown may be said to have been exacted from them under pain
of death. For ages, their country had been devastated and plundered
by the power that now holds them in special thrall, and the means of
existence wrested from them through the inhuman exactions of a
tyrannical government. Their name and race had been banned, their
humble homesteads razed to the ground, and their families scattered,
naked and hungry, throughout the length and breadth of the land, or
exiled to foreign shores. The stranger had stolen in on their
hearthstone, robbed them of their lands, goods and chattles, usurped
their powers of local legislation, and then closed every door to
preferment against them, leaving them without a hope or a crust for
the future, on their own shores. Under this horrible pressure,
thousands of them necessarily gave way and fell victims to those
gaunt recruiting sergeants of the government--Hunger and Rags.
Unable to earn wherewithal to keep body and soul together at their
own doors, or within their own borders, and perceiving that the
commerce, the manufactures and all the native resource of their
country were crushed to the earth, beneath the relentless heel of the
oppressor, they fell into the pit-fall dug for them by an accursed
perjurer and traitor, and, in obedience to the first law of nature,
assumed her livery, and swore allegiance to her flag. But think you
that either God or man attaches the slightest importance to an oath
exacted under such circumstances? Here am I, Nick Barry, now in the
service of the usurper, and driven into it with tears in my eyes and
rebellion in my heart, and do you suppose that I regard my oath as
other than an additional incentive to plot the downfall of the
infamous tyrant and robber who hounded me into swallowing it, and
who, to-day, keeps the girl I love out of her mother's property,
that, on a mere technicality, was laid hold of, and thrown into
chancery, by a villainous and traitorous relative, long in the secret
service of the government at home, when he found the poor, young
thing an orphan, and without a wealthy friend in the world to back
her, and that too, upon a claim that hadn't a leg to stand upon, as
everybody knew? My soldier-life, and his continued absence in
England, prevented my meeting the villain before he died; but as he
has left the suit to his son, who, I learn, is no better than he was
himself, and is also a great hanger on about the Castle of Dublin, I
am in hopes of one day or other meeting this same gentleman, who
purports to represent the old villain in this case, when, no matter
how the chancery suit may go, I shall hold him to a severe reckoning
for the injustice and hardships to which she has been so long
subjected through their joint instrumentality. But why should she
complain any more than Tom there, whose father's side of the house,
once powerful and wealthy, in the west of Ireland, have been all but
beggared through the same infamous government, and their accursed
agents, who had plundered them of every acre they possessed, and
exiled the bravest and best of them to these distant shores?"
These few observations were made with an earnestness and vehemence
that showed how fierce and hostile the blood that boiled in the veins
of the speaker. Nor was there any appeal from the inexorable logic of
his remarks. From the inhuman manner in which England has, for seven
centuries preyed upon the vitals of Ireland, and plundered and
expatriated her children, the latter are morally absolved from all
allegiance or fidelity to her, no matter what the circumstances of
their plighted faith. No man should be bound by oaths or obligations,
to maintain the supremacy or defend the interests of a tyrant,
exacted under an inhuman pressure or in the presence of such an
alternative as the poor Irish recruit is subject to, namely, that of
enlisting or starving. How can any Irish soldier, possessed of a
single spark of pride or patriotism, and wearing the queen of
England's livery to-day, be other than the deadly enemy of the
representative of a people who have laid his country waste, murdered
his kindred and left him and millions of his race without a roof to
cover them on their own native shores? How can he gaze with any
degree of enthusiasm or pleasure upon the blood-stained rag that
waved over Mullaghmast, that was perjured at Limerick, and that
endorsed with its baleful glare all the demoniacal atrocities of the
Penal Laws? "Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God"--therefore
the children of Ireland who have been so long trodden in the dust
under the feet of an usurper, are but obeying the dictates of heaven
and of humanity, when, by every means within the boundaries of
civilization, they endeavor to encompass not only their own
redemption from the bonds of the oppressor, but the total destruction
of his power in every connection. Ireland owes no allegiance to
England. For seven hundred years she has been crying out against the
colony of foreign bayonets that have kept her in bondage and reduced
her to beggary. For one single hour, throughout the whole of that
long period, she has never voluntarily accepted the condition of her
thraldom, or bowed submissively beneath the British yoke. She
therefore cannot be regarded in the light of a conquered nation, but
must be looked upon as still engaged in the deadly and mortal
contest, whose first field was fought long years ago, between the
Anglo-Norman freebooters and the Fenians of Cuan-na-Groith, or the
Harbor of the Sun, when Strongbow, at the instance of the second
Henry, made an unprovoked descent upon her shores.
