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YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

THE AMERICAN IRISH

AND THEIR INFLUENCE ON

lEISH POLITICS

BY
PHILIP H. BAGBNAL, B.A. Oxon.

LONDON
KEGAN PAUL, TEENCH & CO., I, PATERNOSTEE SQUARE
1882

{The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved.)

PKEPACE.
For the sake of historical sequence I have treated my
subject in chronological order. Those, however, who
wish to read at once that portion of the work which
relates to the American Irish of to-day, and their
influence on Irish politics, will find the requisite
information at once in Part II.
I have to acknowledge with thanks the courtesy of
the Times in allowing me to reprint two letters upon
Irish Colonization, which I contributed, in October,
1881, to the columns of that journal during my tour
in Minnesota.

PHILIP H. BAGENAL.

185, Palace Chambers, Westmiustek.

CONTENTS.

PART I.
CHAPTEK PAGE
I. Irish Colonists before the Eevolution of 1777 , 3
II. The War of Eevolution ... ... ... 12
in. Ibish Emigbation and Statistics ... ... ... 24
rv. Political and Eeligious Tboubles of the Ibish in
Amebioa ... .. .. .. 37
V. Peesent Position of the Irish in America ... 60
VL The New Yoek Irish ... ... ... 69
VII. Irish Settlees in the West ... ... ... 76
VIII. The Ibish- American Colonization Company ... 89
PART II.
I. The Situation ... ... ... . 105
II. National Peopaganda ... ... 109
III. Amebican- Ibish Republicanism ... ... 121
IV. The Amebican Civil Wab and Fenianism .. 138

viii CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
V. The Land Question — The Faith of a Felon ... 153
VI. The Land Question — Continued ... ... 168
VII. The Eevolution ... ... ... ... ... 176
VIII. Me. Paenell in America ... ... ... 198
IX. The Eeign of Terror ... ... ... ... 205
X. Irish Pasties m America ... ... ... 218
XI. American Opinion on Irish Affairs ... ... 232
XII. Conclusion ... ... ... ... .. 240
Index ... ... ... ... ... ... 247

PAET L

THE AMERICAN lEISH,
AND THEIK INFLUENCE ON
IRISH POLITICS.
CHAPTER I.
IBISH COLONISTS BEFORE THE EEVOLUTION OF 1777.
It was on the 13th of May, 1607, that Captain New
port arrived from England at Jamestown, Virginia,
and disembarked John Smith and his Virginian
colonists, consisting of "poor gentlemen, tradesmen,
serving men, and Hbertines." On November 21,
1620, the Mayfloiuer arrived at Cape Cod, and in a
few weeks later the hundred and three souls on board
landed at the historic rock of Plymouth. Twenty-
three years afterwards, an Irish emigration took
place, which in numbers alone put the small Plymouth
colony altogether in the shade. It had become ob
vious to far-seeing men that the colonies only wanted
population to make them prosperous. And, accord
ingly, we find the Bristol merchants treating with
the Government for men, women, and girls to be

4 TEE AMEBICAN IRISH.
sent to the sugar plantations in the West Indies
and to New England.
Whereupon, says Prendergast, in the " History of
the Cromwellian Settlement," " The Commissioners
of Ireland gave them orders upon the governors of
garrisons to deliver to them prisoners of war; upon
masters of workhouses for the destitute in their care
' who were of an age to labour, or, if women, were
of marriageable age and not past breeding;' and
gave directions to all in authority to seize those who
had no visible means, and deliver them to these
agents of the British merchants. Messrs. Sellick and
Leader, Mr. Piobert Yeomans, Mr. Joseph Lawrence,
and others, all of Bristol, are active agents. As one
instance out of many : Captain John Vernon was
employed by the Commissioners of Ireland into
England, and contracted in their behalf with Mr.
Daniel Sellick, and Mr. Leader, under his hand,
bearing date 14th September, 1653, to supply them
with two hundred and fifty women of the Irish nation
above twelve years and under the age of forty-five,
also three hundred men above twelve years and under
fifty, to be found in the country within twenty miles
of Cork, Toughal, Kinsale, Waterford, and Wexford,
to transport them into New England.'' *
* " The Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland," by J. P. Prendergast
2nd edition (Dublin, 1875), p. 90.

COLONISTS BEFOBE THE BEVOLUTION OF 1111. 5
Here then, almost at the very fountain head of the
life blood of the American colony of New England, we
find five hundred and fifty men and women in the
prime of life drawn by one contract from the purest
native Celtic blood of the South of Ireland, and
infused into the primal stock of the American people.
But these five hundred and fifty marriageable men
and fruitful women were but as a drop in this early
tide of Irish emigration. The Eev. Auguste J. The-
baud, in " The Irish Eace in the Past and Present,"
says, " It is calculated that in four years those
English firms of slave-dealers had shipped 6400 Irish
men and women, boys and maidens, to the British
colonies of North America."
As we have already shown, New England was the
first shelter of the Irish emigrant in the seventeenth
century. "In 1737," says the Kev. T. A. Spencer in
his "History of the United States," "multitudes of
labourers and husbandmen in Ireland, unable to pro
cure a comfortable subsistence for their families in
their native land, embarked for America." The same
writer again, speaking of New Hampshire in 1738,
says, " The manufacture of linen was considerably
increased by the coming of Irish emigrants to this
colony ; " so that we assume that the New Hampshire
settlers principally consisted of Ulster men.
Upon the general subject of pre-revolutionary

6 THE AMEBICAN IBISH.
colonization, Mr. Spencer makes a remarkable state
ment : " No complete memorial has been transmitted
of the emigrations that took place from Europe to
America, but (from the few illustrative facts that are
actually preserved) they seem to have been amazingly
copious. In the years 1771-72 the number of emi
grants to America from Ireland alone amounts to
17,350. Almost all of them emigrated at their own
charge ; a great majority of them were persons em
ployed in the linen manufacture, or farmers pos
sessed of some property which th'ey converted into
money and carried -with them. Within the first fort
night of August, 1773, there arrived at Philadelphia
3500 emigrants from Ireland, and from the same
document which hasi recorded this circumstance it
appears that vessels were arriving every month,
freighted with emigrants from Holland, Germany,
and especially from Ireland and the Highlands of
Scotland. As most of the emigrants, and particularly
those from Ireland and Scotland, were personally
discontented with their treatment in Europe, their
accession to the colonial population, it might reason
ably be supposed, had no tendency to diminish or
counteract the hostile sentiments towards Britain
which were daily gathering force in America."
Despite the slender communication between the
Old and the New Worlds, the Irish race still moved

COLONISTS BEFOBE THE BEVOLUTION OF 1777. 7
westward, Maryland, probably from its Catholic
origin, was at an early period a point of attraction.
So rapidly did the Irish Catholic element multiply,
that in 1708 the Protestant inhabitants passed an
Act imposing a fine of " twenty shillings for poll on
Irish servants, to prevent the importing of too great
a number of Irish Papists into the province." Ap
parently, however, this had not the desired effect,
for in 1717 yet another Act was passed against " Irish
Papists," more stringent than the first.
Almost every civil war, rebellion, insurrection,
and disturbance in Ireland, from the time of the
Tudors downwards, arose more or less directly from
q,uestions connected with the possession of lands. It
was the land question which helped to drive the
Presbyterian Protestants out, early in the last cen
tury, as the first Irish settlers in America. The
abolition of the tithe of agistment rendered pasturage
so much more profitable than tillage, that the land
lords throughout the North of Ireland began to con
solidate their farms and expel their tenantry, most
of whom were Protestants — for few of the Catholics
had risen above the rank of agricultural labourers.
Whole villages of Protestants, the descendants of
those who had been induced to settle in Ireland by
the exclusive privileges conceded to them by the
policy of the Government, were depopulated. . These

8 TEE AMEBICAN IBISH.
clearances gave vast numbers of Protestant tenants
to America just before the Eevolutionary war, and
they suppUed the levies of Washington with a body
of brave determined men, animated by all the bitter
ness of caste and a hatred of the power that had been
the origin of their fathers' first settlement in Ireland.
Pennsylvania was perhaps the most distinctively
Irish colony of any. The histories of that State
teem with the doings of the Irish settlers. That the
immigration of Irish emigrants was phenomenally
large is obvious. "In 1727," says the Philadelphia
Gazette, " in Newcastle Government there arrived last
year 4500 persons, chiefly from Ireland, and at Phila
delphia in one year 1155 Irish, of whom none were
servants." In the very next year 5600 Irish landed
at the port of Philadelphia, while in the next ten
years the Irish furnished to the Carolinas and Georgia
the majority of their immigrants. Pennsylvania
received a very large proportion of the Protestant
Irish in the eighteenth century, and being far the
most important settlement of the old colonies, the
history of its early settlement is consequently in
teresting. In " A Brief Account of the Society of the
Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, founded in Philadelphia
in 1770," * there is some valuable information on this
* " A Brief Account of the Society of the Friendly Sons of St
Patrick." 8vo. Philadelphia, 1844.

COLONISTS BEFOBE THE BEVOLUTION OF 1777. 9
point. The province had long been torn by party
strife, but while poHticians fought the Irish settlers
continued to flow in, and " the true foundations of
Pennsylvania were laid without noise or ostentation
by successive bands of brave, industrious, and intel-
Hgent Irishmen, whilst in the inland counties her
real history was aU the time writing ; not, it is true,
with the pen, nor on paper, but by the spade, the
axe, and the plough, in characters that remain en
graven on her soil to the present day." From
December, 1728, to December, 1729, the proportion
of the various classes of emigrants who landed in the
province was as follows : — English and Welsh, 267 ;
Scotch, 43 ; Palatines (German), 243 ; Irish, 5655
— the Irish thus being nearly ten to one of all other
emigrants taken together, and that proportion was
doubtless sustained down to the Eevolution. These,
the true founders of Pennsylvania, scattered their
settlements over the interior, until then covered with
the woods which gave name to that province.
In 1729 the Irish element had increased so much
in Pennsylvania that a prominent member of the
Provincial Government expressed himself glad to find
that the Parliament was about to take measures to
prevent a too free immigration of Irish settlers. " It
looks," he said, " as if Ireland is to send all her
inhabitants hither ; for last week not less than six

10 TEE AMEBICAN IBISH.
ships arrived, and every day two or three arrive also.
The common fear is that if they continue to come they
will make themselves proprietors of the province. It
is strange they thus crowd where they are .not
wanted." *
There is a good deal of interesting matter to be
gleaned concerning the character of the Pennsylvanian
Irish, and as it is true that the character of the first
settlers of a country determines that of their de
scendants, a student of hereditary characteristics may
be glad of historical evidence on the point. t Mr.
Sherman Day says, " They were a pertinacious and
pugnacious race, pushing their settlements upon
unpurchased lands, and producing fresh exaspera
tion among the Indians." Another authority, Mr.
Winthrop Sargent,| describes them thus : " They
were a hardy, brave, hot-headed race; excitable in
temper, unrestrainable in passion, invincible in pre
judice. Their hand opened as impetuously to a
friend as it cUnched against a foe. They loathed
the pope as sincerely as they venerated Calvin or
Knox, and they did not particularly respect the
* " A Tribute to the Principles, Virtues, Habits, and Public Useful
ness of the Irish and Scotch Early Settlers of Pennsylvania," by a^
Deacendant. Chambersburg, 1856.
t Historical Collection of Pennsylvania, by Sherman Day. 1848.
% Introductory memoir to the Journal of Braddock's Expedition.
Lippiocott and Co.

COLONISTS BEFOBE THE BEVOLUTION OF 1777. H
Quakers. If often rude and lawless, it was partly
the fault of their position. They hated the Indian
while they despised him . . . impatient of restraint,
rebelHous against anything that in their eyes bore
the resemblance of injustice, we find these men
readiest among the ready on the battle-fields of the
Eevolution. If they had faults, a lack of patriotism
or of courage was not among the number. Amongst
them were to be found men of education, intelhgence,
and virtue."
From what I have said and quoted from historical
authority, it is quite evident that the Irish took a
prominent part in the settlement of the original
thirteen English colonies, and became an important
element in the bulk of the native American popula
tion. What they did on the " battle-fields of the
Eevolution " will be seen in the following chapter.

12 THE AMEBICAN IBISH.

CHAPTEE II.
THE WAE OF EEVOLUTION.
The early struggle for independence waged by the
army of Washington in 1775 against the veteran
troops of King George III., had no more strenuous
supporters than the Irish-born and Irish-descended
colonists of the day. Any one who has taken the pains
to trace the deeds and fortunes of the many exiled
Irishmen of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
who fought on European battle-fields, will find that
they were ever in the forefront of the fight. And the
services rendered by the Irish in America during the
war of Eevolution were of almost equal importance in
the history of that prolonged and bitter battle, as at
Fontenoy, at Cremona, in the Peninsular War, or in
the Crimea.
As to the actual numbers of Irishmen who fought
in the American ranks, we find remarkable inde
pendent historical evidence in a curious volume
published in London in 1785, the title-page of

TEE WAB OF BEVOLUTION. 13
which professes to be, "The Evidence, as given be
fore a Committee of the House of Commons, on the
Detail and Conduct of the American War." * The
object of the inquiry was to fix the responsibility
for the failure of the various campaigns conducted by
Generals Gage, Burgoyne, and Cornwallis, and to
ascertain the causes that contributed to the disasters
which befell English arms in America. No less im
portant a personage than Edmund Burke sat on the
committee, and this celebrated Irishman, in examining
a Major-General Eobertson who had served in the
army in America for twenty-four years, elicited a
curious and interesting fact. "How," asked Burke,
" are the Provincial (American) corps composed : are
they mostly Americans, or emigrants from various
nations of Europe ? " The answer was, " Some
corps mostly natives ; the greatest number such
as can be got. . . . General Lee informed me
that half the rebel Continental Army were from
Ireland." t
But not only were the rank and file of the revolu-
* A copy of this volume is in the possession of Mr. W. J. Onahan,
of Chicago, to whom I am indebted for its perusal.
f In the " Official Eegister of the Officers and Men of New Jersey
in the Eevolutionary War," published by General Stryker at Trenton,
New Jersey, 1872, are to be found the names of all the rank and file
and officers of all those from the State of New Jersey, who took
part in the Eevolution. The number of Irish names appearing is
most remarkable.

14 TME AMEBICAN IBISH
tionary army composed very much of Irish. Amongst
the commanding officers of Washington's forces are
to be found some of the most distinguished generalB
and brilliant fighters of the American army and navy.
Some time before the outbreak of the war, there had
been formed by the Irish settlers " The Society of
the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick," where Catholics,
Presbyterians, Quakers, and Episcopalians were
united like a band of brothers. Happily for the his
torian, the minute-book of the society, commencing in
1771 and continued till 1796, has been preserved, and
the most interesting parts published.*
Founded as the Society was during the most
interesting time of the colonial history, composed of
most active and influential men, and meeting in
Philadelphia, the focus at that period of all political
and national movement and the capital of the people
when Independence was declared — all these circum
stances give additional interest to its memoirs. The
devotion of its members to the cause they espoused
was acknowledged by Washington himself in a letter
to the president of the society, where he described the
society as " distinguished for the firm adherence of its
members to the glorious cause in which we are
embarked." The Hves of the members of the society,
* " A Brief Account of the Society of the Friendly Sons of St.
Patrick." Philadelphia, 1844.

THE WAB OF BEVOLUTION. 15
too, abound in instances where self-denial, and
sacrifice of time, labour, blood, money, and Hfe,
gave still more enduring proof of their fidelity and
patriotism. They were not wanting, either, in the sport-loving
characteristics of all Irishmen. In the year 1766
the Gloucester Fox-hunting Club was instituted, and
continued its meetings until the year 1818. Many of
its members were also members of the Sons of St.
Patrick, and from the two associations was formed
the " first troop of Pennsylvania Cavalry," which
performed numerous exploits at the battles of Trenton
and Princeton, receiving the thanks of Washington
for the many essential services which they have
rendered to their country, and to himself personally,
during the course of that severe campaign. " Though
composed," he said, " of gentleman of fortune, they
have shown a noble example of discipline and subordi
nation, and in several actions have shown a spirit
and bravery which wiU ever do honour to them, and
will ever be gratefully remembered by me." It is
quite evident, therefore, that the Friendly Sons of
St. Patrick were, for the most part, men of fortune,
and associated in terms of familiarity, friendship, and
equality with the first men of Pennsylvania, and
included among them the very best men of the country.
We find, as we shall see, many among them occupying

16 TEE AMEBICAN IBISH.
the highest and most responsible stations in the
army, navy, cabinet, and Congress.
Until the flames of war broke out, the objects of
the society were purely social and convivial. They
met and dined and sang and joked, as Irishmen have
been wont to do from time immemorial, and many
a time Washington was present at their festivities.
In 1775 the revolutionary feeling became very intense,
and the side which the members of the Friendly Sons
of St. Patrick took is very unequivocally indicated by
the record of their proceedings at the meeting of
December 17, 1775. A motion was made, seconded,
and carried, that Thomas Batt, a member of the
society, should be expelled for taking an active part
against the liberties of America. When at last war
was declared, this group of brilliant Irishmen threw
themselves into the movement with all the energy
and resolution of educated men. No one saw more
keenly than did Washington what valuable material
for leaders there was in this Society of Friendly Sons
of St. Patrick, and we see at once that he availed
himself, without any delay, of the martial instincts of
his Irish colonists.
It would be impossible to go through all the roll
of honourable Irish names that adorned the military
history of the American Eevolution ; but amongst
the " Friendly Sons " there are some that must be

TEE WAB OF BEVOLUTION. 17
mentioned. Major-General Anthony Wayne, the son
of Irish parents, entered the army at the age of
twenty-nine, and fought in Canada, at the battles of
Brandywine, Germantown, Monmouth, and led the
assault in the most desperate attack on Stony Point
at the point of the bayonet. General Wayne was
known as " Mad Anthony," on account ofhis reckless
valour. General Walter Stewart came to America, from
Londonderry, when very young, entered the army,
and was appointed a colonel of iafantry at the
age of twenty-one, causing great annoyance amongst
native American officers of greater age and longer
standing. General William Thompson was a native of the
north of Ireland. He accompanied Montgomery
in his expedition to Quebec, and commanded the
American forces at the battle of Trois Eivieres, in
Canada, in June, 1776.
Major-General H. Y. Knox was born of Irish
parents, and throughout the whole revolutionary
contest was actively engaged as an artillery officer,
besides having occupied the post of Secretary at
War and of the Navy, under General Washington,
until 1794.
General William Irvine was born in Ireland, and
was educated for the profession of medicine. He
c

38 THE AMEBICAN IBISH.
raised, commanded, and equipped a regiment of the
Pennsylvanian line, and was entrusted with the
defence of the north-western frontier. He subse
quently became a member of Congress.
General Edward Hand was born in Ireland and
became one of the most distinguished officers of the
American army of Eevolution, and was so high in the
confidence of Washington as to become adjutant-
general, and was considered one of his right-hand men.
Stephen Moylan, the first president of the
" Friendly Sons," was also distinguished by the con
fidence of Washington, and rose to the rank of
brigadier-general of cavalry. He was a native of the
south of Ireland, and brother to the Catholic Bishop
of Cork. Colonel Eichard Butler and his two brothers,
scions of the Ormonde family, also distinguished
themselves during the war, particularly at Stony
Point and Saratoga. The first rose afterwards to
the rank of major-general, and was tomahawked by
an Indian chief at the battle of St. Clair in 1791.
Honourable mention is made of Colonel Butler in
Marshall's " Life of Washington."
John Barry was the first commodore of the
American navy, and was born in the county of
Wexford. He entered the merchant service in early
life as captain of a ship owned by Eeese Meredith.

THE WAB OF BEVOLUTION. 19
General Washington, on his visits to Philadelphia,
always staj-ed at Mr. Meredith's house, and thus
became acquainted with Captain Barry and his
abUities. These were the principal Irishmen of this convivial
society who rose to prominence in the war of Eevo
lution. There were others from various states who
are deserving of mention. But before briefly giving
some account of them, let me conclude with one
instance of the material assistance rendered by this
Irish club to the necessities of the American army.
At a time when everything depended on a vigorous
prosecution of the war, it was found almost impossible
to arouse the public spirit of the Americans. In this
emergency was conceived and carried into operation
" the plan of the Bank of Pennsylvania, established
for supplying the army of the United States with
provisions for two months." Ninety -three individuals
and firms subscribed, and the amount realized was ,
£300,000. Of this, twenty-seven members * of the
Friendly Sons of St. Patrick subscribed £103,500.
* Their names show their origin to have been nearly all of Ulster
parentage, viz. Eobert Morris, Blair M'Clenaohan, William Bingham,
J. M. Nesbitt, Richard Peters, Samuel Meredith, James Mease,
Thomas Barclay, Hugh Shiell, John Dunlap, John Nixon, George
Campbell, John Mease ; Banner, Murray, and Co. ; John Patton,
Benjamin Puller, George Meade and Co., John Donaldson, Henry
Hill, Kean and Nichols, James and Samuel Caldwell, John iShee,
Sharp Delanj, Tench Francis.

20 TEE AMEBICAN IBISH
But besides these Irish soldiers and citizens,
members of this remarkable convivial society, there
were many others of Irish birth and parentage engaged
m the War of Eevolution. Eichard Montgomery, the
first general of the Continental Army who fell in the
struggle, was born at Conroy Castle, near Eaphoe,
in the county of Donegal. He was killed at Quebec.
On the news of his death. Sir Henry Newenham
appeared in the Irish Parliament in full mourning,
and when his wife visited Ireland, she was visited by
the Duke of Leinster and the Earl of Chaiiemont.
The three brothers, John, Daniel, and Ebenezer
Sullivan, were three very conspicuous figures through
out the revolutionary period. Indeed, it is claimed
for John Sullivan that he struck the first blow for
American independence. He and John Langdon, in
1774, seized the military stores at Fort William and
Mary, at the entrance of the harbour of Portsmouth,
New Hampshire. This was the first exploit of the
movement, and the powder thus obtained enabled
the rebels, as they then were, to fight the battle of
Bunker's Hill. After the deaths of Generals Mont
gomery and Thompson, Sullivan became general of
the northern division of the Continental Army, and
served with great distinction during the succeeding
campaigns. John Stark was the son of one of the oldest Irish

TEE WAB OF BEVOLUTION. 21
colonists of New Hampshire, and in looks, gesture,
wit, and brogue was as Irish as if he had been
reared in Cork. Daniel Webster used to imitate,
with great unction, Stark's voice. One of the oldest
revolutionary generals. Stark fought at Bunker's Hill,
at Trenton, at Princeton, and at Bennington, where he
achieved great renown.
Besides these, there were many other Irishmen
who fought with distinction in subordinate places,
and it was their example, doubtless, which led to
the enlistment of the Irish emigrants in the ranks.
One thing is certain, that the part played by the
Irish in the war of American independence was far
more important than has hitherto been fully ac
knowledged. The French armies which co-operated
with the American forces contained many thousands
of Irishmen, and the second in command of the be
sieging force defeated at Savannah was no other
than Count Arthur Dillon, who had brought with
him his own Irish regiment which he had commanded
in France. At last success crowned the efforts of Washington,
and the surrender of Cornwallis extinguished the last
hopes of the British armies in America. The Friendly
Sons of St. Patrick once more took to eating, drinking,
and joviality, and a series of brilliant entertainments
were given. General Washington had now become

22 TEE AMEBICAN IBISE.
acquainted with the talents and energy and material
assistance of the members of the society on many
a hard-fought field, and by the substantial evidence
of £ s. d., and accordingly he soon showed his appre
ciation of their services. The society met on Decem
ber 17, 1781, and " his Excellency General Washing
ton was unanimously adopted a member of the
society." Not only did the "father of his country"
accept the profl^ered honour, but also an invitation to
dinner, at which were present the bravest and most
distinguished generals of the allied armies of America
and France — Generals Lincoln, Howe, Moultrie,
Knox, Hand, Mcintosh, and Baron Steuben ; Colonels
Washington, Smith, Tilghman, Count Dillon and
Count de la Touche, Stewart, Blaine, Johnstone,
Morris, Meredith, and Hill.
Thus was completed the acknowledgment of the
public services rendered to America by the Irish
colonists and their sons.
When the Declaration of Independence was signed
in the old hall in Philadelphia, there were at least
nine men of Irish birth, or Irish descent, who put
their names to that remarkable document. If you
step into Independence Hall in Chestnut Street,
Philadelphia-, and look on the pictures that chequer
the quaint square apartment upheld by its four
slender pillars, you can see some of their portraits.

TEE WAB OF BEVOLUTION. 23
The light falls full upon the wall opposite the
identical little old-fashioned table where the Declara
tion was signed. Here is Charles Carroll, of Carroll-
ton, a grey-haired, high-bred old gentleman, his
delicately cut aquiline nose, high-bred forehead, and
well-moulded jaw denoting blue blood and good
ancestry. Near his portrait is that of General
Montgomery, in blue uniform and yellow facings,
lace ruffles, black stock, and epaulettes. Another
signer is Thomas Lynch, junior, whose boyish face,
beautiful eyes, and powdered head, have been done
full justice to by some French artist. Here, too, are ,
portraits of George Eeed, George Taylor, Edward
Eutledge, Matthew Thornton, Thomas McKean, James
Smith, John Nixon, all signers of the Declaration of
Independence, and all Irish colonists or descendants
of Irish colonists. With these men at his back in the
very outset of the struggle, and with the Friendly
Sons of St. Patrick to aid him in arms in days of
doubt and peril, we can well believe Washington
gladly accepted an opportunity of doing honour to a
race that had done such deeds and given such
hostages to fortune as the American Irish of his own
day.

24 TEE AMEBICAN IBISE.

CHAPTEE III.
lEISH EMIGEATION AND STATISTICS.
PaiOK'to 1819, the progress and extent of immigration
is determined only by such meagre evidence as statis
ticians of that period possessed, and by the relations
then existing between the United States and the
countries from which persons emigrated. Authentic
official information there was none.
As was natural, the current of migration com
menced its flow from England, Ireland, and Scotland,
and from Germany through the French and British
ports. It was subject, as we shall see from time to
time, to many fluctuations, but continued uniformly,
as a rule, up to 1806. In that year Mr. Samuel
Blodget, an American statistician * of research and
accuracy, wrote that " from the best records and
estimates at present attainable," the immigrants
* "History of Immigration to the United States from 1819 to
1855," by W. J. Bromwell. New York, 1856.

IRISH EMIGBATION AND STATISTICS. 25
arriving in America did not average for the ten years
from 1784 to 1794, more than four thousand per
annum. During 1794, ten thousand were estimated to have
arrived in the United States from foreign countries
(see Cooper's " Information respecting America ").
From 1806 to 1816, the unfriendly relations of
Great Britain, France, and America precluded immi
gration altogether.
England maintained the doctrine (and enforced
it for some time), " a man once a subject always
a subject." This deterred many emigrants from
venturing their luck in a new country. Numbers had
gone to America to enter the American merchant
service, and many more stiU might have gone whom
the fear of British impressment frightened from their
design. In 1806 England issued a decree declaring
the coasts of France in a state of blockade, and the
French retaliated in like manner. To these restric
tions on commerce, and consequently on the un
obstructed passage from Europe, succeeded the British
Orders in Council, and the Milan decree of Napoleon.
In March, 1809, the United States law was passed
prohibiting for a year intercourse with Great Britain
and France. In 1810 the Napoleonic decrees were
annulled, and the commerce of the United States
in 1811 had fairly commenced, only to see her vessels

26 TEE AMEBICAN IBISE.
fall into the hands of England. Preparations were
accordingly made for active hostilities, and on June
18, 1812, war was declared formally between England
and America.
All this had a bad effect on the emigration of the
world, inasmuch as nearly all emigrants then em
barked chiefly from Liverpool and Havre, and thus
from 1806 the stream of emigration was pent up at
its very source.
In February, 1815, peace was concluded, the tide
resumed its flow, and with a speed so accelerated, that
from authentic custom-house information during
1817, we learn that not less than 22,240 persons
arrived at ports of the United States from foreign
countries — their number, of course, including American
citizens returning from abroad. Even in 1816 emigra
tion was to some extent impeded. An English Act
of Parliament allowed vessels to carry to the United
States only one passenger for every five tons, while it
allowed one for two tons to every other country. But,
even with this restriction, in no year previous had
half so many foreigners reached the American shores.
The following table, prepared by Mr. W. J. Brom
well, an American statistician, gives a view of the
progress and extent of immigration to the United
States from September 30', 1819, to December,
1855 :—

IBISE EMIGBATION AND STATISTICS.

27

Total
Passengers arriviug.

During the 10 years ending Sept. 30, 1829 j 151,636
lOi ,, „ Deo. 31, 1839 572,716
9J „ „ Sept. 30, 1849 I 1,479,478
6i „ „ Dec. 31, 1855 2,279,007

4,482,837

Of foreigu
birth.

128,602
538,381
1,427,3372,118,404

4,212,624

Of these he puts 4,212,624 foreign-born immigrants ;
207,491 were designated as English, 747,930 as Irish,
34,559 as Scotch, 4782 as Welsh; while 1,348,682
were put down as born in Great Britain and Ireland,
without any division as to nationality. Considering
the history of the century, it is safe to assume that
of the 1,348,682 persons indefinitely described, one
nulhon came from Ireland, which with the 747,930
designated would amount to only 1,747,930 as the
Irish immigration since 1819. This must obviously
be incorrect, as the emigration during the famine
years was by itself over a million. The difficulties,
however, of making any exact calculation are very
great, for this reason : The immigrants on arrival in
America were classed according as they came from
Great Britain or Ireland. Thousands of Irish — in fact,
the great majority — in this way embarking from the
English ports were put down on arrival under the
head of Great Britain.
Several other statisticians have made calculations

28

TEE AMEBICAN IBISE.

as to the number of Irish emigrants to America.
Mr. Edward Young,* Chief of the Bureau of Sta
tistics in Washington, has given some figures oh the
subject which are worth reproducing. They give
the Irish immigration from 1846 to 1875, and I
have added from other sources the immigration of
later years : —

1846 ...

. 58,043

1865 ...

... 82,918

1847

111,984

1866

98,647

1848 ...

. 1 ^2,833

1867 ...

... 114,411

1849

175,319

1868

74,779

1850

. 178,329

1869

... 79,030

1851

236,214

1870

76,732

1852

. 160,149

1871 ...

... 64,068

1853

163,476

1872

69,761

1854 ...

. 105,931 -

1873

... 75,848

1855

56,328

1874

47,688

1856

. 62,232

1875 (six mon

ths) 29,969

1857

73,502

1858

. 35,916

2,721,366

1859

44,115

1860 ...
61,511
1875 (six mon
ths) 19,604
1861
33,274
1876
37,000
1862
35,859
1877
... 38,000
1863 ...
96,088
1878
41,000
1864
89,442
Mr. Hamilton Andrew Hill, of Boston, in a paper
recently published on immigration to the United
States, says, "Ireland has been our chief source of
supply in the past, and during the last forty years
has contributed nearly three millions to the popu
lation of the United States. During 1847 to 1854
" Labour in Europe and America," by B. Young.
IBISE EMIGBATION AND STATISTICS. 29
inclusive, the arrivals from Ireland averaged 150,000
a year. In 1867 they were 108,857."
Another authority upon Irish emigration, the
Eev. Stephen Byrne, says,* " Between 1820 to 1872
the aggregate number of immigrants into the United
States is reported at about 8,000,000. Of these
3,000,000 are accredited to Ireland. But that this
proportion is too small is evident from the fact
that until within a few years past, when the strong
current of German immigration began to set in, the
great majority of all immigrants were Irish. Of
course there are given to Great Britain, not specified
as to nationality, 544,000 ; and inasmuch as almost
the whole immigration from Great Britain for many
years was from Ireland alone, we may set down most
of these as natives of that island. The proportionate
emigration from Ireland during the last fifty years
is marked as follows :— from 1820 to 1830, 27,106 ;
1831 to 1840, 29,188 ; 1841 to 1850, 162,332 ; 1851-
to 1860, 748,740 ; 1861 to 1870, 650,000.
In table VI. of the United States Census of 1870
may be found a view of the population of the United
States by states and territories, classified by race and
place of birth, and showing the number of persons
* " Irish Emigration to the United States," by Eev. S. Byrne,
O.S.D. New York : The Catholic Publication Society, 9, Barclay
Street.

30

TEE AMERICAN IBISE.

born in each state and territory and specified foreign
country. According to this the total number of
persons of Irish nativity in the United States was
1,855,827, as against 550,688 Enghsh, 140,809 Scotch,
74,520 Welsh, and 1,690,410 Germans.
The following table is interesting as showing the
relative populations, according to states, of the
English, Irish, Scotch, and German : —

England.

Ireland.

Scotland.

Germany.

—Alabama

1,039

3,893

458

2,479

-Arkansas

526

1,428

156

1,562

California

17,685

54,421

4,949

29,699

Connecticut . . .

12,992

70,630

3,238

12,443

—Delaware

1,419

5,907

229

1,141

-Florida

327

737

144

595

—Georgia ...

1,085

5,093

420

2,760

Illinois

53,866

120,162

15,733

203,750

Indiana ...

9,943

28,698

2,507

78,056

Iowa

16,660

40,124

5,248

66,160

Kansas ...

6,159

10,940

1,530

12,774

Kentucky

4,171

21,642

1,019

30,318

—Louisiana

2,792

17,068

814

18,912

Maine

3,645

15,745

998

508

Maryland

4,850

23,630

2,432

47,045

Massachusetts

34,081

216,120

9,000

13,070

Michigan

35,047

42.013

8,552

64,143

Minnesota

5,670

21,746

2,194

41,364

—Mississippi

1,086

3,359

432

2,954

Missouri

14,313

54,983

3,283

113,618

-i^'ebraska

3,602

4,999

792

10,954

Nevada

2,547

5,035

630

2,181

New Hampshire ...

2,679

12,190

892

436

New Jersey . . .

26,606

86,784

5,708

53,999

New York

110,003

528,806

27,277

316,882

'TJ'orth Carolina

490

677

420

904

Ohio

36,551

82,674

7,817

182,889

Oregon

1,344

1,967

394

1,875

Pennsylvania

69,665

235,798

16,846

160,146

Ehode Island

9,285

31,534

1,947

1,200

IBISE EMIGBATION AND STATISTICS.

31

England.

Ireland.

Scotland.

Germany.

.South Carolina

610

3,262

309

2,742

.Tennessee

2,075

8,048

552

4,525

Texas ...

2,029

4,031

620

23,976

Vermont

1,945

14,080

1,240

370

Virginia ...

