DA 958 .P2S7 ;- "W •- tit. \ * .^Vir. % *«&&*.* ♦ •*«*• ^ ••%&** ^V^^^^^ V O, 'o^* ^ \ > *^^*\ 4 ^ ' ^ <^, vV rv^ o » • - **U ** v % .** o^ %/ # «S?!?*\' # «WV*,v** k°_ ^ t^ •' ^ »*J ,• ^> tv » ** . V^>^.. v™y v^^v v*^ ■•'>" V^wpy V^>* ^•-^v ^ j°+ ^.V ^* ^ *$£§jfylo 1 «g* v ♦^?rr« /v <* '».»« .< .G* V 5 ^ .** .?* «G* V ♦TfTT." a, ^ •?.?« o* V Of?7^ .a. ^* /V *<^ °* *o . » * * .6* % **<$&' * A *<* °* *o . » - * «G* v*-r^**^" Oo a**»" , **a ° V.^^'W' °°a % "^ PARNELL; OR, Ireland and America, BY V I R G I L I U S. " Sains poptili sitprema lexT Price, 26 Cents. PUBLISHED BY AMERICAN NEWS COMPANY. 1 8 8 O. [Copyright, 1830, by Charles J. Smith. PARNELL; OR, Ireland and America, BY V I R G I L I U S li Sa/us populi suprcma lex! 1 V Price, 26 Cents. PUBLISHED BY AMERICAN NEWS COMPANY. 1 8 8 O. PREFACE. "Ireland for the Irish." The American people of all shades of opinion on foreign politics have had ample time to estimate the merits of Mr. Charles Stewart Parnell's theory on the means of adjusting the relations between landlord and tenant, and permanently settling the Irish land problem on the basis of a tenant pro- prietary. It is the purport of these pages to undeceive the honest and impartial reader, by dispelling certain mists of prejudice which a hasty perusal of superficial newspaper articles may have led him to entertain. Answerers lie under many disadvantages. The false statements of the other side have had ample time to fly through the country, while the refutation comes limping slowly after, and arrives, too often, when men's opinions are already fixed. Besides, it is the weakness of too many to mistake the utterances of a certain section of the press for their own sincere convictions, and even for the sentiments of mankind. Nevertheless, truth is great and shall prevail. The cause advocated by Mr. Parnell is the cause of the weak against the strong. It is the defense of the oppressed and long misgoverned peasantry of Ireland, against a system and a class "whose honor rooted in dishonor stands." Among the tenantry of Ireland there is a perfect unanimity of opinion in favor of Mr. Parnell's plan. Now all men are united in holding that when the collective body of the people agree it is the sense of the nation, and therefore should not be persistently opposed in the national legislature. It will be well for England to take a lesson in time from this Parnell agitation; for her true interest lies in doing so. Neglect to learn wisdom from the active friends of the American colonies, the Parnells of their day, was the seed which ripened into a mighty republic. Besides the loss of the best portion of her colonial empire, that wilful neglect, cost England the loss of many millions of annual revenue, and increased the nations indebtedness to the amount of some $500,000,000. Much as the American people have done by their un- exampled munificence to alleviate actual distress in Ireland, there is yet a better and more lasting service which that country asks at their hands, and which can be given without either inconvenience or expense. It is that, in thinking and speaking of the Irish question, Americans divest themselves of prejudice, and not allow preconceived ideas to warp their better judgment. Ireland solicits the impartial verdict of America on that English system of land tenure which afflicts the Irish people with periodical misery, and compels them to go forth, as tearful mendicants, to the nations. This judgment is what Ireland especially asks, and what will bear abundant fruit long after the existing distress shall have ceased to prey upon the vitals of the cottier farmers. Let the practical American mind bend itself on this problem : " Whereas Ireland produces enough food to maintain a population five times larger than it possesses, is not England the criminal cause of Irish distress?" The English Government upholds a land system by which the produce of the land passes from the poor cottier who tills it into the pockets of alien landlords, who know little and care less for Ireland. Is that honest ? The answer of every true American will be, " Let the people have their own land, and let them live by its produce." That is the verdict which Ireland asks from America. In no civilized country is public opinion more talked about and less acted upon than in England. " In fourteen years," says Grattan, "the Irish Parliament, with all its imperfections, had done more for Ireland than the English Parliament had accomplished in a century for England." 'Hence the absolute necessity of a vigorous, sustained expression of public opinion, in order to effect a radical change in the land system of Ireland. That is the object of Mr. Parnell's visit to America; and it would be difficult to exaggerate the lasting benefits to the Irish farmers which are sure to result from it. Much has already been achieved. Seldom has Parliament, in its opening session, devoted so much consideration to Irish affairs as it felt itself constrained to do in 1880. All that has been done must in fairness be regarded as the result of Mr. Parnell's patriotic exertions. He lias been the means of causing nations to deplore and denounce the direful effects whose cause he aims at eradicating root and branch. Misery and famine all true hearts bleed to think of ; landlordism, whence they flow, he boldly struggles to destroy. Should America fail to sustain him, justice will receive another proof that her path is rugged, and her friends are few ; but whatever storms he may encounter, whatever shoals and quicksands he may have to guard against, the day is not dis- tant when he and his friends will cry, " Tendimus in Latium." To Parnell it is due that the scenes of '48 have not already been re-enacted, and that some future poet shall not have U chant the jeremiads of this day in language like to that of th sweetest and purest of living bards : " Sudden fell Famine, the terror never absent long. Upon our land. It shrank the daily dole ; The oatmeal trickled from a tighter grasp ; Hunger grew wild through panic; infant cries Maddened at times the gentle into wrong ; , And like a lamb that openeth not its mouth. The sacrificial people, lillet-bound, Stood up to die. * * * * * * The nettles and the weeds by the wayside Men ate ; from sharpening features and sunk eyes Hunger glared forth, a wolf more lean each hour ; Children seemed pigmies shriveled to sudden age ; And the deserted babe, too weak to wail, But shook if hands, pitying or curious, raised The rag across him thrown. In England alms From many a private heart were largely sent, As oft-times they have been. 