"Yes," replied Tom, when Barry had finished, "both I and mine have
felt the cruel fangs of the despoiler; but, sure, where is the use of
singlin out ourselves, when the whole of the thrue native
Irish--which manes the nineteenth twintieths of the kingdoms-are jist
as badly off. The quarrel is not yours nor mine, nor the grievances
naither. Both belong to every man, woman and child possessed of a
pure dhrop of Irish blood in their veins; for all have suffered
alike, as far as that is consarned. And, now, all that has to be done
on the head of it, is jist to wait the nick of time that we are all
expectin, and then, with one well directed and united blow, dash the
tyrant to the ground on this side of the Atlantic, and thrust to
Providence, the sympathy of the great American people and our own
sthrong arms and hearts for the rest."
"Quebec and the fort beyond there," observed Burk, "may give us some
trouble; but further than this, from what has been ascertained of the
Province generally, there is little to be apprehended. The intimate
business relations and the intermarriages between the Canadians and
the people of the United States, will exercise a most powerful
influence in the case, while the manner in which both the English and
Canadian Governments fomented the recent civil war on the other side
of the lines, cannot fail to have embittered the American people
against the British Flag, wherever it is to be found. The treacherous
attack of England upon the existance of the Republic, in subsidizing
the South with arms and money, and in destroying, as she did for a
considerable period, the American carrying trade, through the
instrumentality of pirates built and fitted out in her own ship-yards
and docks, will now afford the American government an opportunity of
paying her off in kind, through permitting Fenianism to pursue its
course without interruption, until the Provinces become part and
parcel of the Union, when they have served as a basis of operation
for the purpose of fitting out expeditions against the arch enemy of
Ireland and of human freedom, and contributed to the final redemption
of that oppressed country from the bonds in which it has so long
lain. Surely, what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander;
and if England, through the House of Commons, cheered the Alabama
when her destructive qualities were described before that body by Mr.
Laird, and, after having built the pirate, sent her out to make war
upon the North when it was in sore trouble--surely, I say, America
will not be over anxious to throw obstructions in the way of any
party who may take in hand the chastisement of such an infamous
power, no matter what the grounds of the quarrel. But when it comes
to be understood that for the last ninety years, and up to a very
recent period, England has been the deadly defamer and the secret or
avowed enemy of America and American institutions--when it comes to
be understood, that the statesmen, the business men and the wives and
daughters of the citizens of the American Commonwealth, ever since
the immortal Washington won the day for the oppressed of the whole
world, have been subjected to the sneers and jibes of the English
aristocracy and press, and held up to the ridicule of despotic
Europe--when this comes to be understood, I repeat, in connection
with the fact, that the cause of Ireland is the cause of human
liberty and of republican institutions, there will be but little fear
of America stepping out of her way to uphold the skull and
cross-bones of St. George, either on this or on the other side of the
Atlantic ocean, or, in fact, in any portion of the globe."