1,906

5,191

705

4,050

-West Virginia

1,810

6,832

746

6,231

Wisconsin

28,192

48,479

6,590

162,314

Territories.

Arizona
134
54
3
379
Colorado
1,358
188
165
1,456
Dakotah
248
77
3
563
District of Columbia
1,418
351
29
4,918
Idaho
539
114
335
549
Montana
691
208
197
1,233
New Mexico
120
36
9
582
Utah
16,070
2,391
1,783
358
Washington
790
309
44
645
Wyoming
555
260
58
652
Total of Territories
21,923
When we come to analyze the territorial distribu
tion of the Irish population of the United States at
the present day, the map published by the United
States Census gives a very intelligible view of the
subject. The relative number of natives of Ireland
is marked in different shades of green, from light to
dark. There is an almost total absence of green of
any shade in the Southern States. A speck in
Virginia, two or three in Georgia, and along the
Mississippi, at New Orleans, Vicksburg, and Memphis.
A dot of green in Texas, and another at Arkansas,
and we have the sum total of the Irish in the
32 TEE AMERICAN IRISE.
Southern States. The presence of the negro is
hateful to the Irish population, and this, together
with the lack of old associations, renders the south
almost a tabooed territory for Irish emigrants.
From Maine to Long Island, the map shows a
broad line of deep emerald green, denoting a very
thick population along that portion of the Atlantic
seaboard. It contains the great cities of New York,
Brooklyn, Newark, Jersey City, Albany, Hartford,
New Haven, Providence, and Boston, with nearly all
the manufacturing towns of New England. South
and west of this large Irish district there is another
strip of green of almost the same size, but of some
what lighter shade, covering the coal-mines of
Pennsylvania and Baltimore and Philadelphia.
Then we find another green border on the southern
shore of Lake Ontario of the same shade, taking in
Buffalo, Eochester, and the manufactm'ing centres of
Western New York State. Almost as large a border
of green, but of a lighter shade, denoting a still
thinner Irish population, lines the southern shore of
Lake Erie, and this shade marks the south and west
of Lake Michigan. Spots of the same hue surround
St. Louis, Cincinnati, Kansas City, Omaha, and St.
Paul. The lightest shade of green is to be found
covering a vast territory extending from New England
through New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and

IBISH EMIGRATION AND STATISTICS. 33
Illinois, and thence along both banks of the Missis
sippi river into Minnesota ; and the footnote informs
us that the Irish population is from one to three to
the square mile, while in the deepest emerald green
shade the density of the population is put down as
over fifteen to the square mile.
It is impossible by statistics to obtain a clear view
of the Irish population in the United States, inas
much as the census only gives under the head of
Ireland those who were actually born in Ireland.
The sons of Irish parentage are all enumerated as
American citizens. It is obvious that though the
mere figures given in the United States Census from
a mere nativity point of view may be perfectly correct,
they can give no adequate indication of the amount
of Irish national feeling which exists in America.
The sons of Irish parents are in reality often more
Irish in sentiment than their own fathers and
mothers.* But the figures given can be very readily
appreciated as a means of gaining some idea of the
vast Irish population which has been growing up in
America, and also how it is distributed.
* The American Irish themselves lay claim to a population of
between ten and fifteen millions, counting in that estimate, of course,
the various degrees of consanguinity for which the race is proverbial.
There can be no doubt that the amount of Celtic blood in the
American people must be very much greater than they themselves,
perhaps, would like to allow. D

34 THE AMEBICAN IBISH.
The plan pursued in the compilation of the United
States Census tables of occupations was to refer every
specification of occupation to some grand division of
industry, and within these grand divisions to institute
as many distinct subdivisions as the nature of the
material furnished would allow. In 1870 the number
of Irish engaged in agriculture in the United States
was 138,425, as against 224,531 Germans. The
number of Irish engaged in personal and professional
services was 425,087; of Germans, 191,212. Of
persons engaged in trade and transportation the
number of Irish was 119,094 ; of Germans, 112,435.
Lastly, in 1870, the number of Irish engaged in
manufacturing, mechanical, and mining industries
was 264,628; the number of Germans, 308,240.
Let us now examine some of the subdivisions of
the labour statistics of the census of 1870, and see
with what significance they bear on the statistics of
territorial distribution. The total population of the
United States was in 1870 given as 28,228,945. The
number of natives of Ireland in this total was
1,769,375. Of the total American population, one-
fifth, or 5,922,923, were engaged in agriculture, while
of the entire Irish population only about one-thirteenth
— 138,425 — were engaged in agriculture, as against
one- seventh of the Germans, one-eighth of the English
and Scotch, and one-seventh of the French. In

IBISH EMIGRATION AND STATISTICS. 35
other words, only about eighty in every thousand
Irish in the United States were employed in 1870
in the pursuit of agriculture. The number of farmers
of Irish birth given in the census of 1870 was 88,923,
while the Germans, with 158,000 less of total popu
lation, were represented by 159,114 farmers.
Coming now to professional and personal services,
we find the following comparison. In 1870 the
number of Irish domestic servants was 145,956, while
the Germans were in the same subdivision 42,866.
The Irish labourers (not specified) were 229,199 ; the
Germans, 96,432. The next greatest occupation
under this head for the Irish population was that
connected with laundries, in which 11,530 Irish and
2761 Germans were engaged. There were 111,606
cotton-miU operatives, and of these 18,713 were Irish,
and but 1214 Germans. There were 22,822 miners
born in Ireland, and but 8579 born in Germany.
There were 12,231 woollen-mill Irish operatives, and
only 2664 Germans. There were 8211 Irishmen
dealing in liquors, and 2677 Germans. There were
120,756 draymen and hackmen in the United States,
and of these 17,925 were Irish, 11,261 Germans.
Out of the American army of railway employes (not
clerks) 37,822 were Irishmen, and 7855 were Germans ;
while in the military service of the United States
Government, of the 22,000 soldiers, 4964 were Irish
and 2997 Germans.

36 THE AMEBICAN IBISE.
It is unnecessary to go through the whole catalogii.e
of labour and occupations. It is only too evident
how the Irish population is distributed. The small
minority are on the land ; the vast Irish democracy
lives in the tenement houses of the great cities, in
the cottages of the factory towns, in the huts by the
public works and mines, or as domestic servants in
the houses of the wealthy. It is these who form
the constituencies of anti-English Irish demagogues,
and who contribute their money to the various
"funds" which have become, indeed, the root oi all
political evil in Ireland.

C 37

CHAPTEE IV.
POLITICAL AND EELIGIOUS TROUBLES OF THE lElSH
IN AMEEICA.
Oblivion has long since fallen upon the very remark
able movement which in the years 1843-44 convulsed
the American Eepublic, and which has left its name
on the page of history as the " Native-American
Movement." It is, however, interesting in connection
with the history of the Irish people in America. They
bore the brunt of the sectarian animosity which, in
part, lay at the root of the discussion ; they were the
victims of any violence and outrage that disgraced
the movement, and the action of American political
parties in the business determined the political creed
of the Irish in the future. The Native-American
movement was, in fact, the chmax of a long slumber
ing feeling of ignorant national jealousy of foreign
immigrants, combined with a fear and hatred of the
growing numbers and importance of the Catholic
Church. The Irish contained in their birth and
religion the two very points which were so obnoxious

38 TEE AMEBICAN IRISH.
to the small and bigoted clique who originated the
agitation, and thus obtained a large proportion of
the malediction and persecution which was heaped
upon the objects of the movement.
It is hardly to be wondered that a people who
were descended from men expatriated for their re
ligious and political faith should have deeply im
planted in their minds the truths of their religion.
The Americans of the last generation were far more
bigoted Protestants than they are to-day. Constitu
tionally, America has not, since 1836, had one single
religious test, oath, or question interfering between
the citizen and the highest public or private right.
But, personally, the bitterness of sectarian feeling
in America has never been eradicated; it has been
merely overruled.)
In the same way, in the question of foreign im
migration and naturalization the American people,
through their constitution, finally determined to
throw open their gates of refuge to all the nations
of the earth, merely as a matter of expediency. The
personal feehng on the subject from the very outset
was very gre'at, and for years the question of
naturalization was a burning and dangerous one.
Political parties divided upon it, the Whig party
opposing and the Democrats supporting the proffered
privileges of citizenship.

POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS TBOUBLES. 39
International law has long demanded of every
Government some regulations on the subject of ad
mitting foreigners to the full right of citizenship, and
accordingly we find among the special powers granted
to the American Congress the following : — " To esta
blish a uniform rule of naturalization." Washington
strongly recommended to Congress, in 1790, the
exercise of this right, and Congress thought it ex
pedient to permit a foreigner to become a citizen
by legal process, after a residence of two years in
America. In 1795 this period was extende(i to five
years, in 1798 it was extended to fourteen years,
and in 1802 it was reduced once more to five
years, at which it has ever since remained, not
withstanding the agitation of the period of Native-
Americanism. The statistics given in the last chapter afford some
idea of the volume of immigrants into the United
States in the commencement of the century. The
New Orleans Native American, a paper published
in the interest of the anti-immigration party, said
on this point, "Few are aware of the number of
foreigners daily arriving among us. Should the
number of immigrants double within the ten years
from 1840 to 1850, as it did between the ten years
previous, we should have an addition of three millions
to our foreign population ; in 1860, six millions ; in

40 TEE AMERICAN IRISE.
1870, twelve milhons ; in 1880, twenty-four millions !
Thus in thirty-five years, a period not very distant
in the view of any one of us, and especially in that
of our sons, we shall have an accumulation of thirty-
eight millions of foreigners, besides all those now in
the country, who will see with Americans, but with
far different feelings, the mighty foreign flood which
then, and probably long before, will have borne down
and swept away every landmark of American free
dom." All these terrible facts have occurred, except
the last. The millions of foreigners are in the United
States, but the landmarks of American freedom are
still standing. The " flood " is American, not ,
" foreign," and Americans are welcoming every day
the thousands of immigrants of every nationality
that daily land on American soil. Indeed, it is not
too much to say that free immigration and the free
communication of political rights to strangers has
made America what it is to-day. The Native-
American movement, had it succeeded, would have
overthrown the very foundations of American power.
The pamphlet literature * of this period contains
the history of this Native-American movement. It
convulsed the country for some five years, and was
* " Address of the Louisiana Native-American Association." New
Orleans, 1839. " Address of the American Eepublicans of the City of
Philadelphia to the Native and Naturalized Citizens of the United
States." Philadelphia.

POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS TROUBLES. 41
deftly used by politicians to inaugurate a new de
parture of political party combination. Native-
Americanism, followed by " Know-Nothingism," in
fact, might almost be described as the vestibule of
the present Eepublican party.
Louisiana was the first state in which the Native-
Americans publicly proclaimed their new programme.
The " Address of the Louisiana Native- American
Association," issued in 1839, is couched in somewhat
inflated and exceedingly alarmist language, but there
is no mistaking the tone and temper and objects of
the new combination. It put the matter very plainly :
" So long as foreigners entered in moderate numbers
into the states and territories of the United States,
and became imperceptibly merged and incorporated
into the great body of the American people, and were
gradually imbued and indoctrinated into the prin
ciples of virtue and patriotism which formerly
animated the whole American community, so long
their advent was an advantage and a benefit to our
community. But when we see hordes and hecatombs
{sic) of beings in human form, but destitute of any
intellectual aspirations — the outcast and offal of
society, the pauper, the vagrant, and the convict —
transported in myriads to our shores, reeking with
the accumulated crimes of the whole civilized and
savage world, and inducted by our laws into equal

42 TEE AMERICAN IRISH.
rights, immunities, and privileges with the noble native
inhabitants of the United States, we can no longer
contemplate it with supine indifference. We feel
constrained to warn our countrymen that unless some
steps be speedily taken to protect our institutions
from these accumulated inroads on the national
character, from the indiscriminate immigration and
naturalization of foreigners, in vain have our pre
decessors, whether native or naturalized, toiled and
suffered and fought and bled and died to achieve
our hberties and establish our hallowed institutions."
It may be easily seen from this statement that the
fear of foreign influence in the United States at this
period was becoming intensified. An example had
also been lately given in New York of the growing
political power of the Irish population in that city,
and, as we may imagine, it was eagerly grasped by
the " native chivah-y of Louisiana." The address
continues : " That the minds of many foreigners
have indulged in imaginings connected with the
possible future usurpation of all political power in
the United States, is not only shadowed forth in the
hostility of a large proportion of them to a repeal of
the naturalization laws, and their slanderous and
vituperative assaults on the native Americans, who,
foreseeing the dangers which threaten their country,
have availed themselves of a right guaranteed by the

POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS TBOUBLES. 43
constitution to every American citizen, and have
petitioned Congress on this subject ; but the design
has been openly avowed in the following handbill,
which was Uberally circulated in the city of New York
at the late Charier election : — ' Irishmen, to your
posts, or you will lose America ! By perseverance
you may become its rulers ; by negligence you will
become its slaves. Your own country was lost by
submitting to ambitious men ; this beautiful country
you gain by being firm and imited. Vote the ticket-—
Alexander Stewart alderman ; Edward Flanagan for
assessor — ^bothtrue Irishmen.' ' Here,' says a recent
report of a special committee of its own body to
Congress — 'here you have the object avowed — the
subversion of your government and a revolution con
templated.' Mark the language of this appeal, and
remember that it was made to foreigners in the city
of New York, at an election for officers of the city
government, within which they number 100,000
foreigners." The political ignorance of foreigners, their
illiteracy, especially of the Irish section, their natural
ization frauds, their demoralizing effect upon party
pontics, but especially their foreign associations and
prejudices, were all themes of bitter denunciation and
complaint. It may be easily imagined that by such appeals

44 THE AMERICAN IRISE.
the Native-American party succeeded in arousing a
good deal of public feeling on the subject of foreign
immigration and naturahzation. It is certain that
the Irish population, through their newspapers, were
not slow to resent and reply to the attacks of the
Native-Americans, not only against their political
status, but against their religion ; and these literary
skirmishes, combined with the acrimony of the plat
form, made the antagonism between Protestant and
Catholic, American and^Irish, tenfold more bitter and
pronounced. The opinions of the best Catholic Irishmen in the
United States at this period were represented in the
public press by Brownson's Quarterly Review.* A
criticism in the April number, 1850, second series,
upon a speech delivered by Mr. C. C. Kelly, a Catholic
Irishman, for the purpose of denouncing Native-
Americanism, is therefore valuable for showing the
secret springs of this religious and national antago
nism. " It is such men as he," says the reviewer,
"that have created the greatest part of the hostility
of the American people to the naturalization of
foreigners, and it is such miserable defenders of
Catholicity that have made many people believe that
a Catholic never regards truth where his Church is
concerned. We would not speak harshly of this poor
* Brownson's Quarterly Eeview (Boston, 1850), p. 267.

POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS TROUBLES.
man, but we would tell him that the demagogical
spirit is the farthest removed possible from the
Catholic spirit, and that a nominal Catholic turned
demagogue is an animal of those unclean habits
which disgust not only good Catholics but even
heretics themselves. The man who is not incapable
of pandering to the prejudices of a mob, lacks the
essential ingredient of a freeman, and the louder he
screams in behalf of Democracy, the louder and more
unequivocally he proclaims his slavery. If we had in
this_coim±ry: no political, demagogues ,pf foreign birth
or descent, we_shquld never, have Jieard.of a ' Native-
Americaa_-.PartY.' . . . Multiply such orators as
Charles C. Kelly, and such papers as The Truth-teller
and The Nation, and you will have Native-American
ism and more than you can manage. The distrust
of the Cathohc population _arises  chiefly f''om_JLtis,
fa^cilitj_with_,s^i£k.^^imposed upon by such orators and papers as these we
mention, and the American people will nejgaiiJiaze
anv_confidence in them so long as th^jL-ajiffeiL-f.bp-m-
selves to be preyed upon, as they heretofore have
been, by a set of political harpies, whether_njative-
born or foreign-born, whether railing  uadsr „the
Catholic flag or that of heresy."
It is quite evident from this that the sectarian
political war was carried on vigorously on both sides.

46 TEE AMEBICAN IRISE.
To scream in favour of democracy was evidently the
roh of the Irish demagogue at that period as it is
now, and then, as now, the indiscriminate adhesion
to one party was sternly criticized as inexpedient and
opposed to the best interests of the Irish population.
Not that it is in any way surprising that the Irish in
America have contrived to support the party which
always in its turn supported the speedy naturalization
of the immigrant. One of the_Celtic cha.racteriRtics
is extraordinarvfijelitv to what he Relieves to be his
partj. "Spend me but defend me," was of old his
motto. And the Democratic party took him at his word.
The Whig party — which afterwards became the
present Eepublican party— on the other hand, opposed
from the first the naturalization of foreigners, and
their opposition to the Irish element of the foreign
population was particularly bitter, as I have shown.
The foreign immigrant was a political bone of con
tention. As_a_rule, the Democratic__£arty^^ecured the
foreign vote, and this was quite sufficient to intensify
liny conscientious or foreboding scruples entertained
by the Whigs against free naturalization.
But the objection to the foreigner, as I have
already sufficiently shown, was not exclusively
political. Below this was another objection which
operated chiefly among the labouring classes. The
great masses of the people bad inherited frnrq thp.ir

POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS TROUBLES. 47
ancestors the national English contempt for the Irish
peasant. The Yankee labourer looked down, accord
ingly, with ineffable contempt on his brother Irish
hod-carrier, a contempt which widened and deepened
into hostility as the supply of labour from Ireland
threatened more and more to lessen wages. In the
South, also, the attitude taken by O'Connell on the
Slavery question had excited the highest indignation.
" The cry of Eepeal," said a New Orleans paper, "is
but a decoy to distract our attention from the fanatical
and traitorous designs of the enemies of America, or
rather of Americans. They wish to play upon our
too easy sympathies, and enrich themselves at the
expense of our indiseriminating good-nature. They
aim at the destruction of our domestic institutions,
and the supplanting of our slave labour by their own.
What if they deny it here ? they openly unite with the
Abolitionists at the North."
The highest objection, however, to foreigners of
Irish extraction lay deeper stiU. The_Native-Amerir
can party was chiefly an anti-Catholic party. The
firitlrish emigrants of the present century, by the in
fluence of their priests and their own religious instinct,
were driven to settle near together, in neighbourhoods
where they were within reach of a priestly guide and
a church. They thus were a separate people, and
appeared to the Americans incapable of ever being

48 TEE AMERICAN IBISE.
absorbed into the Protestant life of the country.
Then the old traditional hatred of Catholicism led
Americans to hold that the Eoman Cathohc religion
was incompatible with republicanism, hostile to popular
institutions, and they therefore looked suspiciously on
a race which was both foreign and Catholic.
The action of the Irish race, too, in their clubs
and associations gave high offence. Prom time
immemorial the clanship of the Irish people has been
remarkable. It was more than natural that in a
strange land the feeling should be redoubled, and only
natural, perhaps, that in the land of " bosses " these,
clubs should fall under the domination of individuals,
and become objects of jealousy to the Americans.
All this happened, and complaints thereof were
duly made. For instance,* " Tbrjaflnpuc^ and prg-
judices of foreigners are manifested .the moment thev
set^foot on our soil. . . . They _ huddle together as
birds of a^ feather. They nyoid ji.ryj kf^ep_.R,1oQf_jFiYiTn
Americans, and literally prOTio^^^^„,CJi£se-.oL£5Com-
munication upon, them. They join few or none of
our_associations, except where s^omejp,g,siaLa4¥fliHftage
is to be gained, and exclude us from their own. This
they do as much from their own prejudices, national,
political, and religious, as from the orders of their
priests. And not only do thjy thus ba,nd together
• " The Crisis." New York, 1844.

POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS TROUBLES. &>
into_SQ(3iaUbaada, to preserve their foreign nfltjnrjality,
their foreign prejudices, habits, languages, and__£iir-
poses, but they join themselves into foreign military
bodies. They call upon then- countrymen as 'our
fellow-countrymen,' ' United Irishmen,' ' brother
Catholics,' etc., etc. Again, what is the effect of all
this exclusiveness, of all this foreignism, on the minds
of the children of these 'better Americans,' as they
profess themselves ? It is clearly and assuredly to
make them also ' better ^Americans.' They are early
introduced into their associations, and zealously
instructed in aU the mysteries calculated to make
them such Americans. One of the means to accom
plish this is to prevent them, both by inclination and
prejudice, and by the command of priests, from uniting
with the children of native Americans in om' Public
Schools. 'Let^not your children,' says the Cathohc
Diary, ' so much as touch a school book made by a
Protestant teacher.' This may be very liberal in the
eyes of political demagogues, but we would rather
abide the decision of candid, intelhgent, and patriotic
Americans as to whether it is so or not. Certain it
is that, native Americans being 'heretics,' nothing
is more plain than that American associations are to
be avoided, as well as heretics or Americans indivi
dually. HxLW can foreigners, under these restrictions,
ever becoi]a.e_Amfirica'"s ? "

50 TEE AMERICAN IRISH.
These remarks were printed at a time when the
Eepeal agitation of O'Connell was proceeding, and
public demonstrations in his favour were being held
in America. This was another source of criticism;
the Native-Americans discerned in it a distinct viola
tion of international law. " The Eepealers," they
said, " are guilty of an open and wanton violation of
all principles of international law ; and they reck
lessly provoke retaliation and war, as a consequence,
from the British Government. They unceasingly
agitate and prejudice the public mind, for no other
reason than to promote their own selfish ends, and
to gratify their own feelings of hostility against a
friendly Government." A Eepeal orator said not long
since, " America cares not how soon war is declared ;
two hundred thousand' Irishmen can be raised, effec
tive and willing."
The sectarian bitterness of the American Pro
testants found its first vent in violence in Massachu
setts. For some time previous to 1834, " a wild
course of fanaticism and bigotry had been pursued
by certain Protestants in our country against the
Eoman Catholic Church." These are the words used
by a " Protestant native of Philadelphia " in a
pamphlet published in 1844.* Protestant clergymen
* " The Truth Unveiled, or a Calm and Impartial Exposition of
the Origin and Immediate Cause of the Terrible Riots in Philadelphia
on May 6-8, 1844."

POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS TROUBLES. 51
in Boston made impassioned no-Popery harangues ;
pamphlets and tracts of the most inflammatory cha
racter were published. The very newsboys sold sheets
by announcing the contents to be articles against the
Cathohc rehgion. A scandalous book was published,
reflecting upon the moral character of Eoman Catholic
religieuscs, and the chmax of the od'mm theologicum
came in the burning down in 1834, by a Boston mob,
of the Ursuline convent in Charlestown, an act which
was the outbreak of a population that had been
excited by the fiery sermons of well-known Protestant
clergymen. Then came the action of Bishop Hughes, a
Catholic prelate, on the school question, at a time
when the popular mind was very much agitated by
long and previous attacks on his communion. The
case was thus put by the bishop. He addressed
the School Commissioners of New York, and re
quested, as the guardian of the faith of Catholic
children, that the Protestant Bible might not be used
for a reading-book in the public schools. If it would
not be dispensed with, he requested that, as the
Catholic population were taxed to support the school
system, he might be allowed to have them separately
instructed, and be allowed the same sum for the educa
tion of Cathohc children as was paid by the public for
ihe instruction of the others. This request of Bishop

52 TEE AMERICAN IRISE.
Hughes raised a storm of indignation ; the School
Commissioners declined to grant the request, and it
was finally referred to the decision of the ballot boxes
or a popular election. The flame which had been
burning already so fiercely was fanned into a con
flagration. " Protestantism and no Popery " became
arrayed against " Bishop Hughes and Catholicism,"
and the election struggles were warmly contested.
The final issue was the granting of the petition of
Bishop Hughes, and the Catholic children of New
York were educated separately, and the Native-Ameri
cans were furnished with yet another watchword,
" The Bible in the Schools," wherewith to wage their
sectarian war.
Just at this season of excitement the Protestant
Association was formed in Philadelphia, and the self
same tactics were employed as had in Massachusetts.
resulted in the burning down of a Catholic convent.
The pulpit orators descanted on " Anti- Christ " and
" the abominations of the Eoman Catholic Church."
Women and children were frightened by stories- of
horrid conspiracies. A crusade was preached against
papists, and in a very short time Philadelphia was
filled with discord and alarm. The peace of the-
community was broken, and on May 6, 1844, a
terrible riot broke out, which was continued for three
days, and resulted in the burning down of two Cathohc-

POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS TROUBLES. 53
churches, one Catholic seminary, two Catholic par
sonages, and a Catholic theological library. It is
needless to say that there were retaliations during
these awful days, and the ceaseless abuse cast upon
the Irish by the three Philadelphia papers was
revenged by lawless outrage on the part of the Irish
population. The Native-American movement subsided after
this climax of horror, but the anti-Eomish feehng
only slumbered to burst out again in a few years.
The decade of American history which opened in
1850 was fraught with remarkable events. The
question of slavery and the Southern State rights
became year by year more violently agitated and
discussed. The old Whig party, of which Webster
and Clay were the leaders and brightest ornaments,
fell to pieces, and upon its ruins arose the new Ee
publican party, which carried on the slavery question
to its final issue, and, under the presidency of
Liacoln, consolidated the Union for ever.
The history of the formation of the Eepublican
party is interesting in connection with the Irish
question, for, in fact, it resulted very considerably
from the recurrence of those opinions and prejudices
of foreigners and Eoman Catholicism to which we
have alluded in the Native-American movement.
The "Know-Nothing" combination of 1854 was

54 TEE AMEBICAN IBISH.
the first political party in the history of America which
undertook a campaign which was influenced by secret-
rules and organizations. The new party had a
regularly prescribed ritual of oaths, passwords, signs,
and ceremonies of initiation. The ritual was be
trayed, and published in the Richmond Enquirer, and
subsequently copied by Democratic papers throughout
the state. A few of its articles show sufficiently
the nature of the Association. It is headed, " The
Know-Nothing Eitual, or Constitution of the Grand
Council of the United States of North America.
Adopted unanimously, June 17, 1856, the Anniver
sary of the Battle of Bunker's HiU." The motto
adopted by the Know-Nothings was a supposed order
of Washington's on the eve of an important battle,
which has no evidence to support its promulgation —
"Put none but Americans on guard to-night," and
its adoption shows clearly the anti-foreigner spirit
of the movement.
Article I. ran as follows : — " This organization
shall be known by the name and title of the Grand
Council of the United States of North America, and
its jurisdiction and power shall extend to all the
states, districts, and territories of the United States
of North America."
Article II. : "A person to become a member of
any subordinate council must be twenty-one years of

POLITICAL AND BELIGIOUS TBOUBLES. 55
age ; he must believe in the existence of a Supreme
Being as the Creator and Preserver of the Universe ;
he must be a native-born citizen, a Protestant^ bprn^of
Protestant parents, reared uiider Proteslant influence,
and not united in marriage wi^_j;_Bp.mMi-llatholic . ' '
The objects of the association were declared to be
" to resist the insidious policy of the Church of Eome
and other foreign influence against the institutions
of our country by placing in all offices in the gift of
the people, or by appointment, none but native-born
Protestant citizens."
The oath ran in part as follows : —
" You and each of you, of your own free will and
accord, in the presence of Almighty God and these
witnesses, your right hand resting on this Holy Bible
and cross, and your left hand raised towards heaven
in token of your sincerity, do solemnly promise and
swear that you will not make known to any person
or persons any of the signs, secrets, mysteries, or
objects of this organization; . . . that you will in
all things political or social comply with the will of
the majority. . . . You furthermore promise and
declare that you will not vote, nor give your influence,.
for any man for any office in the gift of the ijeople,
unless he be, an American-born citizen in favour of
Americans-born ruling America, nor if he be a Eoman
Catholic ; and that you will not, under any circum-

56 TEE AMEBICAN IBISE.
stances, expose the name of any member of this
order, nor reveal the existence of such an orgamza-
tion. To aU the foregoing you bind yourselves under
the no less penalty than that of being expelled from
this order, and of having your name posted and cir
culated throughout all the different councils of the
United States as a perjurer and as a traitor to God
and your country, as a being unfit to be employed
and trusted, countenanced, or supported in any busi
ness transaction, as a person unworthy the confidence
of aU good men, and as one at whom the finger of
scorn should ever be pointed. So help you God."
As each oath-taker said to this harangue, " I do,"
it is not surprising that, on being questioned by an
outsider as to what this new association was, he
always answered, " Oh, I know nothing about it."
And it was from the continual reiteration of this
assertion that the organization gained the nickname
of the " Know-Nothing Party."
For a brief period the whole of the United States
was aflame with this new thing in politics. It swept
along like a prairie fire, and then disappeared in the
sea of the anti-slavery agitation. But the leaders of
the Know-Nothings knew what they were about. For
the time it was successful. Know-Nothings gained
the mastery in the Massachusetts, Connecticut, and
New Hampshire State elections by a judicious"

POLITICAL AND BELIGIOUS TROUBLES. 57
combination of Anti-Catholicism, Abolitionism, Free-
soilism, and the old Whig party. Mr. Gardner, who
was elected Governor of Massachusetts in 1855, dis
banded several military companies of militia who
were born in foreign lands. John Mitchel, the well-
known Irish revolutionist, who at this time, after his
escape from Van Diemen's Land, was editing a paper
called the Citizen, denounced the disbanding of Irish
mflitia companies in strong language.
" Since the Citizen was established," he says,
" seeing that the existence of separate Irish-German
and Native-American companies could not he helped,
we have earnestly impressed upon the Irish soldier
that he bears arms solely for his adopted country,
whose laws he is bound to obey, and whose flag and
constitution he is to defend with his life. We have
loudly condemned the anomaly and absurdity of what
is called the ' Irish vote ' (another mischief invented
and used by American politicians), and exhorted our
countrymen not to vote in masses or batches as Irish
men, nor suffer electioneering intriguers to ' make
capital'of them by a few blarneying phrases. . ..But
submit to no brand of inferiority, no shadow of dis
paragement at the hand of these natives. . . . We are
happy to find that Colonel Butler, of Lowell, refuses
to brook the outrage. He declines to transmit the
order for disbandment, invites a court martial, and

58 TEE AMEBICAN IBISE.
appeals to the law. And the Shields Artillery of
Boston have taken like action in the case. If, how
ever, the final decision be against you and Colonel
Butler, and if the military companies of foreign birth
are actually disarmed and disbanded, then for every
musket given into the State armoury, let three be
purchased forthwith ; let independent companies be
formed — there are no Arms Acts here yet ; let every
' foreigner ' be drilled and trained, and have his arms
always ready. For you may be sure, having some
experience in that matter, that those who begin by
disarming you mean to do you a mischief. Be
careful not to truckle in the smallest particular to
American prejudices. Yield not a single jot of your
own ; for you have as good a right to your prejudices
as they. Do not by any means suffer Gardner's Bible
to be thrust down your throat. Do not abandon your
post or renounce your functions, as citizens or as
soldiers, but after the last and highest tribunal is
open to you, keep the peace ; attempt no ' demonstra
tions,' discourage drunkenness, and stand to your
arms." Such were some of the civil, political, and rehgious
troubles of the Irish during the period extending from
the commencement of the naturahzation question,
down to the war of rebellion. They have left their
marks to the present day. There is still considerable

POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS TBOUBLES. 59'
jealousy of the Eoman Catholic Church, and of the
increasing pohtical power of the Irish, though it is
not expedient for American politicians to proclaim it
from the housetops. Native-Americanism and Know-
Nothingism is now only a sub-mental feeling, but, like
some of the subterranean rivers of America, it run&
strong and deep.

€0 TEE AMERICAN IBISH.

CHAPTEE V.
PEESENT POSITION OF THE IRISH IN AMERICA.
Since the final issue of the American war of Eebellion,
the position of the Irish in America has in every way
changed. They have been acknowledged as a power
in politics, in religion, and society. They have not
increased in popularity as a section of the American
population, principally because they have always
persisted, against their own interests, in keeping up
their distinctiveness of race and religion in a manner
antagonistic to the great mass of the American people.
Their bands, their societies, their newspapess, and
their foreign politics, all very well when unobtrusive,
have from time immemorial been distasteful to the
undemonstrative and more Puritanic or native Ameri
can. But the Irish have grown great in numbers,
and the shrewd Yankee caucus -man has long since
appreciated the big battalions of the Irish at the
ballot-boxes, and votes are facts in America often
more potent than even dollars.
But the subject of the Irish in America when

PBESENT POSITION. 61
discussed with an American has evidently a sting in
it. It is a subject the very history of which, as we have
endeavoured to show, involves the conflicting tastes,
passions, and prejudices of the American community.
The Irishman has long been taught to look upon
America as the refuge of his race, the home of his
kindred. His feelings towards her are those of love
and loyalty. But when he lands, his great expecta
tions are sometimes checked. He often finds himself
shghted as a man, and his people despised as a race,
and this not by any means directly, but indirectly.
Then he throws himself with aU the fervour of his
race into party politics, determined to show that he is
as good as the best. Five years' probation (some
times less) in electioneering tactics makes him an able
auxOiary at the poU, and soon the fierce zeal with
which he enters pohtical strife excites the jealousy
and dislike of the native American. The most sober
and tolerant cannot endure the boisterous patriotism
of the newly-fledged citizens, nor feel at ease in
seeing those who were a few years ago despised
subjects of England acquire per saltum an equality of
right with the offspring of home-born Eepublicans.
It is this survival of Native-Americanism which
makes the Irish question in America a delicate one
from a political point of view. And when the fate
of a Presidential election depends upon the votes of a

¦62 THE AMEBICAN IRISH.
smgle state, and that state is New York, the empire
state of the Union, which is governed almost entirely
by the Irish vote, we then see how bitter may be the
thoughts of old-fashioned Americans when they find
the election of a President virtually in the hands of
a race whom for years they had looked upon as alien
and inferior.
The- more modern Americans, however, have
accepted facts, and, with the well-known ingenuity of
the race, have turned the Irish population to good
advantage. They manipulate Irish nationality, flatter
Irish pride, and " scoop " the Irish vote with the
same aptness that they corner wheat in Chicago or
"utilize the margin" on the New York Stock Ex
change. But if the Americans are still jealous of the
political power of the Irish race that is planted in
their midst, there is also in some quarters a religious-
born fear and distrust of that Cathohc Church which
has been built up by means of the Irish population to
its present position of wealth and influence.
An interesting work has been published by the
Eight Eev. Dr. Spalding,* Bishop of Peoria, United
States, on the rehgious mission of the Irish race,
which gives authoritatively some information upon
the aims and scope of the Eoman Catholic Church in
* " The Eeligious Mission of the Irish Eace and Catholic Colon-
ization," by J. L. Spalding, D.D. New York, 1880.

