LECTURES 
 
 VERY REV. FATHER Bl'RKE, 
 
 JAS. ANTHONY FROri) 
 
 The English Historian. 
 
 :, 1 E, TWENTY -FIVE CENTS, 
 
 PRINTED : 
 403 S/ 
 
LECTURES 
 
 VERY REV. FATHER BURKE, 
 
 IN REPLY TO 
 
 JAS. A. FROUPK, 
 
 The English H istorian. 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO : 
 
 PRINTED BY THE CATHOLIC PUBLICATION CO. 
 
 403 SANSOME STREET, CORNER SACRAMENTO. 
 
 1872. 
 
PUBLISHERS' PREFACE. 
 
 NO course -of lectures ever delivered in America 
 will be so universally read as those delivered 
 by Father BURKE, in reply to Mr. FROUDE. Most of 
 the reports published in the newspapers have been far 
 from complete, but few of them having room for such 
 long lectures ; neither do the publishers of this edition 
 pretend that it is absolutely correct, but they have got 
 the fullest reports possible. These lectures will soon 
 appear, there is no doubt, in book -form, but it is the 
 intention of the CATHOLIC PUBLICATION COMPANY to 
 place all such matter within the reach of every Catholic 
 on the coast, and hence they have issued this cheap 
 edition, and do not expect to receive for it but a very 
 small per centage, if any thing more than the absolute 
 cost. 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO, December, 1872, 
 
 / 
 
FIRST LECTURE. 
 
 THE NORMAN INVASION OF IRELAND. 
 
 T ADIES AND GENTLEMEN : It is a strange fact that the 
 1 i old battle that has been raging for seven hundred years 
 should continue so far away from the old land. The question 
 on which I am come to speak to you this evening is one that 
 has been disputed at many a council board one that has been 
 disputed on many a well - fought field, and is not yet decided 
 the question between England and Ireland. (Applause.) 
 Among the visitors to American who came over this year, there 
 was one 'gentleman distinguished in Europe for his style of 
 writing and for his historical knowledge the author of several 
 works which have created a profound sensation, at least for 
 originality. 
 
 MR. FROUDE'S PURPOSE. 
 
 Mr. Fronde has frankly stated that he come over to this 
 country to deal with England and with the Irish question, 
 viewing these from an English stand -point; that, like a true 
 man, he came to America to make the best case that he could 
 for his own country ; that he came to state that case to an 
 American public as to a Grand Jury, and to demand a verdict 
 from them, the most extraordinary that was ever yet demanded 
 from any people, namely : the declaration that England was 
 right in the manner in which she has treated my native land for 
 seven hundred years. (Applause.) It seems, according to 
 
this learned gentleman, that we Irish have been badly treated . 
 that he confesses ! but he puts in, as a plea, that we only got 
 what we deserved. (Laughter and applause. ) " It is true, " he 
 says, "we have governed them badly ; the reason is, because it 
 was impossible to govern them rightly. It is true that we have 
 robbed them the reason is, because it was a pity to leave 
 them their own they made such bad use of it. It is true, we 
 have persecuted them ; the reason is, persecution was a fashion 
 of the time and the order of the day." On these pleas there 
 is not a criminal in prison to-day in the United States that 
 should not instantly get his freedom by acknowledging his 
 crime and pleading some extenuating circumstances. Our ideas 
 about Ireland have been all wrong, it seems. Seven hundred 
 years ago the exigencies of the time demanded the foundation 
 of a strong British Empire ; in order to do this, Ireland had to 
 be conquered, and Ireland was conquered. Since that time the 
 one ruling idea in the English mind has been to do all the good 
 that they could for the Irish. Their legislation and their action 
 has not always been tender, but it has been always beneficent. , 
 They sometimes were severe, but they were severe to us for 
 our own good, and the difficulty of England has been that the 
 Irish, during these long hundreds of years, have never under- 
 stood their own interests or knew what was for their own good. 
 Now, the American mind is enlightened ; and henceforth, no 
 Irishman must complain of the past in this new light in which 
 Mr. Froude puts it before us. Now the amiable gentleman 
 tells us what has been the Irish fate in the past. He greatly 
 fears that we must reconcile to it in the future. He comes to 
 tell us his version of the history of Ireland, and he also comes 
 to solve Ireland's difficulty, and to lead "us out of all the 
 miseries that have been our lot for hundreds of years. 
 
 SURMISES CONCERNING MR. FROUDE'S MISSION. 
 
 When he came, many persons questioned what was the 
 motive or the reason of his coming. I have heard people 
 speaking all around me, and assigning to the learned gentle- 
 man this motive or that. Some people said he was an emissary 
 of the English Government ; that they sent him here because 
 
they were beginning to be afraid of the rising power of Ireland 
 in this great nation ; that they saw here eight millions of Irish- 
 men by birth, and, perhaps, fourteen millions by descent, and 
 that they knew enough of the Irish to realize that the Almighty 
 God blessed them always with an extraordinary power, not 
 only to preserve themselves but to spread themselves, until, in a 
 few years, not fourteen but fifty millions of descendants of 
 Irish blood and of the Irish race will be in this land. (Great 
 applause.) According to those who thus surmise, England 
 wants to check the sympathy of the American people for their 
 Irish fellow - citizens ; and it was considered that the best 
 way to effect this was to send a learned man, with a 
 plausible story, to this country ; a man with a single power of 
 viewing facts in the light which he wishes himself to view 
 them, and put them before others ; a man with the extraor- 
 dinary power of so mixing up these facts that many simple- 
 minded people will look upon them as he puts them before 
 them as true, and whose mission it was to alienate the mind of 
 Americans from Ireland to - day, by showing what an imprac- 
 ticable, obstinate, accursed race we are. 
 
 Others, again, surmised that the learned gentleman came for 
 another purpose. They said: "England is in the hour of her 
 weakness ; she is tottering fast and visibly to her ruin ; the dis- 
 ruption of that old empire is visibly approaching ; she is to-day 
 cut off, without an ally in Europe ; her army a cipher, her fleet 
 nothing according to Mr. Reade, a great authority on this 
 question nothing to be compared to the rival fleet of the 
 great Russian power now growing up. When France was 
 paralyzed by her late defeat, England lost her best ally. The 
 three emperors, in their meeting the other day, contemptuously 
 ignored her, and they settled the affairs of the world without 
 so much as mentioning the name of that kingdom, which was 
 once so powerful. Her resources of coal and iron are failing ; 
 her people are discontented, and she is showing every sign of 
 decay. Thus did some people argue that England was anxious 
 for an American alliance ; for, they said, " What would be more 
 natural than that the old, tottering empire should seek to lean 
 on the strong, mighty, vigorous, young arm of America?" 
 