'Tvvas vain. The land Wept while her sons sank back into her graves Like drowners 'mid still seas." Let us hope that Aubrey de Vere may hang up his lyre on present sorrows, to resume the exultant epic of heroic courage and fortitude, crowned by the glorious victory of peasant pro- prietary. In connection with Mr. Parnell the words of O'Connell's biographer are not wholly inapplicable : " The world never saw so powerful a confederacy as the British peerage ; fron which it would seem to follow that the tribune who confronted and discomfited them must be the most extraordinary man that ever lived." I believe these words will not be falsified by Mr. Parnell ; but I invite his attention to this noble senti- ment of the Liberator, which in hours of gloom may stand him in stead : " I care not how much I am calumniated when the vials of defamation are poured out upon me on account of my exertions in behalf of my country." YlRGILIUS. I. Mr. Parnell's Visit to America. " Palmam qui meruit ferat." There is no gainsaying the fact that the visit of Charles Stewart Parnell to the United States will mark a most mem- orable epoch in Anglo-American history. But there is another country in whose chequered annals it will, through all future ages, constitute an event of singular, if not unpre- cedented importance. It is needless to say I refer to Ireland. The history of that interesting and beautiful island is strangely mixed up Avith poverty and suffering. Civilized when all other known nations were steeped in barbarism, it is at this day the object of the compassionate sympathy of the entire world. But it comes before the nations this time in a manner unlike to that it has at aivy other period assumed, and this fact is owing to the energy, boldness, and independence of Charles Stewart Parnell. He is no common advocate, and he pleads the cause of his misruled, unhappy country, amid no ordinary circumstances, and in cp:iite an original manner. His education, his force of character, and his high social position compel respect. His aim and motives are presumably unselfish and disinterested. Unless we disregard all ordinary canons of criticism, and set aside the common standards by which thoughtful men are guided in forming an estimate of human character, we are compelled to admit that Mr. Parnell has much to lose and nothing to gain by his mission to America. Irishmen, both at home and in the United States, are pro- verbially suspicious of men who go out of their way to vindicate Ireland's cause ; nor is this to be wondered at. Perhaps no nation has been better deceived and more cruelly betrayed. But the promptings of narrow suspicion vanish 8 before the lofty personal character of Charles Stewart Parnell. He is, however, a man. He is neither stronger than Samson, nor wiser than Solomon, nor holier than David. He inherits all the weaknesses of his countrymen ; nor is there any imaginable anchorage to which we can fancy him so immo- vably fastened as to be inaccessible to the pernicious influences of English bribery. Disregarding these and similar reflections, however, and leaving the future to take care of it- self, we desire to view Mr. Parnell as we find him, as he is, not as he may one day possibly be. We speak of him in connection with his mission to the United States, a self- imposed mission, and one which the history of Irish patriots proves to be the reverse of attractive. It is painfully true that Ireland has little reason to boast of those who have touched the shores of America to speak in behalf of the Emerald Isle. It is undeniable that they shed pale lustre on themselves and their country, and, in most instances, have scattered seeds of lasting bitterness among that numerous class of Americans whose knowledge of Ireland is derived from a view of the emigrants at Castle Garden, or a mid-summer church picnic, or a Patrick's day procession, wad- ing through the mud and slush of some American city. In this connection Mr. Parnell is quite a phenomenal visitor. He is not a Catholic, and by this fact is at least partially estranged from the lowest substratum of the Catholic Irish in America. He is not an orator, and here again he is fundamentally dis- tinguished from nine-tenths of those who have at all times espoused the interests, and imagined themselves the cham- pions of Ireland. He is not a prating mountebank, a reckless, jolly, hair-brained free liver, of irregular life and irresponsible speech. He is, on the contrary, a perfect gentleman. He is a man of university education, of ample fortune, and singular earnestness of purpose. His indomitable sternness of character has marked his career in America as one altogether exceptional. It gives him a powerful- claim to a fair and im- partial hearing from friend and foe — from Irish and anti- Irish — from all who love truth and honesty, no matter what may be their creed, their politics, or their nationality. As to the Irish who have made their homes in the United States, no unbiassed thinker can doubt but that they have 9 gone over in overwhelming majorities to Mr. Parnell's side. They have assembled in vast numbers to hear him. Invita- tions have poured in upon liin}. In all the cities and towns lie has visited royal honors were showered in lavish abundance upon him. He went about, not as an adventurer, but as an invited guest. Large sums of money were contributed toward the two-told cause he advocates. The argumentum ad crume- nam, a powerful test of public approval, has been tried with complete success. Thus far as to the co-operation of the Irish element of American society. But American sympathy has not been wanting. The leading public men of our cities took part in the Parnell meetings, spoke words of no doubtful sound in behalf of the movement, and demonstrated their sincerity by handsome contributions. A member of the British Parliament, he was listened to with respect in the legislative halls of America. He spoke in Albany, the capital of the Empire State of the Union. He was received with quiet but significant dignity by Cardinal McCloskey and President Hayes. The churches of every denomination participated in the movement. Catholic priests and Protestant ministers mingled together harmoniously on the Parnell platform, and spoke at the Parnell meetings. It may unhesitatingly be affirmed that these clergymen rep- resented the mind and heart of hundreds of Catholic priests throughout the United States, for in most of the cities the resolutions of sympathy, encouragement, and thanks were moved by Roman Catholic clergymen. The significance of this disinterested co-operation will be apparent when it is remembered that Mr. Parnell is not a Catholic himself. It was a spontaneous tribute of homage to a cause intrinsically just and praiseworthy. Protestant ministers were not indifferent. They entered heartily into the movement, and spoke words of weighty import. As a speciman, the reader will recognize the telling speech of Mr. Henry Ward Beecher, who, at the Parnell meeting held at Brooklyn, spoke substan- tially as follows : — " I am in favor of the most serious, prolonged, and earnest agitation of public sentiment in America for the emancipation of the Irish peasantry from their present condition. (Tre- mendous cheering.) There is no other subject that is more 10 important to the great mass of mankind than the .question of land There are a great many ways, gentlemen, by which oppression can make itself felt. It may take