PRESENT POSITION. 63
America, as well as of the religious aspect of the Irish
question. " The one constant and abiding cause,"
says Bishop Spalding, " amid the rise and fall of
empu-es, is religion . . . embodied in the Catholic
Church. ... As she may be attacked by men, she
may also be defended by them. . . . And this, I take
it, is the rehgious mission of the Irish people in the
new era upon which the Cathohc Church is now
entering." Speaking of the progress of Catholicism in
America, the bishop says, " The thirteen American
colonies which a hundred years ago declared their
independence of the power by which they had been
founded were intensely and thoroughly Protestant.
... At the breaking out of the War of Independence
there were not more than twenty-five thousand
Catholics in a population of three millions. They
had no bishops, they had no schools, they had no
rehgious houses, and the few priests who were
scattered among them generahy lived upon their own
lands, or with their kinsfolk, cowed by the fearful
force of Protestant prejudice. . . . An observer who
a hundred years ago should have considered the
rehgious condition of this country, could have dis
covered no sign whatever that might have led him to
suppose that the faith of this little body of Catholics
was to have a future in the American Eepublic;

64 THE AMERICAN IBISE.
whereas now there are many reasons for thinking
that no other religion is so sure of a futm-e here as
the Cathohc. The Church in the United States,"
continues the writer, "is no longer confined to three
or four counties of a single state. It is co-extensive
with the country, embracing north and south, east
and west. Its members are counted by millions, its
priests and sacred edifices by thousands. The arch
bishops and bishops rule over eleven metropolitan
and fifty-four suffragan sees. The religious homes
for men and women, its colleges, academies, and
schools, are found in every part of the Union. It has
acquired the right of domicile ; it has become a part
of the nation's life. It is a great and public fact
which men cannot, if they would, ignore."
This category of Catholic power and influence ha3
been reproduced in order to emphasize Dr. Spalding's
final remarks. " If now," he says, " we turn to explain
this rebirth of Catholicism among the Enghsh-speak-
ing peoples, we must at once admit that the Irish
race is the providential instrument through which
God has wrought this marvellous revival. . . . The
Irish have made the work of the converts possible and
effective, and they have given to Catholicism in this
country a vigour [and cohesiveness which enable it
to assimilate the most heterogeneous elements, and
without which it is not at aU certain that the vast

PRESENT POSITION. 65
majority of Catholics emigrating hither from other
lands would not have been lost to the Church."
Such language as this is remarkable evidence as
to the religious aspect of the Irish question in
America. The Eoman Catholic clergy have built up
the greatness of their Church in the United States by
means of the Irish masses, whom they persuaded and
commanded to settle in the great cities, for eccle
siastical purposes, when the great emigration com
menced. The scattering of the Irish over the land
and their absorption amongst the native American
element was from the very first discountenanced
by the Cathohc hierarchy, and the present social
misery and poverty, squalor, and crime in the vast
Irish population of the Eastern American citi
zens is directly attributable to the old policy of the
Cathohc Church. Now that the Catholic Church has
no further need of centralization, we find a new
and healthier departure inaugurated, with Bishop
Spalding and Bishop Ireland as earnest advisers and
directors. But, it may be asked, is not this vast element of
Catholicism feared by the American people? Is it
not dreaded as an influence which is uncongenial, if
not altogether incompatible with republican institu
tions ? Mr. Froude has pronounced his verdict upon
the case of " Eomanism and the Irish Eace in the
F

66 TEE AMEBICAN IBISE.
United States,"* and, after much foreboding, declares
that " the conflict will go on, and may last for some
generations. Liberalism will not easily be convinced
that it had been mistaken ; and Eomanism, burdened
as it is with so many spiritual incredibilities and so
dark a history, could never have stood its ground, or
have recovered ground which it has lost, unless it
represented something most real which the world
cannot afford to forget. It will not win in the long
run." In this I concur, though for different reasons to
those given by Mr. Froude. Whatever the ultimate
end may be of the Catholic Church, I do not believe
the American people have the slightest fear of any
injury being effected to themselves as a nation, or to
their institutions as a Eepublic, by the action of the
Eoman Catholic Church. The Irish element in the
population is by no means the priest-ridden flock of
sheep which Mr. Froude represents them to be. The
generations of Irishmen who have been born in
Ireland, and who have brought with them from their
native country that primitive reverence for, and the
filial obedience to, the priest which has always been
the characteristic of the Irish at home, have, no
doubt, reproduced their old habits in their new
* " Eomanism and the Irish Eace in the United States," North
American Seview, December, 1879, and January, 1880, by J. A. Froude.

PRESENT POSITION. 67
hearths. But these are not the leading men in the
Irish population. The second generation of Irish are
Americans first and Catholics afterwards to a very
great degree. The theory of the Eepublic which
Mr. Froude puts so well they have accepted and
abide by. The American Irishman is able to take
care of his own interests, temporal and eternal, at
the same time rendering reverence and respect to his
clergy. He has a right to go his own way, to worship '
under his own forms, to speak his own thoughts, and
to have a voice in the general management, and he
does all these things. In politics he is not, and will
not be, guided by his clergy. His press has no
Cathohc censor, as any one who reads the Irish World
can readily see, and he has learnt such toleration of
other creeds as is unknown in Ireland.
The Catholic clergy in America have long been
fighting the battle of education. They dislike the
national free school education, and have set up
schools of their own. They are persistently agitating
for the application of the education rate to denomi
national pm-poses. Does this affect the presence of
Irish children in the free schools ? By no means.
I myself visited a school in Boston where three-
fourths of the boys present were of Irish parentage.
The Irish-American supports his Church, but he is
in the second and third generation becoming more

68 TEE AMERICAN IRISE.
and more emancipated from ecclesiastical control.
Nor is it possible that it should be otherwise. The
influence of surroundings, thoughts, feehngs,.' and
sentiments is stronger than dogma or doctrine, and
American expression and criticism of religious topics
is such as to influence the most Catholic of the
Catholics. The very life of a city (and the majority
of the Irish in America have their habitations in
cities) must insensibly affect Cathohcism in its in
tegrity; and, much as Bishop Spalding may hope
and wish for the supremacy in America of the
Catholic Church as a social and political force, it is
probable that in his case the wish, and in his ultra-
Protestant foes the fear, is the father of the thought.

( 69 )

CHAPTEE VI.
THE NEW VORK IRISH.
The statistics of the Irish in New York city are worth
examining closely, as through them we can best
decipher their social and physical condition, and com
pare it with that of the Irish who have passed by the
great city and settled upon land in the Western
States. According to the census of 1876, the popula
tion of New York was 942,292, composed of 523,198,
or 55"5 per cent., native Americans ; 202,000, or 21*4
per cent., Irish ; 151,000, or 16*1 per cent., Germans ;
and 32,000, or 8 per cent., English, Welsh, and
Scotch. The balance comprised all other nation
alities. Of this population there are engaged at common
drudgery of the severest and worst-paid kind —
50 per cent, of ... ... ... Irish,
20 „ „ ... ... Native Americans,
16 „ „ ... ... ... Germans,
14 „ „ ... ... English, etc.

TEE AMERICAN IRISE.
At the best of times this class of toilers can barely
live. A dull season, a severe winter, throws at least
one-fourth of them out of employment. This one-
fourth of 50 per cent, of Irish have to seek their food
from the 50 per cent, who are not mere drudges, so
that injtard times every^Jour_Irishmen have to sup
port one pauper_countryman. Under similar con
ditions twenty-one Germans have only one pauper
countryman to support.
To prove that this degrading servitude and poverty
is grinding the life and manhood out of the Irish New
Yorker, and that a process of extinction is in active
operation, we have only to consult the statistics of
the city.
The deaths in New York city for the quarter end
ing March 81, 1877, were 5986. Of these, 1239
were Irish born, giving an annual death-rate of
24'50 per thousand ; and 593 were of German bkth,
giving an annual death-rate for them of 15*7 per
thousand. On arriving in this country the Irish are
as healthy and as strong as the Germans ; how is it
that one improves and the other deteriorates ? Here
are 440 deaths of the Irish in one quarter, or 1760 in
the year, which might have been prevented by a more
liberal diet and a toil less excessive.
The number of marriages tell better than any
thing else the prosperity of a people. For the year

TEE NEW YORK IRISH. 71
1873, in New York only ten per thousand of the Irish
indulged in matrimony, against forty-two per thousand
of the Germans. This proves that the Germans are
four times as prosperous as the Irish, or four times
as reckless, — which is not probable.
The poor food and excessive toil has also its bad
effects on the American-born children of Irish parents.
For the three months ending March 31, 1877, in
New York, 1218 children were born to Irish fathers,
but in the same time there were 1013 deaths, or 88
per cent, of the bu-ths, of American children having
Irish fathers. For the same time there were 2407
bu-ths to German fathers. The deaths of American-
born children having German fathers during the same
time were 840, or about 85 per cent, of the births.
So that in New York we find the Irish dying faster
than any others, less given to marriage than any
others, and more given to hard work and fasting than
any others.
As long as 50 per cent, of the Irish are poorly-
paid and Ui-fed drudges, so long wiU they be intem
perate, for intempexanca is .Qft.p,Ti..ajGU£ifp.ni-of-jpi3sajdiy
asjyeU^as^ cause. Andin_£roportion as they. age_
intemperate will they be disturbers_of ^lawjjid^grdg^
Their poverty wiU keep them from marrying, and,
when combined with severe toil, will bring them to
an early grave.

72 TEE AMERICAN IRISE.
I was not surprised at the statistics I have quoted
when I visited the tenement houses in New York
where the Irish population dwell.
The effect produced upon the mind by an in
spection of these human rookeries is a vehement
desire to puU down and raze to the ground the
vast system which holds in bondage thousands and
thousands of men, women, and children. These high
brick houses tower up to heaven, each flat holding
from five to ten families, and one building numbering
frequently a population of six hundred souls. To
their credit be it said, the condition of the Irish is
by no means the worst, but the atmosphere of_the
place ..is.,.d,eatkj-JfflS£allx^.aBd^--PhyaicaIly. Crowded
into one small room a whole family lives, a unit
among a dozen other such families. Can such a
place be called a house ? Most assuredly not. There
is a high rent to be paid — but no one dares in New
York to say with Michael Davitt that such a rent is
an "immoral tax." The street below is dirty and
ill kept. On the basement is a beer saloon, where
crime and want jostle each other, and curses fill
the air. On the other side is an Italian tenement
reeking with dirt and rags. Close by is a Chinese
quarter, or a Polish Jew colony. Eyeigarfi«.Ee~i^
moral_ atmosphere is. one_Qf .,.degra,datio.B"aa^h4uuan^
demorahzatipn. Gross seiisuarlity—prevails. The

TEE NEW YORK IRISH. 73
sense of shame, if ever known, is early stifled.
Domestic morals are too often abandoned and simple
manners are things of the past. There is no family
life possible in such surroundings ; no noble traditions
can descend from father to son. The fireside is hired
by the week, the inmate is a hireling, and his family
are most probably chained as hirelings also in some
great neighbouring factory mill.
It is fi-om these vast nm-series of poverty that the
Irish in New York pour forth to attend the demon
strations of Mr. T. P. O'Connor, Mr. Healy, and Father
Sheehy, and pay out their hard-earned dollars to keep
up a political agitation thousands of miles away, in
which they can never have actual hand or part, or
derive any benefit whatever. How much better it
would be for the Irish World to set on foot a gigantic
fund . for the transportation of some thousands of the
tenement Irish to the West, than to lend its efforts
towards transforming them into reckless Socialists
and Communists, robbing them of their earnings, and
fiUing their minds with dreams of the impossible.
Poor food and hard work have had terrible effects
upon the American-born children of Irish parents,
especially when the parents have succumbed to the
one gigantic temptation of the country — drink. The
general mortality of the foreign element is much
greater than that of the native element of the

74 THE AMERICAN IRISH.
American population ; and of aU the various foreign
races the Irish fare worst. They show a marked
liabihty to diseases of the "constitutional group,"
and a comparative exemption from the diseases of
the " febrile group," especially the eruptive fevers
and diseases of the digestive and nervous system.
The diseases most common and most fatal are con
sumption, cancer, pneumonia, and diarrhoeal diseases ;
while an extraordinary liability to bronchitis and
Blight's disease points to the prevalence of intem
perate habits.
Thus live the descendants of the great Irish
exodus of 1845-48. They came unprovided and un-
instructed in the experience of American life. Fallen
like tired migratory birds. OP the eastern shorfis^f
the shelter continent, theyJeItihaiaipiilaa_aLffiig^-
^Mon_exhfljisi,ed ; their_^,fliLBy gone, with no-definite
purposes or plans, they had at once tq3rla.pt \^P.Tm.
selTCS_to_,fllacja_,aad_circums^^ They sought
such occupation as offered ; they underbid labour,
adapted themselves manfully to the conditions of
industry, or joined the rabble that trooped as "ballot-
stuffers " and " shoulder-hitters " in the train of the
Tweeds, the Morrisseys, and the Kellys of the day ;
and so became the scourge of American politics. In
those bygone days when the American-Irish nation
began to grow on Yankee soil, had Government

THE NEW YORK IRISH. 75
directed and assisted the tide of emigration, hundreds
of thousands would have been carried out west.
There, accustomed to agricultural pursuits, they
would have become quiet and prosperous citizens,
instead of firebrands and perpetuators of the ani
mosity between England and Ireland. All other
nations have directed themselves straight to the spot
where theu- labour was most appreciated : the Welsh
to the mining districts in Ohio ; the Norwegians and
Swedes to the four states west of Lake Michigan,
where, with the Germans, they busy themselves in
agriculture. But tqJhei£aTOjossjijDd_unh^;gi^^
and more by their own misfortuaa.Jhaa...,fey_^their
fault, the great bulk of ..th^_Ir.iskJtiam.-blocked up
thechannels of immigration, at... the ^ entrances . and
remainlike_the sand which^ lies at^Jjia-bar- of a
river's mouth.
Let us now see how the minority have succeeded
in the far west, where tenement houses are unknown,
and hfe in a prairie cottage holds out prospects of
health, wealth, and domestic contentment.

TEE AMERICAN IRISE.

CHAPTEE VII.
IRISH SETTLERS IN THE WEST.
The contrast between city life in New York and
country life in Minnesota is, indeed, remarkable.
It was hard to keep from the mind's eye the squalor
and poverty of the crowded haunts of the Irish in
the eastern cities, as I journeyed up from Chicago
to St. Paul, and surveyed the fine lands which had
already been entered into and possessed all along
the Chicago and North-Western Eailway.*
At St. Paul, the capital city of the north-west,
I became acquainted with the Eight Eev. Dr.
Ireland, coadjutor-Bishop of Minnesota, who gave
me every facility for investigating the system of
colonization which is now connected with his name.
The plan of emigration which is now being
advocated as a means of re-distributing the Irish
* This is one of the most important railways of the west, and has
no less than ten divisions. The road is in oa.pital order, and runs
through Omaha to the west, and St. Paul to the north-west. No
better route can be taken for general purposes.

IRISE SETTLERS IN TEE WEST. 11
population of the United States, was first put into
practice by two French bishops of the north-west.
The names of these first apostles of Catholic
colonization in America were Mathias Loras, the
first Bishop of Dubuque, and Joseph Cretin, the first
Bishop of St. Paul, Minnesota.
Bishop Loras' see, in 1837, when he was conse
crated, embraced the whole region now forming the
states of Iowa and Minnesota. By great energy
and considerable enterprise he planted several small
colonies, and made the conditions of soil and climate
known to the world by means of a large correspondence
with the American and European press. He wrote a
series of letters, I believe, to the Dublin Freeman's
Journal upon the subject in 1853, and his descriptive
accounts of the country and his unceasing efforts
to attract settlers were so successful, that in a single
year, 1856, the Catholic population of Minnesota was
doubled ; and in no other state is there relatively
such a large number of Irish farmers as in Iowa
and Minnesota.
The CivU War put an end to the western stream
of emigration for many years. It was not until after
the commercial crisis of 1873 that vast multitudes
of American citizens went out west and took pos
session of the land. Ever since that period the wave
of emigration has continued unabated. It is esti-

78 TEE AMERICAN IRISE.
mated that two millions of people have gone from
the older states westward during the past six years.
The sales of pubhc and railway lands have been
proportioned to this movement. The General Land
Office of the United States from 1875 to 1877 disposed
of from 8,500,000 to 4,000,000 acres of land a year.
For the year ending June 30, 1878, the quantity
disposed of was over 7,000,000 of acres, and for the
year ending June 30, 1879, it was 8,650,000. The
sales of one railway company, the Burlington and
Missomi Eailway, in Nebraska, for 1878, were 511,609
acres. Population is moving westward en masse, and
the Pacific Ocean is the only stopping-point of the
great line of invasion.
It is with a strong appreciation of this great and
important fact that the Catholic clergy of America
are now urging the necessity of the Irish race in
America taking steps to join in this property
absorbing movement. In twenty years it wiU be
too late, and the Irish population wiU be condemned
to remain for ever the hewers of wood and the
drawers of water, the drudges, the factory hands of
the American Eepubhc.
Some years ago there was abundance of cheap
land in Minnesota, nearly all of which belonged to
railroad corporations, the Government lands having
been, for the most part, disposed of to older settlers.

IRISH SETTLERS IN THE WEST. 79
In 1876 Bishop Ireland opened his first colony in
Swift County, and his plan, which he has pursued
in every succeeding case, was very simple. He
selected a tract of land of some thousands of acres,
the exclusive right to dispose of which was given to
him by the railroad company. Having thus obtained
the locus in quo. Dr. Ireland formed a bm"eau and
obtained a secretary to work the organization, by
which he brought the land, with full details as to
price and conditions, under the notice of Catholic
famihes who desired to secure homes in the west.
The fii-st person to enter the colony is the priest,
selected with a special view to his knowledge of
country life, who is to be the pastor of the flock.
He is on the ground to receive the first family, who
find at once in him a friend and help. The church
is the first building put up, and around this the
earliest colonists choose their lands. Town sites
are laid out at proper distances along the line of
raflroad, and in a few weeks the colony is in working
order, with a post-office and a large general shop.
No public-house is allowed to be opened. The
temperance society is the first organization formed,
and total abstinence is inculcated as one of the first
axioms of prairie life. Timber to build the cottages
of the settlers is brought by the railroad to the
scene of operations at a reduced rate, and farms

80 TEE AMERICAN IRISE.
are selected in advance for those who, with good
recommendations, apply to become part of the new
colony. The country being a plain, there are no
trees to be cut, no roads to be made, and, as there is
a herd law in Minnesota, no fences are built. When
those who have bought farms so desire the priest has
some twenty acres of each farm ploughed the summer
before theu arrival. This is absolutely necessary if
wheat is to be sown; not so in the case of flax,
Indian corn, and oats. The roots of the prairie
grass that has been growing for centuries hold the
earth in such a tangled, complex mass that it is
only after frost and thaw that it yields sufficiently
to allow of a crop of wheat to be raised.
The St. Paul Catholic Colonization Bureau, as it
was called, did nothing in a pecuniary sense for the
new settlers, except to bring organization to bear
upon their transportation and acquisition of land.
The movement was purely religious and philanthropic,
the only material advantage being the original right
of pre-emption of railway lands, which Bishop Ire
land secm-ed at a fixed rate for so many years, so
that the advancing value of real property did not
affect the incoming occupants. The railroad terms
for the sale of land are not so easy as those of the
Irish- American Colonization Company, but they offer
terms for the ultimate purchase of the fee simple

IRISE SETTLERS IN TEE WEST. 81
which are exceedingly low as compared with those in
the old country.
An intending settler writes — say, this month — to
the St. Paul Bureau to have eighty acres of land in
Avoea, at $6 an acre, the price for the fee, selected
for him. For those eighty acres he pays down, before
getting his contract from the railroad company,
one year's interest — some $33 (£7). He writes on
then to the Bureau to have thirty acres of his new
holding broken and ready for a crop next spring. The
breaking up of the land will cost him $2-|- an acre, or
$75 (about £17). The settler arrives himself next
spring, pays another year's interest to the railroad
company, puts in his crop, and has it saved and
ready for market in August. Up to this time, not
calculating the expenses chargeable to the crop, he
has paid out S142, about £36, and has his farm
open and in a fair way to pay him. Six or seven
years are given by the railroad company for payment
of the purchase-money, which, with the interest, is
paid in instalments.
From the foundation of the colony there has been
a daOy maU, and thus the colonists are enabled to
keep up a correspondence with those who are near and
dear to them. The bishops and priests of Ireland
see their people come to America with regret, because
they know the moral dangers to which they must be

82 TEE AMERICAN IRISE.
exposed. But the plan which Bishop Ireland has
adopted with such marked success must place emi
gration to the States in a much more satisfactory
light, and remove the grave moral objections which
are naturally entertained on the subject. With the aid
of colonization societies and bureaux of information
in the cities where emigrants arrive, an easy and
effective plan is unfolded for giving the best direction
for Catholic emigration, and there seems no reason
why the capital of Catholics in Europe should not in
the future seek investment in American colonization
enterprises, which, properly directed, offer the op
portunity of doing the greatest amount of good and
at the same time give the best financial security.
Already the example set by Bishop Ireland has
been imitated, and there exists to-day a corporation,
called the Irish Catholic Colonization Association,
formed on the lines of the St. Paul Bureau which I
have mentioned, and intended to take up the work
of colonizing the Irish people in the western states
upon a considerable scale. The main object of this
association is to bring about a redistribution of the
Irish population in America — to lift families from the
densely populated cities of the eastern states, and to
place them upon the land of the west. The associa
tion was not formed for the purpose of encouraging
emigration from Ireland, but in order to improve the

IRISE SETTLERS IN TEE WEST. 83
condition and prospects of the Iiish people already
settled in America. But the Irish peasant, a friend
less and helpless immigrant, cannot be neglected. He
especiaUy stands in need of information and aid to
direct him aright in determining where and how he
shall select his future home ; and the association,
therefore, has determined to take this branch of the
work under then- care also.
The history of this Irish Catholic Colonization
Association is briefly stated. On St. Patrick's Day,
1879, a national conference was held in the interest
of Irish Cathohc colonization. Eepresentative men
from several States attended, and a corporation was
formed with the following prelates members of the
directorate — the Cathohc archbishops and bishops of
Baltimore, Boston, Buffalo, Omaha, St. Paul, and
Peoria. The capital stock of the company is
$100,000, a trifling sum of money, but sufficient to
make a beginning. With this sum the association
has bought 10,000 acres of land in Minnesota and
25,000 acres in Nebraska, and the plan of colon
ization is substantially the same as that on which
Bishop Ireland's colonies have been organized. The
secretary's second annual report gives some inter
esting information as to the situation and prospects
of two colonies which have been already planted,
viz. Greeley Colony, Nebraska, and Adrian Colony,

84 TEE AMERICAN IBISE.
Nobles County, Minnesota. Notwithstanding the
exceptional severity of the past winter and during
an unprecedented rainy autumn, the settlers have
got on without notable discomfort, and the outlook
for the coming year is on all hands encouraging.
The Board of Directors are engaged now in making
preparations for the establishment of one or more
colonies, in Texas and Arkansas. The object of the
association is to be enabled hereafter to offer land to
intending colonists in almost every variety of climate,
and upon land where the conditions of farming
successfully seem to be beyond doubt. Under existing
circumstances, the only way of accomplishing this
is to secure land for new colonies under conditions as
favourable as possible to the settler, leaving him to
deal with the railroad companies directly, as in the
case of the Avoca settlement. The successful expe
rience of Bishop Ireland in Minnesota has demon
strated the practicability of establishing such colonies
on this plan, and it has the advantage that, with
railroad co-operation, it is practicable to multiply
colonies in many states and territories at the same
time. The association is now enabled to offer
choice of different temperature, soil, productions, and
chmate, so that taste, capacity of endurance, health,
etc., can find conditions dictated by necessity or in
clination.

IBISE SETTLEBS IN TEE WEST. S5
I have had several interviews with Mr. William
J. Onahan, of Chicago, the secretary of the associa
tion, and received ocular proof of the eagerness of the
people in the eastern states to obtain information
regarding western colonization. A constant stream
of letters pours in, and it is interesting to see that
precisely the same reasons are urging precisely the
same classes in the crowded American states to
emigrate as exist in Europe.
The correspondents fall into three classes — first,
persons possessing a certain limited amount of fair
and, in many cases, of much more than average in
telhgence, and who are moved to turn their thoughts
to the west and to a home on the land in a new
colony by the motive of saving their children ; to be
enabled to bring them up in an atmosphere and under
conditions more favourable to the preservation of
their rehgious and moral as well as material life than
is possible in great cities. " Not for our own sakes,"
they say, "do we wish to make this change, but for
our children's."
Then there is another large class, possessing gene
rahy a smaUer amount of means in ready money, who
have toiled for years in public employments or in
shops and factories, and who see ahead no hope or
prospect of bettering their condition where they are.
These people are eager to get on a farm, but are

86 TEE AMERICAN IRISE.
uncertain and hesitating as to the locality to select ;
and in most cases their means would barely suffice
to tide them over the outlay necessary to keep them
during the first, and possibly a second, year in the
colony. But by far the most numerous class are the
poor labouring men, who, though in steady employ
ment, scarcely ever have anything to put by. They
work from year to year for a pittance — usually have
large and helpless families to support, with no
resources to depend upon except the labour of
their hands, the rewards of which are uniformly
meagre. They have no provision for themselves or
their families in case of sickness — no life insurance
policy in case of death. This class says pitifully,
" Cannot you put us on the land and give us a chance
to keep body and soul together, and save both ? We
see our children demoralized and degraded before
our very eyes and we cannot raise them. Enable us
to get them on the land and make them breathe the
pure air of heaven. Give us an opening to employ
our energies in cultivating the soil; get us away
from the misery and turmoil and vice of the big cities
— from crowded, filthy tenement houses, from miasma,
disease, and death, moral and physical; give us a
hope and a future to labour for. By such help you
will benefit not only us whom you lift out of wretched-

IBISE SETTLEBS IN TEE WEST. 87
ness and sorrow and worse than poverty, but also
those who are left behind ; for it is competition
that cheapens wages, and the removal of some
makes the labour of those who are left behind more
valuable." This is exactly what the same classes at home
are saying, and I emphasize the existence of the
appealing cry because it seems to me that the self
same machinery and organization which make pos
sible the relief of some, at all events, of the American
deserving poor might well be imitated to advantage
in Ireland and England.
A good climate and a fertile soil do not by them
selves insure the success of any colony. It is not
enough to put a number of men down on the prairie
and bid them take care of themselves. In many
cases such a proceeding is nothing less than cruelty.
The mere shoveUing out of paupers may enhance the
happiness of those who are left behind, but it is often
the refinement of torture to those who depart. The
Irishman's cabin is too often at home the cave of
poverty, but set adrift from it and tossed violently
into the whirlpool of an American city he is only
made not merely poor, but wicked and revolutionary.
So far back as 1847 the idea of co-operation as
applied to emigration was mooted in a letter pre
sented to Lord John Eussell, signed by Mr. W. H.

88 TEE AMEBICAN IBISH.
Gregory, M.P., Mr. M. J. O'Connell, M.P., and Mr.
J. E. Godley, and accompanied by a memorial. The
main propositions embodied in that memorial were —
first, the necessity of systematic colonization on a
very large scale from Ireland to Canada, and the
assistance of the State to promote it ; secondly, the
necessity of making religious provision for the emi
grants; thirdly, the advantage of enlisting private
enterprise in the form of agency to carry out the
plan ; fourthly, willingness to accept an income and
property tax for the purpose of defraying the cost of
emigration. The idea has at last taken definite and practical
shape in America; and I have given briefly and
plainly what I have seen and heard of the working of
Assisted and directed emigration in the west. The
formation of a National Board of British Colonization
is a matter worthy of public consideration. Such a
bureau, having agents and correspondents in British
colonies, with power and funds to secure lands and
houses for famihes, would be of inestimable benefit
to the empire, and might open up new colonies whose
importance might equal those of Austraha and New
Zealand.

( 89 )

CHAPTEE VIII.
the IRISH-AMERICAN COLONIZATION COMPANY.
It was at St. Paul, the capital of Minnesota, that I
first made the acquaintance of Mr. John Sweetman,
the managing director of the Irish-American Colo
nization Company. I soon made arrangements to
make an expedition to the colony which the com
pany had planted in Murray Comity, some hundred
and seventy-six miles southwards, and about a week
afterwards found myself deposited by the railway at
the village of Tracey, right in the middle of the
prairie. Owing to the great and unusual rains the
drive in the " stage," i.e. a waggon drawn by two
horses and carrying the mail, was slow, inasmuch
as we were forced to go across the prairie without
troubling the roads, which were too deep and miry
for traffic. Wrapped up in a comfortable buffalo
robe, however, with clear, crisp weather, the new
experience of being taken across country in the Great

90 THE AMEBICAN IRISH.
Western prairie was pleasant enough. The driver
declared that for years such a rainfall had never
been known. As a rule the climate is dry, and prairie
roads are as dry and as hard as a board, and afford
capital going. One result, however, of our somewhat
unusual route was to raise game of all descriptions —
duck, teal, prairie chickens, snipe, wild geese, and
other wildfowl. The prairie in Murray County,
where the Irish-American Colonization Company have
purchased 17,400 acres, over which I travelled in the
manner described, is a fine rolling country, with a
splendid supply of water, in the shape of streams
and lakes of all sizes. From Tracey to Currie, where
the " Sweetman Colony," as it is universally called,
has its head-quarters, I passed quite a number of
lakes, all of which were dotted with innumerable
wildfowl. When within two miles of my destination we
met Mr. Sweetman and his superintendent, Mr. John
O'Connor, driving across the prairie in a buggy
and a pair of horses, into which I was soon trans
ferred, and accompanied them on a tour of stock
inspection. Taking a few colonists on our way, we
had a most enjoyable drive, and, having inspected a
number of fine cattle, drove into a sheltered and
well-wooded paddock on the side of Lake Shetek for
the night. We arrived at the town of Currie, a small

IRISE-AMERICAN COLONIZATION COMPANY. 91
collection of about thirty houses, but nevertheless
laid out mathematically, and ready at the arrival of
men and capital to spring into a place of importance.
As it is, the county court is held here, and a paper
is published called the South-West Minncsotian, in
itself an instance of the survival of the fittest, its
rival having ceased to exist a short time previously.
Here, then, at Mr. Fling's excellent little hotel,
I lay that night after a capital supper. Next day
Mr. Sweetman drove me from early morn until
nightfall all over the colony, visiting the various
families of which it consists.
The colony is the result of substantial co-opera
tion in Ireland, but differs from its companion or
ganization in many ways, but especially that the
head-quarters are in Dublin, while the practical
management Uves here on the spot. The directors
of the Irish -American Colonization Company are
nearly all well-known Irish gentlemen, and include
such names as the Eight Hon. W. Cogan, D.L.,
Edmund Dease, Colonel Dease, George Eyan, Lattin
Thunder, Lieutenant-Colonel W. Butler, C.B., etc.
The managing director, Mr. John Sweetman, has
from the very commencement been the principal
organizer and practical director of the emigration.
The company is by no means purely philanthropic in
its aims and objects. It was formed for the purpose

92 TEE AMERICAN IRISE.
of enaWing some of those who have determined upon
emigrating from Ireland to take advantage of the
vast tracts of open country which are lying unten
anted and untilled in the western states of America.
In order to make the most profitable selection of
lands, Mr. Sweetman travelled through and carefuhy
examined the states of Dakota and Minnesota, and
also Manitoba, and finally purchased some twenty
thousand acres of prairie land situated in Murray
County, which lies on the direct road five hundred
miles westward from Chicago, and between two lines
of railway, viz. the Chicago and North-western on
the north, and Chicago, Milwaukie, and St. Paul on
the south.
Murray County is in area thirty miles by twenty-
four, and is one vast roUing expanse of rich prairie
land, presenting to the eye the appearance of an
ocean of grass. In the fall of the year the colouring
is dull and uniform, and is exactly hke one great
uncut, ripe hay-field, without anything to relieve the
eye but here and there a small piece of fallow or a
scanty copse.
Twelve years ago Murray County was inhabited
by only twelve families, and so lately as 1862 the Eed
Indian stalked the plains in pursuit of buffalo, and
enjoyed the luxury of taking the white man's scalp
whenever he got a favourable opportunity. He has

IRISH- AMERICAN COLONIZATION COMPANY. 93
gone now for ever, and his name and appearance are
only a tradition. The supply of game, however, as
far as wildfowl goes, is as good as ever, while in the
lakes there are several varieties of fish.
Such are the native denizens of the country. Man
has during the past twelve years entered into posses
sion of the Indian's territory with marvellous rapidity,
and the extension of railways westward makes the
complete settlement of the county merely a matter
of time. At present there is a population of five
thousand, and plenty of room and to spare. The
Irish-American Colonization Company have, however,
made choice of good land, and I have seen what
hard-working, industrious families have, with proper
assistance and advice, been able to perform in the
face of much difficulty and some privation.
The means which the company have taken to
insure the immediate comfort and success of the
emigrants are worth narrating at length. Very few
of the hundreds of Irish emigrants who have started
and who are starting to take their chance in a strange
land can commence intelligent and immediate agri
cultural operations without capital. Even if they
have sufficient to buy the land, there is money
required to build a house and buy agricultural imple
ments. It has been the want of this necessary
initial capital that has stranded so many thousands

94 TEE AMERICAN IRISE.
of the Irish race in the great cities of America, and
made them a race of Gibeonites without any chance
of rising in the social scale. It is owing to the know
ledge of the absolute necessity of some little capital
that has enabled the Germans, the Norwegians,
Swedes, and the Danes to make their emigration
successful from the outset, and, accordingly, we find
them in possession, and daily taking possession, of
the best lands of the western states.
The Irish-American Colonization Company has
been among the first associations who have recog
nized a most important fact, which is most plain
here, but which is not so easily appreciated at home,
viz. that the two classes of people who are most likely
to succeed in the west are capitalists and labourers.
The one class is necessary to the other. Money
is as indispensable as labour. The one gains higher
interest and the other more rapid independence than
in the older countries. The difficulty of getting
labour is very great, and, accordingly, wages are
very high.
The company, therefore, determined to select such
families for emigration as would be self-supporting,
and, with few exceptions, such have proved very satis
factory settlers. Each settler has possession on the
foUowing terms : — He gets eighty acres of land in fee
simple at the average price of £1 5s. the statute acre,

IBISE-AMEBICAN COLONIZATION COMPANY. 95

a very common yearly rent in Ireland for the same
amount of land. The company does not charge any
thing for a year and a half after the time of purchase.
Then it charges interest for that year and a half at
six per cent. The following two years it charges a
twentieth of the principal each year and interest on
the balance. For three years after that it will charge
a tenth of the principal and interest on the balance.
Then for three years it will charge a fifth of the
principal and interest on the balance. Tabulated
thus, it will show that a settler who came last April
would have to pay : —

April, 1881 ...
Dec, 1881

Principal.
 0 ..
0 ..