I have heard others say that the gentleman came over to this 
 country on the invitation of a little clique of sectarian bigots 
 (laughter) in this country. Men who, feeling that the night of 
 religious bigotry and sectarian bitterness is fast coming to a 
 close before the increasing light of American intelligence and 
 education, (applause) would fain prolong the darkness for an 
 hour or two, by whatever help Mr. Froude could lend them. 
 
 But I protest to you, gentlemen, here to - night, that I have 
 heard all these motives assigned to this learned man, without 
 giving them the least acceptance. I believe Mr. Froude's 
 motives to be simple, straightforward, honorable and patriotic. 
 (Applause.) I am willing to give him credit for the highest 
 motives, and I consider him perfectly incapable of lending 
 himself to any base or sordid proceeding, from a base or sordid 
 motive. (Applause.) But as the learned gentleman's motives 
 have been so freely canvassed and criticised, and I believe, 
 indeed, in many cases misinterpreted, so my own motives in 
 coming here to-night may be, perhaps, also misinterpreted 
 and misunderstood, unless I state them clearly and plainly. 
 As he is said to come as an emissary of the English Govern- 
 ment, so I may be said, perhaps, to appear as an emissary of 
 rebellion or of revolution ; as he is supposed, by some, to have 
 the sinister motive of alienating the American mind from the 
 Irish citizenship of the States, so I may be suspected of endeav- 
 oring to excite religious or political hatred. 
 
 Now, I protest these are not my motives ; I am here to-night 
 simply to vindicate the 
 
 HONOR OF IRELAND IN HER HISTORY. 
 
 I come here to - night lest any man should think that in this 
 our day, or in any day, Ireland is to be left without a son 
 who will speak for the mother that bore him. 
 
 FROUDE UNFIT FOR THE TASK. 
 
 And, first of all, I hold that Mr. Froude is unfit for the task 
 that he has undertaken, for three great reasons : First, because 
 I find in the writings of this learned gentleman that he sol- 
 emnly and emphatically declares that he despairs of ever find- 
 
ing a remedy for Ireland, and he gives it up as a bad job. 
 (Laughter.) Here are his words, written in one of his essays 
 a few years ago: "The present hope," he says, "is that by 
 assiduous justice, (that is to say, by conceding every thing that 
 the Irish please to ask) we shall disarm that enmity, and con- 
 vince them of our good will. It may be so ; there are persons 
 sanguine enough to hope that the Irish will be so moderate in 
 what they demand, and the English so liberal in what they 
 grant, that at last we shall fling ourselves into each other's 
 arms in tears of mutual forgiveness. (Laughter.) I do not 
 share that expectation (renewed laughter) ; it is more likely 
 they will push their importunities until at, last, we turn upon 
 them, and refuse to yield further. And there will be a struggle 
 once more ; and either emigration will increase in volume until 
 it has carried the entire race beyond our reach, or, in some 
 shape or other, they will have to be coerced into submission." 
 "Banish them or coerce them;" there is the true English 
 speech. "My only remedy," he emphatically says, "my only 
 hope, my only prospect for the future of Ireland is : Let 
 them all go to America ; have done with the race ; give us an 
 Ireland at last, such as we have endeavored to make, for seven 
 hundred years, a desert and a solitude ; or, if they remain at 
 home, they will have to be coerced into submission.'" I hold 
 that that man has no right to come to America to tell the 
 American people and the Irish in America that he can describe 
 the horoscope of Ireland's future. He ought to be ashamed to 
 attempt it, after having uttered such words. 
 
 SECOND REASON. 
 
 The second reason why I say he is unfit for the task of 
 describing Irish history is, because of his contempt for the Irish 
 people. The original sin of the Englishman has ever been his 
 contempt for the Irish. It lies deep, though dormant, in the 
 heart of almost every Englishman. The average Englishman 
 despises the Irishman looks down upon him as a being almost 
 inferior in nature. Now, I speak not from prejudice, but from 
 an intercourse of years, for I have lived among them. I have 
 known Englishmen, amiable and generous themselves, charm- 
 
10 
 
 ing characters, who would not, for the whole world, nourish, 
 willfully, a feeling of contempt in their hearts for any one, 
 much less to express it in words ; yet I have seen them mani- 
 fest, in a thousand forms, that contempt for the Irish which 
 seems to be their very nature. [A voice "True ! >; ] I am 
 very sorry to say that I can not make any distinction between 
 the Protestants and Catholics of England in this feeling. I 
 mention this, not to excite animosity or to create bad blood or 
 bitter feeling ; no, I protest this is not my meaning ; but I 
 mention this because I am convinced it lies at the very root of 
 this antipathy and of that hatred between the English and 
 Irish which seem to be incurable ; and I verily believe that, 
 until that feeling is destroyed, you never can have cordial union 
 between these two countries, and the only way to destroy it is, 
 that by raising Ireland, through justice and by home legisla- 
 tion, she will attain such a position that she will enforce and 
 command the respect of her English fellow - subjects. Mr. 
 Froude, himself, who, I am sure, is incapable of any ungenerous 
 sentiment toward any man or any people, is an actual living 
 example of that feeling of contempt of which I speak. In 
 November, 1856, this learned gentleman addressed a Scottish 
 Assembly in Edinburgh. The subject of his address was : " The 
 Effect of the Protestant Reformation upon Scottish Character." 
 Accoiding to him, it made the Scotch the finest people on the 
 face of the earth. Originally fine, they never got their last 
 touch that made them, as it were, archangels among men, until 
 the holy hand of John Knox touched them. On that occasion, 
 the learned gentleman introduced himself to his Scottish audi- 
 ence in the following words: "I have undertaken," he says, 
 "to speak this evening on the effects of the Reformation in 
 Scotland, and I consider myself a very bold person to have 
 come here on any such undertaking ; in the first place, the 
 subject is one with which it is presumptuous for a stranger to 
 meddle. Great national movements can only be understood 
 properly by the people whose disposition they represent. We 
 see, by our own history, that Englishmen only can properly 
 Comprehend it. It is the same with every considerable nation 
 that works cut its o\vfl political and spiritual life through 
 
II 
 
 tempers, humors and passions peculiar to itself, and the 
 same disposition which produces the result is required to inter- 
 pret it afterward." Did the learned gentleman offer any such 
 apology for entering so boldly upon the discussion of affairs? 
 Oh no ! there was no apology necessary ; he was only going to 
 speak of the mere Irish. 
 
 "ONLY IRISH." 
 