possession of the Government, and by arms despoil the citizens — take their rights from them, imprison them, slay them. That is tyranny the most common and obvious. It may be that there shall arise in the midst of the State such power in wealth, such combinations of capital and monopolies, that the great thoroughfare shall be choked up by the few, and prevent the passage of the million many, and so oppression may take place in the community. That may be more mild in its as- pects, but it is nevertheless oppression. And there is another oppression quite possible by which the rights, happiness, and the life of the people may lie sucked out, and that is the pos- session of land. The time is coming when the world is to have a new agitation on the subject of land. He that pos- sesses the land possesses the people. You cannot put the land of any nation into the hands of a few men and not make them the despots over the many. (Loud applause.) The holding of the land in fee simple by the men that work on it is the principle, and shall yet be the universal world doctrine. (Renewed applause.) It is quite in vain that four millions of Africans have been emancipated if they are forbidden to buy land. Now the question comes up if we Americans have the right to protest against despotism anywhere except at home ? I say that I have the right to protest against despotism wherever it exists under the broad heavens. (Cheering.) I hold more than this — that there is rising up in modern times an influence which we call public sentiment, a moral influence which is growing more and more powerful, and which is yet to overawe Parliaments and Courts, and to determine largely the changes that are necessary for the uprising of the great com- mon classes of the common people. We should be false to our traditions, false to the examples of the fathers and their wor- thy sons, if we did not in some way denounce everything that is wrong, and let every civilized nation of the globe feel the light of our intelligence and the indignation of our conscience. But I need not refer to the liberty of the past of America, and turn to Great Britain herself to find my precedent. When Ferdinand II. oppressed his citizens, when his prisons were glutted with political prisoners, did not Gladstone, to his eternal honor, rise up in Parliament and publish the public sentiment ; did he not direct the energies of the Government itself against the nobles' government in behalf of the op- pressed ; and did he not bring a pressure to bear, partly civil, partly moral, that changed the policy of Lower Italy ? I should like to know whether Great Britain employed any 11 civil, military, or moral influence in Turkey. (Loud laughter.) I should like to know whether to-day in India or in Afghani- stan Great Britain is expressing an opinion as to the institu- tions of those countries. (Applause.) I hold that it belongs to our free national character— we that arc descended from the Irish, the English, the Welsh, and the Scotch — whether we have not been born, bred, and brought up in the doctrine that anything that concerns the human race concerns us. (Applause. ) I hold then that we have the right to throw across the water and into Great Britain such expressions of sympathy for her oppressed laborers, and the want of con- science and justice shown to them as shall stir up this great people. I have not a word to say against them derogatively. I admit their power ; but I hold that the land system of Great Britain has to be revolutionized, or Great Britain will be revolutionized. When we were helping four millions of men in bondage, without rights and recognition, was Great Britain silent? (Laughter.) Did she not set our sins before our eyes'? (Laughter. > And when the thunders of war awoke us to the atrocity of our sin, then did not Great Britain turn back on us and light what she had tried to raise up ? (Renewed laughter.) Yet I can say, in regard to England, with the poet — " With all thy faults, I love thee still." 1 am told, however, that it is not simply land tenure that is the matter with Ireland. I am told that it is religion (laughter), I am told that it is laziness, I am told that it is thievery, 1 am told that it is the Irish people's depravity. Now, I would not certainly withhold the tribute of an ordin- ary amount of depravity to our Irish brethren. I suppose they have enough to go around. But I call your attention to one fact, that from the day when Cromwell landed in Ireland, according to Froude, the Irish have been fractious and rebel- lious, and never under any Government had a settled and easy state of things, which I suppose is correct ; and I hope that for another eight hundred years to come they never will — unless they are free. (Applause.) I admit that they are a troublesome people to govern (laughter), that they are a proud people, intensely loving their own land and their own ways, and that they are the worst people to oppress under the face of the heavens. But bring the Irish out to this con- tinent on which they are bound 'by no unjust laws, but have the benefit of free institutions, free land, and free commerce, and what then is the character of the Irish people ? When they first came among us the less educated gave us some trouble. Their ideas of voting are obscure. (Laughter.) I 12 know not what percentage of them perish in the making, but trace them on the whole — trace the green Irishman who comes with his shillelah fresh from the soil — he has to vote a good many times in order to learn how. (Laughter.) But if he survives whiskey and gets a little property, and lives ten years in this land, he votes just as well as you do. They tell me that the trouble in Ireland is the nature of the Irishman himself. I say bring him to our land and give him a chance and time, and we will prove that he needs nothing but good institutions and good laws to make him as good a citizen as the sun shines on. The educated Irish that come to us arc a bounty and a blessing, and a light and a warmth ; and I hold that their mercurial blood, mixed with the colder blood of New England and Germany, is yet to give a race of people that will combine, I hope, the virtues of the different nations without their vices and their faults. That may be the mil- lennium. Then let us hope we are near the millennium. Without expressing any opinion in favor of organized opposi- tion and insurrection, I call your attention to one fact in history, that every amelioration of the condition of Ireland has followed the outbreak of violence in Ireland. I do not counsel organized insurrection or war; but I do honor the effort to make the Government so uncomfortable that it at last consents to make the people comfortable. (Loud ap- plause.) It is said that emigration is the only cure for Irish grievances. I say that so far as we are concerned let them come here. We want them. And so far as they are con- cerned a Government which does not know how to manage its people, except by taking them out of the nation, is a Government