Interest. £ s.

Total. £ s.

, 18S2 ...

 0 ..

... 10 10 .

.... 10 10

, 1S83

5 ..

... 6 0,

.... U 0

, 1884 ...

 5 ..

... 5 14 .

.... 10 14

, ISS.i
10 ..
...5 8.
.... 15 8
, 1886 ...
... 10 ..
... 4 16 .
.... 14 16
, 1887
10 ..
.... 4 4 .
.... 14 4
, l^.SS ...
... 20 ..
.... 3 12 .
.... 23 12
, 1SS9
20 ..
...2 8.
.... 22 S
, 1890 ...
 20 ..
...14.
.... 21 4
£100
£48 16
£143 16
If the settler is able, he may, of course, pay off the
purchase money as soon as he wishes, and thus lessen
very materially the amount of interest. So much,
then, for the actual land. For all the thirty-seven
families who arrived last May the company built
96 TEE AMEBICAN IBISE.
strong, comfortable wooden houses ; and under these
the settlers have dug a deep cellar for storing pota
toes and other commodities. They also lent to each
settler the following stock and farm implements, upon
which, and on the travelling expenses and the value
of the house, interest is charged at the rate of eight
per cent. : —
Travelling expenses for family of four adults from the sea
board to the colony
Wooden house 14 feet by 18 feet ...
Furniture, including cooking stove
Yoke of oxen ...
PloughCow ...
Waggon Flour, groceries, etc., for six months for family
Total
What with seed and fuel, and small sundry help, the
total amount advanced to each family came to about
^GIOO. The interest, eight per cent., is not a high
interest in the west, and the same is obtained on the
very best security.
I have carefully inspected the families who have
thus been enabled to plant themselves on the western
prairie. They are all located within a radius of five
miles of the little town of Currie, where there are two
hotels and about thirty dwellings, a grist-mill with
two runs of stone in active operation, and a capital
general store where all the necessaries and many

... £12 0

0

22 10

0

... 8 0

0

20 0

0

... 3 0

0

5 0

0

... 10 0

0

9 10

0

...£90 0

0

IRISE-AMERICAN COLONIZATION COMPANY. 97
of the luxuries of life are to be had at a very cheap
rate. A Catholic priest arrived from Ireland a fort
night ago to take charge of his flock, and the service
was held yesterday in a room, with a large congrega
tion. A church is in process of building, and a large
State school-house is nearly completed.
There is no place, perhaps, where individual cha
racter comes into relief more strongly than on the
wide, lonely prairie of the west. From what I have
seen of the new settlers it is easy to know the kind
of men who wiU be most successful. They must be
courageous, hardy, indefatigable and sober, patient
and hopeful. I am happy to say Mr. Sweetman's
importations all seem to believe in their future. They
have good land, and with good hard work they have
no doubt of success. Already they had broken a large
portion of their eighty acres of virgin soil. Since
May each man had buUt himseK a warm, comfortable
shed for his stock, and they all had good crops of
potatoes, besides some Indian corn for their cattle.
Several had raised a crop of flax. On the average
each settler had broken from fifteen to twenty acres,
in the following proportions: — from five to nine acres
of flax, from half to one acre of potatoes, from two
to four acres of Indian corn.
Besides these crops I saw garden produce, the
result of some minor work around the homestead. H

98 TEE AMERICAN IRISE.
The flax is a valuable crop in this state, there being
a large manufacture of oil carried on in the principal
cities throughout the country. One settler, who had
just threshed three acres of flax, told me he had
twenty-seven bushels of produce, which he sold at
4s. 6^. the bushel, so that this will realize a con
siderable amount of money. Hay is, of course, plen
tiful. In a few days a man can mow enough of the
fine prairie meadow to stock his cattle for the winter.
Indeed, the amount of hay to be cut is absolutely
illimitable. It is also used very much as fuel — the
old settlers tying it up into hard knots and using it
thus something like turf. But there is no lack of
fuel, coal being easily obtained at either of the rail
ways ten miles away, at from 18s. to 24s. a ton.
I found, therefore, that although arriving very late
in the spring, the new settlers had become thoroughly
acclimatized, and had taken to farming their new
lands in earnest. There was now a good deal of
ploughing to be done, and this is carried on with
a pair of oxen, who can break up an acre a day. The
eighty acres of virgin soil, of course, must be brought
only by degrees into cultivation, and probably it will
take three years at least before the whole claim-
will be in first-class working order. Meanwhile the
settlers can earn good wages helping their neighbours,
the older settlers, in harvest and threshing. Flax

IRISE-AMERICAN COLONIZATION COMPANY. 99
and oats and barley are now allowed by aU autho
rities to be the most profitable crops.
It ought to be distinctly understood that south
western Minnesota is not a wheat-raising country.
The experience of the past seven years has proved
that the dreams of unlimited crops of wheat and
large fortunes therefrom are a myth, and the wheat
crop has for some seasons, and especially this, been
quite a fa'Uure. But the land is splendidly adapted
for green crops, Indian corn, barley, and oats. Hay
can be cut and stacked at a cost of from 3s. to 4s. a ton.
These indisputable facts, and the rolhng character
of the prairie, make me feel quite certain that in stock-
raising will be found the most profitable pursuit for
farmers, both large and small. There are perfect
runs here for sheep, which thrive splendidly, and are
remarkably free from disease. Much of the country
around Currie resembles the "downs" of England,
and, the ground being naturally dry, foot-rot in sheep
is practically unknown. For cattle the prairie ought
also to be a fine beef-producer, and every year the
experience of stock-breeders encourages them more
and more to invest their capital in cattle. Most of
the new settlers are fully alive to this, and already
can be seen a calf here and there which has been
bought for a few dollars as an investment.
The results of my observations and inquiries have

100 TEE AMERICAN IRISH.
been to convince me that, without assistance or some
capital, the success of Irish emigrants in the western
prairie is by no means assured, and, even with such
assistance and capital, it is not every man who wih
succeed in living a happy, contented, and prosperous
life. The real success of an emigrant lies in the cha
racter of the man himself, his brain and back, his
temper, capability, and determination. He must not
forget that his prairie life for some years is that of a
pioneer ; that there is a long and rough winter to be
endured, commencing in the middle of October, and
lasting until next April; that there is not much society,
and little intercourse with the outer world. It is not
only a mistaken idea, but also one that brings sorrow
and suffering in its train, which imagines that any
poor person will do for an emigrant. It may be a very
useful theory for those who wish to cut the Gordian
knot of surplus population at home, but it has been
proved practically that, to succeed, emigrants must
be picked men in a certain sense — men who have
practical knowledge of agriculture, a resolute will,
and energy of purpose. There is nothing to prevent
such men from becoming in a few years, as compared
Avith their position in the old country, well-to-do,
independent, and often rich men. Their families
obtain free education from the State, and health and

IRISE-AMERICAN COLONIZATION COMPANY. lOl
strength in an exceptionally fine, clear atmosphere
and fair climate.
Now that the question of Irish emigration seems
in a fair way of being treated in a more scientific
manner than it has hitherto been, it might be well
for those interested in the subject to consider how
intending emigrants might be put in the way of
avaihng themselves of the lands in Western America.
The Land Act* has given powers to the Commis
sioners to enter into agreements with public bodies
for the advance of funds to assist families to emigrate.
* Clause 32. — " The Land Commission may from time to time,
with the concurrence of the Treasury, and on being satisfied that a
sufficient number of people in any district desire to emigrate, enter
into agreements with any person or persons having authority to con
tract on behalf of o?m/ state or colony or puilic body or public com
pany with whose constitution and security the Land Convmission matj
be satisfied, for the advances by the Commission by way of loan, out of
the moneys in their hands, of such sums as the Commission may think
it desirable to expend in assisting emigration, especially of families
and from the poorer and more thickly populated districts of Ireland.
Such agreements shall contain such provisions relative to the mode
of the application of the loans and the securing and repayment there
of to the Commission, and for securing the satisfactory shipment,
transport, and reception of the emigrants and for other purposes, as
the Commission with the concurrence of the Treasury approve. Such
loans shall be made repayable within the periods and at the rate of
interest -within and at which advances by the Board of Works for the
purpose of the reclamation or improvement of land are directed by
this Act to be made repayable : Pro-vided always that there shall not
be expended by -virtue of the authority hereby given a greater sum
than two hundred thousand pounds in all, nor a greater sum than one
third part thereof in any single year."

102 TEE AMEBICAN IBISE.
There are, however, difficulties in the way of such
agreements being carried into effect. Companies will
hesitate to incur losses or failure, and will be slow to
hamper themselves with new conditions and respon
sibilities. What is wanted to bring the Government
into communication with such bodies as the Irish
Colonization Company is some association, uncon
nected with either the Government or such public
bodies, which would supply information and marginal
expenses as charitable contributions to intending
emigrants, and which would have a kind of benevo
lent supervision over State-aided emigration generally.

PAET II.

( lOS )

CHAPTEE I.
THE SITUATION.
Irelanb has undergone many revolutions, and has
experienced many so-caUed " settlements ; " but the
greatest of all, and different in its nature from all
previous revolutions and settlements, is the revo
lution and settlement projected by Mr. Gladstone,
and carried out by his Government in the " Land Law
(Ireland) Act" of 1881. To paraphrase Sir Eobert
Inglis's expression concerning Peel's " Queen's Uni
versity Act," it is a gigantic scheme of agrarian
revolution. It is the first attempt in the course of
seven hundred years to re-invest the Irish with the
ownership of the soil, after being reduced to the state
of farmers, labourers, and turf-cutters, hewers of wood
and drawers of water.
Enghsh, but more especially Scotch, political
economists taught that the Irish small farmers
should become day labourers, and declared that it
would be more advantageous to the State, and happier

106 TEE AMEBICAN IBISE.
for the labourers themselves. No approach was ever
made towards creating a body of small landed
proprietors, unless when Sir Eobert Peel introduced
his scheme for five-pound fee-farmers. They also
preached the value of clearances and virtues of large
landed estates. Instead of all this, Mr. Gladstone's
Land Act of 1881 has turned every tenant (except
leaseholders under existing leases) into tenants in
fee farm, even to the occupiers of the meanest one-
roomed cabin in the kingdom.
In fact, up to the Land Act of 1870, throughout
seven centuries the populace remained ragged and
pauperized, mere tenants at will. No one thought
of investing them with landed property. The memory
of man runneth not to the contrary, that the Irish
people have been barred of all estates in land, until
the founding of the Land League created a revolu
tion which, with the aid and assistance of an
English Government, has undone all previous
history and made the common people the lords
of Ireland. Never before has so great an alteration
in landed property been attempted in these kingdoms,
unless after a conquest, and by plantation.
I propose briefly to indicate the origin and trace
the history of this last "settlement" of Ireland. It
is now two years since I first stated * my conviction
» " The Irish Agitator." Dublin ; Hodges, Poster, Figgis and Co.,

TEE SITUATION. 107
that the roots of the agitations and disturbances
which have convulsed Ireland and shaken England
were to be found in America. The events of the past
twelve months have more than confirmed my original
views. But although I had always felt that without
American Irish aid, and that material assistance
which always forms the real sinews of business as
well as of war, the efforts of Mr. Parnell and his
party must have been comparatively feeble, I never
completely realized the true feeling of the Irish in
America until I had myself moved among them, and
in the cities and states of the Union appreciated to
the fuU the existence, three thousand miles away,
Of a people numerous, comfortable and influential,
animated by a spirit of nationality beyond all belief,
and impelled to action by a deep-seated hostihty to the
English Government.
The connection between America and Ireland has,
indeed, as I have shown, been more or less close since
the very first foundation of the early colonies. But
the basis of the present trouble is to be found in
the famine and consequent exodus of the Irish in
1848 ; in the Young Ireland movement ; and in the
transplantation to America of the ideas of Mitchel,
Davis, Doheney, and Lalor. Under present circum-
1880. 8vo. " PameUism Unveiled." Dublin ; Hodger, Foster, Figgis
and Co., 1880. 8vo.

108 TEE AMEBICAN IBISE.
stanceSj therefore, it is most important that this fact
should be put forward most prominently, and that the
true scope and end of the Land League organization,
at home and abroad, be closely understood by the
United Kingdom.

( 109 )

CHAPTEE II.
NATIONAL PROPAGANDA.
It has been seen already by statistics how vast an
accession to the Irish race in America was given by
the operation of the famine of 1847-48. Almost simul
taneously with the phenomenal exodus of those years
came the crash of the Young Ireland party. Their
thrilling writings, in prose and verse, were yet ringing
in the ears of the tens of thousands who were taking
ship for another land. " They are going with a
vengeance," said the Times, and the expression has
been fulfilled in a remarkably sinister manner.
Let us, however, first call to mind the principles of
that section of the Young Ireland party which has exer
cised so powerful an effect upon the Irish in America,
and through them upon Irish politics at home.
O'Connell and that portion of the Young Ireland party
which founded the Nation newspaper, viz. Smith,
O'Brien, Dillon, Duffy, and O'Gorman, declared them
selves constitutional agitators. The bulk of the

110 TEE AMEBICAN IBISH.
National party, says Mr. A. M. Sullivan,* though
swept into insurrection amidst the fever, of '48, held
the views expressed in the confederation debate of
the 4th of February, 1848. They never based their
policy on revolution. It was regarded as a con
tingency not to be shrunk from if absolutely forced
upon them, but one so remote as to be beyond their
range of practical concern.
Let me first glance at the division which occurred
in 18^8 amongst the Irish Nationalists at home.
Precisely as the United Irishmen of Grattan's time
outstepped his programme and proclaimed them
selves ready to die (and did die) for the impossiblej?-
task of breaking up the British empire, so did the
advanced Nationalists of O'Connell's period burst
aside from all personal restraint, and avowed them
selves separatists from the English connection. The
French Eevolution of 1848, and the general up
heaval throughout Europe in that eventful year, may
have had much to say to the swift conversion of
Irish Nationalists into Irish revolutionists. John
Mitchel's journal, the United Irishman, openly
preached insurrection. That stern, fanatical Pres
byterian was seized, tried, convicted, and transported.
Then followed the affair at Ballingarry. State trials
succeeded, and men once more paid the penalty of
* " New Ireland," chap. xvii. p. 259, New York edition.

NATIONAL PBOPAGANDA. Ill
attempting impossibilities. O'Brien, Meagher, Mac-
Manus, and others were convicted and transported,
and large numbers of minor participators left the
country. The result of the abortive insurrection of 1848
was to change the base of Irish revolution from Ire
land to America. It was received with open arms by
those Irish akeady settled there, a goodly section of ¦
the population, and eagerly espoused by the million
and a half emigrants who had contemporaneously
left the shores of Ireland. Thus a new nation was
formed, whose principal hterature was hostile to
England, whose heroes and martyrs were either
pohtical prisoners or executed felons, and whose
every aspuation and hope was at variance with the
established order of, things in the land which they
had left.
The best access we can have to the political
creed of the Irish in America is the national litera
ture of 1848. It was this which has kept alive the
flame of Irish nationality with such intense fervour
at the distance of three thousand miles ; and in the
journalistic writings of those Young Ireland days are
to be found the mainsprings of all the Irish political
movements, at home and abroad, which have been
carried on since that time, including the entire pro
gramme of the Land League.

112 TEE AMEBICAN IBISH.
Some idea of the effect that the National press
has had upon Ireland and America may be gathered
from the history of the Nation newspaper. It gives
the key to the influence over the Irish mind which
has been exercised by that journal so successfully
ever since its foundation, and the keynote to the tone
of the whole of the National press up to a very
recent period.
About the year 1840, two young men, graduates
of Trinity College, became connected with a journal
called the Morning Register. Their names were
Thomas Davis and John B. Dillon (father of the
present member for Tipperary). The Register had
been generally ranked among the mercenaries of the
Castle, but suddenly all Dublin was startled by the
brilliancy and original vigour of its article, especially
on one occasion. When the Whigs retired from
office, they rewarded a partisan by commanding Lord
Plunket to retire from the Bench in order to make
room for Sir John Cambell. The result was a wordy
war between parties, and a newspaper tournament
among editors. The Register, to the general astonish--^
ment of aU, took up a new line, and Davis in a bold
article denounced the appointment as an insult to
the country, and vindicated the superiority of the
Irish Bar over the adventurers which each mlinistry
in turn promoted.

NATIONAL PROPAGANDA. 113
Satisfied by the effect produced by his writings
that there was a magnificent opening for a journal
such as he had dreamed of for the salvation of his
country, Davis and his companion soon broke off
theu- connection with the Register, and began to
cast about for means to found a paper of their
own. A third man appeared on the scene just at
this junctm-e, Charles Gavan Duffy, an old school
fellow and friend of Davis, who had just thrown up
the editorship of the Belfast Vindicator, and come to
Dublin. He joined eagerly with Davis in the idea,
and after an evening's ramble in the Phoenix Park,
during which the terms and principles of the paper
were canvassed, the publication of the Nation was
determined upon.
The first number of the Nation appeared on the
12th of October, 1842, at a time when Ireland was
heaving under the agitation of O'Connell, and when
the Liberator was entering on the zenith of his
popularity. It is difficult now to imagine what a
tremendous power was wielded at once by this first
creation of a national press. It must be remembered
•that the men who engaged in the national jom-nahsm
of '42 were no mere literary hacks toiling their lives
away under a commercial proprietorship, with their
bodies and souls obedient to a London special wue,
praising and blaming according to command. What-

114 TEE AMEBICAN IRISE.
ever their pohtical faults and crimes, they had one
great recommendation to our sympathy — they were in
earnest. They were banded together not for the sake
of gain. Their policy was not that of the pocket.
The aim of the Young Ireland party was a revolution,
and their object the formation of a public opinion
strong enough to result in a general rising.
At this time the country was led by a man one of
whose first principles was that no political change
was worth shedding a drop of blood, and for a time
there was no attempt to put theory into practice.
But O'Connell was a lawyer and possessed of strong
and hard reasoning powers. It may be imagined
what effect upon fiery minds and ardent tempera
ments the agitation of Catholic emancipation must
have had. Apparently, indeed, Ireland was on the
verge of revolution. The whole people moved like a
regular army, and acted with extraordinary obedience
to the commands of this one man. We are told they
were accustomed to assemble in every part of the
country on the same day, and that scarcely an adult
Catholic abstained from the movement.
No wonder, then, with this before their eyes,
and the stiU more marvellous success of the Eepeal
agitation, that the founders of the Nation were filled
with wild hopes for the ultimate separation of Ireland
from England. Indeed, the state of society for ten

NATIONAL PROPAGANDA. 115
years previous to 1842 was in itself sufficient to buoy
up the hopes of the revolutionists. Agrarian murders
and tithe riots, the bm-ning of houses and the mutila
tion of cattle, were of daily occurrence. The country
was honeycombed with secret societies, and in many
parts of Ireland law was at a discount, and class war
fare and sectarian bitterness held supreme sway. To
crown aU, the most coercive Coercion Act ever in
flicted upon a recalcitrant country was put into force,
and not only directed against crime, but against
political agitation. In fact, martial law for some time
supplanted the British constitution. Labouring
under these throes, it is hardly to be wondered at
that Young Ireland conceived and brought forth the
National press.
It has been said that to make the priests the rulers
of the country and himself the ruler of the priests, was
O'ConneU's great object throughout his career as an
agitator. The object of the editors of the Nation, after
they found that O'Connell would never adopt any but
constitutional measures to gain repeal, was to coun
teract the influence he held over the people, and to
oppose it with all the forces of their brilhant literary
and intellectual armoury — and no mean weapons did
that armoury contain : the spell of Thomas Davis's
-extraordinary poetic love and genius, the fiery force
of Gavan Duffy, the brusque, hate-inspiring vigour

116 TEE AMERICAN IBISE.
of John Mitchel, the oratory of Thomas Francis
Meagher, the scholarship of McGee and McNevin,
and the honest fervour of John Martin and Wilham
Smith O'Brien. Here was indeed a circle of genius,
and around it was grouped a host of friends who gave
freely all they had of worldly and intellectual goods
for the sake of a cause, perhaps the most desperate
ever undertaken.
Such were the times, and such were the men.
The press which was the result of the times and the
men had one great and peculiar characteristic ; and
it contains in it the key to its past power and its
present popularity. This peculiarity was the raising
again of the question of nationality. It may be that
the publication of Thierry's " Conquest of England by
the Normans," appearing as that work did at a time
when the Irish people were struggling under O'Con
nell for a recognition of race, as opposed to religion,
may have had considerable influence on the minds of
revolutionary Irishmen. Thierry's grand thesis, given
in the first sentence of his introduction, is the
diversity of the races of men, and its effect upon his
tory. "It were falsifying history," he says, "to
introduce into it a philosophical contempt for every
departure from the uniformity of existing civilization,
and to consider those nations as alone worthy of
honourable mention, to whose names the chance of

NATIONAL PBOPAGANDA. 117
events has attached for the present and the future
the idea of that civihzation." Again, Thierry said,
*' The sword of conquest, whUe changing the face of
Europe and the distribution of its inhabitants into
distinct nations, has left its original features to each
nation, created by the mixture of several races."
Unlike other historians who preceded him, Thierry
•constituted himself the historian rattier of the con
quered than of the conquerors; he traced out the
existence of nations at different periods, giving them
their true position, colour, and signification, and is, in
fact, the author of the modern disturbance of Europe
by the question of nationalities, which he first brought
into prominent view. In his view of Ireland he has
construed the history of the Irish race in a manner
as national as the most enthusiastic "Nationalist"
can desire. It is from him undoubtedly that the
modern cry of Celt versus Saxon was first derived, and
a jealousy set on foot which bids fair to grow more
bitter as years advance. Thierry maintained that a
people are not so quickly subjugated as would seem to
be intimated by the official acts of those who govern
by the right of force, and he pointed to Greece, then
arising from her ashes, to prove that it is a strange
mistake to consider the history of kings, or even of
conquering nations, as that of the country over which
they hold dominion.

118 TEE AMEBICAN IBISE.
This was, in fact, the note of nationality which
the journahsts of 184.2 struck with so strong a hand.
They adopted that idea of the Celt with a hearty
recognition of its truth and usefulness in a war
against the conquering Saxon. They felt within them
that patriotic regret which Thierry maintains lies deep
in the breasts of men long after all hope for the old
cause of the country has expired, a feeling which,
when it has no longer the power to create armies,
still creates bands of partisans and political brigands,
and causes such of them as die on the gibbet to be
venerated as martyrs. I can recall no utterance of
the Young Ireland party which has in it so audibly
the note of nationality as the concluding words of
John Martin in his speech after his conviction for
treason-felony, as editor of the Irish Felon, August,
1848. "My object," he said, " in all my proceedings has
been simply to establish the independence of Ireland
for the benefit of all the people of Ireland— noblemen,
clergymen, judges, professional men — in fact, all
Irishmen. I sought that object first, because 1
thought it was our right ; because I thought, and
still think, national independence was the right of
the people of this country. And secondly, I ^admit
that being a man who loves retirement, I never would
have engaged in politics did I not think it necessary

NATIONAL PBOPAGANDA. 119
to do all in my power to make an end of the horrible
scenes the country presents — the pauperism and the
starvation, and the crime and the vice, and the hatred
of aU classes against each other. I thought there
should be an end to that horrible system which, while
it lasted, gave me no peace of mind ; for I could not
enjoy anything in my country so long as I saw my
countrymen forced to be vicious, forced to hate each
other, and degraded to the level of paupers and
brutes. This is the reason I engaged in politics."
Here is Thierry's idea of race and nationality fully
expressed by one of the leaders of the Young Ireland
party, and it was that idea which pervaded the whole
of the National press of 1842. It was the dream of
Davis to educate the people of Ireland into an acknow
ledgment of this race characteristic. It was his object
in aU his writings, prose and verse, to fire the spark
of nationaUty in the breast of each Irishman, and the
pubhcation of the Nation certainly effected this object
in a marvellous degree.
Then followed John Mitchel's journal, the United
Irishman, which was suppressed ; next, the Irish
Felon ; then, at various times and periods, other news
papers of similar tone and tendencies. These have
been the classics of the Irish race in America. The
feehng of affection and devotion which the Irish
American feels for Ireland is of the most romantic

120 TEE AMEBICAN IBISE.
kind. He gives money to prove its intensity, and no
amount of chicanery or imposition can alter the feel
ings which animate his political action. He is repub
lican in sentiment, democratic in ideas, and bitterly
opposed to the aristocratic institutions of an Enghsh
Government. The submarine telegraph cable has
introduced a new era in politics, and the exiles of
1848, cut off from intercourse with their native
country, are represented now by a new generation,
intimately acquainted and deeply interested in the
affairs of Ireland.

( 121 )

CHAPTEE III.
AJIERICAN-IRISH REPUBLICANISM.
Between 1849 and 1852 was enacted yet another
scene in the pohtical drama of Ireland. Insurrection
had been crushed. But the cry for tenant right
sm-yived, and found expression in Ulster first, and
finally throughout the remaining provinces by means
of the " Irish Tenant League." In February, 1852,
it was at the height of its power, and at the general
election in the spring of that year were returned fifty
tenant-right members to Parhament, amongst them
Charles Gavan Duffy and Frederick Lucas. But the
triumph of the new Irish party was brief. The
acceptance of Government office by Mr. Keogh and
the ruin and suicide of John Sadher broke up the
new National coalition, and " The Brass Band " soon
became a byword amongst Irish pohticians. In the
words of Mr. A. M. Sullivan, " Eepeal was buried.
Disaffection had disappeared. Nationality was un-
mentioned. Not a shout was raised. Not even a

122 TEE AMEBICAN IBISE.
village tenant-right club survived. The people no
longer interested themselves in politics. Who went
into or who went out of Parhament concerned them
not. The ' agitator's ' voice was heard no more. All
was sUence — rest and peace, some called it; sullen in
difference and moody despair, others judged it to be."
It was just the time for a conspirator to com
mence anew revolutionary schemes. Distrust of
agitators, the collapse of the tenant-right movement,
the treachery of the "Brass Band" had given the
populace a shock which it took them some years to
recover. But with the re-awakening of the feeling of
nationality came the moment for the revolutionist.
Dm-ing the years' of inaction, the people had drunk
deep of the literatm-e of Young Ireland, they had
imbibed heartily the principles of John Mitchel.
The young men were ripe for the hand of the
organizer, and their futm-e course of action depended
on the impulse then given. It so happened that
there was a man ready for the work, deeply impli
cated in the abortive rebelhon of 1848, and ready to
throw himself heart and soul into any project of
disaffection. This was James Stephens, son and
clerk of a poor broker in Kilkenny. On whatever
evidence Mr. John Eutherford has founded his
" Secret History of the Fenian Conspiracy,"* I have
* " The Secret History of the Fenian Conspiracy." 2 vols. 8to.
C. Kegan Paul & Co., London, 1877.

AMERIGAN- IRISE REPUBLICANISM. 123
very good authority for saying that his account
talhes closely with all the private information sup
plied to the Government upon the whole subject. I
see no reason for refusing to believe his account of
Mr. James Stephens's early propaganda of the prin
ciples of Fenianism, more especiaUy as it is in
keeping with aU we have since learnt of the methods
of organization at home and abroad adopted by his
more modern imitators. Stephens had escaped with
Michael Doheney from BaUingarry in 1848, and had,
after remarkable adventures,* got clear out of the
United Kingdom. Doheney went to New York,
Stephens to Paris. Here he became a professional
conspirator, and learned the science of continental
organization, hoping by becoming enrolled amongst
the secret societies to obtain aid when he had
matured his design of revolutionizing Ireland.
During all this period of continental apprentice
ship, Stephens was associated with John O'Mahony,,
yet another of those who had been " out " in the
BaUingarry business, a man of good family and cul
tured tastes. It was to ^him that Stephens owed all
the support which ultimately came to Fenianism from
America. O'Mahony insisted that whatever effort was
to be made by the Irish against the English Govern-
* See " The Felon's Track," by M. Doheney. 8vo. Cameron and
Ferguson, Glasgow and London.

124 TEE AMERICAN IRISE.
ment could not succeed without the aid of the Irish in
America, and to him was confided the task of orga
nizing the Transatlantic Irish. Thus the first pro
gramme of the new L-ish Eevolution was arranged.
Stephens returned to Ireland in 1853, and O'Mahony
departed for America, where Doheney had been
ah-eady at work ventilating the ideas which after
wards developed into Fenianism.
In company with Thomas Clarke Lubey, lately
arrived from Australia, Stephens made a tour of
Ireland in 1853, preparatory to making any efforts
to commence operations. His journey of observation
gave him plenty of food for reflection. The native Irish
population — in other words, the peasantry — offered
a fine opportunity for an organizer. O'ConneU's pro
longed agitations had kept ahve all the old memories
of English oppression and injustice, and fomented
sectarian strife and bitterness. The national aspira
tions, passions, and sentiments inculcated by the
Young Ireland republicans were stUl burning in every
peasant's cabin and farmer's dwelling. Peasant con
spiracies had for a century spread their network over
each province, and this agrarian combination alone,
properly utilized, could be turned to good account by
a man of tact and daring.
In fact, hatred of England, the sense of defeat,
the desire for vengeance, the brooding over senti-

AMERICAN-IRISE REPUBLICANISM. 125
mental wrongs, and the more open efforts of public
agitators had already organized Ireland in the rough,
before even James Stephens came to take up the
materials ready to his hand. Hitherto the com
monalty of Ireland had been led by men of culture
and position. Stephens took the first step to change
aU that. He was for a social and democratic revo
lution, such as Paris only could afford. There were
in Ireland two classes, the educated and the unedu
cated. The former, by associations and by position,
were outside his sphere of operations. But in the
populace he found to his hand good material, credu
lous, easily led, and disgusted at the moment with
their natural leaders by the treachery of the " Brass
Band." From beginning to end, Stephens laboured to
form a democratic revolution. There was no mental
culture or inteUectual refinement to be found in the
ranks of his numerous converts, and in this the move
ment which resulted in the Irish Eepublican Brother
hood differed essentiaUy from that of 1848, while it
afforded a ready model for the Land League of 1879.
MeanwhUe O'Mahony had arrived in America,
and had begun to organize the Irish race there. He
found good material ready. Eibbonism had found its
way across the Atlantic, and its lodges were found to
be favourable to the new schemes of revolution. The
mUitia system of the United States was another

126 TEE AMERICAN IRISH.
useful organization ready made. Exclusive Irish
battalions had been formed by the refugees of Ireland
in 1848, in order that the Irish in America should be
prepared to take advantage of any European troubles
which might prepare England's " difficulty " and
afford Ireland her "opportunity." But the efforts
of O'Mahony were not successful in obtaining unity
of pm-pose. The new association of revolutionary
Irishmen was called by various names, and for five
years the conspiracy was kept going, until O'Mahony's
ill-success brought over Stephens to the United States
in 1858. He at once aroused the enthusiasm of the
Irish masses. Money flowed in, and the plot was
remodelled and renamed again under the title of
the "Fenian Brotherhood," and when Stephens de
parted, he left the American branch of the conspiracy
in flourishing condition.
It only required a man of abUity to accomphsh
this. Without having had personal experience of the
feelings of the American Irish with regard to the land
of their nativity, it is hard to realize the intensity of
their romantic national sentiment. I have met men
of the second generation, sons of Irish parents,
American in voice and appearance, who have never
set foot on Irish soU, with as ardent an affection for
Ireland as the most National native-born inhabitant
of Cork, the very capital of Irish nationality.

AMERICAN- IBISH BEPUBLICANISM. 127
I have already mentioned the influence of the
Irish National press upon the sentiments of the Irish.
The strength and extent of these mixed sentiments
were, as we may weU imagine, sohdified and widened
by the exodus of the decade 1841-1851. The Irish
census of 1851 showed a diminution of near 2,000,000
in the population of Ireland in the preceding ten
years. In the years 1841 to 1850 inclusive the British
emigration to America was 1,522,600 persons, of
which certainly 1,300,000 were Irish.*
Mr. Hamilton A. HiU,t a weU-known Boston sta
tistician, calculates that from 1820 to 1879 inclusive
the number of Irish emigrants was 3,065,761. " Ire
land," says that gentleman in his paper on immigra
tion, "has been our chief source in the past, and
during the last forty years has contributed nearly
three miUions to the population of the United States.
During 1847 to 1854 inclusive, the arrivals from Ire
land averaged 150,000 per annum " (see also Young's
"Labour in Europe and America"). Such an im
mense transfer of people from one climate, govern
ment, and state of society to another, different whoUy
in character, was indeed one of the most remarkable
social phenomena of the age. Its treatment by
the English press was indignantly resented by the
* Dr. E. E. Hale's " Letters on Irish Emigration." Boston, 1852.
+ Paper on Immigration. Boston, 1879.

128 THE AMEBICAN IBISH.
emigrant Irish themselves, and by their countrymen
in America, and, read by the light of modern events,
there can be little doubt that the tone of such journals
as the Times and Satwrday Review in their treatment
of Irish subjects was well calculated to excite the
indignation of the principal actors in the heart
rending exodus of those days.*
For the leader writer of a paper to look at the
"long agony of Ireland's misfortunes " as anatm-alist
would upon an operation of Nature, was entirely
philosophical, and for Government to expedite that
operation was, no doubt, a pleasing task. But we
can hardly be surprised that, after the sufferings of
the people under the teachings of John Mitchel and
his followers, the emigrant Irish should look upon
their own dispersion as anything but a phUosophical
or pleasing matter. Nay, that they should carry
with them the undying seeds of enmity against the
country whose press treated them, as they thought,
so scornfully and cruelly in their trouble and exile
is but natural, and that they should transmit
that enmity to their offspring is almost a matter of
necessity. To them the "Deus nobis hsec otio fecit " of
the Times, this thanking of Heaven for the rehef that
England felt, was the kneU of home life in Ireland.
* See Times, September 14, 1853; Spectator, January 5, 1847 j
Saturday Eeview, December 1, 1863.

