IRISH READINGS

New Zealand Tablet, Volume LII, Issue 42, 4 November 1925, Page 9

IRISH READINGS

.. Electors and non-electors of Ballinrobe and Kilmain, what has brought you all here to-day? In what cause assemble here all the men I see before me? It is the same spirit that upheld the cross and the shamrock — in God and faith in Ireland throughout the immortal past. It is the same spirit that will hold together the Irish race, one and indestructible, through the half revealed glories of an august future. It- is the spirit of manhood that is within you. It is the divine fire of your race that burns in your hearts. It is the resolve to be free that is sustained in your souls by the prayer of St. Patrick, that the land of his labors and his love should not remain in bondage for ever. It is not whether I shall be returned to Parliament or not—which in itself is a matter of very little consequence —but whether Irishmen and the consciences of Irishmen shall be trodden under foot by tyrants. It is not my cause but your own cause—the good fight that your fathers . fought before you, that your children will win after you— you come here to maintain to-day. The lords of the soil have won the soil by the sword; and with the sword, as long as they can, of course, will retain it; they have sold the Parliament of their country to the English Parliament, and the price of their treason, like the leprechaun’s gold, has turned into withered leaves in their pockets. But there is something belonging to the people that they have never won or bought or sold, which they never will win or buy or sellthe right of the people to think for themselves and act for themselves —■ the “courage never to submit or yield,” which they have held good for ages, and which has never yet been conquered from them. , And this is not only their right by the laws of nature and of God, but by the law of the land, which goes for a good deal more under the British constitution. A petitioner once said to the celebrated Duke of Ormond, “I have no friend at court but God and your Grace.” “I am sorry to say,” he replied, “you could not have two worse friends at court than those that you have . named.” And so we will say nothing for the present of two such friends as God and natural right, have been in this country, and content ourselves with pleading the law of the land, on which we arc told we may more legally rely. In the address to the electors of the county which I published a few weeks ago, among the rights which I announced my intention to watch over and defend w-ere the rights of property and I knew the first rights of property that I should be called upon to defend would be those of the electors in the exercise of the electoral franchise—which are as much the property of the voters as their estates are the property of the land-, lords. And now you may ask me what brings me here to-day? And I - tell you, in all sincerity, that; I am not here with the views

(Edited by A. M. Sullivan, M.P., and T. D. Sullivan, M.P.) SPEECH OF GEORGE HENRY MOORE. (On the Hustings at Ballinrobe,- August 25, 1868.)

and purposes of a candidate. I come on the part of the electors of Mayo, to call you to the rescue of your fellow-countrymen—to take counsel with you against a great act of meditated oppression—that, with a common will and united effort, we may assert their liberties and punish their . oppressors. There are at this moment, as you well know, upwards of a thousand men in this county, as good Irishmen as any in the world; men of quick intelligence and warm hearts — eyes fixed, like our own, on the future destinies of their country — hearts burning to see those destinies accomplished; but bound in chains of feudal tyranny that they are as powerless to resist as sleeping men in the thrall of a nightmare. There is no iron on their limbs; no hempen cords round their necks. They are no longer menaced, like their fathers of old, with the dungeon and the scaffold. And yet there is a. fear in their hearts deeper than the dread of the jailor or the hangman. A fear for their homes, a fear for the food of their children, a secret sense of helplessness and hopelessness, more deadly and degrading than those more open dangers that spur the souls of men to resistance. It is no longer their bodies that are in bondage: it is their souls that are in ironstheir consciences that are sent to the scaffold. It is with sorrow and dismay that I speak of such relations as existing between landlords and tenants —between my friends and my fellow-countrymen my native county. If, instead of maintaining such relations with the people,they would come forward as their natural leaders and protectors, the people would not look for leadership or protection to me or to those who stand around me. The electors of Mayo are called upon to elect two representatives to take two different sides upon every political question. They are compelled to elect one Whig and one Tory—to elect one man to vote for tenant-right and one to vote against itone to declare for a native Parliament and another against it. They are to elect one man to vote for the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act and the gagging of the Irish people, while another is to be chosen as the not inappropriate representative of a gagged people. Surely they reckon too much upon' the endurance of the people if they expect them to submit to this insult upon their patience. It is said that on.one occasion, as the Emperor Napoleon the First went the rounds .the .night- before a battle in which his army had to contend with overwhelming odds, he recognised an old grenadier standing at his post, and addressed to him this question“ The enemy seem to think they can swallow us up at a mouthful what think you?” V “No! please .your Majesty,” said the old .man;- “we’ll iplace ourselves crossways.” Now, that’s what I want you,to. do. We must place ourselves crossways. Every honest elector and' non-elector

