HENRY WARD BEECHER ON IRELAND.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XII, Issue 5, 23 May 1884, Page 25

HENRY WARD BEECHER ON IRELAND.

(From the Pilot.) The dinner of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, of New York City is famed for eloquent and witty speeches, and many other brillian accompaniments that render it one of the notable annual {fathering of the United States. It is needless to say that the society embrace the leading Irish-Americans of New York. This year it even sur passed itself, pwing probably to the ability and great popularity oi its eminent President, Chief Justice Daly, whose opening speech wai a record of extraordinary historical interest. The society celebrated its 100 th anniversary on the 17th inst., and thia fact alone would bare ren If red the occasion interesting. But the speech of the evening was made by the Rev. Henry Ward Beecaer, who was received with tremendous applause by the Friendly S*ns. Mr. President and Gentlemen :— I do not know whether you are as ranch surprised to see me here as I am to be here. * When I received your invitation I accepted it very largely from*" the novelty of it (applause). I did not know that there was any really deep foundation in the matter, but it has been disclosed to me since I have been here (applause). The proverbial modesty of the Irish people is such that they need somebody who can brag for them, and looking around among the men who are engaged in this kind of oratory, they saw me and said : That is the man (laughter). He is a Yankee (laughter). He celebrates twice a year the Forefathers' Day — for we eat dinnei in Brooklyn on the 21st of December and in New York on tho 22nd, and I have to speak to both of them— and therefore if any selection is to be made it should be of some man who is an expert in these anniversary speeches. And lam bound to say that you needed some such man (laughter and applause). I never saw such a waste of opportunity. Do you not suppose that if the Mayflower had come over to this country in the ninth century, and that the forefathers had discovered ita9 your forefathers have (laughter), you would have had four dinners and everyone would have been filled full of the achievements of our ancestors 1 Here you have been hundreds and hundreds of years before we have had a vision of the land, and what a small matter you make of it. There was but one man south of Mason and Dixon's line, and he died ; and all those that went North, into the hyperborean regions of this country, were digested and went home (laughter). Ah, gentlemen, these are occasions, which, if let go without improvement, will never come again. I did not know but you mistook me for an Irishman (laughter). I have looked into the matter seriously. I think the foundation stock from which I came was English, unless it was Jewish. My name is Jewish, but I cannot trace that. We came from county Kent, in England. I find also that there is an infusion or Welsh blood, and last of all, I find that there is a stream of Scotch blood. Now, if there had been one drop of Irish blood, there would have been a spontaneous combustion (continned laughter and applause). It very likely will be found out before the next anniversary, for we are now going to have national anniversaries thick and fast. We shall have a Norwegian one, and a Scotch one, and a French one, and an Italian, and a Hungarian. All nations that have populated this country are bound to have a dinner and recount their ancestries and all that they have done or meant to do for this country. I am now diligently preparing myself to make a Danish Bpeech, and lam after an ancestor (laughter). Well, gentlemen, if to speak a little seriously the qualification for such a meeting as this is a very sincere admiration of the race, then I was a right man to be called (applause). For, with some abatement I do admire the Irish (laughter). Gentlemen, when fish are very small they fry them and eat them without dressing— all there is of them ; but when they are very large they can afford to take off the fios and take out much of the entrails and then there is much left for a banquet ; and the Irishman can afford to be eviscerated and yet there will be a good substance left (applause and laughter). I bemoan the fate of that beautiful island of the sea. Did you ever think that fruit trees never eat their own apples ? Other hands pluck the fruit ; they only bear. Ireland raises men and all the world plucks them (great applause). As far back as the history of civilisation goes there is not a nation that has earned a place in history in whose councils, in whose armies or on whose battlefields the Irish have not been found — everywhere ; and of all the nations of the eartn none has profited so much by them as this nation (cries of " bravo " and applause). One of the signs of a true Christian civilisation is the estimate which humble motives are held in, and when I look at those that come over to our families and the unassuming humbler services of the Irish maidens, their love of our children, their loyalty and their fidelty, I cannot enough honour them. When I perceive how they work, toiling through the months with their pittance of wages, saving it, wearing the least and spending the least, that they may set the stream of gold flowing across the sea to their old father or mother, or to bring out brother or sister to this conntry, I feel in the language of sacred writ that the last and least should be first in honour (continued applause). We, with the surety of publicity, perform deeds of charity, or of heioism ; but in the humbler sphere in which these persons labour there is no certainty and almost no reality of