AMEBICAN-IBISH BEPUBLICANISM. 129,
And for an Englishman to quote the motto, com
fortably seated at home, was, no doubt, translated by
the Irish in America as a psean on the Providence
which slew millions of the pauper Irish and banished
the rest.
In the Fenian days, too, the London press intensi
fied the vindictive Irish-American hostility to England.
" The departing demons of assassination ; " " The rush
of departing marauders whose lives were profitably
occupied in shooting Protestants from behind a
hedge;" Ireland "has no snakes or vermin except
among its peasantry and clergy " — these are expres
sions which have rankled deeper than Coercion Acts
and sentences of transportation. The " departing
marauder" is also comforted for his departure in this
maimer : " Just as the Eed Man and the Bushman and
the Maori melt away before the sure and certain
advances of the superior race, so will the worse
elements of Irish humanity yield to the nobler and
civihzing elements now at work in Ireland ; " " Ireland
is boiling over, and the scum flows across the
Atlantic." Such language, it is perhaps needless to
state, had its effect, none the less sure that it was
at the time unseen and unappreciated. The " scum "
and the chUdren of the " scum " have treasured up
these memories, and in the dollars of the American
Land League are to be recognized the avenging

' 130' TEE AMEBICAN IBISE.
hands of the Nemesis of a reckless and unsympa-
thizing press.
The influence of the American political system also
upon the Irishman rendered Stephens' efforts easy.
Numerically speaking, the Irish have long been the
most important factor of the foreign nationalities
settled in the United States. From a political point
of view they have been at all times a very important
factor. Identified with the Democratic party since
the commencement of the century from feelings of
gratitude for the part taken by the Democrats in the
question of naturalization, the Irish have so far faith
fully adhered to their old allies. Accordingly, as new
emigrants landed in the States, they adopted the
same political creed, though probably with less logical
reason. Ever desirous of perpetuating their political ani
mosity to English aristocratic institutions, and of
emphasizing it by some overt act on American soil,
they have always espoused that party whose prin
ciples profess to be the most radically opposed to
the Enghsh political system. The very name of
Democrat was in itself peculiarly grateful to the new
comer, and finding friends around him imbued with
" Democratic " principles, he threw himself at once
into the arms of the Democrats with aU the fervour
of a political convert.

AMERICAN-IRISE REPUBLICANISM. 131
But, apart from mere party politics, the effect of
American institutions generally upon the Irish settlers
has been very great. Beyond all other nationalities,
from the moment of their arrival, they adopted with
ardour all the principles of American republicanism.
They reveUed in "liberty, fraternity, and equality."
They found themselves suddenly in a land wliere
"caste" is comparatively unknown, and where all
men are supposed at least to be equal. Assimilating
rapidly with the thought, and by the influences of
their surroundings, the Irish began to look back upon
their old life and position in Ireland with distaste.
The only tangible and constant idea present came to
be one of hatred and abhorrence of that system of
government which they were sedulously taught to
believe was the fountain of all their woes, real and
imaginary, and which, in fact, was the exact converse
of the method of government in the land of their
adoption. But deeper than aU these reasons for animosity to
England lay yet another, which touched to the quick
that most vulnerable of all points in the Irishman's
character — his national pride. Until he left his own
country, he never discovered that in every quarter of
the globe, more or less, but particularly in America,
the Irish race, as a whole, was looked down upon,
despised, slighted. Individual Irishmen throughout

132 TEE AMERICAN IBISE.
the whole world have been honoured and admired.
But the peasant Irish have ever been contemned.
Without leaders, without any natural aristocracy,
without wealth, the Irish were thrown on the shores
of America, and fell at once to the lowest scale of the
social ladder. As every year rolls by, the class of
educated Irishmen in the United States grows larger
and more respected. But the prejudice against the
race has and does exist. This terrible . debt the
Irishman in America has placed to the account of
England. This grudge is the deepest of aU. And
when all material grievances have been redressed,
this remains. They think, What might not Irish
men have been under proper treatment and good
government, instead of the despised and rejected of
nations ?
With such material to work upon, and with able
leaders and writers to assist him, it is not to be
wondered at if James Stephens succeeded in laying,
once and for all, a deep foundation for Irish revolution
in America. He himself was a thorough Eepublican
of the French type. He found miUions of artisans
and labourers of his own race eager to listen and
assist him in his new schemes, already thoroughly
impregnated with the principle of democracy, and
without any other idea of being able to benefit their
native country than by doing aU that in them lay to

AMEBIC AN- IBISE BEPUBLICANISM. 1[\'\
secure for Ireland the benefit of that republicanism
which they enjoyed in the United States.
How successfully the Fenian organizer laid the
seeds of Irish republicanism is best appreciated by
the remarkable fruits which his now forgotten labours
have brought forth. Some species of national in
dependence for Ireland has ever been the keynote
of the pohtical creed of the Irish in America.
Their leaders speak, and have ever spoken, in the
same strain. " Our independence," said an early
revolutionist,* " must be had at all hazards. If thn
men of property wiU not support us, they must fall ;
we can support ourselves by the aid of that numerous
and respectable class of the community, the men of
no property." The words are curiously descriptive
of the events of the past two years in Ireland.
The aims and ideas of the most advanced Irish
Nationalist, such as Mitchel and Stephens, point
simply to the repeal not only of the Union, but to
the reversal of the conquest of Ireland, and this tide-
stream of Irish repubhcanism to the shores of
Ireland has flooded with revolutionary thought the
minds of the Irish masses at home.
It is easy to trace in the programme of Fenianism
the selfsame features which have been so recently
visible in the Land League organization. The
* Wolfe Tone.

134 TEE AMEBICAN IBISE.
general aims of the organization, as stated by Euther
ford, are as foUows :— To deprive all proprietors
not siding with them of their estates, to confiscate
Church lands, and to establish new relations between
landlord and tenant, on the principles established in
Prussia by Von Stein and Hardenburg, giving to each
peasant who was a member of the Brotherhood
the power of purchasing his farm at a price to be
determined by a commission. Out of the confiscations,
estimated to amount to eight-ninths of the surface of
the whole island, was to be formed a national pro
perty, which was afterwards to be sold to the profit
of the State, in order to manufacture a large
class of peasant proprietors, similar to that of
France. Equality of rights of inheritance was to be
established in families, and all titles of nobility were
to be suppressed.
The political institutions were to take a thoroughly
republican shape. There was to be a Parliament or
Congress, with a purely Irish title, of which a third
part was to be elected annually by universal suffrage.
Province prejudices were to be humoured by giving
each province a council of its own, and an executive
to manage its own affairs. New laws were to be
enacted in harmony with the new state of things.
All religions were to be tolerated, but none was
to be allowed supremacy. The priest, in fact, was

AMEBICAN-IBISH BEPUBLICANISM. 135
to be in all cases restricted to the exercise of his
purely ecclesiastical duties. Stephens also meant to
secularize education, to deprive religious bodies of
their property, to take the education of the clergy
into the hands of the State, and to make them as
far as possible State officers, by paying them fixed
stipends out of the national treasury. Such were the
designs and intentions of the leaders of the Fenian
movement. They bear upon them the impress of
American and French ideas, and as such were doubly
attractive to the Irish in America.
The anti-ecclesiastical feeling is most significant.
Since 1860 to the present moment the effect of
American ideas has been everywhere to break down
the political power of the priest. The leaders of the
Fenian organization were particularly bitter against
Eomish influence. In Stephens' set of general rules
for the guidance of his lieutenants is the following : —
"Waste no time in attempting to gain the priests.
Their one idea is — the good of Mother Church. Let
the Eevolution only succeed ; Mother Church always
knows how to adopt herself to accomplished facts.
Besides, no priest is a free agent."
The events of the past year are a striking con
firmation of the Fenian rule. They were, however,
but the full outcome of that quiet propaganda of
republican principles which gave its first indications

136 THE AMEBICAN IBISH.
of power in the candidature of John Martin, in 1869,
for Longford, in opposition to the priests' nominee,
Mr. GreviUe Nugent, and in the election of a Pro
testant Home Euler, Mr. Blennerhasset, for Kerry
in 1872, in opposition to the priests' candidate, Mr.
James Arthur Dease, a Catholic. This anti-clerical
sentiment was abroad amongst the Irish in America
as early as 1849.
When Michael Doheney landed in America after
escaping from Ireland, he found, as might be ex
pected, much excitement upon the whole Irish political
situation. Upon the part taken by the Catholic
clergy in the movement of 1848, he says, in the pre
face to " The Felon's Track," " On my arrival in
America, I found a fierce contest agitating, dividing,
and enfeebling the Irish-American population. It
was asserted on one side that the entire failure
was attributable to the Catholic priests, and that, in
opposing the liberation of Ireland, they acted in
accordance with some recognized radical privileges of
the Church." I have also heard it stated that Thomas
Francis Meagher was very strong upon confining the
priest to his ecclesiastical functions. "If the altar
were to stand," he said, "between a man and his
liberty, I should say down with the altar." It is
evident, therefore, the latent distrust of the priest as
a political factor in Ireland was fully felt and fostered

AMERICAN-IRISH REPUBLICANISM. 137
by many of the '48 men, while the Fenian leaders'
mistrust and dislike of ecclesiastical interference in
national matters was, no doubt, the reason of the
active part taken against them in the very crisis of
their conspiracy by the Eoman Catholic hierarchy.

138 THE AMEBICAN IBISH.

CHAPTEE IV.
THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR AND FENIANISM.
The long life-quarrel between the north and south,
after whole decades of discussion, at last came to a
climax when southern guns fired in April, 1861,
upon Fort Sumter. The sword, after all, was to
be the arbiter between slave-owner and abolitionist.
Throughout the northern states the Irish population
at once declared for the Union, and it is computed
that in the Federal armies alone there were 170,000
Irishmen enrolled. In that protracted and unparal
leled conflict the Irish race proved once again their
aptitude for war, and their personal valour on the field
of battle. First in Spain, then in France after the
battle of the Boyne and the surrender of Limerick, the
Irish soldiers have played an important part in the
military history of Europe. Their turn now came to
uphold again in another hemisphere the reputation of
which they have at aU times been jealous ; and on the
bloody fields of Virginia, in the cotton fields of Georgia,

THE AMEBICAN CIVIL WAB AND FENIANISM. 139
and among the Carolina swamps lie the bones of many
an Irish soldier who fought for the Stars and Stripes.
It is not, however, within the province of these
pages to describe the military exploits of the Irish
soldiers in the war of rebellion.* That has been done
elsewhere f by capable hands ; and no Irishman can
help feeling proud in reading the glorious military
record of his race in America. A few words, however,
are necessary to indicate how great were the induce
ments for Irishmen to enter the army. J First, there
* " To the Irish division commanded by General Meagher was
principally committed the desperate task of bursting out of the town
of Fredericksburg, and forming under the -withering fire of the Con
federate batteries, to attack Marye's Heights, lowering immediately in
their front. Never at Fontenoy, at Albuera, or at Waterloo, was more
undoubted courage displayed by the sons of Erin, than during those
six frantic dashes which they directed against the almost impreg
nable position of their foe. . . . The bodies which lie in dense masses
within forty yards of the muzzles of Colonel Walton's guns are the
best evidence of what manner of men they were who pressed on to
death with the dauntlessness of a race which has gained glory on a
thousand battlefields, and never more richly deserved than at the foot
of Marye's Heights on 13th December, 1862." — Times special corre
spondent, Hon. Francis Lawley.
See also " War Pictures from the South," by B. Estvan. London :
Eoutledge and Co., 1863.
t "Life of Brigadier- General Meagher," by Captain Lyons. Glas
gow : Cameron and Ferguson. 8vo.
"The Irish Brigade and its Campaigns," by Captain D. 0. Con-
yngham, A.D.C. .Glasgow = Cameron and Ferguson. 8vo.
X " The immense arrivals of Irish astonish those who are not in
the secret. Their passages are paid by the United States Govern
ment, and will be charged to the enHstment expenses. The sum
appropriated for this purpose is $3,000,000, and it is estimated that

140 TEE AMERICAN IBISE.
was the generous feeling of gratitude to the country
that had received them into her bosom ; and many
for this reason gave up lucrative positions and sacri
ficed their interests to their patriotism. Then there
was the natural feehng of excitement which leads a
fiery • and impetuous people to enlist in any great
popular movement ; and, finally, strongest of all was
the desire to learn the use of arms and the science
and art of war, with the hope of turning them at
some future day to practical service in the cause of
their native land.* The Fenian Brotherhood made
it will bring over to this country 120,000 Irish persons. Of this
number it may be safely estimated one half that will cost only $50
each for sixty thousand, and in any other shape it costs the United
States $100 per soldier. — " Manhattan," letter to Daily Telegraph,
May 9, 1863.
" Some shiploads of emigrants, having arrived in 1862 from the
Green Isle most of them utterly destitute, were beset on landing by
the recruiting officers with promises of $100 from the Federal Go
vernment, $50 from the State of New York, and $50 from the Common
Council of the city. Bewildered and dazzled at the prospect of such
enormous wealth, they marched direct from the emigration dep6t
to the recruiting office, and became soldiers of the Union before they
had been twenty-four hours in the country." — Irish Times.
* Some idea of the feeling which inspired the Irish-American
soldiers in their national character as Irishmen may be found in
the fugitive literature of the period, of which I found a good example
in the British Museum library. It rims as follows : —
" St. LA.-WEENCE O'ToOIe's LlTANT.
" De Frofundis Clamavi.
"O most patriotic and venerable O'Toole, who didst innocently
and without guile transmit to thy unworthy successor the livery of

THE AMEBICAN CIVIL WAR AND FENIANISM. 141

full use of its opportunities. In the large cities
mUitia regiments, exclusively composed of Irish, had
heaven to be defiled by serving two masters, to thee we turn in our
affliction ; of thee we implore that inspiration of love for the Old
Land, which thou didst, while Archbishop of Dublin, endeavour by
word and deed to infuse into the Irish heart in repelling the Anglo-
Norman with all his works and pomps. Explain to my once anti-
Irish master, Adrian, the sad consequence of his bull in our land,
which, through his kind but unsolicited exertions in benefiting tlft)
soul, has brought unremitting pain and misery on the body.
" Call to thy aid, 0 most liberty-loving O'Toole, those Christian
auxiliaries of power and glory — the soul-inspiring cannon, the meek
and faithful musket, the pious rifle, and the conscience-examining
pike, which, tempered by a martyr's faith and Fenian's hope and
a rebel's charity, will triumph over the devil and restore to us our
own, and only our own, in our owti land, for ever and ever. Amen.
O'Toole, hear us.
O'Toole, attentively hear us.
Prom English civilization.
Prom British law and order,
From Anglo-Saxon cant and freedom.
Prom the Guelphs and other Philistines,
From the best of the English queens,
Prom the Lion's mouth.
From " Eule Britannia,''
From the cloven hoof,
From the necessity of annual rebellion,
From billeted soldiery.
From anti -Irish Irishmen,
From landlord absenteeism.
From extension of the Castle lease,
From the mockery of further petitions.
From a pious Church establishment.
Prom the payment of tithes.
Prom sackcloth and ashes,
From fasting on feast days,
From the patience of Job,

O'Toole, deliver as.

142

TEE AMERICAN IRISE.

O'Toole, deliver us.

been formed before the war, and a renlarkable illus
tration of the spirit of these regiments was given
From the slavery of praying for crowned heads, "^
From all other hypocrisies.
From internal discord.
From royal anniversaries.
From loyal banquet speeches.
From mock trials.
From artificial gallowses.
From natural hangmen.
From a living death,
From untenanted graves.
From salvation from the cross of St. George,
From the curse of Cromwell,
From all things purely English,
By the wearing of the Green,
By the Grave of Emmett,
By our Irish martyrology,
By the massacre of Drogheda,
By the memory of Penal Law,
By the broken treaty of Limerick,
By the old rebel Pike,

We beseech thee to
hear us, O'Toole.

By the waving sunburst.
By the immortal shamrock.
By the sprig of fern.
By the bayonet charge.
By the Irish hurrah, J
Through Cin of the hundred battles.
Through the old Ajax of Clontauf,
Through O'Neil of the Eed Hand,
Through the spirit of Lord Edward,
Through the patriotic Sarsfield,
Through Ireland's unwritten history.
Through the Celtic tongue.
Through the magic pen of Davis,
Through the memory of '98,
Through the Fenian Brotherhood,

Grant us victory,
'" O'Toole.

THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR AND FENIANISM. 143
during the visit of the Prince of Wales to the United
States in 1860. An order was given for the New

Bayonet charge on them, \
Musket hail on them, I
Sword slay them, I
Pike transfix them, I

O'Toole.

It is a falsehood,
O'Toole.

Fire and smoke, ]
Torch of rebellion, ^"^^"S dismay unto the enemy.
Vengeance of Seven Centuries, °° ®-
Fenianism, the salvation of our race.
Record it above, O'Toole.
Fenianism to be stamped out like the cattle plague.
We -will prove them false prophets, O'Toole.
Ireland reduced to obedience,
Ireland loyal to the Crown,
Ireland a country of West Britons,
Ireland pacified with concessions,
Ireland to recruit the British army,
Ireland too holy to fight,
Ireland not united in effort,
Ireland to be free, prosperous, and happy,
As sure as you are in heaven, O'Toole.
Ireland to be a paradise of religious toleration.
Pray for it, O'Toole.
Ireland never to be dragged at the tail of any nation.
Proclaim it on high, O'Toole.
" O'Toole, thou who still lovest the land of thy nativity, look down
upon the coming struggle with favour and approval. Inspire the
old race once more with patriotic devotion, and give strength to
sunder the chains of the oppressed. The sprig of fern and the
shamrock look heavenward from their lowly beds. The prophecies
are being fulfilled : the sons of Erin of the seas are preparing for the
da?fn. Give to the long-looked-for day a, glorious sunset — victory
for the Gael with the green above the red. God save the green.
Amen."

144 TEE AMEBICAN IBISH.
York militia regiments to parade in honour of the
royal visitor. Colonel Corcoran refused to parade his
regiment, saying that, as an Irishman, he could not
consistently parade Irish-born citizens in honour of
the son of a sovereign under whose rule Ireland was
left a desert, and her best sons exUed or banished.
This most inveterate foe of England had been born
in Sligo, and had been in the Irish constabulary force
for three years before he emigrated. He was brought
to a court-martial for this refusal to parade, but the
outbreak of the war and the refusal of his men, all
Fenians, to march without him caused the proceed
ings to be dissolved.
A paragraph in a sketch of the constitution of the
Fenian Brotherhood, drawn up by Halpin, gives some
idea of the extent to which Fenianism pervaded the
officers and men of the United States army. " Of
the contributions," he says, " in officers and men
made by the Fenians to the United States armies, we
can only call attention to a few of the more promineni
examples of regiments sent from New York. Nearly
aU the officers of General T. F. Meagher's original
and famous Irish Brigade, as also the Corcoran Legion,
were famous. Colonel Mclver, of the 170th New
York Volunteers, belongs to the order, as does also
General Gleeson of the 63rd, formerly of the Pope's
Foreign Legion service in Italy. In the Corcoran

TEE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR AND FENIANISM. 145
Legion alone in 1862 twenty-four Fenian officers
were killed or disabled. The 164th New York was
originaUy raised and officered by Fenians, who had
graduated in the 99th New York State Militia, other
wise caUed the Phoenix or Fenian Eegiment, a regi
ment which educated and sent into the army three
fuU sets of officers, together with 1200 rank and file.
In Coimeeticut one whole Fenian circle of about two
hundred volunteered unanimously ; but as their state
quota was full, they went off in the 10th Ohio Infantry.
Two-thirds of the 9th Massachusetts Infantry were
Fenians. The Douglas Brigade of lUinois, chiefly
raised in Chicago, was in great part Fenian, as was
the brigade raised by the late Colonel Mulligan, who
was high in the order. In the Excelsior Brigade a
large proportion of the officers were Fenians ; and
the 42nd New York was chiefly organized by Colonel
Michael Doheney, one of the original founders of the
Fenian Brotherhood."
General Thomas Francis Meagher, the organizer
of the Irish Brigade, was by far the most important
figure in the ranks of the Irish-American soldiers.
Born in the city of Waterford in 1823, the son of
a Cathohc merchant and member of Parliament,
Meagher returned from collegiate life in England at a
time when the Eepeal movement of O'Connell was on
the very eve of its overthrow, and by his impassioned

146 TEE AMEBICAN IBISE.
invocation to the sword, in opposition to O'ConneU's
doctrine of moral force, fixed his fame for ever as the
foremost orator of the Young Ireland party.
Meagher appeared in arms with Smith O'Brien,
and, after O'Brien's attempt at Ballingarry had failed,
was tried for high treason at Clonmel, and condemned
to death ; but the sentence was commuted to trans
portation for life. In the spring of 1852 he made his
escape from Van Diemen's Land, and landed in New
York, where he soon became distinguished as a
lecturer and lawyer. Meagher himself never became
a Fenian. Indeed, the attitude of the '48 men to
wards Fenianism was always one of disdain. They
looked upon Stephens and his centres as plebeian
upstarts, deeply tinged with atheistic and socialistic
sentiments, unworthy to head or initiate a national
movement. Prom the very commencement of
Stephens's conspiracy John Mitchel and Meagher had
opposed the idea. They were prejudiced against
Stephens, and could not believe that where highly
educated gentlemen had so completely failed, under
more trying and dangerous circumstances, a low-born
conspirator could succeed.
That Stephens was not so contemptible a person
as was then thought, Mitchel himself sufficiently
proved when he joined the Fenian Brotherhood some
years later, and acted for a time as its chief agent

THE AMEBICAN CIVIL WAR AND FENIANISM. 147
in Paris. Meagher, though not avowedly a member
of the Brotherhood, favoured it in many ways, and
principally by taking command of the Irish Brigade,
which was Fenian to a man, and which is said to
have supplied nearly all the adventurers who became
notorious in Ireland in 1865-1867.
FuU advantage was taken of the war, and the
enthusiasm created by it, by the Fenian leaders, to
turn their rank and file into soldiers. But this was
not theu only purpose. A more remote, but in their
view far more important, object was to purchase the
favour of the northern statesmen who were conducting
the war, and to contribute, if possible, some cause for
a war with England. There can be no doubt that
the Fenians received much encom-agement from many
civU and. mUitary servants of the northern states.
There was 'an understanding, feigned or sound, between
the head centre, O'Mahony, and certain authorities,
and it had a potent influence on recruiting.
The question of Irish naturalization in America,
and its power to dissolve the tie of allegiance, was
considered almost a sure pretext by which England
could be involved in an armed conflict with America.
The Fenians looked with breathless interest for the
outburst, and it seemed to have arrived when a
Northern admiral, Wilkes, stopped a British mail
steamer and forcibly took from its deck the two

148 THE AMERICAN IRISH.
Confederate ambassadors. Mason and SlideU ; when
Lord Palmerston had sent out an army to Canada,
and at the same time made a peremptory demand
for the restoration of the Confederate envoys. The
Fenians at home and abroad made good use of the
incident, but their hopes were not destined to be
realized, and no actual break occurred in the
amicable relations of England and America.
The Civil War in America ended in July, 1865, and
thus a mass of furious Irish, inured to war, finding
theu occupation gone, and bearing the hatred of
enforced exiles to the Enghsh, as authors, in theu
opinion, of the famine which drove them from their
country, returned in numerous smaU parties to Ire
land during the year 1866. They were aU this time
organizing insurrection under the orders of the
Fenian leaders at New York and Dublin, and a gene
ral rising was arranged for the 5th of March, 1867.
The commander-in-chief selected at New York was
General Cluseret, a Frenchman naturalized in Ame
rica, a member of the revolutionary clubs of France,
Italy, and Germany, and an able soldier. He served
both in the French and American armies. Next
under him was Colonel Godfrey Massey, made lieu
tenant-general of the Fenian forces.
Cluseret came over, but his practised inteUigence
showed him at a glance that the Fenian army was, to

THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR AND FENIANISM. 149
a great extent, imaginary ; and further, that the Irish,
so swayed by the priesthood, were not materials for
a revolution, being, if bad subjects, only worse rebels.
Cluseret instantaneously retired to seek fresh fields
and pastures new, and turned up next as leader of
a successful rising of the Eeds of Marseilles in the
days of the Commune.
Thence he came to Paris and wa.s made Minister
of War by the Communists, and on the 19th of April,
1871, signed the decree for the puUing down of the
Column of the Place Vendome, superintended the
demohtion on the 16th of May, and pronounced
the oration over its ruins. It was to mark, said
General Cluseret, the end of those feudal and ancient
ideas which made the deeds of soldiers and warriors
the most glorious in the world's eye. Henceforth,
labour was to take the place of valour; work was
to be superior to war, and the sword was to yield
the place of honour to the shuttle and the spade.
His speech was almost in the very words of Prince
Albert on opening the Great Exhibition of London
in 1851, curious preludes, both speeches, to the events
which have intervened. At the faU of the Commune,
Cluseret left Paris by the " underground railway," *
* The expression of the Americans to describe the unaccount
able means whereby the negro slaves escaped from the south to the
north.

150 THE AMEBICAN IRISH.
leaving his friends to die by the military executioners.
It will be well if he is not heard of again.
Lieutenant-General Godfrey Massey, a young man
of five and twenty, left America, under the orders
of the same committee, about the same time as
Cluseret. An Irishman (his original name being
Patrick Condon), he served in the Texas Hussars, part
of the cavalry of the Southern Confederates, of which
he was made colonel. He had been lately married,
and he sent over his bride before him to Liverpool,
preliminary to taking the field. Eejoining her there,
he passed through Dublin to Cork, and on the night
of the 4th of March left Cork for the Limerick
junction, having orders to collect his men and mass
them, and await the arrival of the commander-in-
chief. General Cluseret.
But an information party, Corydon, had prepared
the Government ; and General Massey, on his arrival
at midnight at the appointed spot, found himself in
the arms of Sir Henry Brownrigg, director-general of
the Irish constabulary, and a vast body of military
pohce. He swooned, was carried off prisoner to the
Castle of Dublin, and after some confinement was
induced by his young wife— admitted to him with
this design — to save himself, — hve for her and give
evidence against his comrades.
So ended the Irish Eevolution of March 5, 1867. It

THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR AND FENIANISM. 151
was a most absolute fiasco, the result of a systematic
delusion, projected upon the basis of an insurrection
in Ireland at a time when England was at peace,
assisted by forces and arms from America contrary to
the laws of the United States. From the very first
the people in Ireland were deluded with the idea
that the Irish in America were, in fact, an imperium in
imperio — a great and powerful nation with unlimited
resources by sea and land, and ready and willing to
give important material aid in troops and arms, with
the connivance, or even in spite, of the United States
Government. The Irish Americans, on the other hand, were
grossly deceived as to the power and resources of
the revolutionary element in Ireland. When, after
the fatUe attempt had been made and it was discovered
that the American Government had not the slightest
intention to aUow the Fenians to make any hostile
demonstrations, and it was seen that its connivance
was only in consideration of the Irish vote, there came,
in addition to faUure in Ireland, the curse of factious
disunion in America. The Fenian Brotherhood
broke up into a number of cliques, and their various
circles stUl form, under other names, the present
material of Irish revolution. But from the collapse
of Fenianism untU the year 1879 Irish revolutionists
isolated themselves entirely from the public life of

152 THE AMERICAN IRISH.
Ireland. They had failed in their attempt to sever
all political connection with England, and sank once
more into comparative insignificance and oblivion.
In the Home Eule movement they took but httle
interest, and that motley crowd of members of Par
liament who gathered round Mr. Butt after the
general election of 1874 was never in any sense
representative of the " Irish people " as the term was
understood by Stephens.

( 153 )

CHAPTEE V.
THE LAND QUESTION  THE FAITH OF A FELON.
Having now prominently brought into view the senti
mental aspect of Irish nationality on both sides of
the Atlantic, and the efforts of Irish revolutionists
of 1848 and 1865 to bring theu political ambition into
practical operation, it is time to consider what effect
then- views have had upon the most recent phase of
Irish disturbance. HappUy for the historian, the
pohtieian, and the Government, nearly aU the modern
Lrish revolutionists have been journalists. Their
ideas and objects have always been put into shape
and given due publicity, so that those who choose
may trace the origin and advance of aU the most
recent Irish agitations.
The newspaper history of the rise and faU of the
Land League is fresh in the minds of the public,
though probably few know its real origin. There is
nothing new under the sun, and the organization of
the Land League is no exception to the wise man's

154 THE AMERICAN IBISH.
aphorism. Like all other national movements, the
anti-rent agitation and the no-rent combination are
the children of a byegone generation. To James
Fintan Lalor, one of the least known revolutionists
of 1848, the leaders of the Land League owe their
inspiration. Their action was successful because they
received sufficient pecuniary aid from America to
make them formidable at the very moment when, from
reasons best known to themselves, the Enghsh Govern
ment were unwiUing to crush an incipient revolution.
James Fintan Lalor was born at TenakiU in the
Queen's County. He was son of Patrick Lalor, one of
the largest tenant farmers in Ireland and sometime
member of Parliament for his native county, and
father of the present member for Queen's County, Mr.
James Lalor. The Lalors or O'Lalours were one of
the seven septs of Leix, and were transplanted to
Munster by King James I., for the peace of the
English plantation in the Queen's County. On every
rebellion they were found running back to theu
homes, and thus, perhaps, the Lalors of Tenakill came
back to their old neighbourhood.*
From the first, James Fintan Lalor had one grand
* The O'Lalors and O'Moores were in 1609 transplanted by
Chichester from the Queen's County to Kerry, in hopes that they
might there forget their ancient pride and fierceness, and suffer the
English plantation to proceed. They had rebelled eighteen times
against the plantation ordered by Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth,

THE LAND QUESTION. 155
idea upon the land question, which if properly
carried out, he maintained, would revolutionize Ireland
and reconquer the "land for the people." This was,
briefly, the refusal of aU rent and the resistance of
the service of the queen's writs. In 1848, when John
Mitchel parted company with the Nation, and embodied
in the pages of the United Irishman the revolutionary
creed to which he himself fell a victim, he was
anxious to obtain Lalor's service as a writer. The
negotiation miscarried, and Mitchel accordingly ap
propriated Lalor's ideas and used them freely in his
journal. When the United Irishman was suppressed
and Mitchel was transported, a paper called the
Irish Felon was started to carry on the views of the
defunct revolutionary organ, and in the only numbers
which were aUowed circulation by the Government in
June and July, 1848, are to be found in full the
whole programme of the Irish National Land League
of 1879-1882. Lalor had been one of the small band of men who
had broken away from O'Connell and formed the
Irish Confederation. He entirely disbelieved in
Eepeal as a national cry. The measure which he
wished to substitute for the Eepeal of the Union was
and been nearly exterminated. See the articles for the transplanta
tion of th-e seven septs of Leix, signed at MolUn-O'Lalonr upon
St. Patrick's Day, 1608 (Calendar of State Papers of King James I.,
A.D. 1606-1608, by Eev. Dr. Eussell and J. P. Prendergast, page 465).

156 TEE AMEBICAN IBISH.
absolute independence, with abolition of the tenures
by which the lands of Ireland are holden in fee
from the British Crown.
In the first number of the Irish Felon, June 24,
1848, Lalor's first paper appeared, stating the prin
ciples which ought to guide Irish revolutionists in the
future: "The principle I state and mean to stand upon
is this — that the entire ownership of Ireland, moral
and material up to the sun and down to the centre, is
vested of right in the people of Ireland ; that they,
and none but they, are the landowners and lawmakers
of this island; that all laws are null and void not
made by them, and all titles to land invalid not
conferred or confirmed by them; and that this. fuU
right of ownership may and ought to be asserted and
enforced by any and all means which God has put
in the power of man. In other, if not plainer
language, I hold and maintain that the entire soil of
a country belongs of right to the entire people of that
country, and is the rightful property not of any one
class, but of the nation at large, in full effective pos
session, to let to whom they will on whatever tenures,
terms, rent services, and conditions they will; one
condition being, however, unavoidable and essential —
the condition that the tenant shaU bear fuU, true, and
undivided fealty and aUegiance to the nation and the
laws of the nation whose lands he holds, and owe no

THE LAND QUESTION. 157
;iance whatsoever to any other prince, power, or
people, or any obligation of obedience or respect to
their will, orders, or laws.
" I hold further, and firmly believe, that the enjoy
ment by the people of this right of first ownership of
the soU is essential to the vigour and vitality of all
other rights ; to their vahdity, efficacy, and value ;
to their secure possession and safe exercise. . . .
Between the relative merits and importance of the
. two rights, the people's right to the law and their
right to legislation, I do not mean or wish to insti
tute any comparison. I am far indeed from desirous
to put the two rights in competition or contrast, for
I consider each ahke, as the natural complement of
the other, necessary to its theoretical completeness
and practical efficacy. But considering them for a
moment as distinct, I do mean to assert this — that
the land question contains, and the legislative question
does not contain, the materials from ivhich victory is
manufactured ; and that, therefore, if we be truly in
earnest and determined on success, it is on the former
question, and not on the latter, we must take our
stand, fling out our banner, and hurl down to England
our gage of battle. Victory foUows that banner and
no other. This island is ours, and have it we will, if
the leaders be but true to the people, and the people
be true to themselves. . . .

158 TEE AMEBICAN IBISE.
" The rights of property may be pleaded. No one
has a higher respect for the real rights of property
than I have; but I do not class among them the
robber rights by which the lands of this country are
now held in fee from the British Crown. I acknowledge
no right of property in a small class which goes to
abrogate the rights of a numerous people. I ac
knowledge no right of property in eight thousand
persons, be they noble or ignoble, which takes away
all rights of property, security, independence, and ex
istence itself from a population of eight millions, and
stands in bar to aU the political rights of the island
and all the social rights of its inhabitants. I ac
knowledge no right of property which takes the food
of millions and gives them a famine — which denies
to the peasant the right of a home, and concedes in
exchange the right of a workhouse. I deny and
challenge all such rights, however founded or en
forced. I challenge them as founded only in the code
of the brigand, and enforced only by the sanction of
the hangman. Against them I assert the true and
indefeasible right of property — the right of the people
to this land and to possess it ; to Uve in it in comfort,
security, and independence; and to live in it by their
own labour, on their own land, as God and nature
meant them to do. Against them I shaU array, if I
can, all the forces that yet remain in this island.

TEE LAND QUESTION. 159
And against them I am determined to make war, to
then- destruction or my own."
In the second number of the Irish Felon news
paper, July 1, 1848, Lalor printed a paper written
in the last week of the preceding year, which contains
the fuU scheme of revolution propounded by him
for the separation of Ireland from England. It is
impossible to give it in full. After denouncing
O'ConneU's idea of Eepeal as impracticable, in
adequate, incompatible, and absurd, he points out
that a fight against England must be defensive.
" The force of England is entrenched and fortified.
You must draw it out of position ; break up its mass ;
break its trained line of march and manoeuvre, its
equal step and serried array. You cannot organize
or train or discipline your own force to any point
of efiSciency. You must therefore disorganize and
Bntrain and undiscipline that of the enemy ; and
not alone must you unsoldier, you must unofficer it
also ; nullify its tactique and strategy as well as its
discipline ; decompose the science and system of
war, and resolve them into their first elements.
You must make the hostile army a mob, as your
own wUl be; force it to act on the offensive, and
obhge it to undertake operations for which it never
was constructed. Nothing of all this could you do
on Eepeal."