 There was no word to express his own fears that, perhaps, he 
 did not understand the Irish character on the subject upon 
 which he was about to treat ; there was no apology to the Irish 
 in America the fourteen millions if he so boldly wa^ to 
 take up their history, endeavoring to hold them up as a licen- 
 tious, immoral, irreligious, contemptuous, obstinate, unconquer- 
 able race not at all. It was not necessary they were only 
 Irish. If they were Scottish, then the learned gentleman 
 would have come with a thousand apologies for his own pre- 
 sumption in venturing to approach such a delicate subject as 
 the delineation of the sweet Scottish character, or any thing 
 connected with it. (Laughter and applause.) What, on the 
 other hand, his treatment of the Irish ? I have, in this 
 book before me, words that came from his pen ; and I protest, 
 as I read them, I feel every drop of my blood boil in my veins 
 when the gentleman said: "The Irish, they may be good at 
 the voting booths, but they are not good to handle a rifle." He 
 compares us, in this essay, to a "pack of hounds." He 
 says, "To deliver Ireland ; to give Ireland any meed, would be 
 the same as if a gentleman, addressing his hounds, said : I 
 give you your freedom ; now go out, and act for yourselves.'" 
 That is, he means to say that, after worrying all the sheep in 
 the neighborhood, they would end by tearing each other to 
 pieces. (Laughter.) I deplore this feeling. The man who 
 is possessed of it can never understand the philosophy of Irish 
 history. 
 
 Thirdly. Mr. Froude is utterly unfit for the task of deline- 
 ating and interpreting the history of the Irish people, because 
 of his more than contempt and bitter hatred and detestation in 
 which he holds the Catholic religion and the Catholic Church. 
 
In this book before me, he speaks of the Catholic Church as an 
 old serpent whose poisonous fangs have been drawn from her ; 
 and she now is a Witch of Endor, mumbling curses to-day be- 
 cause she can not burn at the stake and shed blood as of old. 
 He most invariably charges the Church and makes her respon- 
 sible for the French Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day ; for 
 the persecutions before those days that originated from the revo- 
 lution in the Netherlands, of the Duke of Alva against Philip 
 the Second ; for every murder that has been committed and 
 fouler butchery, he says, by the virus of a most intense preju- 
 dice ; that the Catholic Church lies at the bottom of them all, 
 and is responsible for them. The very gentlemen that wel- 
 comed and surrounded him when he came to New York, gave 
 him plainly to understand, where the Catholic religion is in- 
 volved where a favorite theory is to be worked out where a 
 favorite view is to be proved that they do not consider him a 
 reliable, trustworthy witness, or where his prejudices are con- 
 cerned as a historian. Yet I again declare not that I believe 
 this gentleman to be capable of lying I believe he is incapa- 
 ble but wherever prejudice comes in, such as he has, he dis- 
 torts the most well-known facts for his own purposes. This 
 gentleman wishes to exalt Queen Elizabeth by blackening Mary 
 Queen of Scots ; in doing this, he has been convicted by a citi- 
 zen of Brooklyn of putting his own words as if they were the 
 words of ancient chronicles and ancient laws, deeds and docu- 
 ments, and the taunt has been flung at him, ''''that Mr. Froude 
 has never grasped the meaning of inverted commas" Henry 
 the Eighth, of blessed memory, (renewed laughter) has been 
 painted by this historian a most estimable man, as chaste and 
 holy as a monk bless your soul ! (Great laughter.) A man 
 that never robbed any body, who every day was burning with 
 zeal for the public good. As to putting away his wife and tak- 
 ing the young and beautiful Anne Boleyn to his embrace, that 
 was a chaste anxiety for the public good. (Renewed laugh- 
 ter.) All the atrocities of this monster in human form melt 
 away under Mr. Froude's eye, and Henry the Eighth rises be- 
 fore us in such a form that even the Protestants in England, 
 when they heard him described by Mr. Froude, said : "Oh ! 
 you have mistaken your man, sir !" 
 
HENRY V1I1. 
 
 One fact will show you how this gentleman treats history. 
 When King Henry the Eighth declared war against the Church, 
 and when all England was convulsed by his tyranny one day 
 hanging a Catholic because he would not deny the supremacy 
 of the Pope ; the next day hanging a Protestant, because he de- 
 nied the Real Presence any body that differ2d from Henry 
 was sure to be sent to the scaffold. It was a sure and expedi- 
 tious way of silencing all argument. 
 
 During this time, when the monasteries were beginning to be 
 pillaged, the Catholic clergy of England, especially those who 
 remained faithful to the Pope, were the most odious to the ty- 
 rant. And such was the slavish acquiescence of the English 
 people that they began to hate their clergy in order to please 
 their King. Well ! at this time, a certain man, whose name 
 was Hunn, was lodged a prisoner in the tower, and hanged by 
 the neck. There was a coroner's inquest held upon him, and 
 the tivelve blackguards, I can call them nothing else, in order to 
 express their hatred for the Church, and to please the powers 
 which were, found a verdict against the Chancellor of the Bishop 
 of London, a most excellent priest, whom every body knew to 
 be such. When the Bishop heard of this verdict, he applied to 
 the Prime Minister to have the verdict quashed. He brought 
 the matter before the House of Lords, in order that the charac- 
 ter of his Chancellor might be fully vindicated. The King's 
 Attorney-General took cognizance of it by a solemn decree, and 
 the verdict of the coroner's inquest was set aside, and the twelve 
 men declared to be twelve perjurers. (Applause.) Now lis- 
 ten to Mr. Froude's version of that story. He says: "The 
 clergy of the time were reduced to such a dreadful state that 
 actually a coroner's inquest returned a verdict of willful murder 
 against the Chancellor of the Bishop of London, and the Bishop 
 was obliged to apply to Cardinal Woolsey to have a special 
 jury to try him because, if lie took any twelve men in Lon- 
 don, they would have found him guilty." Leaving the reader 
 under the impression that this priest, this Chancellor, was a 
 monster of iniquity, and the priests of the time were as bad as 
 he. Leaving the impression that a man was guilty of the mur- 
 
it 4 
 
 der who was as innocent as Abel, and that, if put for trial before 
 twelve of his countrymen, they would have found him guilty on 
 the evidence. This is the version he puts upon it ; he knowing 
 the facts as well as I know them. 
 
 FROUDE'S FIRST LECTURE CONSIDERED. 
 