that ought not to stand. I Avish Mr. Parnell may be successful in his mission. Newspapers nor any com- binations have power to crush any cause that has real worth, and that is upheld by men of pluck and substance. (Loud applause.) " But the crowning event of Mr. Parnell's visit, and the strongest evidence that he carried American sympathy with him, is found in the fact that, by an overwhelming vote of the House of Representatives, he was invited to address that assembly on the subject of his visit to America. This is a fact of national importance both to Ireland and America. It is of similar occurrences that history is composed ; that the life and hope of oppressed nationality is rescued from extinc- tion. Some forty years ago the bones of Robert Bruce were discovered in the ruins of Dunfermline Abbey. The event created a storm of Scottish enthusiasm, which stirred the 13 land of Scott and Campbell from the depths of the Clyde to the mountains of the Dee; and people not unnaturally con- cluded that the senii-extinct patriotism of that ancient Celtic kingdom had borrowed a new lease of life. In another section of the Celtic family a mournful wail of sorrow continues to sweep the land, and the spur of adversity revives the sinking spirits of afflicted but invincible Ireland. In the spirit of true patriotism Mr. Parnell makes himself the advo- cate and ambassador of the Irish farmers, and with rare consistency and unswerving firmness labors to make impartial Americans realize the perfect feasibility of a plan, at once practical and just, for the lasting amelioration of the tenant farmers of Ireland. With the eagle glance of lofty states- manship, he reviews the whole domain of periodical distress and chronic disaffection among the Irish peasantry, and fixes the true cause of both in the helpless condition to which the people are normally reduced by an unjust system of land tenure, and by the vexatious exactions, the selfishness and tyranny of alien and unsympathizing landlords. He enters upon the ennobling task of breaking down the brazen walls of this frowning fortress of Irish landlordism, and asks for the cheering sympathy of all upright minds in this broad land of freedom. It has been given in unstinted measure. The supply will continue to meet the demand. America is the natural tribunal whereat to try the cause of a despotic gov- ernment against a misgoverned people. As long as this bloodless contest shall last, so long shall the hands of Par- nell be lifted in suppliant appeal to Columbia, and, through the press and public opinion of Columbia, to all the nations of the earth, and so long shall the people's advocate receive the encouraging reply, " Onward ! nor halt while one stone of the unseemly structure remains upon another." Generations of Americans yet unborn shall read of this Parnell discussion with feelings akin to those which the student of to-day experiences in reading Edmund Burke on the claims of the American colonies to independence. Before this century is much older, the chains of the Irish cottiers shall be broken ; nor is there any need of the fire that touched Isaiah's lips to predict the glowing enthusiasm with which, forty years hence, the historian of America will describe that evening in 14 our legislative chamber at Washington, when the cheers of ;i delighted nation greeted a modest Irish gentleman who fiercely denounced the unjust land system of England. When Mr. Parnell shall stand upon the ramparts of the doomed citadel, giving the banner of victory to the breeze, one can fancy the departing spirit of landlordism addressing him in the words of the expiring Clorinda to Tancred : "Friend! thou hast conquered ! I forgive thee ; do thou also pardon me." Together with much warm sympathy and encouragement, Mr. Parnell has received from the know-nothing section of Americans not a little hostility. That is but natural. A bad cause, like a bad man, is pitied ; people conclude to leave them severely alone. But a good cause, like a good man, is persecuted, vilified, and persistently misrepresented. Those who thoughtfully endeavor to cast the horoscope of Ireland's future will discover in this partial apathy towards Parnell's land theories the best omen of their ultimate success. For the opposition to his scheme proves rather for than against its justness and reasonableness, inasmuch as all the great political, social, and scientific changes of modern times have been made in the face of violent opposition. Wellington was opposed to the emancipation of the slaves, and so was Peel, and so were the Southern planters, but emancipation is a fact. Winser, the German, who made the first experiments in lighting a street in London with gas, was looked upon as a lunatic. Sir Humphrey Davy, the first chemist of his day, called it " an impossibility," and Sir Walter Scott, writing from London, says : " There is a madman proposing to light the London streets with smoke." The project of ocean steamers was met with a tempest of ridicule. Lord Brougham, in the House of Lords, declared his readiness to swallow whole the first steamer that crossed the Atlantic. More violent still was the opposition against which Morse was compelled to struggle. His application for aid to Con- gress, in 1837, was received with jeers and hisses. He was refused letters patent in England, but he died decorated with all the honors Europe had to bestow. 15 Englishmen are traditionally and characteristically slow to perceive the value of any new movement in jurisprudence and science, a fact of which the Suez Canal furnishes recent evi- dence. The project was stubbornly opposed in England, to the amazement of all France. The protracted struggle for Parliamentary Keform witnesses to the same stubborn resist- ance to change and progress in the days of our fathers. More than thirty years after Pitt had energetically fought for re- form, Wellington obstinately declared " that he was opposed to all and every reform, because the existing forms were suffi- cient for every purpose and possessed the perfect confidence of the country." But that pompous utterance was both in- discreet and untrue. His ministry fell, and within two years the Reform Bill became law, having received a handsome majority in both houses of Parliament. It has become fashion- able with a small class of Americans to develop a sham veneration for existing laws and usages. The experience of our late " unpleasantness " makes us suspiciously intolerant of novelty. When our Elevated Road was projected, the wiseacres shouted that New York would be torn in pieces. But not one stone of our system has been displaced, and we move about more rapidly, yet more smoothly than before. A savage attack has been made on " Parnellism " by British and Irish landlordism, and the chorus has been taken up by (sic) our American aristocracy. But in the lifetime of living men Parnellism will undoubtedly become law, while the integrity of the British Empire, the true interests of the Crown of England, and the happy relations