160 TEE AMEBICAN IBISE.
After enunciating these new principles of warfare,
which are easUy recognized as the basis of the
modern Land League operations, 1879-1882, Lalor
goes on to sketch out in some detaU how he would
promote an Irish revolution : — " There is yet another
class of means and mode of force, better founded in
moral right and more efficient in action than either
agitation or mUitary insurrection. Its theory may
be briefly stated as founded on the principle of
natural law . . . that every distinct community or
nation of men is owner of itself, and can never of
right be bound to submit to be governed by another
people. Its practical assertion forms the third mode
of action which this country might have recourse to ;
and consists —
1. In refusal of obedience to usm-ped authority ;
2. In maintaining and defending such refusal of
obedience ;
3. In resisting every attempt to exercise such usurped
authority and every proceeding adopted to en
force obedience ;
4. In taking quiet and peaceable possession of all the
rights and powers of Government, and in pro
ceeding quietly to exercise them ;
5. In maintaining and defending the exercise of such
rights and powers should it be attacked.
"I have thought of a name for this system

TEE LAND QUESTION. 161
of means, and for want of a better I may call it
moral insurrection. The difference between it and
true military insurrection amounts to nothing more,
in practical effect, than the difference between the
defensive and the aggressive use of physical force — a
difference, however, which is often important, whether
as regards moral right or mechanical efficacy. . . .
The practical assertion of the right consists of two
parts —
1. Abohtion of British government.
2. Formation of a national one.
" (1) How would you proceed to accomphsh the
former? By a general refusal to obey the entire
existing law? Impossible. You could not do this
even mentaUy to your own satisfaction; much less
could you do it in actual fact. Or by selecting and
seizing some one particular law to take your stand
upon, trample down, and nuUify ? What law ? Name
it. The law you select for assailing must have four
requisites : — first, it must form no part of the moral
code ; second, it must be essential to Government —
a part of its substance, not a mere accident, the
abrogation of which would be an abrogation of
sovereignty; third, it must be one easily disobeyed,
and, fourth, difficult to enforce — in other words, a law
that would help to repeal itself. There is none such
to serve the purpose of Eepeal. In Ireland, unluckily, M

162 TEE AMEBICAN IRISH.
there is no direct and general State tax, payment
of which might be refused and resisted.
" (2) The second component part of the system —
formation of a national Government — is rendered im
possible by the circumstance that the owners of
the soil are not on your side, and are not Irish, but
English all in blood and feeling."
After some more denunciation of Eepeal, Lalor
proceeds with his programme : — " A revolution is
beginning to begin which wiU leave Ireland without
a people, unless it be met and conquered by a revolu
tion which wUl leave it without landlords. The
operation of this terrible famine wiU turn haM the
smaU tillage farmers, the sole strength and hope
of this island, into mere labourers working for wages.
The operation of the measure of repealing the corn
duties, rendered more sure and speedy by the present
sudden increase of demand for foreign corn, wiU leave
landless the remainder. . . . One move wiU save
checkmate. . . . Strip, then, and bid Ireland strip.
Now or never — if indeed it be not yet too late to
achieve independence. . . . There is, I am convinced,
but one way alone, and that is, link Eepeal to some
other question, like a railway carriage to the engine ;
some question possessing the intrinsic question which
Eepeal wants, and strong enough to carry both
itself and Eepeal together. And such a question

TEE LAND QUESTION. 163
there is in the Land. One ready prepared. Ages have
been preparing it. An engine ready made ; one, too,
that wiU generate its own steam without cost or care
— a self-acting engine, if once the fire be kindled,
and the fuel to kindle, the sparks for the kindling
are everywhere. Eepeal had always to be dragged.
This I speak of wUl carry itself, as the cannon baU
carries itself down the hill."
In the following number of the Irish Felon, July
8, 1848, Lalor concluded his essay — under the
heading " The Faith of a Felon." In this he dis
tinctly lays down the No-rent policy of the past
year. "Years ago," he says, "I perceived that the
Enghsh conquest consisted of two parts combined
into one whole, the conquest of our liberties and the
conquest of our lands. I saw clearly the reconquest
of our hberties would be incomplete and worthless
without the reconquest of our lands — would not
necessarUy involve or produce that of our lands, and
could not, on its own means, be possibly achieved;
whUe the reconquest of our lands would involve the
other, would at least be complete in itself and
adequate to its own purpose, and could possibly, if
not easily, be achieved. The lands were owned by
the conquering race or by traitors of the conquered
race. They were occupied by the native people

164 TEE AMEBICAN IBISH.
or by settlers who had mingled and merged. I
selected as tJie mode of reconquest to refuse payment of
rent and resist process of ejectment."
After regretting that this method of revolution was
not adopted by the Young Ireland party which
formed the Confederation, upon whom Lalor had
pressed it as the only means of effecting a successful
insurrection, he continues —
" The opinions I then stated, and which I yet
stand firm to, are these : 1. That in order to save
their own lives, the occupying tenants of the soU
of Ireland ought next autumn to refuse aU rent and
arrears of rent then due, beyond and except the value
of the overplus of harvest produce remaining in their
hands, after having deducted and reserved a due and
full provision for their own subsistence during the
next twelve months. 2. That they ought to refuse
and resist being made beggars, landless and home
less, under the English law of ejectment. 3. That
they ought further, on principle, to refuse all rent
to the present usurping proprietors (or lords para
mount in legal parlance), untU they have in national
congress or convention decided what rents they are to
pay, and to whom they are to pay them. 4. And
that the people, on grounds of pohcy and economy,
ought to decide that those rents shall be paid
to themselves, the people, for public purposes and

THE LAND QUESTIOi^. 165
,1
for behoof and benefit of them, the entire general
people. "These are the principles, as clearly and fully
stated," continues Lalor, " as limit of time will allow,
which I advise Ireland to adopt at once, and at once
to aim for. Should the people accept and adhere to
them, the English Government will then have to
choose whether to surrender the Irish landlords, or to
support them with the armed power of the empire.
" If it refuse to incur the odium and expense, and
to perU the safety of England in a social war of ex
termination, then the landlords are nobody, the people
are lords of the land, a mighty social revolution is
accomplished, and the foundations of a national revolu
tion surely laid. If it should, on the other hand,
determine to come to the rescue and relief of its
garrison, elect to force their rents and enforce their
rights by infantry, cavalry, and cannon, and attempt
to lift and carry the whole harvest of Ireland- — a
somewhat heavy undertaking, which might become
a hot one too — then I, at least, for one, am prepared
to bow with a humble resignation to the dispensations
of Providence. Welcome be the will of God. We
must only try to keep our harvest, to offer a peaceful
passive resistance, to barricade the island, to break
up the roads, to break down the bridges ; and should
need be and favourable occasion occur, surely we may

166 THE AMEBICAN IRISH.
venture to try the steel. Other approved modes of
moral resistance might gradually be added to these,
according as we should become trained to the
system; and all combined, I imagine, and well
worked, might possibly task the strength and break
the heart of the empire. Into artistic detaUs,
however, I need not and do not choose to enter
for the present.
"It has been said to me that such a war, on the
principles I propose, would be looked on with
detestation by Europe. I assert the contrary. I
say such a war would propagate itself throughout
Europe. Mark the words of this prophecy: the
principle I proposed goes to the foundations of
Europe, and sooner or later will cause Europe to
outrise. Mankind will yet be masters of the earth.
The right of the people to make the laws ; this
produced the first great modern earthquake, whose
latest shocks even now are heaving in the heart of
the world. The right of the people to own the land ;
this will produce the next. Train your hands and
your sons' hands, gentlemen of earth, for you and
they wUl yet have to use them. I want to put
Ireland foremost, in the van of the world, at the
head of the nations; to set her aloft in the blaze
of the sun, and to make her for ages the loadstar
of history. WiU she take the path I point out — the

THE LAND QUESTION. 167
path to be free and famed and feared and followed,
the path that goes sunward ? Or onward to the end
of time wUl wretched Ireland ever come limping and
lagging hindmost ? "
That question has been answered in the year
1880, and the path that James Fintan Lalor pointed
out has been found at present to lead to the jail, and
not to glory. How his programme was carried out
by another generation of conspirators, I will narrate
in a succeeding chapter.

168 TEE AMERICAN IBISE.

CHAPTEE VI.
the land question — continued.
Such were the doctrines of James Fintan Lalor upon
the land question in 1848. They were fully adopted
in the next great revolutionary movement in Ireland
in principle, but Stephens only looked upon the land
question as a matter to be decided when the great
battle of Irish independence had been fought and
won. Lalor, on the other hand, from the first saw
that the land was the most effective weapon to win
that battle, and his remarkable scheme, excavated
from its obscurity in America ' and worked by the
Land League, has, in fact, brought the whole
question of the Eepeal of the Union once more
before the world. A well-known Irish lawyer,* a
Cathohc and formerly a member of Parliament,
used to say, with Attic point, there were three
questions in Ireland— the church question, the educa
tion question, and the land question. " The Irish
» The late Vincent Scully, Q.C., M.P.

THE LAND QUESTION. 169
Church," he used to say, "is the English question,
as being an admitted wrong in politics ; the Irish
education question is the Eoman question, as being
that which most interested the Church of Eome ;
but the Irish land question is the Irish question."
The theories of Lalor, and the success with which
they have hitherto been attended, would seem to
corroborate this remark. Diuing the Fenian times,
it is quite certain that the possession of land was
held out as a bait to the populace to become secret
revolutionary brethren, and the writing in the Irish
People, the organ established by Stephens for the
purpose of imbuing the masses with the principles
of revolution, coincided entirely with aU Lalor wrote.
The Irish People was first published in December,
1863, and ran with extraordinary success until it was
seized and suppressed in the summer of 1865. The
effect produced by its plain, pointed writing was
quite unequaUed in the annals of revolutionary
joumaUsm. In a short time it was very clear that,
for the first time in the history of Ireland, the masses
were urged to give their clergy the go-by, and depend
upon their own efforts in the cause of " liberty, fra
ternity, and equahty." * Though treating the land
* " Superstition is fast yielding to common sense in this country.
. . Experience proves that submission to certain Irish bishops in
political matters is equivalent to slavery. . . . With reflection this

170 TEE AMEBICAN IBISE.
question as outside the region of revolution, it was
used for the purpose of inflaming the passions of the
people against the landed gentry, precisely as it has
been used during the past two years. A few extracts
are sufficient to show this ; e.g. :
"They are but given some sparks of the sacred
fire of '98, and, lo, the whole is all ablaze. . . . We
now know that this island through and through is
ours — the Irish People's, and that, being ours by right,
it is our duty to make it so in fact." — Irish People,
December 5, 1863.
" It is territorial magnates of the British empire
who are the grand obstacle in the path of Ireland's
prosperity, and never, till they and the accursed
land laws which in their own interest they have
enacted are swept clean away, and the land restored
to its rightful proprietors, the Irish people, wiU there
be an end of those horrors which have astonished
truth comes, that the priesthood have a right to enforce obedience
on their flocks only so far as spiritual matters are concerned." — Irish
People, May 14, 1864.
" Can any one, save a knave or a fool, deny the malignant and
persistent hostility of most of the clergy to the national cause since
'48 ?"— Irish People, June 4, 1864.
" Pulpit Denunciations and Peiests in Politics. — Now it is
declared a mortal sin to read the Irish People. . . . Was not John
Mitchel drawn to declare that there was no hope for Ireland till her
whole people should be excommunicated with bell, book, and candle ?
'Tis an old story. We ought to have it by heart long ago." — Irish
People, September 24, 1864.

TEE LAND QUESTION. 171
the nations. . . . The land is the real reason why
the flow of the Irish race are rushing across the
Atlantic."— July 2, 1864.
" Who are the rightful owners of the soil ? The
people. . . . Throughout all we see one grand system
of injustice and oppression constantly at work. . . .
It is a system which, in its least repulsive aspects,
compels thousands and tens of thousands to fret
and toU, and live and die, in hunger and rags
and wretchedness, that a few useless drones may
revel in indolence and luxury. . . . Such a system
is accursed alike of man and of God, and our country
never wUl possess an hour's prosperity or peace tUl
it is swept away, root and branch." — July 9, 1864.
" It wiU be admitted on all hands that labour
must he at the very foundation of those rights [of
property]. Land is the great raw material out of
which everything valuable to supply man's neces
sities, and to minister to his enjoyments, is originally
extracted. It is the inheritance of no privileged class,
but of the entire community, and should be parceUed
out by the State on such terms as are most con
ducive to protect and to promote the interests of all.
This simple principle strikes at once at the very root
of that enormous evil caUed territorial landlordism,
which, like some huge poison tree, has for so many
centuries cursed other European lands, as well as our

172 TEE AMEBICAN IRISE.
own, with its deadly and destructive shadow."* — July
30, 1864.
"I To permit a privileged class, either alien or
native, to possess a monopoly of the soU of any
country is an intolerable evil. Its continued enforce
ment is neither more nor less than a constant robbery
by the rich and powerful of the laborious earnings of
the poor and helpless. . . . The land is the property
of the people. — Ibid.
" ' Ireland foe the Irish.' — Every man has one
simple object to accomphsh. It is to rid the land of
robbers, and to render every cultivator of the soU his
own landlord, the proprietor, in fee simple, of the
house and land of his father, which wiU be an inherit
ance worth a freeman's whUe to bequeath to his
children, and worth the children's whUe to enjoy in
a nation which bows to no power under heaven." —
September 17, 1864.
Notwithstanding these appeals to agrarian revolu
tion, it was not long before the older Irish agricul
turist was once more peaceably inclined, for no
occupation implants so speedy and effectual a love of
peace and order as husbandry and tillage of the soU.
Wars are, in truth, as much the detestation of farmers
as of mothers. Moreover, the local leaders of the
* Observe the curious resemblance to Mr. Gladstone's celebrated
metaphor of the upas tree in connection with Irish grievances.

TEE LAND QUESTION. 173
Fenian revolution had fled the country, terrified by
the energy of the Government and the treason of their
associates, so that fifteen more years had to elapse
(the allotted period for the ripening of a revolution)
before a new generation sprang into existence eager
for the excitement of another national movement.
Legislation stepped in at a moment when it was
thought advisable to attempt some settlement of
Irish affairs, although the manner in which the
electioneering campaign was carried on must always
be regarded as dangerous when read by the hght of
recent events.
When canvassing for the power to rule in 1868,
Mr. Gladstone recommended himself by asserting that
Ireland must be governed by Irish ideas. He de
clared that the Protestant Church of Ireland, the
land of Ireland (meaning the proprietorial right of
the land), and the education of Ireland were all
branches of a pestUential Upas tree, to which he
gave the name of "Protestant ascendency," being, in
fact, English ascendency. He caUed upon the Pro
testant people of England to put down this Protestant
ascendency, teUing them that he and his party were
banded together to make war upon that system,
namely, upon the Protestant ascendency in the
Church, in the land, and on the education. Mr.
Bright, at Limerick in the same year, enlarged upon

174 TEE AMERICAN IRISE.
the method of lopping the Land branch, and held it
up as a grievance to the " people of Ireland " that
eight-ninths of the land belonged to Protestants.
Such language, so closely resembling that of the Irish
revolutionists themselves, * was not calculated to
aUay the anti-English feelings which had been so
successfuUy excited and sustained by the Fenian
writers. But the Church Act and Land Act of 1870
were passed, and Ireland became apparently tranquil,
and her inhabitants outwardly peaceable.
How different the effect of failure on the Irish-
American mind ! Stung to desperation by defeat,
goaded into a vindictive desire for revenge, with their
leaders in prison and their highest hopes blasted, the
Fenian brotherhood set about some new scheme for the
future regeneration of their mother country, forgetful
of the change which had come over the minds of
the Irish at home. They had but to begin over
again. Ireland stiU, as ever, gave opportunity of
mischief, and defeat and detection were only looked
upon by the buccaneering leaders as a fresh pretext
for renewed hatred against the name of England.
For this reason it was more important than ever that
civil combination should go hand in hand with the
military organization of the Fenian brotherhood.
Accordingly, an alliance was made with what is
* See Irish People, July 30, 1864.

TEE LAND QUESTION. 175
known in America as the Labour party. News
papers were started in the interests of the most
Eadical of the democratic political section. The
cause of the Irish tenants was identified with the
cause of American labom-, and Fenianism joined
hands with the most violent advocates of revolution
aU over the world.

176 ^TEE AMERICAN IBISE.

CHAPTEE VII.
the revolution.
Between 1870 and 1878 a vast propaganda of
American ideas had been imported, quietly and regu
larly, into Ireland. The American-Irish refugees soon
became owners of a newspaper called the Irish World,
which had been first projected by Mr. W. E. Eobinson,
of Brooklyn, and now member of Congress for that
city, but which soon became the property of the most
violent section of the Fenian party. They watched
very closely the affairs at home, and waited patiently
for a moment when another blow could be struck at
the power of England.
With the Home Eule movement the Fenians had
but little sympathy, and the character of the asso
ciation founded for the advancement of Home Eule
was of so complex a description that aU its com
ponent parts, all the various interests and influences
which projected it, wUl not probably be known until

TEE BEVOLUTION. 177
a futm-e generation has arisen. But we may be cer
tain of this, that the Fenians were not unrepresented
in it. FederaUsts, Nationalists, Eepealers, Tenant-
righters— all these had theu advocates openly amongst
the motley crowd that obtained seats under the
generalship of Mr. Butt at the ballot-boxes of the
General Election of 1874. We may rest assured, and
the event has proved how true the fact is, that the
Fenian party in America have been secretly repre
sented in Parhament, and that their representatives
have done good service for the cause of which John
Mitchel, James Stephens, and Michael Davitt are the
brightest ornaments.
It may be doubted whether the Home Eule move
ment was in reahty looked upon by the bulk of the
people with any real interest. It is quite different
with the land question. Here was a subject that
came home to them with peculiar force ; it was at
their very doors ; and to hear theories which held out
hopes of changing mere teniue into actual ownership
was a terrible temptation to throw common sense to
the winds, and join an agitation with so delightful
and beneficial an aim.
But the Irish World for many years advocated
nothing but physical force. The writers of it had all
been victims of EngUsh law, and had suffered pains
and penalties in various degrees for different crimes,
N

178 TEE AMEBICAN IBISE.
from treason-felony to seducing the queen's soldiers
from their allegiance.
From its foundation in 1870, up to 1879, one of the
principal features of the newspaper was the " National
Fund," formed for the purposes of "skirmishing"
against the power of England. The following head
ings were always standing in a j)rominent position : —
" The National Fund.
" MAXIMS FOR skirmishers.
"Humane W.4Rfare. — The shortest, swiftest, and
cheapest warfare — that which does the greatest
material damage to the enemy with the least loss of
life to either side — is the most humane warfare.
"A Common-sense View op It. — The first and last
thing to be considered in war is SUCCESS. Every act
that looks to this end is justifiable and honourable.
Do nothing in bad blood, nothing in pure malice.
But every act likely to inflict material damage on
England and give strength and prestige to the Irish
cause — every act that will open England's eyes and
make her feel that it does not PAY to hold Ireland —
will be approved by common sense. The Irish leader
who does not keep this principle in sight should
abdicate his leadership.
"Ireland and America. — 'The wrongs of which

TEE BEVOLUTION. 179
America had to complain (in 1776) were but mos
quito bites by the side of the enormous injuries which
had been inflicted by English selfishness on the trade
and manufactures of L-eland. Why was Ireland to
submit when America was winning admuation by
resistance ? Why, indeed, save that America was in
earnest ; the Irish were not.' — Froude.
'• England's Mode of Warfare. — What is it ? Ask
the biographer of Cromwell. Ask the Kookas of
India. Ask the signers of the Declaration of Inde
pendence. Listen : — ' She has plundered our seas,
ravaged om- coasts, BUENT CUE TOWNS, and
destroyed the lives of our people.' This is the testi
mony of the men of '76. Ask the American historian
of the war of 1812. Ask the Ashantees how England
made war upon them. Ask every unfortunate people
upon whom England has ever breathed her unwhole
some breath, and in whose midst her ruffian soldiery
have planted her robber flag. The answer is all the
same. " Justice, not Vengeance. — Peace is the natural
and proper state of man. No rational being ever
yet wanted war for war's own sake. The men who
originated the Skirmishing Movement are lovers of
Peace. Whatever villifiers may say to the contrary,
this is the truth. But Peace, to be enduring, must
have its foundation in Eight and Justice. Such is

180 TEE AMEBICAN IBISE.
not the 'peace of Warsaw.' Now, the question is r
Does England in sincerity desire Peace ? If she does
she can have it. Let her but restore their plundered
rights to the Irish people to-morrow, and there is an
end to it. All iU-feehng shall be put away. Not a
word more shall ever be said of her seven centuries of
crimes. If we cannot forget, we shall at least en
deavour to forgive, the past. It is not Vengeance we
seek: it is JUSTICE."
Meanwhile, however, had arisen a new schism
amongst the Irish in America. In 1878 a party arose
who had read James Fintan Lalor's ideas in the
Irish Felon, and who had formed a scheme to carry
them into effect. Michael Davitt, who was enjoying
the freedom which the Government had given him as
a convict on a ticket of leave, and John Devoy,
formerly an active Fenian agent in seducing English
soldiers from their allegiance, were the men who
inaugurated what they called a " new departure in
National politics," and having secured the co-operation
of the Irish World as their organ in the press, and
the approval of the leaders of the Boston Irish, they
proceeded at once to set on foot the third and last
attempt to effect such an Irish Eevolution as was
foreshadowed by Lalor, the rebel of 1848. Davitt, at
the latter end of 1878, delivered a lecture in Boston
detailing his plan to the Irish in America, and im-

TEE BEVOLUTION. 181
mediately left for Ireland. Devoy wrote a letter to
the FrecTnan's Journal, dated from New York,
December 11, 1878, containing a full account of the
proposed agitation, and the policy which was in
future to guide the Irish revolutionists.*
The plan laid down was simply to honeycomb the
provinces with organized bodies of men, the exact
counterpart of the Fenian Brotherhood, but with
none of its secresy. Ireland, in fact, was to be
governed by a large number of small land centres,
under the command of a supreme vigUance com
mittee, and the object in view was to depreciate the
value of property, to drive the owners of that property
out of the country by " constitutional" agitation and
exasperation, and finally, to obtain possession of the
soU of Ireland in whatever way time and circum
stances might point out. " The land should be owned
by those who tiU the soil," that was the banner of the
new agitation.
The policy of the agitation was founded exactly
upon the principles laid down by Lalor. It was to
be carried out within the hmits of existing law. The
whole essence of it was that the Irish Nationalists,
who had hitherto abjured aU methods but the sword,
"¦ The letter was republished in the Dublin Nation, of the 4th of
January, 1879, and the full text is also to be found in the appendix
of "The Irish Agitator," Svo (Hodges, Foster, Figgis & Co., Dublin).

182 TEE AMERICAN IRISE.
should take part in the ordinary political life of
Ireland. The object aimed at was stated to be the
recovery Qf Ireland's national independence, and the
severance of aU political connection with England;
and to gain this the whole energies, the best intellect,
the financial forces, and the physical strength of the
nation were to be enlisted. Most of the individuals
responsible for the "new departure" were not only
ineligible to Parliament by being convicts or ticket-
of-leave men, but also incapable, on conscientious
grounds, of taking the Parliamentary oath.
But this mattered little. The revolutionists be
hoved there were good men enough in the country, not
bound by pledges, who could be trusted to play the
revolutionary game in Parliament, and who would not
hesitate to adopt a bold policy. That such has proved
to be the case is sufficiently evident. But the most
important point in the new policy was the declaration
of an organized, steady, and persistent effort to get
possession of the local bodies throughout Ireland.
The municipal bodies, the boards of guardians, the
farmers, and tenant clubs, all these were to be
honeycombed with revolution ; and with the majority
of these in their possession, the leaders of the move
ment believed they could do much of which in
January, 1879, they could scarcely dream. With the
municipal bodies, and with men of spirit and deter-

THE BEVOLUTION. 183
mination as Parliamentary representatives, backed by
the country and by miUions of the Irish race all over
the world, there would be no necessity to go to London
either to beg or to obstruct, and Irish Nationalists
would have no more " Tallaghts," or cabbage gardens,
flung in their faces. Home Eule on Mr. Butt's federal
plans was dismissed as absurd.
Simple repeal would restore the Irish House of
Lords — an intolerable notion to those who could not
even endure landlords. The only plan worthy of sup
port was to form a common platform which would bind
aU who advocate " self-government," withholding a
definition of that word until the country itself should
speak in a manner to command the aUegiance of all.
So much for the new scheme for a coalition of Irish
parties. By far the most important part of the
manifesto, in view of the land-and-labour agitation,
which it preceded, was the section upon the land
question. "No party or combination of parties in Ireland,"
declared the manifesto, "can ever hope to win the
support of the majority of the people except it honestly
proposes a radical reform of the land system. No matter
what may be said in favour of individual landlords,
the whole system was founded on robbery and fraud,
and has been perpetuated by cruelty, injustice, ex
tortion, and hatred of the people. The men who got

184 TEE AMEBICAN IBISE.
small farms in the time of confiscation settled down
in the country, and their descendants, no matter what
their political party, are now ' bone of our bone ' —
have become Irish— and perform a useful function in
the land. No one thinks of disturbing them.
" If the landlords had become Irish, and treated the
people with humanity, the original robbery might be
forgiven^though a radical change in the tenure of
land must come of itself some day; but when, as a
class, they have simply done England's work of rooting
out the Irish people ; when the history of landlordism
is simply a dark story of heartless cruelty, of artificial
famines, of evictions, of rags and squalid misery,
there is no reason why we should forget that the
system was forced upon us by England, and that the
majority of the present landlords are the inheritors
of the robber horde sent over by Elizabeth and
James I., by Cromwell and William of Orange, to
garrison the country for England. It is the interest
of Ireland that the land should be owned by those
WHO TILL THE SOIL, and this could be reached without
even inflicting hardship on those who deserve no
leniency at the hands of the Irish people. A solution
of the Land Question has been reached, to a large
extent, in France, in Prussia, and in Belgium, by
enabling the occupiers to purchase their holdings.
Let THE Irish landlords be given a last chance op

TEE REVOLUTION. 185
SETTLING THE IrISH LaND QUESTION AMICABLY IN THIS
MANNER, OR WAIT FOR A SOLUTION IN WHICH THEY SHALL
HAVE NO PART.
" Let a beginning be made with the absentees, the
Enghsh lords and the London companies who had
stolen iand in Ii-eland, and there will be enough of
work for some years to come. Let evictions be
stopped at aU hazards, and the rooting-out process
come to an end. But I shall be told the English
Parliament wUl never do any of these things. Then,
I say, these things must only wait tiU an Irish Par
liament can do them better ; but in the mean time
good work wiU have been done, sound principles in
culcated, and the country aroused and organized.
" To those who are alarmed at language like this,
in regard to the Land Question, I would say, ' Look
at France, at Prussia, and Belgium, and you will find
that the secret of their prosperity hes in the numbers
of the tUlers of the soU who own their holdings.
Listen to the mutterings of the coming storm in
England, and ask yourselves what is going to become
of the land monopoly after a few more years of com
mercial or manufacturing depression — a depression
sure to continue, because the causes of it are on the
increase. " The English are a very practical and very selfish
people, and will not let any fine sentiment stand in

186 TEE AMERICAN IRISE.
the way when they think it is their interest to redis
tribute the land. What, may I ask, would become of
the Irish landlords — especiaUy the rack-renting, evict
ing ones — in case of a social convulsion in England ?
It is a question which they themselves must decide
within the next few years. With them or without
them the question will be settled before long, and
many who now think the foregoing assertions ex
travagant, will consider them very moderate indeed
by-and-by." Here then was the engine ready made to hand,
which would generate its own steam, and to which was
to be hereafter linked the question of separation from
England. The fire was kindled by Davitt in the
manner advocated by Lalor, and he found the sparks
for the first kindling in the west of Ireland.
For some months, whUe the Home Eule party was
luxuriating in the pleasures of private quarrels and
public discussions, Davitt was busily engaged in
taking up the broken threads of the old Fenian con
spiracy, and organizing the new departure in Irish
practical politics. Mayo was the scene of his first
labours. Here he was born. Here he was certain of
a cu-cle of friends, all ready and willing to engage
in the quasi-open combination against the owners of
property. Had he not at his back another ex-
political prisoner, a Fenian gentleman of distinction.

TEE REVOLUTION. 187
who boasted that he had had not only the honour
of a seat in Parliament, but also the far greater
honour of a seat on a wooden stool in an English
prison — Mr. O'Connor Power, the member for Mayo ?
This, then, was the field for Davitt's efforts, and the
result amply justified his expectations.
Lalor himself could not have desired better
material than had Davitt ready to his hand. From
1877 to 1879 there had been a marked decrease in
the growth of the staple crop of potatoes.* The
losses of those three years, in potatoes alone, were
valued at £10,286,000, and in Connaught especially
was this particularly felt. The population of that
province consists in a very large measure of migra
tory labourers, a class almost peculiar to Ireland, and
these men had felt keenly the loss of employment as
harvestmen in England. For years the men of
Connaught had been reaping golden harvests forr
themselves and their English employers, journeying;
to and fro between England and Ireland. As long
as wages were good, and there was English capital to
employ Connaught labour, there was no murmuring '
heard in the west, no mutterings of the "land for the
people." And this notwithstanding bad crops and
bad climate since 1877. But directly the stream of
English cash ceased coursing into the pockets of the
» See Thorn's Directory, 1880, p. 694.

188 TEE AMERICAN IRISE.
migratory Connaught men, it became evident the
outlook was almost hopeless. The realization of
the stoppage of English wages first became apparent
in March, 1879. It is in that month the Irish of
Connaught begin to leave for England, and the flow
of them goes on gradually increasing week after week,
more or less, according to the accounts sent home of
the extent of employment. Bad news came back
very quickly, and we now know that the men of
Mayo had the first presage of their fate in March,
and were fully aware of it in June.
During the whole of that time, Davitt was busily
engaged in organizing the western masses, upon
whom he depended to give the initial velocity to his
agitation. The cry of distress and destitution was
first raised where there was much real need and
misery. Connaught had, from time immemorial,
presented scenes of poverty and wretchedness, which
had shocked the world, and from time to time had
invited the sympathy and assistance of all nations.
For the first time the condition of that province
was to be made the stepping-stone to another Irish
revolution. The scheme was well devised and carried out.
While Davitt was organizing in the provinces, the
active Parliamentary party were engaged in obtaining
their first object, the final dismissal of Mr. Butt, who

TEE REVOLUTION. 189
had long been a stumbling-block to their new
pohcy of obstruction. This was obtained by the
action of Mr. John DiUon in the Home Eule League.
The next thing was to win over to the actual
Fenian party (which at this time consisted, as far
as I can gather from facts, principally of Messrs.
Davitt, DiUon, and O'Connor Power) the advanced
obstructionists, Messrs. ParneU, O'Donnell, Biggar,
and A. M. SuUivan.
That for a long time Mr. ParneU was unwUling
to accept the present crusade against landlords as
a solution of the land question is evident by his
speeches. His idea seems to have been to conduct
an agitation in England. As late as the 17th of
AprU, 1879, he held back, but soon after that date
he gave in his adhesion to the new policy. On
the 20th of April the first fruits of Davitt's organi
zation became evident in the meeting at Irishtown,
County Mayo, where the speakers were, as might be
expected, Messrs. Daly, Brennan (of subsequent
fame), and O'Connor Power, M.P. From this date
the anti-rent agitation commenced to spread through
out the country, and soon displayed signs of how
deeply laid and how admirably organized the system
was. The great end in view, from the very com
mencement of the plot, was to arouse the worst
feeling of the agricultural population against the

190 THE AMEBICAN IBISE.
landlords. To bUnd the public, however, and espe
cially the landlords, the ostensible reasons at first
thrown out for the anti-rent agitation were the agri
cultural distress and the fears of a bad harvest, which
was dexterously and emphatically prophesied.
But soon the mask was thrown off ; the true key
note of the new revolutionary conspiracy was boldly
struck, and the motto at every extreme land meeting
in the west was the "Land for the people." The
cry was taken up throughout Ireland. Mr. Parnell
stoutly preached the doctrine of repudiation of con
tract, and advocated the disestablishment and dis-
endowment of the landlord classes, loudly and ably
assisted by Michael Davitt. As the movement grew
stronger and stronger, ecclesiastical influence was
boldly and openly resisted on the public platform,
and the whole agitation culminated in the foundation
by Davitt of the enormous vigilance committee, known
under the name of the National Land League, and
the resolutions of the National Convention Committee,
deciding to assemble in the course of a year a national
convention of the Irish people.
Such was the commencement of the anti-landlord
agitation in Ireland. In Parliament the obstruc
tionists attracted the eyes of the world upon themselves
for one purpose only, to gain power and influence
with the Irish people during the forthcoming agitation

TEE REVOLUTION. 191
and general election. Ably assisted outside the walls
of the House of Commons, the energy, the ability, the
determination of the Irish agitators has no parallel
almost in modern politics. In England, Scotland,
and Ireland they spoke and wrote with surprising
vigour and unceasing assiduity. Eagerly accepting
help from any one and every one, the moderate
Home Euler and the ambitious English Whig, eager
for a seat in Parliament, alike fell a prey to their
unscrupulous machinations. Messrs. Davitt and Co.
were going a longer journey than most L-ish politi
cians, but they would be glad of the company of any
public man, no matter how short the distance might
be for which they travelled together. There was a
smaU inner band of devotees who had determined to
push the plot against the owners of land in Ireland,
no matter who accompanied them. The people were
at then- back in the west, and they hoped soon to
have sufficient propagandists to infect the whole
country. MeanwhUe the Irish World did good work in the
press, sending vast quantities of inflammable matter
into Ireland. If any one during the last ten years
had taken the trouble to go down to the Kingsbridge
terminus, Dublin, and awaited the arrival of the
American maU, he would have seen (as I have) large
bales landed on the platforms ; and if he had had a

192 TEE AMERICAN IBISE.
Fenian friend beside him, and had asked him, "What
do those bales contain?" he would have answered
with a wmk, "Light! Light! Light!" and would
have whispered the watchword, " Spread the light."
On further investigation it would have been found
that these bales were copies of the Irish World in
thousands. The following passage, published in the
issue of August 30, 1879, is a good specimen of its
tone and matter : —
"The Good Work.
" So far as the scope of our observation extends,
there has never yet been a time in the history of
Irish Eevolutionary organizations when the men
consecrated to the Liberation of their Motherland
were more zealous in the cause, more harmonious in
council, more intelligently active, less solicitous for
' leadership,' or more animated by a profound sense
of duty in the prosecution to a final and successful
issue of the holy work — is it not a holy work ? — which
they have now in hand.
"And for this most satisfactory state of things
three names— John Devoy, John J. Breslin, and Dr.
Carroll — deserve especial thanks.
" Ireland has other good and excellent sons work
ing faithfully in her cause ; but these three men —
Carroll, Breslin, and Devoy — impress us as men

TEE BEVOLUTION. 193
that have made a covenant, each with himself, to
sink aU other considerations, and to render every
purpose entirely subservient to this one aspiration of
their existence.
"Never did we feel more confident than now of the
ultimate success of Ireland's standard.
"And what we rest our solid hope upon is the
fact that a good beginning has been made.
" 'First know you're right,' was the sensible advice
of Sam Slice, ' then go ahead ! '
" The Irish Eevolution at last looks in the
SIGHT direction.
" Fenianism saw only a Green Flag — a very good
thing in its place, but not the only thing needed by
the Irish people.
" The men of to-day have discovered there is
SUCH A THING AS LaND, AND THAT EVERY MAN BORN INTO
THE WORLD WITHIN THE SEA-GIRT MARGIN OF IRELAND HAS
AN inalienable right to a man's share of that Land.
"FxTBt Light, then Action. This is the programme
of our day."
The theory of no-rent was also industriously
circulated in the foUowing manner : —
" The Secret of Slavery."
" The reader wiU please bear in mind the ground
which we have gone over up to this time. Usury

194 TEE AMEBICAN IBISE.
covers every transaction among men where the income
of an individual is not exactly measured by a labour
service rendered. "land usury.
" We first considered the subject of Eent, where
the individual claiming the proprietorship of lands
and houses secures an income for which he renders
no labour equivalent. After giving the rentier a fair
and complete hearing, I showed him to be a robber,
living in luxury on the toil of usefiU people, and
armed by statute law with infinite capacities for
plunder. " Please label Eent in this analysis of slavery as
land usury. "money usury.
" The next division of incomes-without-work we
have considered under the head of Interest. When
barter was supplanted by certificates or tokens of
indebtedness known as money, the proprietor per
petuated his plunder by claiming the right to levy
on labour, by virtue of owning the land representa
tive (money). In this claim he is perfectly consistent,
if you concede his original claim to ownership in the
8oU. The original act of plunder, if acquiesced in,
sanctions the rest. Any man who does not believe

TEE BEVOLUTION. 195
in interest, and yet admits the right of property in
God's soU, knocks down his own house.
" Please label Interest, the second great form of
industrial plunder, as money usury.