 Well, now, my friends, I come to consider the subject of his 
 first lecture. Indeed, I must say I never practically experi- 
 enced the difficulty of hunting a Will -o'-the- Wisp in a marsh 
 (laughter) until I came to follow this learned gentleman in his 
 first lecture. I say nothing disrespectful of him at all, but sim- 
 ply say he covered so much ground, at such unequal distances, 
 that it was impossible to follow him. He began by remarking 
 how Mr. Rufus King wrote such and such a letter about certain 
 Irishmen, and said that the Catholics of Ireland sympathized 
 with England, while the Protestants of Ireland were breast high 
 for America in the old struggle between this country and Great 
 Britain. All these questions which belong to late days, I will 
 leave aside for the close of these lectures. When I come to 
 speak of the men and things of our own day, then I shall have 
 great pleasure in taking up Mr. Fronde's assertion. But com- 
 ing home to the great question of Ireland, what does this gentle- 
 man tell us ? For seven hundred years Ireland was invaded by 
 the Anglo-Normans. The first thing, apparently, that he wishes 
 to do, is to justify this invasion, and establish this principle 
 that the Normans were right in coming to Ireland. He began 
 by describing a terrible picture of the state *of Ireland before 
 the invasion. "They were cutting each other's throats, and 
 the whole land was covered with bloodshed ; there was in Ire- 
 land neither religion, morality, or government ; therefore, the 
 Pope found it necessary to send the Normans to Ireland, as you 
 would send a policeman into a saloon where the people were 
 killing one another." This is his justification : That in Ire- 
 land, seven hundred years ago, just before the Norman inva- 
 sion, there was neither religion, morality, nor government. Let 
 us see if he is right. (Applause.) 
 
 The first proof that he gives that there was no government in 
 Ireland is a most insidious statement. He says : " How could 
 
there be any government in a country where every family main- 
 tained itself according to its own ideas of right and wrong, ac- 
 knowledging no authority?" Now, if this be true in our 
 sense of the word "family" certainly Ireland was in a most 
 deplorable state every family governing itself according to its 
 own notions, and acknowledging no authority. What does he 
 mean by the words "every family?" Speaking to Americans 
 in the nineteenth century, it 'means every household in the land. 
 We speak of family as composed of father, mother, and three or 
 four children, gathered around the domestic hearth ; this is our 
 idea of the family. I freely admit, if every family in Ireland 
 were governed by their own ideas admitting of no authority 
 over them he has established his case in one thing against 
 Ireland. But what is the meaning of the words "every fam- 
 ily ?" As every Irishman who hears me to-night knows, it 
 means the "sept" or the tribe that had the same name. They 
 owned two t)r three counties and a large extent of territory. 
 The men of the same name were called the men of the same 
 family. The MacMurraghs of Leinster, the O'Tooles of Wick- 
 low, the O'Byrnes in Kildare, the O'Conors of Connaught, the 
 O'Neills and the O'Donnells of Ulster. The family meant a 
 nation. Two or three counties were governed by one chieftain, 
 and represented by one man of the sept. It is quite true that 
 each family governed itself in its own independence, and ac- 
 knowledged no superior. (Cheers.) There were five great 
 families in Ireland : The O'Conors in Connaught, the O'Neills 
 in Ulster, the McLaughlins in Meath, the O'Briens in Munstcr, 
 and the MacMurraghs in Leinster. And under these five great 
 heads there were miner septs and smaller families, each count- 
 ing from five or six hundred to perhaps a thousand fighting men, 
 but all acknowledging in the different provinces their sovereignty 
 to these five great royal houses. These five houses again elected 
 their monarch, or supreme ruler, called the Ardrigh, who dwelt 
 in Tara. (Applause.) Now, I ask you, if family meant the 
 whole sept, or tribe, or army in the field, defending their fami- ' 
 lies having their regular constituted authority and head is it 
 fair to say that the country was in anarchy because every family 
 governed themselves according to their own notions ? Is it fair 
 
i6 
 
 for this gentleman to try to hoodwink and deceive the American 
 jury, to which he has made his appeal, by describing the Irish 
 family, which meant a sept, or tribe, as a family of the nine- 
 teenth century, which means only the head of the house, with 
 the mother and the children ? 
 
 A GRAND DISCOVERY. 
 
 Again, he says: "In this deplorable state the people 
 lived, like the New Zealanders of to-day in under-ground 
 caves." And then he boldly says, "that I, myself, opened 
 up in Ireland one of these under-ground houses of the Irish 
 people." Now, mark ! This gentleman lived in Ireland a 
 few years ago, and he discovered a rath in Kerry. In it he 
 found some remains of mussel-shells and bones. At the time 
 of the discovery he had the most learnned archaeologist in Ire- 
 land with him, and they put together their heads about it. Mr. 
 Froude has written in this very book that what these places 
 were intended for, or the uses they were applied to, baffled all- 
 conjecture no one can tell. Then, "if it baffled all conject- 
 ure, and he did not know what to make of it " if it so puzzled 
 him then, that no man could declare what they were for, what 
 right has he to come out to America and say they were the 
 ordinary dwellings of the Irish people ? 
 
 ANCIENT IRISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 In order to understand the Norman invasion, I must ask you 
 to consider first, my friends, the ancient Irish Constitution which 
 governed the land. Ireland was governed by "septs" or 
 families. The land, from time immemorial, was in the posses- 
 sion of these families or tribes ; each tribe elected its own chief- 
 tain, and to him it paid the most devoted obedience and al- 
 legiance, so that the fidelity of the Irish clansman to his chief 
 was proverbial. The chief, during his lifetime, convoked an 
 assembly of the tribe again, and they elected from among the 
 princes of his family the best and the strongest man to be his 
 successor, and they called him the Taniste. The object of this 
 was, that the successor of the king might be known, and at the 
 king's death, or the princess death, there might be no riot or 
 
bloodshed, or contention, for the right of succession to him. 
 Was this not a wise law? The elective monarchy has its ad- 
 vantages. The best man comes to the front, because he is the 
 choice of his fellow-men. For when they came to elect a suc- 
 cessor to their prince, they chose the best man, not the king's 
 eldest son, who might be a booby or a fool. (Laughter.) And 
 so they came together and wisely selected the best, the strong- 
 est, the bravest and the wisest man, and he was acknowledged 
 to have the right to the succession. He was the Taniste, ac- 
 cording to the ancient law of Ireland. Well, these families, as 
 we said, in the various provinces of Ireland, owed allegiance 
 to the king of the province. He was one of the five great fam- 
 ilies called " The Jive great families of Ireland" Each prince 
 had his own judge or brehon, who administered justice in the 
 court to the people. These breJion judges were learned men. 
 The historians of the time tell us that they could speak Latin 
 as fluently as they could speak Irish ; they had established a 
 code of laws, and, in their colleges, studied that la'y, and, when 
 they had graduated in their studies came home to their respect- 
 ive septs or tribes, and were established as judges or brehons 
 over the people. Nay, more ; no where in the history of the 
 island do we hear of an instance where a man rebelled or pro- 
 tested against the decision of his brehon judge. Then these 
 five monarchs in the provinces elected an ** Ardragh," or high 
 king. With him they sat in council, on national matters, within 
 the halls of Imperial Tara. 
 