of all classes of the Queen's subjects shall continue, not only undisturbed, but more powerfully consolidated than before. Here an important question suggests itself : What is Mr. Parnell's object in visiting this country ? Firstly, to sound the alarm of a desolating famine among the Irish cottiers in the certain near future. I affirm that, in the order of time, Parnell's was the first voice lifted, and the first to make itself felt, in presaging the dire distress now raging in Ireland. When he first spoke of it, nobody here, and few in Great Britain, believed him. He was first in the field. Then came all the usual machinery which springs into motion in multi- plied shapes on the occurrence of every critical event. The 16 clergy wrote, members of Parliament spoke, official investi- gations were instituted, the cabinet held extraordinary session. This combined action followed apace, but the first zephyrs of all this national storm were the prophetic words of Parnell, spoken at the meetings of the Land League, when, with rare tact and shrewdness, he instructed the poor, rude cottiers in the primary right to live, and the sovereign importance of self- preservation. If, which Heaven vouchsafe, the universal sympathy subsequently aroused shall be the lever to raise up prostrate Ireland, the fulcrum without which that lever had been inoperative is Charles Stewart Parnell. To intensify the force of his appeal to the British govern- ment, Mr. Parnell crossed the ocean to obtain from America what, in her own horn* of trial, America had sought and obtained from Ireland — sympathy, and the powerful aid of public opinion. Parnell asks from Americans that which Americans asked from Ireland, and France, and Canada. " I found the people of Ireland," says Franklin, " disposed to be friends of America, in which I endeavored to confirm them, with the expectation that our growing weiglit might in time be thrown into their scale, and justice be obtained for them likewise." Appeals from afar have more telling power with those who are apt to trust too much to their fancied security at home. If the whole neighborhood congregate riotously around a man's house, sneering at its internal filthiness, he will promptly seize the broom, and set about sweeping it. If distant strangers carry piles of food across the seas, and toss it in through his windows to feed his starving children, he himself having stores of hoarded wealth, and feasting luxur- iously, he will soon learn that he has duties toward those children, which, unless he discharge, his own house will be made too hot for him. That is the idea which lies at the bottom of Mr. Parnell' s visit to America ; and seldom has any idea been put forth with more astonishing success. America has already done more for the Irish poor than England. There has been more alacrity, more tender sympathy, more generous rivalry here than in England. The heart of the United States has cpiivered, while that of England has hardly been moved, The result is, an amount of money has been sent from America such as no one nation has ever been known 17 to contribute before. Now, I claim that this result is due in the main to the timely alarm given by Parnell, and to his pres- ence and untiring exertions in the States. Let it not be said " he has many adversaries, and they do not believe in him." Be it so; he has goaded them on to action, vied with them, and stimulated them to efforts which, but for their hatred of him, they never would have made. If you refuse, at my request, to aid my starving mother, but will insist, through sheer dislike of me and my ways, in heaping upon her favors I should not have dreamed of soliciting, so much the better for the needy old lady. She will thank her boy none tin 1 less, but rather love him all the more. Neither shall I esteem myself any the less for that I can so easily lash you into such productive activity. It matters little what seas produced the pearls, what mines the gold, so the jewels are plenteously poured into my mother's casket. It will ever remain indis- putably true that the first cause of America's unprecedented munificence to Ireland is Mr. Parnell ; and those who think lightly of his politics will not deny that when Ave behold a majestic river rushing violently down to the sea our pleasure is but enhanced when we remember the tiny rivulet whence the noble stream takes its rise. The torrent of charity which America has poured into Ireland puts England to the blush ; makes her feel ashamed that the foreign rebels of her former colonies should have to feed and clothe the bravest and best of her subjects. To put England in this dilemma, this most humiliating position before the world, is the second object of Mr. Parnell's visit. It has been accomplished with signal success. But there is yet a third. The public opinion which Mr. Parnell asks from America is a healthy and intelligent opinion, which, rooted in the con- victions of the nation, shall express itself with vigorous earnestness and genuine American manliness, and thus con- tribute to shame the government of England into granting a new system of land tenure — the one true panacea for the ills that periodically afflict the tenant farmers of Ireland. The result of such a judgment, borne through lands and seas by the press, will set all men thinking, and will stir that common bond of intelligent sympathy which belts the globe, and is 2 18 the distinctive characteristic of this century. It is not too much for an Irish patriot to ask of free Americans, who, of all nations, scorn those unjust class distinctions which enable a despotic minority to keep its heel on the neck of an oppressed majority. " The rank is but the guinea stamp, The man's the gawd for a' that." 19 II. Parnell and the Land Question. " 111 fares the land to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates and men decay." The unjust system of land tenure in Ireland is the fruitful source of the extreme poverty of her people, and of the famine which periodically spreads such withering desolation among them. It is not, by any means, the only source, nor would its abolition involve the discontinuance of several other real grievances of which the Irish people are, and have long been, the victims. But it is the first and principal source, because it is by the fruits of the land the people live, agriculture being almost their exclusive occupation. Now, the fruits of the small farmers or cottiers' industry are barely sufficient, in the best seasons, to meet two imperative de- mands — the landlord's rent and the necessaries of life. In most parts of Ireland the small farmers can barely obtain a subsistence for themselves and their families, after having paid the rent. They do not own the land, for two-thirds of Ireland is owned by about nineteen hundred landlords, most of them English, and the other third, in great measure, will come into their possession on the expiration or "falling in " of leases. The small Irish farmer, therefore, exists for no other purpose than