commendation or of praise ; and they do it because they have hearts that. are deep and affections that are warm (applause). When I look out upon the labour of the the spade, the industry of the farm, or the work that is connected with unfolding those improvements which have been so eloquently alluded to by the gentleman preceding me, I ask, where until within a few years have we had the bone and muscle to do the worn: that is the substructure of our modern civilisation, and where have we found better citizens^ than in the children of the Irish ? (applause). In coming to this conntry they are not yet accustomed to the ways of a constitutional Government like ours, and do not yet well understand the secrets of liberty. It is not their fault ; they have not been taught these things at home (applause). After they have been here Borne time, if they have not learned how to vote it is not from a want of practice (laughter). When I Bee gentlemen of good liaeage and good blood

that come t#> this land willing to serve, anyway humbling themselves, willing to become aldeimcn or even to occupy offices, I cannot but honour their fidelity and their patriotism to their new country (laughter). Ireland has been called the Niobe of nations, the mother seeing herself bereft by unfriendly gods of all that she loved best, To-day it seems more to me like the old fabled Laocoon who, f aitbf nl to Troy angered the Grecian gods, and mighty serpents crushed both the father and the 60ns, with this change in that fable and poem, that the mighty serpents of oppression that have twined around the children and sought to take away the life of the father will die, and Laocoon will live (continued applause). Pardon me if I allude to tbat which has been to me of the most profound interest, the struggle of this people against organised oppression — a struggle that is still going on— a struggle in which an American has a right to have some interest and enthusiasm, because tbe leader par cxccllenrc of that; civic movement has mingled the Irish blood with tbe American (applause). It is not for me — both a descendant of English stock and also a real admirer of the English people — to indulge in unwarrantable or illimited reproach. I greatly admire many of the sterling qualities of the English people ; but they are hard masters (applause). They make large requirements of themselves and more of their subjects (applause and cries of hear, bear). It was their ignorance of how to manage colonial people that led to tbe War of Independence on this side of the sea. The English were hard governors in all the Oriental lands, they have been hard governors at home, and the days of this ignorance God winked at : but he is going to wink at it no lonerer. The English people are a people whose hands when they are shut are hard to open. Whep^gce they bind a people with their cords- you might as j&\\ try to unfcre*bhe roots of an oak tree. There is no remission or Heviation to tbe Englishman let alone, but when their conscience is Addressed — and part of it is not conscience — when reasons take on substantial forms, when their interests are interrupted and assailed, when they find persistence that is as obstinate as their purpose is, the English people can be brought to their senses (continued applause). lam one of those who believe that Ireland should not assume her proper position or her measure of proper independence 'until she shall have presented such a face to England as tbat Englishmen may feel that their own interests demand the liberation of Ireland. Not all that has beea done is to be approved and it is as little approved by elevated and cultivated Irishmen as<. by the civilised world. It is Macaulay that says, speaking of the French Revolution that tne proper measure of the excesses of tbat Bevolution is the measure of tbe oppression by the French monarch of tbe French people. It may be said, if there is an under class of really untrained natures tbat have no conception or clearly infused notion of power, that form civic combinations and go as beasts go into the contest with teeth and with claws and only with physical violence, bow came there to be such a claß3 of ignorant people ? How came it that it should be thought necessary by any to use violence ? Although, the Irish from the earliest day have been a pugnacious people (applause)— Quakers didn't originate there — (laughter). Yet those things that are so offensive to every right-minded man, the use of dynamite, this attempt to scratch England, thinking you can make her submit, this destroying her depots or- public buildings or the innocent population thit happen to be around the explosion meet no sympathy all the world over (continued applause) But whtre did the Irish get this idea ? It was not born there. All over the continent of Europe to-day there are surging from the bottom Socialistic ideas and Nihilistic ideas which cannot meet the approbation of any right-thinking man. Yet, when" 1 consider the oppression that they suffer,- when I consider the Nihilistic idea — the destroying element I heartily hate— but when I consider the people that are left to right themselves by &uch means of violence, while I deplore it, I say 1 do not wonder that they think it is right to use whatever weapons their ignorance puts into their hands (applause). This people of Russia this people brought up in Austria, this people that have been brought up even under tbe despotism of Germany, time and experience will teach what we have learned in this land, that brains are more mighty for reform than muscles are. He that has a right cause will succeed, and every man that is under the foot of a despot has a right cause if God is God and