KEVIN IZOD O'DOHERTY ON THE IRISH QUESTION.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VII, Issue 412, 4 March 1881, Page 17

KEVIN IZOD O'DOHERTY ON THE IRISH QUESTION.

(From the Australian.)

At a meeting of sympathisers with Mr. Parnell held at Brisbane on January 31 the Hon. "Dr. O'Doherty took the chair.

The Chairman, who was received with continuous cheers, said that they were probably aware that some short time since a circular arrived in the colonies, sent by the Irish National Land League, asking the co-operation of all Irishmen in Australia in the work in which the National Land League in Ireland was engaged. The same circular was sent to America, and, in fact, to all other English speaking countries where Irishmen were to be found. All sorts of comments and rumours were afloat respecting the Land League, and he would therefore read a few extracts f rom the circular referred to, drawing particular attention to the following :—: — Although our movement is directed against a code of laws so oppressive as to paralyse the one national industry of Ireland, and although we have been assailed with the most venomous malignity, and pursued with the most unscrupulous falsehood, yet can we solemnly declare in the face of the civilised world, that all our objects are in keeping with perfect justice to all men, and that all the means we have recommended for the attainment of these objects are in keeping with perfect justice to all men, and that all the means we have recommended for the attainment of these objects are reasonable, peaceful, and thoroughly legal, offending in no degree against natural right, moral obligation, or intelligent hu man law. That circular had been sent throughout the whole length and breadth of America. There was not am important city from New York to San Francisco, which had not at present organised a branch of the Land League ; and he would respectfully remind them as well as those who were inclined to treat with, indifference, probably with contempt, the efforts that were now being made in favour of the unfortunate people in Ireland — he would remind them that they had to deal with a power that had sprung up in America within a very few years — a power consisting of Irishmen who had been driven from their homes in Ireland, numbering at the present time 8,000,000 of people. Meetings had been held in Sydney and Melbourne, and he need not say very much about them. Had leading Irishmen come forward and done what he conceived to be their duty there would have been any amount of peopie to follow them. Here they laboured undei the same difficulty. A considerable number of gentlemen of Irish birth, and of Irish sympathies, it was to be presumed, resident in Brisbane were not present that night ; and although he did not blame them or question for a moment the reasons why they were not there, still he ventured to say that it was a misfortune that their countenance was not given on an occasion of that kind. It was now nearly thirty-two years, the best part of two generations, since he first made bis appearance in the character of an Irish agitator. (Great applause,) It was a very remarkable coincidence that the circumstances which, dragged him from the ardent studies of his profession at that time were precisely similar to the circumstances which dragged him that nigbt from the practice of his profession. (Cheers.) He would tell them how it came to pass that he got into Irish politics. In 1849, during the last year of the Irish famine, he had, as a medical student, to -walk the Cork-street Fever Hospital, and it was there, he told them honestly, that he became a rebel. (Cheers.) He had daily to walk between lines of his fellow-beings stretched upon the ground awaiting admission, and he had seen the most fearful sights that the Lord had ever sent on earth, people in the last stages of famine, dying from scurvy and fever. The medical students in that hospital, almost to a man, became rebels like himself, when their intelligence told them that the Government who ruled the country had not the idea of true Government. Iv 1849 the worst of the famine passed away, but evictions remained. He, with a dozen other enthusiasts, started a paper for the purpose of urging the people to save their harvest that year. It was a good harvest, and it was admitted it was sufficient to save the life of every man, woman, and child in the country, but the product was exported to England to meet the demands of the landlords of the country, and the people were left to starve on their own soil. (Shame, groans.) At that time he indited one leading article. He had never written another in his life, for a burned child dreads the fire. The article was simply an appeal from the depth of his heart to the men of his country to save the harvest, feed their children, and let the landlords go to glory rather than allow themselves to starve. He was twice put on his trial before Baron Pennefather and a jury, bnt each time the jury disagreed and he was discharged, and he recalled with pleasure the fact that the judge's eyes were dimmed with tears as he read the article. (Cheers.) But the Government had a great principle to establish, and he was to be the victim. The third time every precaution was taken. A good Bound judge was placed on the Bench, twelve honest enemies of Ireland were found for a jury, and he was sent away from his ccuntry for ten years to cool bis enthusiasm. He referred them for graphic details of the times to the work published by Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, and also to a leading article in the Courier of the previous Saturday, being an interesting comment on the journals of His Excellency Sir Arthur Kennedy at the period referred to. These alone would justify any action taken to prevent the recurrence of such scenes in Ireland. In 1879 then were scarcely any of you who did not subscribe freely to save our people from starvation, for there was a state of affairs existing little dissimilar to that of 1849 — another cycle of famine and evictions. In 1849 two millions were swept away, and the same was imminent in 1879, but famine and eviction failed to do then what they did in i 1849, owing to the exertions of Australia and America. As a candid opinion of the state of Ireland, he quoted some observations of Mr. Jas. A. Froude, in the Nineteenth C&ntury for September, in which the following passage occurred :—: — " Seven hundred years have now passed since Henry 11. attached Ireland to the English Crown. For all those years successive