 There Patrick found them in the year 432. Minstrel, bard 
 and brehon; prince, crowned monarch, and high king, there 
 did he find them discussing, like lords and true men, the affairs 
 of the nation, when he preached to them the faith of Jesus 
 Christ. (Applause.) And while the Constitution remained 
 the clansmen paid no rent for their land. The land of the tribe 
 or family was held in common. It was the common property 
 of all, and the brehon or judge divided it and gave to each man. 
 what was necessary for him, with free right to pasturage over 
 the whole. They had no idea of slavery or serfdom among 
 them. The Irish clansman was of the same blood with his 
 chieftain. O'Brien, that sat in the saddle at. the head of his 
 
i8 
 
 men, was related to Gallowglass O'Brien, that was in the 
 ranks. No such thing as looking down by the chieftains upon 
 their people ; no such thing as cowed, abject submission upon 
 the part of the people to a tyrannical chieftain. In the ranks 
 they stood as freemen freemen perfectly equal, one with the 
 other. (Applause.) We are told by Gerald Barry, the lying 
 historian, who sometimes, though rarely, told the truth, (laugh- 
 ter) that "when the English came to Ireland nothing aston- 
 ished them more than the free and bold manner in which the 
 humblest man .spoke to his chieftain, and the condescending 
 kindness and spirit of equality in which the chieftain treated the 
 humblest soldier in his tribe." 
 
 "DOES IT LOOK LIKE 'ANARCHY ?" 
 
 This was the ancient Irish Constitution, my friends. And, 
 now, does this look any thing like anarchy ? Can it be said, 
 with truth, of a land where the laws were so well defined 
 where every thing was in its proper place that' 'there was anar- 
 chy? Mr. Froude says " There was anarchy there, because the 
 chieftains were fighting among themselves." So they were ; 
 but, he also adds, there was fighting every- where in Europe 
 after the breaking up of the Roman Empire." Well ! Mr. 
 Froude, fighting was going on every-where ; the Saxons were 
 fighting the Normans around them in England, and what right 
 have you to say that Ireland, beyond all other nations, was 
 given up to anarchy, because chieftain drew the sword against 
 chieftain frequently, from time to time ? 
 
 So much for the question of government. Now for the ques- 
 tion of religion : The Catholic religion flourished in Ireland for 
 six hundred years, and more, before the Anglo-Normans invaded 
 her coasts. For the first three hundred years that religion was 
 the glory of the world, and the pride of God's Holy Church. 
 Ireland, for these thiee hundred years, was the island-mother 
 home of saints and of scholars. (Great applause. ) Men came 
 from every country in the then known world to light the 
 lamps of knowledge and pf sanctity at the sacred fire upon the 
 altars of Ireland. 
 
19 
 
 THE DANES. 
 
 Then came the Danes, and for three hundred years our 
 people were harrassed by incessant war. The Danes, as Mr. 
 Froude remarks, apparently with a great deal of approval, had 
 no respect for Christ or for religion, and the first thing they did 
 was to set fire to the churches and monasteries. The nuns and 
 holy monks were scattered, and the people left without instruc- 
 tion. Through a time of war men don't have much time to 
 think of religion, or things of peace. And for three hundred 
 years Ireland was subject to the incursions of the Danes. On 
 Good Friday morning, in the year 1014, Brian Boroihme de- 
 feated the Dames at Clontarf ; but it was not until the 23d of 
 August, 1103, in the twelfth century, that the Danes were 
 driven out of the land by the defeat of Magnus, their king, at 
 Loch Stranford, in the centre of Ireland. (Applause.) The 
 consequence of these Danish wars was, that the Catholic relig- 
 ion, though it remained in all its vital strength, in all the purity 
 of its faith among the Irish people, yet it remained sadly shorn 
 of that sanctity which adorned, for the first three hundred 
 years, Irish Christianity. Vices sprang up among the people, 
 for they were accustomed to war, war, WAR, night and day, 
 for three centuries. Where is the people on the face of the 
 earth that would not be utterly demoralized by fifty years of 
 war, much less by three hundred ? The "Wars of the Roses" 
 in England did not last more than thirty years, and they left 
 the English people so demoralized that, almost without a 
 struggle, they changed their religion at the dictates of the 
 blood-thirsty and licentious tyrant, Henry VIII. 
 
 MORAL AND RELIGIOUS STATUS OF THE ANCIENT IRISH. 
 
 No sooner was the Dane gone than the Irish people sum- 
 moned their bishops and their priests to council, and we find 
 almost every year after the final expulsion of the Dane, a coun- 
 cil held, where gathered the bishops, .priests, the leaders and 
 the chieftains of the land the heads of the great septs or 
 families. There they made those laws by which they en- 
 deavored to repair all the evils of the Danish invasion. Strict 
 laws of Christian morality were enforced, and again and again 
 
26 
 
 \ve find these councils assembled to receive a Papal Legate - 
 Cardinal Papero, in the year 1164, five years before the Nor- 
 man invasion. They invited the Papal Legate to the council, 
 and we find the Irish people, every year after the Norman inva- 
 sion, obeying the laws of the council without a murmur. We 
 find the council of Irish bishops assembled, supported by the 
 sword and power of the chieftains with the Pope's Legate, who 
 was received into Ireland with open arms whenever his master 
 sent him, without let or hindrance. When he arrived, he was 
 surrounded with all the devotion and chivalrous affection which 
 the Irish have always paid to their representatives of religion 
 in the country. (Applause.) And, my friends, it is worth our 
 while to see what was the consequences of all these councils 
 what was the result of this great religious revival which has 
 taken place in Ireland during the few years elapsed between 
 the last Danish invasion and the invasion of the Normans ? We 
 find three Irish saints reigning together in the Church. We 
 find St. Malachi, one of the greatest saints, Primate of Armagh ; 
 we find him succeeded by St. Celsus, and again by Gregorius, 
 whose name is a name high up in the martyrology of the time. 
 We find, in Dublin, St. Lawrence O'Toole, of glorious memory. 
 (Great applause.) We find Phelix and Christian, bishops of 
 Lismore, Catholicus of Down, Augustus of Waterford ; every 
 man of them famed, not only in Ireland, but throughout the 
 whole Church of God, for the greatness of their learning, and 
 the brightness of their sanctity. We find, at the same time, 
 Irish monks, famous for their learning as men of their class, 
 and as famous for their sanctity. In the great Irish Benedic- 
 tine Monastery of Rathsbon, we find Lawrence and twelve other 
 Irish monks. We find, moreover, that the very year before the 
 Normans arrived in Ireland, in 1 1 68, a great council was held 
 at Athboy. Thirteen thousand Irishmen represented the na- 
 tion ; 13,000 warriors on horseback attended the council and 
 the bishops and priests, with their chiefs to take the law they 
 made from them, and hear whatever the Church commanded 
 them to obey. What was the result of all this ? Ah ! my 
 friends, I am not speaking from any prejudiced point of view. 
 It has been said ' * that if Mr. Froude gives the history of Ire 
 