"trade usury.
"We now come to the third and last great form
of usury, known as speculative profits. Land usury
is a despotic levy on labour by virtue of ' owning '
what is generally caUed real property. Money usury
is an immoral and imwarranted levy, by virtue of
owning the circulating medium, which may represent
aU things. Speculative Profits is a levy by virtue
of owning and controUing the multitude of things
which circulate in trade.
"Please label, then, this last form of plunder
.as trade usury.
"We have then these three comprehensive forms
of Usiuy, viz. Land Usury, Money Usury, and Trade
Usury. Every kind of income which is not secured
by honest labour may be traced to one or the other,
or aU of these three pUlars, on which the Temple of
Mammon is bmlt.
" This trinity of iniquity, in its entirety, is what
I mean by Usury. A complete understanding of the
vast and comphcated machinery by which the triune

196 THE AMEBICAN IRISH.
engine of spoliation is kept in murderous motion, is
the real SECEET OF SLAVEEY."
This is the stream of journalism from which
Michael Davitt has drawn those theories of land
and labom- which he has been so industriously pro
pagating. Towards the end of the year 1879, the schemes
of the revolutionists became more and more obvious.
First, they had extended the cry of distress amounting
to famine from Connaught to the whole of the island,
demanding for this reason a general reduction of rent.
Next they proceeded to demand the abolition of those
whose right it is to claim rent; then they denied
the obligation of all rent : the land was made by God
for the people, and they who tilled and occupied it
should alone be the owners.
At the end of October, Davitt's language grew
so violent that Government engaged short-hand re
porters to attend the Land League meetings, which
hitherto had been everywhere held on Sundays in the
open air. Archbishop McHale avowedly expressed
his disapproval of the violent, defiant, and unconsti
tutional language of the speakers, and his condem
nation was supported by other Catholic prelates.
But the action of the clergy was totally unheeded.
At Galway, on the 2nd of November, Mr. ParneU made
a very plain statement as to the object of the

TEE REVOLUTION. 197
agitation. He carefully explained that the strike
against rent, and the refusal to take farms from
which tenants were evicted, were merely means to
an end, and that end was the compulsory sale of all
landlord property in the land of Ireland. The main
object was, that by the due exercise of terrorism,
combined with a wholesale repudiation of contract,
nobody would finaUy come forward to purchase the
lands of which the tenants were occupiers. Then
the Sm-plus Church Fund was to be taken, the
landlords bought out at a ruinous loss, and the
tenants rooted in the soil. This effected, Lalor's
prediction that a "mighty social revolution would
be accomplished, and the foundations of a national
revolution surely laid," might almost be said to be
within reach of verification.
But on the very day that Mr. Parnell gave a
sketch of his programme, the Government had de
cided to take instant steps to quell the revolutionary
agitation. On November 19th, DubUn and Sligo
were aroused by the news that Messrs. Davitt, Daly,
and KiUen had been arrested on charges of having
made use of seditious language at Giuteen on
November 2nd. Thus ended the first chapter of the
opening revolution.

198 TEE AMERICAN IRISE.

CHAPTEE VIII.
MR. PAENELL IN AMEEICA.
At the time when Davitt, KiUen, and Daly were
arrested, the L-ish National Land League was in its
infancy, without funds, without fame, and without
a secure foundation. In order to get into his own
hands the reins of the revolution, Davitt now de
termined upon destroying the only other existing
popular organization, viz. the Central Tenants
Defence Association, whose motto had been always
"The Three F's." A meeting was held, and it was
determined that the old association should be merged
in the new, and that the National Land League,-
hitherto only a Western Vigilance Committee, should
embrace the whole country, be permanently fixed in
Dublin, and form the head-quarters of the new
organization. This being done, it was decided that Mr. Par
nell should start on a tour in America, while the
remainder of his party should devote their energies.

MR. PARNELL IN AMERICA. 199
to stumping the English cities to gain the Irish
vote at the forthcoming election, and should quietly
extend the Land League organization in Ireland.
The pubhc attention at the end of 1879 was very
much occupied with the distressed condition of cer
tain portions of L-eland. No less than three funds
were started for the relief of Irish distress — the
Mansion House Fund, the Duchess of Marlborough's
Fund, and the Nciv York Herald Fund. To these
Mr. ParneU added a fourth, a Land League Fund,
when he arrived in America in January, 1880.
It was quite evident from the first that Mr. Parnell's
mission in America was a mixed one, partly charitable
but chiefly pohtical. He had the best information
from Davitt of the feeling of the Irish-American
population upon the subject of a new revolutionarj^
movement, and it was only necessary for him to
make a torn- of the crowded eastern cities and
dehver a number of speeches to ensure an en'ihusi-
astic reception. He not only did this, but carried
out his campaign with Mr. Dillon much farther
west, and everywhere the Irish in America received
the Irish representatives with the highest honour
and enormous demonstrations. In many of Mr.
ParneU's speeches we find aUusions to the question
of Irish nationality, which undoubtedly must have
had a great effect upon the masses of his audiences.

200 TEE AMERICAN IRISE.
to whom, as I have already pointed out, the subject
came home with the highest possible interest. For
instance, at Cleveland, on January 26, 1880, he is
thus reported : —
"I have said that we are fighting this battle
against heavy odds. I have also said that we feel
confident of winning it. It has given me great
pleasure during my visit to the cities of this country
to see the armed regiments of Irishmen who have
frequently turned out to escort us ; and when I saw
some of these gallant men to-day, who are even now
in this hall, I thought that each one of them must
wish with Sarsfield of old, when dying upon a foreign
battle-field, ' 0 that I could carry these arms for
Ireland ! ' (Great applause.) Well, it may come to
THAT SOME DAY OR OTHER."
Again, at Pittstown on February 16 : —
" 'I wish here to remark, and I am proud to say it,
that almost the first contribution that reached Ireland
from any quarter before I came over, was £51 sent •
froni.your little city, January 6. You have given
largely of your means, but if you help to keep these
people alive through the winter, we shall kill the
cursed Land System. (Cheers.) !I promise on our
side to fight this battle as pluckily as you can wish.\
(Loud applause.) Up to this time, the Landlords
and Government have failed to give assistance, the

MR. PARNELL IN AMEBIOA. 201
fiendish work of eviction is still pursued ; but from
the blood of the brave connemaea women who
resisted the home desteoyers, shall spring up a
Power which will sweep away not only the Land
System, but the infamous Government that main
tains IT.' (Cheers.) "
And on February 23, at Cincinnati, Mr. Parnell
declared in the same strain : —
"I feel confident zve shall kill the Irish Landlord
system. (Applause.) And when we have given Ireland
to the People of Ireland, we shall have laid the founda
tion upon which to build up our Irish Nation. (Loud
applause.) The feudal tenure and the rule of the
minority have been the corner-stone of English
misrule. Pull out that corner-stone, break it up,
destroy it, and you undei'mine English misgovern-
ment. (Applause.) When we have undermined Enghsh
misgovemment, we have payed the way for Ireland to
take her place among the nations of the earth.
(Applause.) And let us not forget that that is the
ultimate goal at which all we Irishmen aim. None
OP us — ^WHETHEE WE BE IN AMERICA OE IN IRELAND, OR
WHEREVER WE MAY BE  ^WILL BE SATISFIED UNTIEj VTO
HAVE DESTROYED THE LAST LINK WHICH KEEPS IRELAND
BOUND TO England. (Applause.)"
With such language in his mouth it is hard to
beheve that Mr. Parnell had not at his fingers' ends

202 TEE AMEBICAN IBISE.
the whole scheme of revolution so ably drawn out by
James Fintan Lalor, although it might not suit him
to disclose to every assembly the true meaning of the
agitation which he had been leading in Ireland in
1879. But it was necessary to satisfy all classes of
Irish in America — the respectable lawyer, the affluent
merchant, the local politician, and the dynamite-
loving ex-Fenian soldier. It was Mr. ParneU's busi
ness to unite all platforms, and to link an errand of
charity with the sterner business of Irish politics ; to
be received by the most respectable and thriving
Irishmen in every large city, and yet to become also
the very incarnation of the impossible aspirations of
the various Irish Nationalist societies. In this there
can be no doubt Mr. ParneU was eminently suc
cessful. He not only ^.collected money for charitable
purposes, but he also laid the foundation of the Land
League organization in America, from which during
the past year has been received so vast a sum of
money for political purposes. How he was received,
and in what character he was regarded by the Fenian
element, is best appreciated by the foUowing extract
from the Irish World of February 21, 1880, imme
diately after Mr. ParneU's landing : —
" Charles Stewart Parnell is the apostle who
to-day, as he ascends into the altitude of his oppor
tunity, heralds aloud to the world the dawn of that

MR. PARNELL IN AMERICA. 203
universal brotherhood in landcdrights which time is as
certain of crowning with success as, patriots, warriors,
and men are to overthrow the oppressors of the earth.
"There is nothing we hope so much as his suc
cessful nationahzation of Landed Eeform. No man
could ever have Avakened so widely, so deeply, and so
generaUy the heart of any people as he has wakened
the hearts, the wUls, and the patriotism of Irishmen
and Americans, but by being accepted as the leader
of a great thought, and as the concentrated embodi
ment of a great Eeform. The great cities have wel
comed him with ovations such as no man has
received since Lafayette was welcomed as the child
of the Eevolution he battled into victory, and as the
patriot hero of two hemispheres. The smaller cities,
villages, towns, and the people from every palatial
home, and from every cottage fireside, have sent him
greeting, sympathy, money, to aid — what ? Not
Landlordism, not Monopolies in Land, not tyrannies
in Government, not England. No ! Not one of these.
But Ireland in her maetyedom; Ireland to break
the bonds of Landlord rule ; Ireland to proclaim
Equality of right in Irishmen to the Land of Ire
land, and mankind in defiant demand that all Monopoly
in Land shall cease for ever.
" The great mass of the English people demand it,
and they will not be silent.

204 TEE AMERICAN IRISE.
" The great mass of the American people demand
it, and they wUl never cease agitating and agitating
until they have broken up and broken down every
barrier to the universal right of the universal people
to their inheritance to God's soil, the earth and the
fruits thereof."
The dissolution of Parliament interrupted Mr.
ParneU's career in America, and he returned to Ire
land to find himself the leader of a powerful Irish
party. The Liberal majority in the new House of
Commons owed a considerable portion of its members
to the Irish vote in England and Scotland, and
accordingly the outlook for the coming session
seemed hopeful. AU now depended upon the energy
and audacity of the revolutionists ; and the history
of the following year proves how true they were to
their policy of exasperation and disturbance.

C 205 )

CHAPTEE IX.
THE REIGN OF TERROR.
On the 31st of March, 1880, Mr. Gladstone, in his
speech to the constituency of Midlothian, described
the condition of L-eland as one of peculiar prosperity.
" There was an absence of crime and outrage," he
said, "and a general sense of comfort and satisfac
tion, such as had been unknown in the previous
history of the country." As corollaries to this opinion
Mr. Gladstone omitted, in framing the Queen's
speech, to make any aUusion to the existence of a
land question in Ireland, and in the month of July
aUowed the Acts for the preservation of the peace in
Ireland to drop. Mr. Forster declared, in spite of the
warning voice of the Duke of Marlborough, the late
Lord Lieutenant, in the House of Lords, that he
could govern Ireland by the ordinary apphances of the
common law.
On June 18th the celebrated biU, known as the
" Disturbance BUI," was brought in by Mr. Forster,

206 THE AMEBICAN IBISH.
and met with a reception which insured its final
rejection by the House of Lords. UnparaUeled in
principle, the statistics brought forward to support
the BiU were demoUshed, and the facts and figures
relied upon were proved to be utterly imaginary. The
measure was based upon faUacies, the exposure of
which by Messrs.. Gibson, Plunket, and Lord George
Hamilton, was in itself a remarkable episode in the
history of ParUamentary debate. From the very first
the proposition was looked upon by the Whig party as
a dangerous inroad upon the rights of property, only
to be justified by an imperious national necessity, not
proved to be existing. The death of the bUl was as
inglorious as its birth. It produced the resignation
of Lord Lansdowne, and it was rejected by the Upper
House as a crude, incongruous, illogical, and unsound
piece of legislation. It was a measure purloined
from the Parnellite party, and proposed more for the
purpose of quenching an agitation than benefiting a
nation. Satisfied by the dropping of the " Peace Preserva
tion Act" and the introduction of the "Disturbance
Bill " that it only required vigorous measures to force
the hand of the EngUsh Parhament, Mr. Parnell ad
dressed himself in earnest to the task of revolution.
The Land League issued its orders and redoubled
the work of organization. There seems every reason

THE BEIGN OF TEBBOB. 207
to believe the Eiband societies had revived under the
shadow of the Land League. Assassination com
menced. Peasant and peer alike suffered. Feerick
was brutaUy murdered at Ballinrobe, and Lord
Mountmorres feU a victim to the midnight marauder.
From end to end of L-eland, the leaders of the Land
League held meeting after meeting, and incited the
people to the verge of madness. In order to gain
some idea of the spirit in which the anti-rent agitation
was conducted, it is only necessary to read a few
extracts of the speeches from the Land League orators.
Commencing the campaign at Ennis, Mr. Parnell, on
the 19th of September, 1880, gave the cue to his
audience thus : —
" Depend upon it that the measure of the Land
BiU of next session wUl be the measure of your
activity and energy this winter. It will be the
measure of your determination not to pay unjust
rents ; it wiU be the measure of your determination
to keep a firm grip of your homesteads. It will be
the measm-e of your determination not to bid for
farms from which others have been evicted, and to
use the strong force of public opinion to deter any
unjust men amongst yourselves — and there are many
such — from bidding for such farms.
" If you refuse to pay unjust rents, if you refuse to
take farms from which others have been evicted, the

208 THE AMEBICAN IBISE.
land question must be settled, and settled in a way
that wUl be satisfactory to you. It depends, there
fore, upon yourselves, and not upon any commission
or any Government. When you have made this
question ripe for settlement, then, and not till then,
will it be settled. It is very nearly ripe already in
many parts of Ireland. It is ripe in Mayo, Galway,
Eoscommon, Sligo, and portions of the county Cork.
But I regret to say that the tenant farmers of the
county Clare have been backward in organization
up to the present time. You must take and band
yourselves together in Land Leagues. Every town
and village must have its own branch. You must
know the circumstances of the holdings and of the
tenures of the district over which the League has
jm-isdiction ; you must see that the principles of the
Land League are inculcated; and when you have
done this in Clare, then Clare wiU take her rank
with the other active counties, and you wiU be
included in the next Land Bill brought forward by
the Government. Now, what are you to do to a.
tenant who bids for a farm from which another
tenant has been evicted?
" Several voices : Shoot him.
"Mr. ParneU: I thmk I heard somebody say,
' Shoot him.' I wish to point out to you a very
much better way — a more Christian and charitable

TEE BEIGN OF T.EBBOE. 209
way, which will give the lost man an opportunity
of repenting. When a man takes a farm from which
another has been evicted, you must shun him on the
roadside when you meet him — you must shun him in
the streets of the town — you must shun him in the
shop — you must shun him in the fair-green and in
the market-place, and even in the place of worship ;
by leaving him alone, by putting him into a moral
Coventry, by isolating him from the rest of his
countrymen as if he were the leper of old, you
must show him your detestation of the crime he has
committed." Mr. ParneU proved himself an apt pupil of Lalor.
Captain Boycott of BaUinrobe was the first victim,
and it was not long before the system described by
Mr. ParneU became world-renowned, under the
name of "boycotting." It was merely a develop
ment of Lalor's plan of " moral insurrection," and
it was carried out with surprising rapidity throughout
the country. How well that revolutionist's own son
foUowed his father's principles is best shown by an
extract from a speech delivered at Athy on October 10,
1880. There Mr. Lalor, M.P., commented upon the
murder of Lord Mountmorres in the following
terms : —
" Their archbishop that day in his pastoral
showed that he appeared to be under the impression p

210 TEE AMEBICAN IRISE.
that the Land League — and he (Mr. Lalor) was a
member of it — were advising the people to shed the
blood of the landlords. He protested against the
archbishop saddling them with the responsibility of
every assassination that took place in the country.
Neither he nor any one else had a right to do it.
They spoke in that way because one poor fellow of
the name of Mountmorres was shot the other day.
(Groans.) He (Mr. Lalor) would not like to be the
man that shot Lord Mountmorres at all. He
thought it was a very bad act, but was there a fuss
made when a poor man was shot ? In England
five murders were committed for every one that was
committed in Ireland, and yet there was no fuss
made about the men that kUled their wives, their
children, and their sweethearts. (Cheers.) But be
cause a man who was kiUed here happened to have
a title to his name a great fuss was made about
him. It was very wrong of the archbishop to have
said that this country was steeped in the blood of
those men. He (Mr. Lalor) was firmly convinced
that, but for the Land League, there would have been
ten murders committed for the one that has occurred
since it commenced. What the Land League did
was to try to show them another road besides
shooting those men, who were not worth shooting.
The French people, at the time of their Eevolution,

TEE REIGN OF TERROR. 211
took a method of getting rid of their landlords that
unfortunately they (the meeting) were unable to take.
No, they were not able at present to take the method
that they took. He wished they were. It was not
there that he would be then. They must take other
methods." But Mr. ParneU was not forgetful, in his crusade
against landlords, and in his efforts to reconquer the
lands of L-eland for the people, to keep the question
of nationahty before his audiences. Some of his
utterances betray an intimate knowledge of the true
scope of the new revolution. At Galway, on October
24, 1880, he made the following declaration : —
"I expressed my belief at the beginning of last
session that the present Chief Secretary, who was
then aU smUes and promises, would not have pro
ceeded very far in the duties of his office before
he would have found that he had undertaken an
impossible task to govern Ireland, and that the only
way to govern Ireland is to allow her to govern
herself. (Cheers.)
" A Voice : A touch of the rifle.
" Mr. Parnell : And if they prosecute the leaders
of this movement 
" A Voice : They dare not.
" Mr. Parnell: If they prosecute the leaders of this
movement it is not because they want to preserve

212 TEE AMERICAN IRISE. '
the lives of one or two landlords. Much the English
Government care about the lives of one or two land
lords. " A Voice : Nor we.
" Another Voice : Away with them.
" Mr. Parnell : But it will be because they see that
behind this movement lies a more dangerous move
ment to their hold over Ireland ; because they know
that if they fail in upholding landlordism here — and
they will fail — they have no chance of maintaining
it over Ireland ; it will be because they know that if
they fail in upholding landlordism in Ireland their
power to misrule Ireland will go too (cheers). I wish
to see the tenant farmer prosperous ; but, large and
important as is the class of tenant farmers, consti
tuting, as they do, with theu wives and famUies, the
majority of the people of this country, I would not
have taken off my coat and gone to this work if I had
not known that we were laying the foundation in this
movement for the regeneration of our legislative inde
pendence. (Cheers.) Push on, then, towards this goal,
extend your organization, and let every tenant farmer,
whUe he keeps a firm grip of his holding, recognize
also the great truth that he is serving his country
and the people at large, and helping to break down
English misrule in Ireland."
This note was kept up by every prominent speaker

TEE REIGN OF TERROR. 213
throughout the autumn of 1880. At Clonmel, October
24, 1880, Mr. Leamy made a remark which is worth
noting, as showing the steps which, as a revolu
tionist, he thought necessary to secure the inde
pendence of Ireland.
"The three great obstacles," he said, "to the
national independence of Ireland were the Catholic
disabUities until 1829, the Protestant ascendency
untU the disestablishment in 1870, and the third and
last great obstacle was this foreign system of land
tenure. Let them get rid of that obstacle, and then
would be the time for wiUing hands to rear up the
stately edifice of Irish independence."
But as the leader of the revolution, Mr. ParneU's
words must especially be noted, and I will conclude
by giving one more extract from that gentleman's
political beUef.
At Waterford, on December 6, he said, " I always
hke to take every opportunity of pressing on the atten
tion of my feUow- countrymen the necessity of taking
possession of aU the local bodies in this country,
beginning with the corporations and ending with the
Poor Law Boards. (Applause.) There is no reason why
aU these bodies should not be absolutely in the power
and control and direction of the people. (Applause.)
" In a short while we hope to replace the pre
sent system of county government by irresponsible

214 TEE AMERICAN IRISE.
grand juries with one which will give full and com
plete representation to those who pay rates. We
shall have in each L-ish county a little Parliament —
(hear, hear) — and it will be the duty of the Irish
members to insure, when the question of county
government comes before the House of Commons,
that the people shall be properly and thoroughly
represented on these boards, and that full power shaU
be given to the county boards to control all the
affairs of their counties. It will not then be possible ,
to levy heavy rates for the support of extra constabu
lary in the counties. It will not then be possible to
tax the people and deprive them of money for pur
poses over which they have no control and in which
they have no interest ; and we shall have in each
county an educational centre — a centre which wiU
educate the people in the duties of self-government,
which will train up men to take a part in that higher
national life which we hope to partake in upon the
restoration of our own Parliament.
" AU this must be done gradually, and the work of
making the power of our minority in this country felt
must be a gradual one. But we have seen that it has
been advancing of late years with very rapid strides.
I feel convinced that in five or six years time at the
outside we shall have broken the power of the Enghsh
Government to govern us in Ireland, and shall have

TEE REIGN OF TEBBOB. 215
compelled them to restore to the Irish people the
right of self-government. (Cheers.)
" I do not venture this prediction in any too san
guine a spuit. I am not very much of an enthusiast
by nature, but I believe that we have the control of
forces which are practically irresistible, that these
forces are suited for the object that we have in view,
and that, with a reaUy independent party and with an
organized people, it wiU be impossible to maintain the
unnatm-al system of government that we have here.
Sacrifices wiU undoubtedly be necessary, but that
hberty is not worth anything for which the people
are not prepared to make some sacrifices — (hear, hear)
— and I am sure that the smaller sacrifices which our
people are caUed on to make in these days will be
cheerfuUy made. (Hear, hear.) They don't compare
with those which many of our forefathers made on
many a blood-stained field. (Cheers.)"
By such speeches and promises as these was
anarchy encouraged. In September it excited much
alarm. In October Mr. Forster threw a tub to the
whale by sending to Ireland a detachment of marines,
and in November the State trials were instituted. In
December the anarchy had become a reign of terror,
and the state of the country is best described in the
words of Mr. Justice Fitzgerald when addressing the
grand inquest of Munster.

216 TEE AMEBICAN IBISE.
" I do not wish," he said, "to be guilty of exaggera
tion, or to create excitement or alarm. I desire now
to express myself in the calm and measured language
that best becomes one to whom the administration-
of justice is committed; and I should faU short of my
duty if I did not point out to you how in several
districts, embracing a large portion of Munster, true
liberty has ceased to exist and intolerable tyranny
prevails. Life is not secure, right is disregarded, the
process of the law cannot be enforced, and dishonesty
and lawlessness disgrace the land."
Mr. Justice Fitzgerald was not alone in his opinion,
Judge Dowse, Judge Barry, and Judge Lawson, each
in his circuit at the winter assizes, declared the
country to be in a state of anarchy and confusion.
Catholic and Protestant clergymen joined in con
demnation of the Land League, and public men in
England of all parties looked upon the state of
Ireland with anxiety and forebodings.
Thus ended the year 1880. During all the social
anarchy and confusion which prevailed, the Bess-
borough Commission, appointed by Mr. Gladstone to
consider the working of the Land Act of 1870, had
been taking evidence, and its report ushered in the
new year. The history of the year 1881 is already
fresh in the memory of the public. The early
assembling of Parliament ; the failure to obtain a

TEE BEIGN OF TERROR. 217
verdict in the State trials, although Mr. Justice
Fitzgerald said that the evidence for the Crown
was so complete that he would direct a verdict
if it was a civil action; the struggle over the
Coercion Act ; the arrest of Davitt and Dillon ; the
introduction of the Land Bill; the long debate and
final acceptance of that measure by the House of
Lords ; the recommencement of the revolutionary
agitation and the arrest of Mr. Parnell and his
comrades — all these events are recent and well known.
The " settlement " of Ireland is supposed to be com
plete, but the "moral insurrection" which led to it
has hghted a fire which it will be found almost im
possible to put out without the destruction of further
property. Lalor's policy has been so far successful.
The peasantry are the lords of Ireland. The second
part of the drama has yet to be played out. When
that comes there are many in Ireland who will feel
inclined to say to Mr. Gladstone, with Hudibras —
" Indeed, 'tis pity you should miss
Th' arrears of all your services
In letting rapine loose and murther ;
To rage just so far and no further.
And setting all the land on fire
To bum to a scanthng and no higher.
***** Who when your projects have miscarried
Can lay them with undaunted carriage
On those you painfully trepanned." *
• " Hudibras," canto ii. 1. 1037, etc.

218 TEE AMERICAN IBISE.

CHAPTEE X.
IRISH PARTIES IN AMEEICA.
After all these years of political agitation amongst the
Irish in America, let us now see what is the attitude
of the Irish race across the Atlantic, as weU towards
Ireland as towards England. Amongst the many
nationalities that have settled down in the United
States of America, the Irish have remained as a
distiuctive section in the population, and have a
political interest in European and foreign politics
generally which is not to be found in any other
section of the complex American population.
The Irish in America, rightly or wrongly, believe
that the vast immigration of their race into that
continent is owing to English rule. They believe
themselves to have been " frozen out " of their native
land, to use an expression of one of themselves to
me ; and, accordingly, from generation to generation
there has come down an unreasoning and yet solid
feeling of inextinguishable hostUity to the English

IRISE PARTIES IN AMERICA. 219
system of government. And this feeling is part and
parcel of the Irish mind in America.
Without the assistance of American brains and
American gold, the Irish agitation of 1879-1881 would
have shared the same fate as that which befell the
schemes of Mitchel, Lalor, O'Brien, and others in
1848, and which awaited the efforts of Stephens in
1865. From the very commencement, however, the
life which treasm-e gives to any concerted action has
been the mainspring of the success of Mr. Parnell and
the Land League. That life has been steadily in
fused into the Irish political organizations by means
of the Irish in America. The Land League is there
supported by every class of Lishmen. The organ
ization represented to them,^ according to each
man's political creed, the symbol of his national
pride or the instrument of his national revenge.
All Irish societies have supported with their doUars
this new departure in Irish politics. From the
" skirmishers " of O'Donovan Eossa's stamp, who
hope to make the L-ish Land League subservient to
their own ends, up to the President of the Land League
in America, Mr. Collins, a thoughtful inteUigent
lawyer in Boston city- — from the miner to the merchant
—all contribute their money to the common idea,
namely, that of obtaining, at the very least, for their
native country the same privileges which each state

220 TEE AMERICAN IRISE.
in the Union possesses in relation to the central
American Government.
But there are the same divisions and differences
in their views with regard to the modes of obtaining
their common end as prevail among their fellow-
countrymen at home.
The physical force men have always been anxious
to dominate the executive of the Irish National Land
League, and they have succeeded to a large extent in
getting control of the organization. But during the
past six months there has been a growing schism
amongst the various Irish leaders. At present the
position of affairs is as follows : — There are three
great parties amongst the American Irish — the one
headed by the editor of the Irish World, Mr. Patrick
Ford, of New York; another headed by Mr. Collins,
of Boston, the President of the Land League
organizations in America, and Mr. John Boyle
O'Eeilly, of Boston, the proprietor and editor of the
Boston Pilot; and a third represented by Mr. John
Devoy, the proprietor of the Irish Nation.
Besides these, there is yet another party, which
may be called .the Dynamite faction, but even to
name the leaders is to confer a distinction which
they do not deserve. They have no politics at
heart. They can find no one to trust them. Even
the most serious revolutionists avoid them, and so

IRISH PARTIES IN AMERICA. 221
they content themselves by making war upon society
in general, and inciting dupes to commit crimes
which they would never have thought of themselves.
The great difference between the Ford party and
the CoUins party is that the former is in favour of
revolution and separation from England, by carrying
out a No-Eent policy first, and an armed revolution
afterwards at the proper opportunity ; while the latter
is for " constitutional agitation " and Home Eule.
The Chicago Convention was the turning point
of this latest division of the Irish in America. The
manifesto caUing that convention together was signed
by Messrs. Ford, Collins, and O'Eeilly. But this
unity of action lasted no longer than was abso
lutely necessary to call the convention together. It
soon became evident that Mr. Ford intended to use
every possible effort to make the convention assume
in the eyes of the public what it never was intended
to be, a demonstration of the power and influence of
the "physical force" party of the Irish in America.
The remarkable fact that the contributions to the
No-Eent Fund received by the Irish World dwindled
to one-half after the Chicago Convention proved
beyond all doubt that a very important section of the
Irish race in America do not support the latest edict
of the Land League organization in Paris.
Mr. Collins, the president of aU the American

222 THE AMERICAN IRISH.
branches of the Land League, has distinctly said that
he and his party never attempted to control or direct
the Irish Land Executive at home. It tendered advice
and contributed funds, but was perfectly satisfied to
abide by what was done by the Irish leaders. The Land
Act was considered a great concession, and the Boston
leaders were of opinion that it should be accepted and
utUized. With regard to the No-Eent manifesto, they
have been more or less reticent. In the Pilot it was
described as a " temporary resource of a people law
lessly attacked, muzzled, and manacled by a brutal
Government." The best indication, indeed, of the divisions of the
Irish parties in America at the present moment is, as
usual, to be found in their own journals. It is a re
markable fact that one of the original persons who
revived and formulated afresh James Fintan Lalor's
scheme of moral insurrection, as opposed to physical
or military rebellion, has diuing the last few months
recanted all his former ideas, abandoned the new de
parture he proclaimed in 1879, and once more taken
up " the sword " as the only means of effecting Ire
land's independence.
In November, 1881, John Devoy started a new
journal in New York, caUed the Irish Nation, on a
line of opposition to the No-Eent doctrine of the Irish
World, and advocating armed revolution.

IRISE PARTIES IN AMERICA. 223
In the second number of his new organ, Devoy
made use of language which I quote in order to
give the answer of the Boston party to the physical
force argument. "A few years must decide," says
Devoy, " whether she [Ireland] is to take her place
among the nations, or for ever renounce her hopes of
freedom. Although the issue raised two years ago in
volved no question of government, it has brought the
national question to the front, and is fast ripening it
for solution. . . . There is no use ignoring facts. If
Ireland wins her freedom, she must wade to it through
blood and suffering and sacrifice. Independence
means revolution, red-handed and remorseless. . . .
If Ireland is to be freed in this generation we must go
about the business in a more practical way than at
present. The people at home must be prepared — they
must be armed. They must not be left at the mercy of
flying columns and squads of police, and their spirit
broken before the time to strike can come. We in
America must do more than make speeches and sub
scribe money 'to keep the agitation alive.' An
agitation that must be fed and fostered and subsidized
from abroad has nothing in it. Let us devote some
of our spare cash to preparing Ireland for the final
ordeal ; some of our time to devising means of helping
Ireland substantially when that ordeal has to be faced.
Let us get arms. Without them no progress is possible."