"Nor will the clear-sighted children of the Republic be cajoled into a
friendly attitude towards this blood-thirsty dastard, because that,
in the feebleness and fear that have now overtaken her, she essays to
gloze over the infamous acts of which she stands convicted before the
nations, and assumes an air of friendship towards them. Had the Union
fallen, through her infernal machinations, not a city throughout her
dominions but would have blazed with joyful illuminations at the
result; while her government would again introduce the impressments
of 1812. Even when the slightest reverse was suffered by the arms of
the North, the news was heralded throughout the whole of England with
tokens of the most intense satisfaction; while both her people and
statesmen took a fiendish delight in referring to the Commonwealth as
"the late United States!" All this, I say, will influence, and ought
to influence, America in favor of the independence of Ireland, and
prevent the American people from regarding the present pusillanimous
blandishments of John Bull as other than simply the result of
cowardice, and an attempt to propitiate a great power that had
survived his infernal machinations, and now looms up a just and
mighty avenger before him. So long then, as England is permitted to
hold Ireland, that is battling for her rights, in chains, or to taint
permanently the pure atmosphere of this free continent, so long will
the Stars and Stripes shine with subdued lustre, and the memory of
the immortal heroes of '76 be but half honored, by those who are
pledged to defend it to the death in the sight of both God and man."
"As to Quebec and the other garrisons down this way," observed Barry,
"when Hamilton and Toronto are in the hands of the Army of the Irish
Republic, they will be easily managed. None of the strongholds are
proof against Irish sympathizers, in their vicinity. This I know to
be true. Every genuine Irishman within easy hailing distance of the
garrison at Quebec, has more than one tried friend within its walls;
and so of the other strongholds along the St. Lawrence and lakes. But
supposing, for argument's sake, that any of those forts should take
it into its head to stand a siege, where would it be when invested
with such an army as Fenianism can now put into the field, composed
of thousands upon thousands of veterans who are still grim with blood
and smoke from the terrible fields of the South? What, too, would
your militia do, with their holiday legs and maiden swords, against
the men who fought at Cold Harbor, Gettysburg or Bull Run? Why the
one-fourth of the force which it is said Fenianism has at its
command, would sweep Canada like a tornado from Sanwich to Gaspe, and
be recruited every yard of the road, besides; while the instant one
signal victory was won by them, the government of the United States
would at once acknowledge them as belligerants. This, I believe, is
the true state of the case; and if the Fenian organization across the
lines, and here amongst us, possess honest, brave and competent
leaders, the overthrow of England in the Provinces cannot fail to be
achieved; for, after all, she has no secure footing in the hearts of
the masses, and enjoys nothing but a mere official existence here,
under the protection of her guns, and through the instrumentality of
a corrupt government and a hireling press. But as it is getting well
up in the small hours, and as I feel I need some rest, I think I'll
take another tumbler, if you only join me, and then turn in."
CHAPTER III.
When young Barry spoke of the girl of his love, he referred to Kate
McCarthy, now in her twentieth year, and certainly one of the most
beautiful Irish girls that had emigrated to America for many a long
day. Kate and he had been schoolfellows and neighbors from their
infancy, and, as they grew up, were regarded as a sort of "matter of
course match," from the fact, that they were always together, and
apparently cut out for each other. They were both natives of the
county Leitrim, and born on the banks of the Shannon, in the sweet
little town of Drumsna. It was by the beautiful waters of this noble
river that they first felt that impassioned glow that colors all the
after life of man or woman, and which is as different from the
feelings that characterize early boy or girlhood, as the noon-day
solar blaze is from the cold and placid beams of the pale new moon.