truth is truth. We cannot perhaps analyze all the elements at woik ; we cannot go into the historical and physiological conditions of this people; but there are certain facts tbat stand out very plainly. One is tbat the people of Ireland are extremely miserable and unhappy. Nobody knows so much abont it as tbe men themselves. The man that holds the whip does not know what that whip means so well as the man at the other end of the lash (laughter), The Englishman living in his own country may think that the Irish are foolish ; but it is the Irishman starving, without land or prospects of land, and with the Irish blood in his veins, that resents oppression, tbat longs to have the fieedom of a man and a noble manhood. He knows what the times are and what a dollar is and what suffering is. The fact that Ireland is wietchedly misgoverned must be acknowledged by all men. Another fact is open to us, and that is that the efforts tbat have been made under Ihe good influences that have drifted across the ocean fiom our better experiments in labour have been thue far very successful. I think tbat the career of Mr. Gladstone and that the attempted improvements that be has sought to make are all auspicious ; they are not completed ; they will go on form step to step, and Ireland will be as free under tbe Crown as England is under her Crown or Scotland is under Ihe Crown, or Wales ; just as free as under, this Government New York is or Pennsylvania is or New England fs. She may not be separated from the other country, but she will not be under the other country's feet. She will have in all local matters the right that we have to determine her own affairs in her own way, and in regard to all things that pertain to the kingdom at large, to have her voice as tbe other portions of tbe British Empire have their voices. We have but little trouble in this land; we partition off the territories and say to our people : " Have your own way, and if you don't hare your own we will make you "

(applause). If you want to know the pattern of the future govern* ment don t look to England, don't look to Ireland. Look to America. The truths that have been developed here, even if the seed from which they sprang was English «eed, the institutions that have been enlarged and have been unfolded here ; the policy that has held this land together under trials that have never fallen upon any other nation in the history of the world, public Bentiment has blazed acrops the eea. France feels it, Germany is resisting it in vain. The Czar will be exploded utterly if he does not take heed in time. Although I am already what is called outside an old man— (applause and repeated shouts of "No, no,") Gentlemen, l will swap hair with half of you (applause and laughter)— inside I am young ; I am halfgrown (laughter). But before I die I believe that I shall see Ireland free, orderly, prosperous, and as she has always been, enthu siastic and loyal (shouts of " hear, hear.") But, as it is, let^us turo away our eyes from Ireland. The Irish people never can say that they don't behave and prosper. The Irishman is a successful man everywhere but in Ireland. Bring him here where freedom reigus and law, and he is of very little trouble, He may be when he is yet new to this land ; but if an Irishman can evade whisky for ten years and vote early aad often, in the course of ten or fifteen years he is as good a citizen as if he had been born here (applause and laughter). Those that have come here and have lived over a certain period have made the best part of our citizens. If a man wants to see Irishmeu let him come to America. Here we have them in their true fulness ; there they are cramped, here spread open ; there afflicted, here they breathe free air down to the bottom of their lungs ; there they are impoverished, here they are more likely to impoverish us (laughter). They have strong blood, they are a glorious stock to breed from. Though relatively small at home in population as compared with the larger nationalities, yet all history ha* shown and will show us that, wherever the Irish go, they bring vitality with tbem. The Irish may be called the yeast of nations. In meeting you this evening I desire not only to express the most cordial fellowship and good-will to the Irish in America, but also to express the most profound sympathy with the Irish people in Old Ireland itself. lam not born of Irish people. lam not of Irish persuasion in religion ; but I am a man (great applause and cheers). Nowhere from the rising of the sun until the going down of the same shall an oppressed man lift up his hand to redress his wrongs and assert his liberty, and I not be his priest, his prophet and his advocate (great applause). If it be so among Chinamen, if be so among those far off or near at hand, if it be so anywhere throughout the world where I am not connected by any bonds other than those of common humanity, that is my position, and how much more shall I feel a profound .sympathy and enthusiastic reception for that gallant remnant of the old and heroic race struggling in Ireland for the simplest rights of humanity (applause). Mr. President, I thank you for the invitation that has brought me here to-night. I thank you for the opportunity that has been given of sayiDg a few things about Ireland ; but you have no part or lot in it became you are a Yankee (laughter). You are born on the wrong soil, but still we all give something to the lineage (applause). If I have not boasted enough in your behalf, nor made available the materials that are at hand, all I can say is that if you will invite me at the next hundredth, celebration, I will make up my shortcomings (continued applause and cbeers.)