to enrich his landlord, whom, in most in- stances, he has never seen, and who spends the rent earned by the ill-clad and ill-fed cottier in England, France, Italy, Asia, or America. This is not a temporary or novel state of things, either as to the tenant or the landlord. For centuries the tenant was legally incapacitated from holding possession, in fee simple, of a single acre of land as his own property, and at the present day his position is practically the same. Mr. 20 Gladstone's land bill remains inoperative, and the Bright clauses are confined to the paper on which they arc written. At no time for centuries have the landlords been other than Largely English, who drained Ireland of all they could possi- bly squeeze out of it, and spent it anywhere but in Ireland. Some thirty-live years ago Mr. O'Connell said, "It was calculated by an able man that nine million pounds a year pass on! of this country : the railway commissioners reduced it to six millions. Take the reduced amount, and I ask, did ever a country suffer such an odious drain of six million pounds of absentee money? six million pounds raised every year in this country, not to fructify it, not to employ the people of the country, not to take care of the sick and poor, and destitute, but six millions are trans- planted to foreign lands — sent there, but giving no returns leaving poverty to those who enriched. Take six millions for the last ten years. Look now at sixty millions drawn from this unhappy country. Take it for the next six years. Can you, in conscience, encourage this? " There is a cant that agitation prevents the influx of capital. What is the meaning of that '? We do not want English capital. Leave us our own six millions, and we shall have capital in abundance. We do not want that left-hand benevo- lence which would drain the country with one hand, and let in niggardly with the other. There is another item which exhausts the resources of this country, and that to the amount of nearly two millions (£2,000,000) annually. There is again the woods and forests. That department receives £74,000 a year out of Ireland in quit rents. How was that expended for the last ten years? Between the Thames Tunnel and to orna- ment Trafalgar square." Continuing this calculation of Mr. O'Connell's, and not including the six years subsequent to the date — 1844 — on which he spoke, Ireland has been drained since then by absentee landlords of £242,222,000, amounting in our money to twelve hundred and eleven millions one hun- dred and ten thousand dollars ($1,211,110,000). Is it to be wondered at that succeeding generations witness a state of ever-increasing misery among the small farmers of Ireland ? " But," you say, " why don't they work?" They have no work. Land is the only work, or field for work, that offers to the 21 Irish cottier. Ireland has no manufactures, no developed mineral wealth. She lias exhaust less mineral wealth untouched, and ;i water power capable of working the machinery of the whole world. 1 Jut there they lie, desolate as the sands of Syria. Sines' the Union, Irish industries have been crushed out of existence. Before the Union there were in the city of Dublin ahme 68,000 operatives; there are not 8,000 at the present time. His little lot of land is the only hope of sub- sistence for the Irish peasant. Therefore, to secure him in the free hold of this, relieving him from exorbitant rents, and encouraging him to improve his holding for the benefit of his family is the true way to befriend him. That is what Mr. Parnell is working for, and to that it must come. The small farmer has, and can have, no capital. Therefore his life is blasted at his birth, for what is life without hope of improve- ment or advancement? If he attempts to improve the soil, he simply twists a rope to hang himself. His improvements cause the rent to be raised, or, what is more tantalizing still, excite the cupidity of a neighbor, who, because of those very improvements, offers to pay a higher rent, and causes him and his family to lie cast out upon the highway. "But how," you subjoin, "can a neighbor be so inhuman?" Because the land- lord spurs him on to it, and bribes him to outbid his nearby countryman, thus fostering mutual hate and strife, which speedily breed revenge, and too often end in murder. That is the true history of "the wild justice' of revenge," so unintelli- gible to Americans, yet so natural when clearly understood. It begins and ends in " the land," and is begotten of the brutal infamy of the landlords. Thus it will appear that the "spec- ulator," who " hangs " about a New York theatre, raising tin 1 price- of tickets, and encouraging citizens to remain away, and " be sure to be late,"' thus deranging everything, and disturb- ing everybody, for greed of filthy pelf, is really a high-minded gentleman when compared to the unscrupulous Irish land- lord ; yet this wretched class rule with a rod of iron over the finest peasantry on earth. It would appear, in- deed, that the interests of the landlord were held to be best consulted for by the utter degradation of the tenantry. Busi- ness men all over the world secure the confidence and affection of their employees by gentleness, and a thoughtful consider- 22 ateness for their welfare. But the Irish landlord makes the slavish cottier believe that he ought to be thankful for being allowed to exist. Hence Professor Fawcett writes, in the spirit of a true Englishman, that " it has been justly remarked that the Irish cottiers were the only people in the world whose condition was so deplorable that they gained nothing by being industrious." Nor is it the people only that are demoralized and degraded by landlord ascendency. The land itself is made worthless. " No scheme," continues Fawcett, "could pos- sibly be devised which would act more effectually to impover- ish the people and throw the land into the most wretched state of cultivation." The study of this writer's " Manual of Political Economy " would win many earnest converts in England and America over to the cause of the Irish farmers. The traveler is amused at the primitive simplicity of the Irish peasant in thinking he holds high carnival (Americe, " is having a splendid time ") over a cup of tea and some " baker's " bread, which festive occasion commonly concludes with the " squeezing of the tea-pot." The quaint usage is derived from the landlord's traditional policy of distraining, pinching, rack- ing, and " squeezing " the poor illiterate tenant and his little holding to the utmost capacity of their resources. Among the peasantry the more common phrase is " skinning the land, " which religious people associate with the famous judgment of St. Kolumkille : " the tail goes with the hide." But the true etymology will be found in the evidence taken before " Lord Devon's Irish Poor Law Commission," where it is declared, upon the highest agricultural authority, that the nominal amount of cottier rents exceeds the whole product which the land yields, crcri in the most favorable