224 TEE AMEBICAN IBISE.
It is quite evident from this that Devoy considers
the first part of the moral insurrection scheme is
finished. All that can be done has been done. The
people are in possession of the lands, and it only
remains to arm them and to wait a favourable oppor
tunity for an armed insurrection. In this probably
the Irish World agrees, as will be seen.
But the Boston party are of quite a different
opinion. Writing on the 5th of November, before the
Chicago Convention, the Pilot says —
" It must be remembered by the Chicago Con
vention, and all other Irish-American conventions,
that there is to be no dictation to Ireland as to what
line she is to pursue. The five and a half millions
there are the people to judge. It would be better and
manlier for the millions here who have left Ireland
for ever to cut away from her altogether than to
attempt to coerce or decide for her. If Ireland choose
to agitate for a federal union with England, depending
on her great natural advantages, and on her native
militia or volunteers to insist on them; we Irish
Americans should promise her continued sympathy
and support. This is her choice at present in her
own words. We believe it is a wise one ; she will be
better able to demand and secure more, if necessary,
after ten or twenty years of Home Eule.
" Nevertheless, it is far from our wish to see the

IBISE PABTIES IN AMEBICA. 225
physical force men, the separatists, disband their
organizations, and come on to the constitutional plat
form. There could be no surer way of preventing
Ireland from getting any improvement whatever.
All countries keep a force party, an organized army,
as a threat behind the spoken word. The country
that is struggling for existence surely needs this in
a special manner. The Irish Nation irrefutably says
that it was the armed volunteers behind Grattan who
secured the Parhament of 1782.
" Therefore we trust that as Irish unity proceeds
there wiU be one aUowance made on aU sides — of the
necessity of a party of physical force to which all
Lishmen can faU back should England refuse
Ireland's coming demand for Home Eule.
" UntU the Home Eule idea is tried to the utter
most, and refused by England, the physical force
party can never depend on the whole Irish people.
In case of that refusal there is only one course for
earnest Lishmen to take."
And again, in the same issue, the Pilot says —
" Give Ireland a home government and it will be
her interest, even more than it is Scotland's, to
become a quiet part of the empire. As Hungary
entered into the life of Austria, and grew at a bound
to be the most important part of the empire, so
Ireland, with a home government and a proper repre-
Q

226 TEE AMEBICAN IBISE.
sentation in an imperial council or Parliament, can
hold her own and grow rich and respected.
" Ireland has convinced England that she will
not, cannot be ruled, except by her own people.
England sees to-day the advantage of having Ireland
at-peace. She fears entire separation, and will coerce
and lie and murder to oppose it. But a firm and
intelligent demand for a federal union between the
countries will now win its way with unprecedented
speed among all classes of Enghshmen, and wiU be
supported by the public opinion of the world."
To this comparatively moderate statement of Mr.
O'Eeilly's, no doubt written by himself, the Irish
World, December 3, 1881, retorts the insinuation of
" traitor." " We are sorry to see the Boston Pilot," writes Mr.
Ford, " lending its influence to further the plans of the
Whig element in the American branches of the Land
League. This it does in an article that we cannot
help regarding as a direct attack on the Land League.
We do not say that the article was written with that
intent, but what we do say is that adopting the advice
contained in it would result in killing the Land
League organization, and in that way the English
Government would be relieved of aU fear of a move
ment that has welded the Irish race the world over
into one compact whole. . . . And what are we

IBISE PABTIES IN AMEBICA. 227
promised when we ' change the Land League organ
ization, root and branch, into something larger ' ?
^Vhy, Home Eule !
" We thought we had heard the last of this abortion
in Irish pohtics. But the Pilot, it seems, believes
that sacrificing the Land League would not be too
great a price to pay for breathing the breath of life
into Home Eule. . . .
" L-eland wiU not sacrifice her nationality for the
thing called Home Eule. For centuries she has
denied, and she to-day continues to deny, the right
of England to make laws for her. She, and she
alone, possesses that right, and any compromise,
call it Home Eule or what you may, that does not
place in L-eland's hand the power of shaping her own
destinies, without any interference from an imperial
Parhament, or any other outside source, should be
spm-ned with contempt by the Irish nation.
" Do not let it be supposed that the men who have
enhsted in this land war have lost sight of Ireland's
claims to national independence. They have never
once lowered the national banner, but the political
freedom they wish to confer on Ireland will go hand
in hand with industrial freedom, based on the posses
sion of the soU of Ireland by the whole people of
Ireland, and not by one class, as the Whig Home
Eulers and some sham Nationahsts desire.

228 TEE AMERICAN IRISE.
" The whole matter of fact is that the Land League
is laying a solid foundation, on which there will be yet
upreared an Irish Eepublic that will not be the sham
all republics have been that have refused to make
every one of their citizens a partaker in the benefits
that our Heavenly Father has bounteously bestowed
upon all His children.
" The Land League, we firmly believe, has begun a
new era not only for Ireland but for the whole civilized
world, for the industrial revolution it has inaugurated
is destined to extend far beyond its own limits. And
shall the Land League turn aside from this high
mission to disinter the corpse of Home Eule from the
grave where it has been so long buried ?
"We said in the beginning of this article that
the Land League, which has proved its power to cope
with open enemies, has most to fear from its Whig
friends. The proposal to convert it into a move
ment to resurrect Home Eule proves, I think, the truth
of this assertion.
" Let every true friend of Ireland resolve to stamp
out this conspiracy against the life of the Land League.
We must not permit the glorious work of Davitt and
Parnell to end in any such disgraceful way."
All this is interesting as showing the enormous
diversity of opinions in America as to what is to be
done next. Both parties are quarrelhng over Mr.

IRISE PARTIES IN AMERICA. 229
ParneU and the skeleton organization of the defunct
or, at aU events, sleeping L-ish National Land League.
It reminds one somewhat of the two sportsmen out
shooting, depicted by Punch as both stooping to^ pick
up a partridge which had faUen to a joint volley :
¦"My btt-d, I think!" says the first sportsman.
" Mine, I fancy ! " quoth the second.
MeanwhUe the Irish masses continue to subscribe
to the various funds which have from time to time
been formed. Nothing can exceed their interest and
enthusiasm in the whole subject of Ireland. I had
several opportunities of judging for myself of the
extent of their feeling. The most remarkable, perhaps,
was at a meeting in New York, held at the Cooper
Institute, on November 10, 1881, when Mr. Healy,
M.P., and Eev. Mr. Sheehy were received on their
arrival from Ireland. There were about three
thousand people present, and there was a large plat
form audience, made up of a very independent and
representative class of Irish-American New Yorkers.
An American flag and an Irish baimer embeUished the
waU behind the platform, while by far the most con
spicuous object on the platform was a handsome green
sUk standard, on which was inscribed, " 1782," and
the number of an Irish-American regiment, which
was waved by the holder whenever the audience
applauded-

230 TEE AMERICAN IRISE.
When the wandering Land Leaguers were intro
duced by the chairman. Colonel O'Byrne, the whole
assembly rose to their feet, cheering wildly and
waving their hats. Father Sheehy was the first to
speak. But the reverend gentleman fell into the error
of over-studying his subject. He was fettered by his
manuscript, which lay before him in huge folios. His
utterance was disjointed, his voice thin and often
inaudible. Now and then the ex-prisoner would shake
himself free from his written lecture, and bring down
the house with a good hearty " The land for the
people ! " or " Down with landlordism ! " but then
the good father would remember he was not on a
village platform, and he would seek his text and read,
in somewhat stilted tones, a peroration which smacked
very much of the cabin lamp of a Transatlantic
steamer. There was no magnetism in his voice, no re
sponsive heat in his audience, though indeed the
fault lay not with them. AU the enthusiasm of
Fenianism rang out when once the father smote the
kindred chord, and said that it would be far better for
five thousand men to die on the open field than that
Ireland should again be dependent for relief on the
charity of the world. As if by magic, the whole as
sembly rose, and waved their hats and shouted and
hurrahed in the wildest excitement. " That's the

IRISE PARTIES IN AMERICA. 231
logic ! " roared one enthusiast. " Now you are
talkin' ! " vociferated another, and it was evident
that the Land Act was as nothing compared to the
national desire for a fight in some quarter of the
globe.

232 TEE AMERICAN IRISE.

CHAPTEE XL
AMERICAN OPINION ON IRISH AFFAIRS.
It may be asked. What do the native Americans think
of the present crisis in Ireland ? I was myself in the
United States when the No-Eent manifesto was pub
lished and Mr. ParneU was arrested, and took some
pains to discover, from the public press and other
sources, the general opinion of the average cool-
headed and sensible Americans upon the most
recent developments of Irish affairs.
When Mr. Parnell visited America in 1880, to
collect funds for charitable and political purposes, the
attitude of Americans was widely different to what it
is now. American opinion then, as represented by the
press, was unmistakably in favour of a considerable
portion of the Land League programme. Free land
is the rule in the United States, and the Americans
wished to see the best possible terms made for the
Irish tenant. All classes opened their purses to aid
the distressed Irish peasant, and a widespread sym-

AMERICAN OPTNION ON IRISH AFFAIRS. 233
pathy with the physical misery of the people was
strikingly evinced.
So far as the pohtical agitation struck at the
unjust treatment of the tenant, so far American
pubhc opinion favoured Mr. ParneU's movement and
no further. At the time of Mr. ParneU's arrest
and now, it may be said, the fount of American
sympathy for L-ish grievances is altogether dried up.
The press, throughout the Eepublic, susceptible as
it is, as a whole, of more or less manipulation by
the Lish interest for political purposes, has taken
up an attitude of disapproval or cold neutrality,
where formerly cordiahty or sympathetic criticism
was the rule.
The title of land in America is not so old that land
owners care to talk of land-robbers and land-sharks.
The war of rebellion and its scars are not so easily
forgotten that a secessional movement in Ireland,
with aU its accompanying horrors, can be either
approved or assisted by voice or pen. It is easy to
read between the lines. There are certain journals
in America which endeavour to gauge public as op
posed to party opinion. Such are the New York
Herald, the Chicago Times, and the St. Paul Pioneer
Press. In all these cities there are very large Irish
populations, and in all Mr. ParneU was received, on
his visit to America, with the greatest enthusiasm.

234 THE AMERICAN IRISE.
Immediately on the news of the arrest of Mr. Parnell,
all these organs of public opinion wrote very strongly.
The New York Herald said in its issue of October
18th, 1881, "Ireland, wrought up to a wUd and
desperate humour by the acts of agitation, is in a
condition of social revolt, and it may well trouble
wiser heads than those now governing England to
know what may soothe and satisfy her.
" Public opinion in that country has even lost all
the ordinary sense of proportion in judging of men's
acts. If in a coUision in the streets one man goes
down with the police buckshot in him, there is a wild
cry against this official barbarity; but if, out of
eleven labourers who have worked on a forbidden
farm, five are shot on their way home, it seems to
be regarded with tranquil complacency, for in Ireland
now, as in all countries in all times of revolutionary
ferment, no act is evil that satisfies in any degree
the passions of a fierce social resentment.
" We may call the act by what names we like.
Epithets will not change the case. It will always
be regarded by every people as a patriotic act to
kill one of the common enemy ; and there is no dis
guising the fact that throughout Ireland to-day the
most energetic element of the population is acting
under the assumption that the landowner and the
authorities who defend and sustain him, and all who

AMERICAN OPINION ON IRISE AFFAIRS. 235
by then- assistance enable him in any degree whatever
to enjoy or profit by his possessions, are the enemies
of the Irish people and their cause, and should be
summai-ily dealt with as such.
" It would not be easy to say to what limits an
excited nation may in such cucumstances push its
demands ; but it is clear that the least of Ireland's
requirements now is a general confiscation of the
estates of great landowners and an assignment of
farms to actual occupants — the obliteration of the legal
title where this represents merely the right of a
titular owner of that large proportion of the produce
which is handed over as rent. To be absolutely re
lieved from this burden is the demand of Ireland so far
as she is influenced by the Land League operations."
A very few days before the arrest of Mr. ParneU the
Pioneer Press made the following curious prophecy : —
"The issue was not doubtful, and its arrival but a
question of time. Sooner or later England must be
wearied into a consent to separation, or must con
front violence with violence, and put down insubor
dination with armed force. There can be no more
question of the necessity of the latter than of the
necessity of fighting the southern confederacy. The
arrest of Parnell and the others must happen to-day,
or next month, or next year. When Mr. Gladstone
realized this, he decided to meet the movement for

236 THE AMERICAN IRISH.
Irish independence and crush it, before it had ac
quired any greater momentum from the lapse of time.
AU had been done for Ireland that circumstances
admit, and more than the wildest visionaries of a few
years ago would have dared to ask. In recompense,
the League said that the law should^not have a trial ;
thereby tacitly confessing its fear that evUs would be
abolished and its grievance removed. If the repre
sentatives of a state in Congress were to ask a
national law for their benefit, and, such law having
been passed, were to incite the whole people of that
state to resistance and to prevent the enactment from
even going on trial, would there be any question of
the grave but necessary duty laid upon the nation ?
On October 19th also the Chicago Times thus de
nounced the Land League movement : " The Land
League has been determined from the first that the
Land Law should not be successful. Its passing
was resisted in the House of Commons instead of
assisted. From the moment of its passage the orators
of the league have employed their time assuring
the people of Ireland that no possible good could
come to them from the law ; that its passage was a
trick of the Saxon oppressor, whose ancestors some
centuries ago invaded Ireland ; and appealing to the
people to pay no rent, to obstruct the execution of
the laws, and to do everything in their power to make

AMERICAN OPINION ON IRISH AFFAIRS. 237
the government of Ireland in the present form im
possible. "Were there an organized effort in a part of
this state to make the collection of debts impossible,
were the lives of creditors threatened and sometimes
taken, and were the courts paralyzed by the refusal
of jurors to convict and of witnesses to testify, these
same Americans who are now sweeping the strings of
the harp of Erin would be demanding in the most
imperative manner that the Government should call
out the militia and subdue the malcontents, and that
they should appeal to the President for the assistance
of the army if the militia were insufficient. The rail
road strikers and rioters in this country in 1877 could
m-ge poverty as their plea as well as the Irish tenants
can, but they got no sympathy from the masses of the
American people who are now expected to make the
cause of the Irish tenantry their own.
" Having got the Land Bill, the Irish agitators
simply change the object of the agitation. Formerly
their complaint was economic, and they demanded
a change in the law of landlord and tenant ; now it
is political, and they demand the repeal of the Act of
Union. Last year the ' three F's ' was their cry ; they
have now got them, or at least they have got a law
which it is believed wUl give them the three F's, and
now their cry is " Ireland for the Irish ! " It is a good

238 THE AMERICAN IRISH.
cry, too, but it is quite evident that when the Act of
Union is repealed, and Mr. ParneU's vision of a Par
liament on College Green is realized, the agitation will
be no nearer its termination than it is now. The
demand then will be for complete political inde
pendence. It is natm-al that Ireland should want
that, but it is impossible that England should grant
it and remain a nation of any importance in the
world's affairs. Twenty years ago a portion of our
Union wanted the Act^of Union repealed ; we fought
four years to prevent it, and we have felt very hard
toward England because a large number of her people
sympathized with those of our nation who were
fighting for home rule. It would be more consistent
of Americans to be a little subdued in their declara
tions that the tyrant Government of England ought
to let any of its subjects withdraw and set up a
government of its own whenever they wish."
I believe these to be a very fair expression of the
opinion of honest and unbiassed Americans. They
corroborate my own observations, and may be
thought worthy of public attention and respect.
The American people are tired of the whole ques
tion. They do not care to hear anything more
said about the business. Being Eepublicans and
accustomed to self-government, they are, as a rule, in
favour of republican institutions and self-government

AMERICAN OPINION ON IBISH AFFAIBS. 239
in all other countries ; but they have not the faintest
notion of getting hysterical over the state of Ireland
or over Mr. Gladstone's policy. In so far as the
Lish are a large voting population, they are interested
about the Irish ; but as regards their nationality or
then- native country, they do not trouble themselves.
"What is it all about anyhow :' " is the query most
likely to be put by the average native American.
And with this he leaves the question and turns once
more to the pursuit of the almighty dollar.

240 THE AMEBICAN IBISE.

CHAPTEE XII.
CONCLUSION.
I HAVE now endeavoured to show how Irish revolu
tionists, by utilizing the programme of a forgotten
rebel of 1848, have transferred the lands of Ireland
into the hands of the Irish masses. The Irish race
in America, as I have shown, have contributed largely
to this result. The revolution is now almost com
plete. It was planned and carried out by men who
for years had harboured in the United States, after
having gone as far at home as they dared in open
and armed insurrection against the peace of her
Majesty the Queen. What is to come next ?
It would indeed be hard to answer the question —
principally because it is impossible to appreciate at
the present moment the changes which have swept
over the country during the last twelve months.
The man most experienced, practically and historic
ally, in the state of Ireland would to-day be most
cautious in his forecast. The present state of the

CONCLUSION. 241
country and what has occurred within the past three
years was as little expected by those best skilled in
political foresight as by the most ignorant and least
instructed. Let us, however, for a moment pause and analyze
the social condition of Ireland as now exhibited.
The masses of the people are still heaving under the
revolutionary agitation of the three preceding years.
Theu imagination is intoxicated with political am
bition. They have imbibed aU the newest theories of
the most fanciful American writers and thinkers upon
social subjects. They have seen the government of
the country conducted upon a system of aphorisms,
and they have accordingly accepted aphorisms as
their own rule of life and conduct. " Property is
robbery," " interest for money is theft," and " rent
is an immoral tax " — these are the branches of the
new popular upas tree.
Moreover, the influence of the clergy has been
flouted and disregarded as it never has been before
in the history of the country. Cardinal McCabe, the
Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, himself has been
" boycotted " and his coat-of-arms damaged upon his
palace in Eutland Square. A system of terror and
chicane has superseded the law of the land. The
whole of the agricultural population have with one
consent united for the purpose of resisting the pro-
B

242 TEE AMERICAN IRISE.
cess of the law and of plundering those to whom
they were indebted. Anarchy and terrorism, and
outrage upon man and beast, have been for eighteen
months universal.
Irish women have forgotten aU decency and
modesty, and have stripped men naked on the high
way, flogging them with whin-bushes. Judges of
assize have inveighed in every province against crime.
Parliament has endeavoured to coerce illegal associa
tions. The Executive Government has fiUed the jaUs
with suspected persons. But all has been of no
avail. The revolution has never been checked. The
floodgates have been lifted up so high that everything
opposing the rushing torrent of agrarian democracy
has been swept away. One stops aghast, and asks.
What and where are the forces to compel attention
and rescue an unhappy country from the suffering
and demoralization of another upheaval ? Class has
been set against class with a bitterness and eager
assiduity which finds no parallel since the French
Eevolution. The press teems with misrepresentations
and false deductions from new and unheard-of prin
ciples. What used to be axioms of property are now
denied or disputed. The shop windows are full of
caricatures bringing all that is above the mob down
to their own level — and, as is well known, the low is
with the populace the sublime.

CONCLUSION. 243
The gentry and aristocracy have been hounded
down personally and persistently. Sport has ceased,
and in its place lawless mobs sweep the country side,
kiUing everything before them, sometimes only pre
vented from bursting into private demesnes by armed
bodies of soldiers and police. Trade and enterprise
has entirely ceased, and a weU-known Dublin manu
facturer, in the daUy press, has deplored the loss and
decay of Lish manufactures. The land-owning and
land-occupying classes are engaged in an endless and
expensive system of Utigation, which can only pro
duce ruin and discontent instead of prosperity and
peace. In fact, the whole fabric of society has been
shaken to its very base and the foundations under
mined. The revolution is nearly complete ; and by
far the worst feature of the present deplorable con
dition of things is the fact, generally known and
acknowledged, that the material comforts and pecu
niary condition of the farming class has never been
so good as it now is. Harvests for the past two
years have been plentiful, and the cry of distress has
not even been whispered.
But there remains yet another and most important
wave of revolution in the immediate future, which
promises to disturb the present " settlement." The
labourers, of equal numbers with the farmers, are

244 TEE AMERICAN IRISH
already on the move. They are complaining that
they have been left out in the cold, while the farmers
have been making themselves snug, and we find the
usual steps in revolution proceeding. ,The revolu
tionists who have been successful find themselves face
to face with two discontented classes. On the one
hand are the former owners of property, now mere
annuitants, holding by precarious title ; and on the
other hand are the vast army of labourers demanding
from the farmers a share in the spoil. We already
see the effect upon the farmers in the verdicts they
are now returning against rioters and plunderers.
How long the labourers and farmers will remain at
peace is an interesting problem. Certain it is they
contain between them the seeds of yet another revo
lution. Such is the state of affairs at home. Looking
across the Atlantic to what is sometimes called
Greater Ireland, we see a vast population of Irish,
divided into sections among themselves, but united
as one body in their desire to inflict injury on
England. Under the specious plea of putting down
Protestant ascendency* in Ireland, as well religious
as landed and educational, the English Parliament
has been putting down English ascendency, soon to
become, in the hopes of the revolutionists, Irish
supremacy. The smallest concession that would

CONCLUSION. 245
content the Irish in America and the revolutionists
at home is such liberties as would belong to a state
of the American Union. They see that under such
liberties they would soon enact the right of carrying
arms, and " only give us our arms and we shall
recover, not only our lands, but our independence."
The immediate consequence would be a civil war,
in which England and Scotland would be pitted
against Ireland. Ulster would remain, as of old, the
Vanguard of the two countries, and, after a desolating
war, there is little doubt who would remain the
conquerors. Then would be verified the great
moralist's commentary upon the folly of human
wishes : " How nations sink, by darling schemes opprest,
When vengeance listens to the fool's request ! "

R 3

IN^DEX.

Abolitionism, 57
Abolitionists, 57
Adrian Colony, Minnesota, 83
Alabama, relative populations of,
30
Albany, 32
Albert, Prince, 149
Albuera, 139
Anti-Catholicism, 57
Arizona, relative populations of,
31
Arkansas, relative populations of,
30 ; colonies in, 84
Ballingarry, 110
Ballinrobe, 207
Baltimore, 32
Barclay, Thomas, 19
Barry, Commodore John, 18
 , Judge, 216
Batt, Thomas, 16
Belgium, 184
Bennington, 20
Bessborough Commission, the, 216
Biggar, J. G., 189
Bingham, William, 19
Blaine, Colonel, 22
Blennerhasset, R. P., 136
Blodget, Samuel, 24
Boston, 32, 51, 67, 180
Boston Pilot, the, 220
Boycott, Captain, 209
Boyne, battle of the, 138
Brandywine, 16
Brennan, T., 189

Breslin, J., 192
Bright, John, 173
Bromwell, W. J., 24, 26
Brooklyn, 32, 176
Brownrigg, Sir Henry, 150
Brownson's Quarterly Renew, 44
Buffalo, 32
Bunker's Hill, 20
Bunner, Murray, and Co., 19
Burgoyne, General, 13
Burke, Edmund, 13
Butler, Colonel Eichard, 18
 , Lieutenant-Colonel, C.B.,
91
 , Colonel, of Lowell, 57
Butt, Isaac, 152, 188
Byrne, Bev. Stephen, 29
Caldwell, James, 19
 , Samuel, 19
California, relative populations
of, 30
Calvin, 10
Campbell, George, 19
Canada, 17
Cape Cod, 3
CarroU, Charles, 22
 , Dr., 192
Catholic Church, progress of, B,"?
Central Tenants Defence Associa
tion, 198
Charlemont, Earl of, 19
Cliarlestown, 51
Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, 22
Chicago, 62

248

INDEX.

Chicago and Korth-Western Eail
way, 76
Chicago Convention, the, 221
Chicago Times, 233
Chichester, 154
Church Act, 174
Cincinnati, 32, 201
Clay, Henry. 53
Cleveland, 200
Cluseret, General, 148
Cogan, Eight Hon. W., 91
Collins, Mr. P., 219
Colorado, relative populations of,
31
Columbia, relative populations of,
31
Communists, 149
Condon, Patrick, 150
Connaught labourers, 187
Connecticut, relative populations
of, 30
Conroy Castle, 19
Conyngham, Captain D. 0., 139
Cooper, 25
Corcoran, Colonel, 144
Cork, 4, 150
Cornwallis, General, 13
Corydon, 150
Cremona, 12
Cretin, Joseph, 77
Crimea, 12
Cromwell, 184
Currie, 90
Dakotah, relative populations of,
31
Daly, J., 189
Danes, 94
Davis, T., 108, 112
Davitt, Michael, 177, 189
Day, Mr. Sherman, 10
Dease, Edmund, 91
 , J. A., 136
Delany, Sharp, 19
De la Touche, Count, 22
Delaware, relative population i of.
Democrats, influence of, 130
Devoy, John, 180
Dillon, Count Arthur, 21

Dillon, John,189
 , J. B., 109, 112
Disturbance Bill, the, 205
Doheney, Michael, 107, 123, 136,
145
Donaldson, John, 19
Dowse, Judge, 216
Dublin, 150
Dubuque, 77
Duchess of Marlborough's Fund,
199
Duffy, 0. G., 109, 113
Dunlap, John, 19
Elizabeth, Queen, 154, 184
Emigration, statistics of Irish, 24
England, emigration from, 24
Ennis, 207
Erie, Lake, 32
Estvan, B., 139
Feerick, 207
Fenian Conspiracy, 123
Fenian Litany, 140
Fenianism, principles of, 134
Fitzgerald, Judge J. D., 215, 216,
217
Florida, relative populations of,
30
Fontenoy, 12, 139
Ford, Patrick, 220
Forster, Mr. W., 205
Port Sumter, 138
Fort, William, 20
Prance, 138, 184
Francis, Tench, 19
Fredericksburg, 139
Freesoilism, 57
Froude, Mr., 65, 179
Puller, Benjamin, 19
Gage, General, 13
Gardner, Mr., 57
Georgia, relative populations of,
30, 138
Germans, comparative statistics
relating to, 34
Germantown, 16
Germany, emigration from, 24
Gibson, E., 206

INDEX.

249

Gladstone, W. E., origin of his
"upas tree" simile, 172; in
Midlothiiiu, 205; illustrated by
" Hudibras," 217
Gleeson, Colonel, 144
Gloucester, Foxhunting Club at,
15
Godley, J. E., SS
Greele.v Colony, Nebraska, S3
Gregory, W. H., 88
Greville-Nugeut, J., 136
Halpin, 144
Hamilton, Lord George, 206
Hand, General Edward, 18
Hardenburg, 134
Hartford, 32
Havre, emigrants from, 25
Healv, T., 73, 229
Hill, Colonel, 22
 , Hamilton Andrew, 28, 127
 , Henry, 19
Holland, 6
Howe, General, 21
Hughes, Bishop, 51
Idaho, relative populations of, 31
Illinois, Douglas Brigade of, 145 ;
relative populations of, 30, 32
Independence Hall. 22
Indiana, relative populations of,
30
Inglis, Sir Eobert, 105
Iowa, relative populations of, 30
Ireland, Bishop, 65 ; work of, 76
Ireland, emigration from, 24
Irish colonization, pre-revolution
ary, 3-11
Irish-American Colonization Com
pany, 80 ; description of work,
89
Irish Catholic Colonization As
sociation, 82
Irish FeUm, the, 155
Irish, mortality of New York, 71
Irish Nation, the, 220
Irish National Land Lea.^e, ori
gin of, 155-175 ; foundation of,
190
Irish People, the, 169

Irish Tenant League, 121
hi^h. World, the, 176
Irvine, General William, 17
Italy, 114
James I., 154
Jamestown, 3
Jersey City, 32
Johnstone, Colonel, 22
Kansas, relative populations of
30 ; City, 32
Kean and Nichols, 19
Kelly, C. C, 44
Kentucky, relative populations of,
30
Keogh, W., 121
Kerry, 136, 154
Killen, J. B., 197
Kingsbridge terminus, 191
Kinsale, 4
Know-Nothingism, history of,
37-59
Knox, John, 10
 , Major-General H. Y., 17
Lake Shetek, 90
Lalor, James Fintan, 154
 , Patrick, 153
Laud Act, the, of 1880, 101 ;
of 1870, 174
Land League. See Irish National
Land League
Langdon, John, 20
L-rt,nsdowne, Lord, 206
Lawley, Hon. P., 139
Lawrence, Joseph, 4
Lawson, Judge, 216
Leamy, Mr. E., 213
Lee, General, 13
Leinster, Duke of, 19
Leix, 154
Limerick, 138, 173 ; junction,
150
Lincoln, General, 21
 , President, 53
Liverpool, emigrants from, 26
Longford, 136
Long Island, 32
Loras, Mathias, 77

250

INDEX.

Louisiana, relative populations
of, 30, 41
Luby, Thomas C, 124
Lucas, P., 121
Lynch, Thomas, 22
Lyons, Captain, 139
MacManus, J. B., Ill
Maine, relative populations of,
30
" Manhattan," letters of, 140
Manitoba, 92
Mansion House Belief Fund,
199
Marlborough, Duke of, 205
Marseilles, 149
Marshall, " Life of Washingtou "
by, 18
Martin, John, 116, 118, 136
Mary, Queen, 154
Marye's Heights, 139
Maryland, 7 ; relative populations
of, 30
Mason, 148
Massachusetts, relative popula
tions of, 30 ; fanaticism, 51 ;
9th Infantry, 145
Massey, General Godfrey, 148
Mayflower, the, 3
Mayo, 186
McCabe, Cardinal, 241
M'Clenaohan, Blair, 19
McGee, T. D., 116
McHale, Archbishop, 196
Mcintosh, General, 22
Mclver, Colonel, 144
McKean, Thomas, 23
McNevin, 116
Meade, George, 19
Meagher, T. P., Ill, 136, 144
Mease, James, 19
 , John, 19
Memphis, 31
Meredith, Eeese, 18
 , Colonel, 22
 , Samuel, 19
Michigan, relative populations of,
30 ; Lake, 32
Minnesota, relative populations
of, 30 ; colonization in, 76, 89

Mississippi, relative populations
of, 30
Mitchel, John, 57, 110, 146, 155,
177
MoUin-O'Lalour, 155
Monmouth, 16
Montana, relative populations of,
31
Montgomery, Eichard, 17, 19, 20,
22
Morris, Eobert, 19
 , Colonel, 22
Moultrie, General, 22
Mountmorris, Lord, 207
Moylan, Stephen, 18
Mulligan, Colonel, 145
Murray, Bunner, and Co., 19
Murray County, Minnesota, 89, 92
Napoleon, Milan decree of, 25
Nation, the, 45, 112
National Convention Committee,
190
Native-Americanism, history of,
37-59
Nebraska, relative populations of,
30 ; land in, 78, 83
Nesbitt, J. M., 19
Nevada, relative populations of, 30
Newark, 32
Newcastle, 8
Newenham, Sir Henry, 19
New England, 4, 5
New Hampshire, 5 ; relative
populations of, 30
New Haven, 32
New Jersey, relative populations
of, 30
New Mexico, relative populations
of, 31
New Orleans, 31
Newport, Captain, 3
New York, relative populations
of, 30; School Commissioners
of, 51-; Irish population of, 69
New York Herald, 233
 Fund, 199
New York Eegiment, 42nd, 145
New York State Militia, 164th,
145

INDEX.

251

Nichols and Kean, 19
Nixon, John, 19, 23
North Carolina, relative popula
tions of, 30
Norwegians, 75, 94
O'Brien, Smith, 109, 146
O'Byrne, Colonel, 230
O'Connell, D., 47, 109, 155
 , M. J., 87
O'Connor, John, 90
 , J. P., 73
O'Donnell, P. H., 189
O'Gorman, E., 109
Ohio, relative populations of, 30,
32 ; 10th Eegiment, 145
O'Lalours, 154
Omaha, 32
O'Mahony, John, 123, 147
O'Moores, 154
Onahan, W. J., 85
Ontario, Late, 32
Oregon, relative populations of,
30
O'Eeilly, John Boyle, 220
O'Toole, St. Lawrence, 140
Palatines, 9
Palmerston, Lord, 148
Papists, Irish, 7
ParneU, 0. S., 107. 189 ; in Ame
rica, 198 ; at Ennis, 207 ; at
Galway, 211 ; at Waterford, 213
Patton, John, 19
Peace Preservation Acts, 1880,
206
Peel, Sir Eobert, 106
Pennsylvania, 8, 9; Cavalry, 15;
Bank of, 19 ; relative popula
tions of, 30
Peters, Eichard, 19
Philadelphia, 8, 14, 18, 32
Pioneer Press, 233
Pittstown, 200
Plunket, D., 206
Plymouth, 3
Portsmouth, 20
Power, O'Connor, 187, 189
Prince of Wales, the, 143
Princeton, 15

Protestant Association, 52
Protestantism, 50
Providence, 32
Prussia, 184
Quebec, 17, 19
Queen's County, 154
Eaphoe, 19
Eeed, George, 22
Eepeal, 47
Ehode Island, relative popula
tions of, 30
Eobertson, Major-General, 13
Eobinson, W. E., 176
Eussell, Lord John, 87
Eutherford, John, 122
Eutledge, Edward, 22
Eyan, George D. L., 91
Sadlier, John, 121
Sargent, Mr. Winthrop, 10
Saturday Review, articles of the,
128
Savannah, 21
Scully, Vincent, 168
Sellick, Daniel, 4
Shee, John, 19
Sheehy, Father, 73, 229
Shields, the. Artillery, Boston,
58
Shiell, Hugh, 19
Slavery, question of, 47
SlideU, 148
Sligo, 144
Smith, John, 3
 , Colonel, 21
 , James, 23
South Carolina, relative popula
tions of, 31
Spain, 138
Spalding, Eight Eev. Dr., 62
Spencer, Eev. T. A., 5
Stark, John, 20
State trials, 217
Stephens, James, 122, 125, 144,
177
Steuben, Baron, 22
Stewart, General Walter, 17
St. Louis, 32

252

INDEX.

St. Patrick, Friendly Sons of, 8,
14, 16
St. Paul, 32; Catholic Colonization
Bureau, 80
Stryker, General, 13
SuUivan, John, 20
 , Daniel 20
 , Ebenezer, 20
 , A. M., 110, 121, 189
Swedes, 75, 94
Sweetman, John, 89
S-wift County, Minnesota, 79
Tallaght, 183
Taylor, George,- 22
TenakUl, 154
Tennessee, relative populations
of, 31
Texas Hussars, 150; relative
populations of, 31 ; colonies in,
84
Thebaud, Eev. A. J., 5
Thierry, A., 116
Thompson, 20
.  , General WiUiam, 17
Thornton, Matthew, 22
Thunder, Lattin, 91
Tilghman, Colonel, 21
Times, articles of the, 128
Tone, Wolfe, 133
Tracey, 89
Trenton, 13, 15,
Trois Kiviferes, 17
Truth-teller, the, 45

Ulster settlers, 5
Vnited Irishman, the, 155
United Irishmen, 110
Utah, relative populations of, 31
Van Diemen's Land, 57
Vermont, relative populations of,
31
Vernon, Captain John, 4
Vicksburg, 31
Virginia, 3, 138 ; relative popula
tions of, 31
Von Stein, 134
Walton, Colonel, 139
War of Eevolution, part taken by
Irish in, 12-23
Washington, 8, 12, 13, 14, 15
Washington territory, relative
populations of, 31
Waterford, 4
Waterloo, 139
Wayne, General Anthony, 16
Webster, Daniel, 20, 53
West Virginia, relative popula
tions of, 31
Wexford, 4, 18
Whigs, American, 38, 57
Wilkes, Admiral, 147
William of Orange, 184
Wisconsin, relative populations
of, 31
Wyoming, relative populations
of, 31

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