land from an outside view, of course Father Burke would have 
 to give it from an inside view." Now, I am not giving it from 
 an inside view ; I am only quoting English authorities. I find 
 that in this very interval between the Danish and Saxon inva- 
 sion, Lafranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, writing to O'Brien, 
 King of Minister, congratulated him on the religious spirit of 
 his people. I find that St. Anselm, one of the greatest saints 
 that ever lived, and Archbishop of Canterbury, under William 
 Rufus, writes to Murtagh, King of Munster, "I give thanks to 
 God," he says, " for the many good things we hear of your 
 Highness, and especially for the profound peace which the sub- 
 jects of your realm enjoy. All good men who hear this give 
 thanks to God, and pray that He may grant you length of 
 days." The man that wrote that perhaps was thinking, while 
 he was writing, of the awful anarchy, impiety and darkness of 
 the most dense and terrible kind which covered his own land of 
 England in the reign of the Red King, William Rufus. And 
 yet we are told, indeed, by Mr. Froude a good judge he seems 
 to be of religion (laughter) for he says, in one of his lectures, 
 1 * Religion is a thing of which one man knows as much as an- 
 other, and none of us know any thing at all ;" he tells us that 
 the Irish were without religion at the very time when the Irish 
 Church was forming itself into the model of sanctity which it 
 was at the time of the Danish invasion ; when Roderic O'Conor, 
 King of Connaught, was acknowledged by every prince and 
 chieftain in the land to be the High King of Adrigh. Now, as 
 far as regards what he says, "That Ireland was without mor- 
 ality," I have but little to say. I will answer that by one 
 fact : A king of Ireland stole another man's wife. His name, 
 accursed ! was Dermot McMurragh, King of Leinster. (Ap- 
 plause.) Every chieftain in Ireland, every man rose up and 
 banished him from Irish soil as unworthy to live on it. (Great 
 applause.) If these were the immoral people, if these were the 
 bestial, incestuous, depraved race, which they are described to be 
 by leading Norman authorities, may I ask you, might not King 
 Dermot turn around and say : "Why are you making war upon 
 me ; is it not the order of the day ? Have I not as good a 
 right to be a blackguard as any body else ?" (Laughter.) 
 
Now comes Mr, Froude and says : " The Normans were sent to 
 Ireland to teach the Ten Commandments to the Irish. (Great 
 merriment.) In the language of Shakspeare, I would say : 
 " Oh ! Jew, I thank thee for that word." (Uproarious laugh- 
 ter.) In these Ten Commandments, the three most important 
 are, in their relation to human society: "Thou shalt not 
 steal ; thou shalt not kill ; thou shalt not covet thy neigh- 
 bor's wife." The Normans, even in Mr. Froude's view, had 
 no right or title, under Heaven, to one square inch of the soil of 
 Ireland. (Cheers.) They came to take what was not their 
 own ; what they had no right, no title to. And they came, as 
 robbers and thieves, to teach the Ten Commandments to the 
 Irish people, among them the Commandment : "Thou shalt not 
 steal." Henry landed in Ireland in 1171. This was after 
 murdering the holy Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas a 
 Becket. They scattered his brains before the altar, Before the 
 Blessed Sacrament, at the Vesper hour. The blood of the Saint 
 and Martyr was upon his hands when he came to Ireland to 
 teach the Irish, "Thou shalt not kill." What was the oc- 
 casion of their coming ? When the adulterer was driven from 
 the sacred soil of Erin as one unworthy to profane it by his 
 tread, he went over to Henry and procured from him a letter 
 permitting any of his subjects that chose to embark for Ire- 
 land to do so, and there to reinstate the adulterous tyrant, King 
 Dermot, in his kingdom. They came then, as protectors and 
 helpers of adultery, to teach the Irish people, "Thou shalt 
 not covet thy neighbor's wife." 
 
 POPE ADRIAN'S LETTER. 
 
 Mr. Froude tells us they were right ; that they were the 
 apostles of purity, honesty and clemency, and Mr. Froude " is 
 an honorable man." Ah, but he says, remember, my good Do- 
 minican friend, "that if they came to Ireland, they came be- 
 cause the Pope sent them." Henry, in the year 1174, pro- 
 duced a letter, which he said he received from Pope Adrian IV, 
 which commissioned him to go to Ireland, and permitted him 
 there, according to the terms of the letter, to do whatever he 
 thought right and fit to promote the glory of God and the good 
 
of the people. The date that was in the letter was 1 154, con- 
 sequently it was twenty years old. During that twenty years, 
 nobody ever heard of that letter except Henry, who had it in 
 his pocket, and an old man, called John of Salisbury, that 
 wrote how he went to Rome and procured the letter in a hug- 
 ger-mugger way from the Pope. Now let us examine this let- 
 ter. It has been examined by a better authority than me. It 
 has been examined by one who is here to night, who has 
 brought to bear upon it the acumen of his great knowledge. It 
 was dated, according to Rymer, the great English authority, 
 1154. Pope Adrian was elected Pope the 3d of December, 
 1154. No sooner was the news of his election received in 
 England, than John of Salisbury was sent on to congratulate 
 him, by King Henry, and to get this letter. It must have been 
 the 3d of January, 1155, before the news reached England; 
 for, in those days, no news could come to England from Rome 
 in less than a month. John of Salisbury set out, and it must 
 have been another month the end of February or the beginning 
 of March, 1155 before he arrived in Rome, and the letter 
 was dated 1154. This date in Rymer was found inconvenient, 
 wherever he got it, and the current date afterward was 1155. 
 "But," says Mr. Froude, "there was a copy of it kept in the 
 archives of Rome, and how do you get over that?" The copy 
 had no date at all ! Now this copy, according to Baronius, had 
 no date at all, and according to the Roman laws, a rescript 
 that has no date is invalid just so mucli waste paper ; so that, 
 even if Pope Adrian gave it, it is worth nothing. Again, 
 learned authors tell us that the existence of a document in the 
 archives of Rome does not prove the authenticity of the docu- 
 ment. It may be kept there as a mere historical record. 
 