There is one point at which the true passion of love, in all great
hearts, leaps into fierce and instantaneous existence. There may be
many imperceptible approaches to it in some cases, we know, but out
of these it is possible to turn aside. When the hour arrives,
however, in a single moment the storming party, under one wild
impulse, unknown before, mounts the ramparts of the heart, and, after
a moment's sweet confusion, the garrison falls and is surrendered
forever into the hands of the enemy. And thus it was with our hero
and heroine. Although they had long been the dearest of friends and
constant companions--although they had long felt that the happiness
of the one was necessary to that of the other, the great secret of
their existence was never fully revealed to them, until they felt
they were about to be separated from each other for an indefinite
period; Kate to accompany her only relatives to America and poor
Barry to enter the British army, under a pressure of poverty too
dreadful to relate. As already intimated, the prospects of both had
been blighted through oppression and villainy, brought to bear upon
them by distant relatives, who were the infamous agents of a still
more infamous government. The case of Nick, although sore enough in
its way, was not so heartrending as that of Kate. He was of a sex
fitted to wrestle with the storms of life, but she, proud and brave
as she was, occupied a different position. Fortunately for both,
however, through the instrumentality of a small pittance set aside by
the Courts in her case, and a kind relation in that of Barry, their
education was far above their pecuniary pretensions, so that at the
age of twenty Kate was really an accomplished and refined girl, while
her lover, at that of twenty-five, was a dashing young fellow, with a
well stored mind and quite as capable of acquitting himself agreeably
in society as any man, no matter what his rank, in the regiment to
which he belonged. It was, then, in consequence of his education
that he was looked up to by his comrades; although neglected and
studiously kept in the back grounds by some of the officers of his
company, who, viewing his attainments through the, medium of their
English spectacles, closed the door of preferment against him, and
never suffered a single stripe to appear on his jacket. With as good
blood in his veins as the best of them, and with a sense of the
wrongs inflicted upon his country by the government whose abettors
they were, he could never bring himself to stoop to the fawning and
servility through which the lower grades of rank are attainable, only
in the service; and thus, it was that, from first to last, he was
viewed with an eye of suspicion by his superiors, who regarded him as
an incorrigible young Irishman, who, notwithstanding that he wore the
uniform of a British soldier, had no love for the service or the
interests it represented.
Barry entered the army under the most terrific pressure only. He
found that Kate and her friends were destined for America, and being
himself, at the period, totally destitute of funds and without the
means of realizing them speedily, in a moment of desperation he
enlisted in a regiment that was under sailing orders for that
country, in the hope of being stationed somewhere near the being he
loved, and of being able, at least, to keep up a constant and
unbroken correspondence with her until fortune should turn the wheel
in his favor. And so he enlisted and parted from Kate and her
friends, to follow her in a short period across the Atlantic, and
renew his vows of love and affection upon another shore.
The ship that had borne her away from his view had been scarcely two
days at sea, when the deadly intelligence reached his ear that the
sailing orders of his regiment had been countermanded, and that
instead of proceeding to Quebec, it was to sail for Malta, where it
was likely to remain for perhaps a couple of years. This dreadful
news almost annihilated him. He had made a sacrifice to no purpose,
and was now bound hand and foot beyond the hope of redemption. Before
Kate and he parted, he had agreed to write her to Quebec, in care of
a friend, if anything should occur that might postpone the sailing of
his regiment, or that portion of it that was for foreign service; and
now the dreadful opportunity arrived, when he found himself called
upon to convey to her the intelligence, that not only was the sailing
of the regiment postponed, but its destination altered. In due course
the fatal disclosure reached her, and almost deprived her of life and
reason. In the space of one brief hour she passed through the agony
of years. The being she loved, in the burning ardor of his young
soul, had hastily--thoughtlessly sacrificed his freedom; and all for
her! It had been a sufficient dagger to her soul to see him attired
in the blood-stained uniform of the enemies of her country, yet she
knew that he had been driven by the most inexorable circumstances to
assume the hated garb. But now he was overtaken with twofold
desolation--he was a slave, and beyond the reach of one kind word of
solace from her, for whom he had sacrificed all, save and except that
which might be borne to him, through the ordinary channels, across
the trackless deep.
Racked as she was with those torturing reflections, and while the
first wild burst of grief was yet rolling down her cheeks, she
determined to begin her lone, young widowhood by instantly writing to
him and bidding him hope. In this epistle, all the nobility of her
true heart and nature blazed forth so transcendently, and with such
fierce, womanly fervor, that the moment it reached the hands of the
young soldier the light was re-kindled within him, and he at once set
about procuring his discharge, or rather realizing the means of
effecting his release from the bonds into which he had allowed his
pure 'though ungovernable passion to betray him. His education, as
already observed, was most excellent, and now, when off duty, he
turned it to good account, and slowly but surely began to add daily
to what trifle he was able to save from his paltry pay, in the hope
of yet commanding a sufficient sum to purchase his freedom and enable
him, ultimately, to sail for America. In this way, and during the two
years he was stationed at Malta, he spent his spare moments, being
throughout that whole period particularly fortunate in keeping up
what was life to him, an unbroken correspondence with his beloved.