in the county must place himself crossways. And it will riot be as difficult a process this time as it was before. Let those conspirators do what they will, the day of ' their usurped dominion is past. Whatever tyranny is executed on the consciences of men in this election will have no confirmation in the future. I pledge myself to the electors that after this election not a man will be injured for the vote that he may give for God and the people. And I'll tell you why. There is a story of two brothers in the island of Corsica—twins born almost at the same instant— so like each other that no one could tell one from the other— hair, eyes, features, stature, the very sound of their voice, so wonderfully like, that their very mother could not tell the difference. But that is not all—there was such a strange and inscrutable sympathy between them that, at whatever distance they might be apart, they felt together almost as one man. When one was in sorrow, the other mourned; and.when one was triumphant, the other's heart was glad ; and one day one of these brothers felt" in his heart that his brother was dead—ly murdered in another land. He knew it; he was sure of it'. He did not stop to prove the murder or to identify the assassin—he set off straight for the country in which the, outrage was committed. He knew the mur- : derer the instant he saw him, and he avenged his brother on the spot. Well, the Irish people have a brother— a Corsican, but an American brother. A brother people, sprung from the same Irish loins, nursed at the same Irish breasts, and so like each other are these brothers that their mother,. Ireland, can hardly tell the difference. The same dark hair, the same grey eyes, the same ringing laugh with which the Irishman makes love and makes war all over the world. And that brother people, far away over the wave, feels a secret and ineffable sympathy with his brother people at home. He mourns over his sorrows— is indignant at his wrongs he has a heart that feels for him, and a sword that is ready to avenge his injuries. He will know if his brother is murdered, and he will know where the murderer is to be found. And we have a step-sister, too, on the other side of the way very shrewd and sensible lady, as I am informed. She has many great and good qualities, too, when they are brought into play. She is never cruel, unless cruelty can be turned to advantage, and she hates injustice on the part of others, unless she can make anything by it herself. In this case all her good qualities, all her good sense, and .her love of justice, and her hatred of cruelty, will come into play. She knows that those who sympathise with you and protect you might be-; come very dangerous enemies she knows that those who oppress you can never add a feather's weight to her credit or her dominion; and, under those circumstances, she will take very good care that you shall not he oppressed. Now, I shall call both upon our brother over the way, and our stepsister, over the way, just to look on and see fairtplayr- to protect the Irish electors in the exercise of their legal rights, and not to ' allow a petty band of foolish tyrants , to sow the seeds"; of

hatred and animosity between two great fcompircs. At all events, 1 am determined to this out with them. I will have the question settled whether one lord shall drive a hundred human souls to the hustings, another fifty, and another a score —whether this or that squire shall call twenty, or ten, or five, as good men as himself, his voters* and send. them up with his brand on their backs to vote for an omndhanvn at his bidding. In doing this I, shall incur much odium, and expect to reap no reward. In doing this I have no object, end, or ambition, hut that of serving and saving the land in which I N was born.