English administrators h&\ c pretended to govern there ; and as a I result we saw in the last winter the miserable Irish people sending I their emissaries, hat in hand, round the globe, to beg for sixpences ) for God's sake, to save them from starving. The Irish soil, if it were | decently cultivated, would feed twice the population which now occupies it ; but in every garden there grow a hundred weeds for one potato."

He thanked Mr. Froude for the facts which he had 8© pithily stated, but could no>t agree with the remedy he suggested, which was to send another Ciomwellian army of Puritans and replant the country with good Protestants, taking care that no Catholics remained this time. The Irish, thank God, out of Ireland, were strong enongh to see that no such remedy would be permitted . (Loud cheers.) The present Imperial Government, after assuming- office, toot some steps to alleviate the present state of things, which showed they bad some feelings of humanity towards the suffering people of Ireland. MrGladstone, ■whom he regardad with the utmost possible respect as a statesman, who would, if permitted, grant the fullest freedom and equality to the Irish people, introduced a measure called the Compensation for Disturbance Bill, and in moving its second reading, said :

" The two bad harvests of 1877 and 1878 were succeeded in 1879 by a harvest, which in parts of Ireland, was the very worst known since the great Irish famine. With these bad harvests the number of evictions increased. In truth, the act of God in the failure of the crops had replaced the Irish occupier in that condition in which he stood before the Land Act, because he was deprived of liis usual means, and had to contemplate eviction for non-payment of rent, and. as a consequence of eviction, starvation. It is no great exaggeration to say, that in a country where agricultural pursuits are the only pursuits, and where the means of the paympnt of the rent are entirely destroyed for the time by the visitation of Providence, the occupier may regard the sentence of eviction as coming very near to a sentence of starvation." This extract was from an article in the Contemporary Review, and the article went on to say :—: — " And in the same speech, on the Disturbance Bill, from which I have already quoted, he summed the meaning of the eviction figures as showing that 15,000 individuals would be "ejected from their homes, without hope and without remedy, in the course of the nresent year." In other vswds, the Irish landlords— in the year following that in. which there had been the worst potato crop since the great famine — the Irish landlords decreed 15,000 sentences of eviction ; or, to use Mr. Gladstone's words, 15.000 sentences of starvation." These were the words of the Premier of the Empire, and his statement of the case was not at all exaegerated. They had heard a great deal about outrages in Ireland. Five murders had unhappily been committed there during the past year, and be was quite sure there ■was not a man present who did not regret them because of the discredit they brought upon our country. But did those, he would ask, who were commenting so freely upon these disorders, ever think of the atrocities being daily perpetrated under the sanction of law upon the unhappy people, to him it was perfectly amazing the indifference with which these were regarded. Englishmen were lavish in their expressions of sympathy for Buffering of the kind in other countries. But here in the very heart of the Empire, we have the words of the Premier that landlord law had doomed 15,000 of oui race to await death during this past year, and death too of the most fearful kind it is possible to contemplate, and yet men stand by and witness it as they did thirty years ago with the most perfect sang froid and indifference — whilst they will tell us that the men thus coolly handed over to slaughter are the same race who constitute the flower of their army and are at this moment lavishly shedding their blood in different quarters of the world for the defence of the great Empire that so cruelly ill-treated them. (Shame, shame.) Thank God, this slaughter did not occur, and we have to thank Charles Stewart Parnell and the Land League that it did not. (Lo\id cheers.) As was the case thirty years ago, so it was to-day, the Government did nothing, and the Land League had to step in and cave the lives of the people. (Tremendous applause.) Gentlemen, he fully believed the leading men of the present Government weTe heartily desirous of doing justice to our people. Nobody who Tead the speeches of John Bright and Mr ChambeTlain lately delivered can doubt their deep sympathy with their sufferings ; and Mr. Gladstone has ever been consistent — whether in or out of office, in endeavouring to allay their distress. He awaited, therefore, with eager hopefulness, this great land act they have promised, and sincerely wished it would be all that John Bright has predicted — a full and final settlement of thp question. But, whether it be so or not, he had no hesitation in emphatically declaring, that the passing of such a measure, whenever it receives the sanction of both Houses of Parliament, will be the act of Charles Stewart Parnell and his Land League. (Loud cheers.) Now, gentlemen, who is this Parnell we hear and read so much of ? Is he, as some will have it, a needy political adventurer seeking an ephemeral reputation by pandering to the passions of the mob ? Or is he, as many re&pectable people think, t-o great a criminal as to be fit only to be hanged ? Is he in fine, as you will be told by many honest folk, an inciter to assassination, and the rest of it? (Laughter.) O'Connell used to consider himself the best abused man. of his day, and certainly in this respect there can be uo doubt the great man's mantle has fallen upon the shoulders of Mr. Parnell. He should like to disabuse the minds of those who entertained these erroneous opinions about him. Now, he had no hesitation in saying there were not twelve men in the House of Commons who could claim a nobler lineage than he could, at all events in the estimation of Irishmen. About the period of the Restoration, Thomas Parnell cetne over from Cheshire and Bettled in Ireland, purchasing an estate there. His sons, John and Thomas, were both distinguished, John becoming Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench, and Thomas a distinguished poet and literateur — the fiiend of Johnson, Pope, and Swift, amongst whom he was highly regarded. From the Chief Justice descended another John, who became a member of the Irish Parliament. His name is engraved upon the hearts of his countrymen as " Honest John ParnelL" He was Chancellor, of the Exchequer in the Government