At the expiration of three years, having been quartered, on his
return from the Mediterranean, for the last one, in England, at
length came the welcome and startling intelligence, that the
regiment, now indeed, was to proceed forthwith to Canada, where it
would be likely to remain for a considerable period. In a delirium of
joy he communicated the happy intelligence to his love, and had just
time to receive a hurried epistle in reply, in which the very arms of
the true-hearted and beautiful Kate seemed thrown open to receive
him. For some months previously, however, she had been informing him,
from time to time, of a very disagreeable position in which she had
been placed, through the persistent attentions paid her by an Irish
gentleman named Lauder, who, by some means or other, had so
ingratiated himself with her relatives, as to win them over to urge
his suit; and who was reputed to be a person of means. These hints,
however disagreeable, were always accompanied by a renewal of the
vows they had long since plighted on the banks of the Shannon, and
the fervent assurance that no one living or yet to live should ever
lead Kate McCarthy a bride to the altar, save her own Nicholas Barry.
When Kate and her relatives arrived at Quebec, they remained in that
city but a short period, as they had friends at Toronto, as well as
near Fort Erie and at Buffalo, in the State of New York, whom they
were desirous of visiting, and near whom they had determined to
settle permanently. Unfortunately for Barry, the more intimate
guardians or relatives of Kate had become unfriendly to his suit ever
since he entered the army; impressed, as they had become, with that
Irish idea, that the red coat of a private soldier in the British
service was the most disreputable that could be worn. In this light,
therefore, they encouraged the advances of Lauder, in the hope that
absence would so weaken the first love of Kate, as to induce her to
yield ultimately to her new suitor. But they little new the girl with
whom they had to deal; for when Lauder, under their sanction, made a
formal declaration of his passion to her, she quenched his hopes, as
she supposed, forever, by informing him that both her heart and her
hand were previously engaged, and that were they even at her
disposal, she should be quite unable to bestow them upon any
gentleman for whom she did not and could not entertain a single
particle of true love, although he might have secured her esteem.
This rejection, however, did not, as she supposed it would, preclude
the possibility of any further advances from such a quarter, for
Lauder, nothing daunted, kept up the siege when and wherever he
could, without giving absolute offense; so cunningly and intangibly
did he still pursue the object set before him. At last, nevertheless,
so constant were his visits at the house, and so permanent a footing
was he getting in the estimation of her friends, that, after having
resided at Toronto upwards of two years, she left it at the instance
of one of the family, who, on their first arrival in America, had
settled in Buffalo, to which city she proceeded, and in which she now
took up her residence.
While in Toronto the thought struck her that she might be able to
turn whatever abilities she had to account, in the hope of being able
to accumulate sufficient funds to aid our young hero in purchasing
his discharge, fearing, as she did, that his own opportunities, in
this relation, would be greatly restricted. So with her needle, and
through the instrumentality of a small private school, she ultimately
found herself mistress of the required amount, and was about to
forward it to Nicholas, at the very period when she received
intelligence of his regiment being ordered to America. She therefore
thought it better to wait until they met, as she had made up her mind
to set out, when apprised of his arrival, for any place in which he
might happen to be quartered, and there plan for their future and his
freedom.
In due time Barry reached Quebec, and from thence was ordered, with
his company, to the town in which we first encountered him. Here he
was soon joined by the true-hearted Kate, who remained for a few days
with her cousins, Big Tom and his sister. During this period it was
decided that Nicholas should purchase his discharge when he found
that there was any prospect of the regiment being called home. The
reasons for his not at once availing himself of the freedom he knew
he could obtain at any moment, need not now be referred to more
minutely; and as Kate left him to return to Buffalo, just four months
previous to the opening of our story, after having made more than one
pilgrimage from the United States to spend a few days with her
cousins as she averred, it was settled upon finally, that he should
quit the service in the ensuing summer, when they should become man
and wife, as well as residents of the great Repub |