season. When substance and skin are extracted, what remains for the cottier is to be tossed out upon the highway, and allowed to see his mud cabin leveled with the earth. This horrid cruelty must not continue to be tolerated in this age of steam and electricity, and England begins to awaken to this. The Lon- don Quarterly Review (;i Tory organ) admits that ejection, under the best terms, has lived its full term. " We admit that to eject an unoffending and paying tenant from a homestead or farm which he had held for years, and whereon probably his parents had lived before him, and to which, therefore, he had 23 contracted a natural attachment, and thus to eject him from pure caprice or greediness, even when full compensation for actual improvements is given, is a harsh, cruel, and unright- eous proceeding, and in the Irish mind is sure to be regarded as injustice and oppression, and to be resented as such." The writer who, fifty years ago, should use even this carefully guarded language, would have been regarded in Great Britain and Ireland as a lunatic. This is the inhuman system, to destroy which root and branch, Mr. Parnell is pleading at the bar of American public opinion. England meanwhile trembles, for she is being weighed in a scale of even balance, and remorse- fully feels her own side is certain to sink. But it will lend increased grace to this certain future victory to allow an Englishman to proclaim its tidings, which John Stuart Mill has done in these bold and prophetic words : " It is not to fear of consequences, but to a sense of right, that one would wish to appeal on this most momentous ques- tion. Yet it is not impertinent to say that to hold Ireland permanently by the old bad means is simply impossible. Neither Europe nor America would now bear the sight of a Poland across the Irish Channel. Were we to attempt it, and a rebellion, so provoked, could hold its ground but for a few weeks, there would be an explosion of indignation all over the civilized world ; on this single < >ccasion Liberals and Catholics would be unanimous ; Papal volunteers and Gari- baldians would fight side by side against us for the inde- pendence of Ireland, until the many enemies of British pros- perity had time to complicate the situation by a foreign war. Were we even able to prevent a rebellion, or suppress it the moment it broke out, the holding down by military violence of a people in desperation, constantly struggling to break their fetters, * " :: " * could not long succeed with a country so vulnerable as England, having territories to defend in every part of the globe, and half her population dependent on for- eign commerce. * * * Too much bitter feeling still remains between England and the United States, more than eighty years after separation ; and Ireland has suffered from England, for many centuries, evils compared with which the greatest grievances of the Americans were, in all but their principle, insignificant. * * * America is the country with which we are " :< " * * in most danger of having serious difficulties ; and Ireland would be far more likely to confed- erate with America against us than with us against America. * * * If, without removing this (land tenure) difficulty, 24 we attempt t<> hold Ireland by force, it will be at the expense ofalltlie character we possess as lovers and maintainers of free government, or respecters of any rights except our own; it will most dangerously aggravate all our chances pf misun- derstandings with any of the great powers of the world, culminating in war ; we shall be in a state of open revolt against the universal conscience of Europe and Christendom, and more and more against our own. And we shall in the end be shamed, or, it not shamed, coerced into releasing [reland from the connection; or we shall avert the necessity only by conceding with the worst grace, and when it will not prevent some generations of ill blood, that which, if done at present, may still be in time permanently to reconcile the two countries." But during this present famine England, pretending to sustain the tenantry, upholds the landlords, by offering them loans on easy terms to give remunerative employment to their tenantry. For what? Immediately to relieve distress, but ultimately? to enhance the value of the holdings, and then set the tenants at each other's throats, to outbid one another, and so enrich the landlords more and more. By this one single fact Irish landlordism and the English Government stand condemned before the world. When famine comes, Government and the landlords are zealous for the reclama- tion of waste lands and wholesome improvements. It is mere trickery. In 187;") there were 4,255,000 acres of bog and waste land in Ireland. This had increased in IS?'.* to 4,650,000 acres! The true remedy for this ever-recurring apathy of Government and the landlords is to make the tillers of the soil the owners of the soil, or in one word — Parnellism. Let the reader compare the land system of Ireland with that of the Channel Islands, which, while part of the British Empire, have legislatures of their own, without the con- sent of which no act of the British Parliament has any force, being in their nature, too, constituted independent States. The area of these islands, taken together, does not exceed 50,0(11) acres, the size of an ordinary Irish barony — less than one-third the estates of two noblemen in Mayo. But, unlike the tenants of these noblemen, who are liable to eviction at the will of their taskmakers, under a system of Draconian land laws, the people of the Channel Islands have 25 their own land laws and legislative power for centuries, and bhey provide for the equal distribution of land among children, which, while preventing the growth of large properties in land, have secured the division of the islands into small farms, which are owned by the men who till them. And in the world there is no community where there is greater wealth, nor more widely distributed in proportion to the population. Here, then, is a system of proprietorship which has converted these islands into a smiling garden. They possess a population of 90,000, probably the densest in the world. If Ireland had a like population in proportion to its area, in would lie considerably over 30,000,000. Guernsey alone, with only 10,000 acres under cultivation, supports in comfort a population of 30,000 ; while Ireland, with a cultivated area of 15,500,000 acres, has a poverty-stricken population of under 'ive and a half millions. Were Ireland as densely populated as Guernsey, says M. S. Crawford, it would support a population of 45,000,000. The cultivated lands of Jersey are 20,000 acres, and there are 2,500 owners of land occupying farms, which Mould give about eight acres to each farm. In one parish of 3,000 acres there are 40-1 registered owners of land. In this island alone, states Mr. Shaw Lefevre, M. P., 4,000 acres of land are planted with early potatoes, and the produce is estimated to be worth £300,000. Does this system tend