of Lord Castlereagh when the latter sought to bring about the fatal Union. But no amount of argument, ror yet of bribery, could swerve him from his duty. He had already received the honour of a baronetcy, and a peerage was now placed at his disposal, if he would, like so many others, betray his country. His answer was to throw up his post as minister, and, taking his eon, Henry, with him, who was at the time also a member of the Irish House of Commons, both father and son ranged themselves on the side of the Opposition, and stoutly resisted the Act of Union to the end, prophetically declaring it to be fraught with ruin to their country. After the Union both father and son became members of the English House of Commons, representing their old constituencies. Honest John survived but a short time the ruin of Irish Independence, but his son, who received the title, laboured for many years in the Imperial House, rising step by step until he became Cabinet Minister in the Government of Lord Grey, and afterwards in that of Lord Melbourne, finally closing his distinguished career in the House of Lords as Baron Congleton, where his son sits to-day. He was especially distinguished during his career in Parliament for hia advocacy of the Catholic claims, and prepared the way, both by his writings and speeches for O'Connell in his great struggle for Catholic emancipation. He was the granduncle of our hero, who, as if the more to endear him to the Irish heart, can boast of a strain of other blood directly derived from the Irish soil quite as distinguished. His mother is the daugher of Admiral Stewart, the first admiral of the American navy — a most gallant fellow, tbe son of a Belfast man who emigrated to Boston some hundred years ago, and acquired in America a handsome fortune. Mr. ParneU's mother is still alive, like the mother of the Gracchi of old, taking the liveliest interest in his political work, spurring him up whenever a spur is needed. I ask you is it any wonder, with such an cestors, that this young man carries with him the|heartsof the people wherever he goes — (loud cheers) — especially when he has proved himself so worthy a scion of his house. His political career has as yet extended over the short space of five years, during which time he has acquired almost undisputed sway over the Irish people both in Ireland and America ; a truly tremendous power, holding as he does in his hands the will of at least ten millions of our race — a power which, if exercised w:sely and moderately, yet with unbending determination, will undoubtedly result by-and-bye in making our country the happiest and most prosperous portion of this great empire. (Loud cheer 3.) The secret of the influence which he had acquired he considered lay in his intimate knowledge of the forms of Parliament, and. his great ability to use them so as to meet the ends he had in view. It was amusing to notice the conflict between the anxiety of Englishmen to maintain tbat liberty of of speech which they loved so much and their desire to kick Parnell and his followers out of the house. But he had been a match for them so far, and he (Dr. O'Doherty) sincerely hoped he might oontinue bis obstructiveness until he accomplished the great object of his life which was to redeem their unfortunate fellow-countrymen. (Prolonged applause.)