A QUESTION FOR IRISHMEN.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 87, 26 December 1874, Page 11

A QUESTION FOR IRISHMEN.

++ So long as England treats Ireland as a conquered province, and to long as patriotism lives, this will be a living question for IrishmenHow can we help to free our country ? By secret societies and a bloody revolution, answered James Stephens and the Fenians ; and millions of Irishmen heard and believed them. By moral force and open agitation, said Daniel O'Connell andlsaac Butt j and Irishmen are beginning to examine the merits of the two principles. What is the difference between them? The common answer to this is Fenianism means physical force, and Home Rule means moral force. The enemies of Home Rule do not fail to ask— How can you break a power like that of England unless you strike her with a sword ? She does not care for words they say, for words have no weight. Wendell Phillips says of Daniel O'Connell :— " He was an Irishman, despised ; he was a Catholic, hated ; he was a man of words and nothing else. On words alone he, a Catholic, marched to Parliament to break the Constitution ; and when I saw him in London he held the balance of power in his right hand; and I left him there, this agitator, this man of words, standing with the Whig party in one hand and the Tories in the other : and he was deciding to which he would give the government of the realm!" O'Connell was preeminently a believer in moral force. He knew there could be no solid physical force in Ireland unless it Btood behind the moral force. One is part of the other : the moral is the voice — the physical the body. You may develop a physical force without an atom of moral force : Fenianism did this. But you cannot call forth a moral force without a physical strength behind it. Canning said that O'Connell was " the first man who summoned a race into existence." What did that mean? Let Wendell Phillips answer: — "There stood O'Connell, alone, without an office — he never held one — four millions of Irishmen behind him : poverty-stricken, under them the sod Booked with the blood of their ancestors ; and over them such a law that, as Henry Brougham said, they couldn't lift a hand without breaking it ; behind them a history that is a disgrace to England and Europe alike. What was their teaching ? — why they were Irishmen; their blood quicksilver ; hating the law, and loving a fight— and they never had an English law that they ought not to hate. Their own bishop of Kerry said, in 1799 : — 'Allegiance and protection walk hand-in-hand. You never have hud protection, and you do not owe allegiance.' That was the schooling— that was the blood. O'Conneli said to them : 'He that commits an offence helps the enemy.' And for thirty years he waged that battle between homeless, houseless, starved Ireland and the omnipotence of Great Britain, with law on its side 5 and no sheriff ever put his hand on the shoulder of one of his followers." Here was a true moral force : Ireland was aware of her wrongs, and she was demanding her rights in manful words ; and the very demand, in its openness, made her spirit free. This training of the people by O'Connell was invaluable to Ireland. Had it continued for two generations there would have been a race of Irishmen so filed with noble indignation at the refusal of justice, that no bonds could bind them. We should then see the outburst of the true physical force, which had been developed, not in secret, but in open agitation* There are two kinds of violence : that of a man or a people filled with a passing excitement, and that of a man or a people filled with conviction and the dignity of sore need, appealing to arms as a last resorfc. The violence of the latter is much more terrible and lasting in its effect than that of the former, and it only comes from men who have asked for justice and have been denied in the face of day. Behind all lav there must be a physical force strong enough' to execute it. Tame says : " behind evely code of laws there is a man ;" and Emerson says : " There is no true eloquence unless there is a man behind the speech." Had O'ConnelTs lesson been fully taught Ireland would have been infinitely stronger than any secret society could have made her— for the brain would lead and the arm obey. Fenianism was based on the secret society principle. Instead of making the people feel like injured freemen— -which is the only feeling that can support a revolution — it made them feel and act like weak conspirators. Fenianism -was in no way an educational movement, to " summon a people into existence." All it aimed at teaching was the use of a pike or a gun— even this in a miserable way—depending on the arm of the man altogether, and not at all on his mind. Secret societies have always been and are now defended in Ireland by people who say there is no other way to arm and drill the people. But they have never done this. This is a false claim. They have at all times, in 98, '48, and '65, pretended to do this, but they have miserably and criminally failed, as theirTnembers and organisers know well. There is no field in secret organization for the education of citizens ; there is no opportunity for manly speech or open, public action—the signs of a free people. Take Fenianism, for instance : a few were to do the thinking and the leading j the masses were neither to think nor to ask questions. They were not even to know who were their leaders. And they did not know. The nature of the order was such that the intelligence of the country held aloof from ifc : and the power was given into the hands of laen utterly unfit to mould the government of a nation. The motive was good, and, on the whole, the masses were faithful to their oath : but all the time the wretched secret was hawked for sale at the street corners, as such secrets ever must be. We do not condemn Fenianism because it aimed at freeing Ireland by violence ; but we do condemn it because it gave violence the first place. It put the arm before the brain. It developed no exalted national spirit. It allowed inferior men to hold a great and solemn power. Ifc had not an element of the manful, open-air agitation which a great movement for national freedom should have. Between the Fenian and Home Rule principle, Irishmen are called to choose. It is a choice between Stephens and O'Connell : both are men of words— only O'Connell's words represents the hearts and hands of Ireland, while the words of the secret-society man represent nothing but bunkum and the selfish needs or fertile fancies of the organizers. Boston 'Pilot.'