to reduce the value of land? Quite the reverse. Land continually rises in value in Guernsey. No land is sold there under £100 an acre, and near the town, land in lots will fetch several hundred pounds per acre 1 . Yet in presence of such facts at their own door, British statesmen oppose Mr. Parnell's system of peasant proprietary, as an unheard-of novelty. It obtains in Germany, France, Austria, Belgium, Australia, and the United States. Every- where its adoption has been attended with peace, order, con- tentment, and prosperity. Yet the Irish landlords and the English Government have the hardihood to maintain that its adoption in Ireland would involve national disintegration. They reiterate unto weariness that small cottier holdings are a hindrance to the prosperity of Ireland, while the best writers on political economy agree in teaching the contrary. There is nothing new in this profound system of Saxon 26 reasoning. England to be anything must be insular. Before Dr. Baines induced her to adopt the Gregorian Calendar, she preferred to be at war with the heavens rather than at peace with the Pope. In her land system she chooses to be at war with the whole world rather than at peace with Ireland. Rejoicing to see all nations teem with grape and corn, she holds that Ireland ought to be able to get along cpiite well with thistles and briars. France, which has 50,000 proprietors owning each an average of 750 acres, has 500,000 proprietors owning each an average of 75 acres, and 5,000,000 an average of 7.3 acres. In Belgium the land is still more minutely sub- divided. According to Sir Henry Barron, the average extent of separate plots is 1.36 acre. England has flooded other nations with Bibles. Can English statesmen remember a class in the good Book who " have eyes and see not" ? "But," you object, "it is not the land system which ruins Ireland ; it is the vicious, violent, and lazy character of the Irish people, whose horrible crimes tend to keep English capital out of the country." Let us see. As prevention is better than curing, and as good government studies economy, the easiest w T ay to send capital into Ireland is to leave in that kingdom the eight millions sterling which are annually taken out of it. As to the Irish peopie, the whole world finds them to be directly the reverse of what they are described by Eng- land. In three of the four provinces of Ireland the judges on circuit last year congratulated the grand juries on the absence of serious crime, and expressed a request that the English press and people would " make a note of it." With the gaunt spectre of famine staring the people, is there any other nation on the globe of which this can be said? The battle-fields of England, France, Austria, Spain, and America found Irish sol- diers the reverse of lazy. The press of London and New York, and every city where the English tongue is spoken discover little laziness in Irish brains. The yoke of English oppres- sion removed from them, those ill-used men become lawyers judges, legislators, authors, inventors, architects, builders, masons, miners, and models in every department of skilled labor. Two hundred and thirty-two American Congressmen, in contributing to the Irish Relief Fund, declare that they "do this in no political spirit, and with a view solely to the 27 aid of a people who are in actual distress in their native country, and whose energy, industry, pluck, and brains have contributed so much to the advancement of our own." Of what other elements but these is true manhood formed ? If there be four qualities which especially challenge admiration in human character, they are " energy, industry, pluck, and brains." What a skeleton English literature would be if stripped of the contributions of Irish genius ! But it is waste of time to further refute a slander which is best refuted by the army and navy of England itself. I suit join an English testi- mony to Irish character in Ireland, given by one who knew that country better than any other Englishman of ancient or modern times : " It will be our leading object in this publica- tion to induce the English to see and judge for themselves, and not to incur the reproach of being better acquainted with the Continent than they are with a country in which they can- not fail to be deeply interested, and which holds out to them every temptation the traveler can need — a people rich in original character, scenery abundant in the wild and beautiful, and cordial and happy welcome for the stranger, and a degree of safety and security in his journeyings such as he can meet in no other portion of the globe. In all our tours, we not only never encountered the slightest stay or insult, but never heard of a traveler who had been subjected to either, and although sufficiently heedless in the business of locking up ' boxes ' at inns, in no instance did we ever sustain a loss by our carelessness." ("Ireland, its Scenery, Character, etc.," Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall, preface.) The value of this testimony Avill be appreciated when it is remembered that the authors of this beautiful work have traveled through the entire country, and have sojourned in, as they have exquisitely illus- trated, every city, town, and hamlet of Ireland. The real cause of Irish famines and Irish misery is the land system, and the one effective remedy is what posterity shall speak of as " Parnellism." The course of the Gulf stream may be unaccountably vexatious, but Ireland is not the only country to which it works mischief. It may be muddy or clear in itself, but as a philosophical solution of the misrule of Ireland it is a transparent sham. Neither will it do to fly at the heavens, and weep over the moisture of the atmosphere, 28 which specious pretext, besides flinging blasphemy at a bene- ficent God, is alleged to throw a wet blanket of oblivion over the infamous government that has made millions of the Irish weep bitter tears. Let the land system be changed, and the men who scaled the heights of the Alma amid the "pelting" of bullets, and captured Inkerman under a storm of artillery, will know how to prosper amid the generous showers that fatten the rich valleys of their Emerald Isle. 29 III. Parnell and Agitation. "There is a cant that agitation prevents the influx of capital. What is the meaning of that ?" England has a special horror of agitators. The reason is evident. No measure of relief has ever been obtained for Ireland except by prolonged and persistent agitation, and the past is a prophecy of the future. When the people formed secret societies, the corrupt press, speaking for the Govern- ment, cried, " Cowards ! If you have grievances, discuss them constitutionally, and in the light of day, that they may be redressed." When they held public meetings to do so, the press denounced them as unsettling the country, hindering commerce, and the influx of capital. In Mr. Parnell's case we generally find an odious adjective, which points him out as one to be avoided. He is styled a " i