 But suppose that Pope Adrian had given the letter to Henry, 
 and Henry had kept it so secret because his mother, the Em- 
 press Mathilda, did not want him to act upon it well, when 
 he did act upon it, why did he not produce it ? That was the 
 only warrant on which he came to Ireland, invaded the country, 
 and never breathed a word to a human being about that letter." 
 There is a lie on the face of it ! (Applause.) Oh, Mr. 
 Froude reminded me to remember that Alexander III, his 
 
24 
 
 successor, mentions that rescript of Adrian's, and confirmed it." 
 I answer, with Dr. Lynch and the learned author, Dr. Moran of 
 Ossory, and with many Irish scholars and historians, that Alex- 
 ander* s letter is a forgery as well as Adrian's. 
 
 ALEXANDER'S LETTER is A FORGERY AS WELL AS ADRIAN'S. 
 
 I grant that there are learned men who will admit the Di- 
 ploma of Adrian and Alexander's rescript. But there are 
 equally learned men who deny them both, and I have as good 
 reason to believe one as the other, and I prefer to believe it was 
 a forgery. Alexander's letter bears the date 1172. Now let 
 us see whether it is likely for the Pope, Alexander, to give 
 Henry such a letter recommending him to go to Ireland, the 
 beloved son of the Lord, to take care of the Church, etc. Re- 
 member, it is said Adrian gave the rescript, and did not know 
 the man he gave it to. But Alexander knew him well ! 
 Henry, in 1169 and later, supported the anti-Popes against 
 Alexander, and, according to Matthew of Westminster, King 
 Henry II obliged every one in England, from the boy of twelve 
 years of age to the old man, to renounce his alliance to Alex- 
 ander III, and go over to the anti-Papists. Now is it likely 
 that Alexander would give him a rescript telling him to go to 
 Ireland and settle the ecclesiastical matters there ? Alexander 
 himself wrote to Henry, and said to him, < Instead of remedy- 
 ing the disorders caused by your predecessors, you have added 
 prevarication to prevarication ; you have oppressed the Church 
 and endeavored to destroy the canons of apostolical men." 
 
 Such is the man that Alexander sent to Ireland to make them 
 good people ? (Laughter.) According to Mr. Froude, "The 
 Irish never loved the Pope until the Normans taught them." 
 (Laughter.) What is the fact. Until the accursed Norman 
 came to Ireland, the Papal Legate always came to the land at 
 his pleasure. No king ever obstructed him ; no Irish hand was 
 ever raised against a Bishop, Priest of the land, or Papal Legate. 
 After the first Legate, Cardinal Vivian, passed over to England, 
 Henry took him by the throat and made him swear that when 
 he went to Ireland he would do nothing against the interest of 
 the King. It was an unheard-of thing that Archbishops and 
 
25 
 
 Cardinals should be persecuted, until the Normans taught the 
 world how to do it with their accursed feudal system, concen- 
 trating all power in the King. 
 
 Ah ! bitterly did Laurence O'Toole feel it, the great heroic 
 saint of Ireland, (cheers) when he went to England on his last 
 voyage. The moment he arrived in England the King's officers 
 made him prisoner. The King left orders that he was never to 
 set foot in Ireland again. 
 
 It was this man that was sent over as an apostle of morality 
 to Ireland ; he, who was the man accused of violating the be- 
 trothed wife of his own son, Richard I a man whose crimes 
 will not bear repetition ; a man who was believed by Europe to 
 be possessed of the devil ; a man of whom it is written "that 
 when he got into a fit of anger he tore off his clothes and sat 
 naked, chewing straw like a beast." 
 
 Furthermore : Is it likely for a Pope, who knew him so well, 
 who suffered so much from him, would have sent him to Ire- 
 land ; the murderer of Bishops, the robber of churches, the 
 destroyer of ecclesiastical liberty, and every form of liberty that 
 came before him. No ! I never will believe that the Pope of 
 Rome was so very short-sighted, so unjust as^by a stroke of his 
 pen, to abolish and destroy the liberties of the most faithful 
 people who ever bowed down in allegiance to him. 
 
 But let' us suppose that Pope Adrian gave the Bull. I hold 
 still that it was of no account, because it was obtained under 
 false pretenses ; for he told the Pope, "The Irish are in a state 
 of miserable ignorance," which was not true. Secondly, he 
 told a lie, and, according to the Roman law, a Papal rescript 
 obtained on a lie was null and void. Again, when Henry told 
 the Pope, when he gave him that rescript and power to go to 
 Ireland, that he would fix every thing right and do every thing 
 for the glory of God and the glory of the people, he had no 
 intention of doing it, and never did it. Consequently, the res- 
 cript was null and void. 
 
 But suppose the rescript was valid. Well, my friends, what 
 power did it give Henry ? Did it give him the land of Ireland ? 
 Not a bit of it. All it was th'at the Pope said was, "I give 
 you power to enter Ireland, there to do what is necessary for 
 
26 
 
 the glory of God and the good of the people." At most, all 
 he said he wished of the Irish chieftains was to acknowledge 
 his high sovereignty over the land. Now you must know that 
 in these early Middle Ages there were two kinds of sovereignty. 
 There was a sovereignty that had the people and the land. 
 They were his ; he governed these as the Kings and Emperors do 
 in Europe to-day. Besides this, there was one who went by 
 the name and title of King, and required the homage only of 
 the chieftains of the land, but who left them in perfect liberty 
 and in perfect independence. Yes, he demanded this nominal 
 tribute of their homage and worship, and nothing more. This 
 was all, evidently, that the Pope of Rome granted in Ireland, if 
 he permitted so much ; and the proof of it lies here : that when 
 Henry II came to Ireland he did not claim of the Irish kings 
 that they should give up their sovereignty. He left Roderic 
 O'Conor, King of Coianaught, acknowledging him as a fellow- 
 king ; he acknowledged his royalty, and confirmed him, when 
 he demanded of him the allegiance and the homage of a feudal 
 prince a feudal suzerain leaving him in perfect independence. 
 
 DID HENRY II CONQUER IRELAND? 
 