OUR YOUNG MEN.. (By, T. 1). Sullivan in the Nation.) Ireland may well hope much, from the young men of the present generation. They are growing up in possession of many advantages denied to those who went before them, and indications are abundant that they will turn those advantages to good account for their country. In bravery, courage, and fidelity they cannot surpass their forefathers, who met the shock of wave after wave of invasion, and bore the brunt of the penal laws; but in certain other important respects, in some qualities and powers necessary to the building up of a nation, they may fairly be expected to excel them. Those dreadful trials of past times, those ages of conflict, suffering, and proscription, had the effect of checking the material and intellectual progress of • • the Irish race, and reducing them to a state of grievous depression. "While the other peoples of the earth went on increasing in skill and knowledge, cultivating every art/ exploring every science, adding to their re- - sources, and therefore ■to their strength, every avenue to learning, every way to wealth, was closed against the Irish. Education, industry, enterprise, were forbidden to them. They might not have books lest they should learn the full extent of their wrongs; they might not have arms lest they should proceed effectively to redress thorn. ft would he hard for any race of men to live through such times and circumstances; but the Irish did more than merely live through them—they preserved unimpaired great social and national virtues, possessed of which no race can die or be perpetually degraded. „ They never accepted the position of slavery into which they had been forced, hut continued to struggle against it with a spirit and resolution indomitable, and in the end irresistible. For many years they have been forcing their way “upward and onward,” bursting every shackle that restrained their free action, clearing every obstruction from their path, and recovering rapidly the ground lost, in darker and sadder periods of their history. Such is the progress of the Irish race at y the present time. The education of the people is advancing with giant strides, and as • < their knowledge increases their patriotism . becomes more enlightened, more active 3 more .intense. Never did a more intelligent and i high-spirited race of young men exist in

Ireland than tread its soil to-day.- They are thinkers and readers to an extent previously unknown in this country. Even within the last twenty years the intellectual development has been immense. The heart of Thomas Davis would have been gladdened'could he have witnessed it. In his.time the so-called . , National Schools had begun to tell upon the education of the people. Thousands.of young persons were quitting those schools with learning sufficient to enable them to take up and study the literature of their country, if only their country had a literature to present to them. Many good and useful, works on Ireland and Irish affairs were then in existence, but they were not widely diffused, and their price placed them beyond the reach of the people. He desired to meet the want of the time with a literature that should become truly popular, with books that the poorest might purchase and take to their homes, works of history, biography, poetry, romance, all calculated to spread the knowlodge and the love of Ireland. A noble commencement of his design was promptly made, but he did not live to sec it—the first volume of the Library of Ireland, was dedicated to , his memory. But since then the good work has been vigorously carried on. Volume after volume of Irish lore has been given to the public, who have received the gift with rejoicing. Old books, have been republished, and new ones have been issued in great numbers, and still the popular demand for such, reading is on the increase. The history of Ireland is now becoming known in every cottage; the names of Ireland's warriors, saints, and statesmen, her heroes, and her

martyrs, are become familiar words ; their acts are talked of by artisans in their workshops and peasants l in the fields,-the songs and the. music of Ireland are on all lipssongs that do not mourn for the oast; songs that have in them no trace of "despair, or doubt, or fear, but express a resolute and noble spirit, and are ''worthy of a nation marching oh. to freedom. Newspapers that are genuine national educators have attained an immense circulation. In short, Irish literature in every shape is now rendered accessible to the'people, and the people show that thy know how to give it welcome, The young men who have grown up in the midst of such circumstances, with minds so trained, and cultivated, are naturally a greater power for Ireland than wore those on whose lives lay the blighting shadow of the penal laws, the darkness of enforced ignorance, and the crushing weight of a hideous social tyranny. 'The foreign ruler and the domestic oppressor are still strong in the land, but there are things they may not do, deeds once familiar to them which they dare not repeat. The people, who never loved them, do not fear them now: and, instead of being the party to sue for terms, are those who declare they will have no peace until every wrong endured by the Trish nation is righted. They have learned that in every such struggle, however numerous the armies of the oppressor, however strong his fortresses, however full his coffers, "the people with a just cause are sure to prevail in the end; and they are resolved that, come when it may, and cost what it may, the end of this struggle shall be the freedom of Ireland.- •