 Again, let us suppose that Henry intended to conquer Ireland 
 and bring it into slavery. Did he succeed ? Was there a con- 
 quest at all ? Nothing like it. He came to Ireland, and the 
 kings and princes of the Irish people said to him : "Well, we 
 are willing to acknowledge your high sovereignty ; you. are the 
 Lord of Ireland, but we are the owners of the land ; it is 
 simply acknowledging your title as Lord of Ireland nothing 
 more." If he intended any thing more, he never carried out 
 his intention ; he was able to conquer that portion which was 
 held before by the Danes, but not outside. It is a fact that 
 when the Irish had driven the Danes out of Ireland at Clontarf, 
 they, always straightforward and generous in the hour of their 
 triumph, permitted the Danes to remain in Dublin, Wexford, 
 Wicklow and Waterford, and from the Hill of Howth to 
 Waterford. The consequence was, that the whole eastern 
 shore of Ireland was in the possession of the Danes. The 
 Normans came over, and were regarded, by the Irish, as 
 
* w ** A v JBktlHl-JL X 1 
 
 27 
 
 ^*wf/ CAi IPAfttt\K^^ 
 
 cousins to the Danes, and only took the Danish territory. 
 They were willing to share with them. Therefore there was 
 no cause now for Mr. Froude's second justification of these 
 most iniquitous acts that Ireland was a prey to the Danes. 
 He says the Danes came to the land and made the Irish people 
 ferocious, and leaves his hearers to infer that the Danish wars 
 in Ireland were only a succession of individual and ferocious 
 contests between tribe and tribe, and between man and man, 
 whereas they were a magnificent trial of strength between two 
 of the greatest and bravest nations that ever met, foot - to - foot, 
 or hand-to-hand, on a battle-field. The Danes were uncon- 
 querable. The Celt, for three hundred years, fought with them 
 and disputed every inch of the land, filled every valley in the 
 land with their dead, and, in the end, drove them back into the 
 North Sea, and freed his native land from their domination. 
 (Applause.) This magnificent contest is represented, by this 
 historian, as a mere ferocious onslaught, daily renewed between 
 * man and man in Ireland. The Normans arrived, and we have 
 seen how they were received. The Butlers and Fitzgeralds 
 went down into Kildare, the De Benninghams and Burkes went 
 down into Connaught. The people offered them very little 
 opposition, gave them a portion of their lands and welcomed 
 them among them, and they began to love them as if they were 
 their own flesh and blood. But, my friends, these Normans, 
 so haughty in England, who despised the Saxons so bitterly 
 that their name for the Saxon was "villain" or "churl," who 
 would not allow a Saxon to sit at the same table with them, 
 who never thought of intermarrying with the Saxons for many 
 long years ; the proud Norman, ferocious in his passions, brave 
 as a lion, formed, by his crusades and Saracenic wars, the 
 bravest warrior of his times this steel - clad knight disdained 
 the Saxon. Even one of their followers, Gerald Barry, speak- 
 ing of the Saxons, says: "I am a Welshman; who would 
 think of comparing the Welsh with the Saxon boors the 
 basest race on the face of the earth." (I am only giving his 
 words, not his sentiments.) "They fought one battle, and 
 when the Normans conquered them they consented to be slaves 
 for ever more. Who would compare them with Welsh the 
 
28 
 
 Celtic race?" says this man "with the brave, intellectual 
 and magnanimous race of the Celts? " Now, my friends, when 
 these Normans went down into Ireland among the Irish people, 
 went out from the Danish portion of the Pale, what is the first 
 thing that we see ? They threw off their Norman traits, forgot 
 their Norman French language, and took the Irish took Irish 
 wives, and were glad to get them, and adopted Irish customs 
 until, two hundred years after the Norman invasion, we find that 
 these proud descendants of William Fitzalden, Earl of Clanri- 
 card, changed their names. Our name of Burke was changed 
 to the upper and lower Me William or sons of William, in the 
 days of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, and so they called them- 
 selues by that name, and adopted the language and customs o f 
 the country. During the four hundred sad years that followed 
 the Norman invasion down to the accession of Henry VIII, Mr. 
 Froude has nothing to say but that Ireland was in a constant 
 state of anarchy and confusion and it is true. It is perfectly 
 true. Chieftain against chieftain. It was comparative peace 
 before the invasion, but when the Normans came in they drew 
 them on by craft and cunning. The ancient historian Strabo 
 says, "The Gauls always march openly to their end, and they 
 are, therefore, easily circumvented." So, when the Normans 
 came and the Saxons, they sowed dissensions among the people, 
 they stirred them up against each other, and the bold, hot blood 
 of the Celt was always ready to engage in contest and in war. 
 What was the secret of that incessant and desolating war? 
 There is no history more painful to read than the history of the 
 Irish people from the day that the Normans landed on their 
 coast until the day when the great issue of Protestantism was 
 put before the nation, and when Irishmen rallied in that great 
 day as one man. My friends, the true secret is, that early and 
 constant effort of the English to force upon Ireland the feudal 
 system, and, consequently, to rob the Irish of every inch of 
 their land, and to exterminate the Celtic race. I lay this- down 
 as the one secret the one thread by which you may unravel 
 the tangled skein of our history for the four hundred years that 
 followed the Norman invasion. The Normans and the Saxons 
 came with the express purpose and design of taking every foot 
 
of land in Ireland and of exterminating the Celtic race. It 
 is an awful thing to think of, but we have evidence for it. 
 First of all, Henry II, while he made his treaties with the Irish 
 Kings, secretly divided the whole of Ireland into ten portions, 
 and allotted each of these portions to one of his Norman 
 knights. In a word, he robbed the Irish people and the Irish 
 chieftains of every single foot of land in the Irish territory. 
 It is true they were not able to take possession. It is as if a 
 master - robber were to divide the booty before it is taken ; it is 
 far easier to assign property not yet stolen than to put the 
 thieves in possession of it. There were Irish hands and Irish 
 battle - blades in the way for many a long year, nor has it been 
 accomplished to this day. 
 
 ENGLISH TREATMENT OF THE IRISH. 
 
 In order to root out the Celtic race, and to destroy us, mark 
 the measures of legislation which followed. First of all, my 
 friends, whenever an Englishman was put in possession of an 
 acre of land he got the right to trespass upon his Irish neigh- 
 bors and to take their land, as far as he could, and they had no 
 action in a court of law to recover their land. If an Irishman 
 brought an action at law against an Englishman for taking half 
 of his field, or for trespassing upon his land, acording to the law 
 from the very beginning, that Irishmen was sent out of court 
 there was no action the Englishman was perfectly justified. 
 Worse than this. They made laws declaring that the killing 
 of an Irishman was no felony. Sir John Davis tells us how, 
 upon a certain occasion at the Assizes, at Waterford, in the 2Qth 
 year of Edward I, a certain Thomas Butler brought an action 
 against Robert de Almay to recover certain goods that Robert 
 had stolen from him. The cause was brought into court ; 
 Robert acknowledged that he had stolen the goods, that he 
 was a thief ; the defense he put in was that Edward, the man 
 he had plundered, was an Irishman. The case was tried. 
 Now, my friends, just think of it ! The issue that was put 
 before the jury was, whether Edward, the plaintiff ", was an 
 Irishman or an Englishman. Robert, the thief, was obliged 
 to give back the goods, for the jury found Edward was an 
 
3 
 
 Englishman. But if the jury found that Edward was an Irish- 
 man he might go with the goods there was no action against 
 him. We find, upon the same authority Sir John Davis- a 
 description of an occasion at Waterford, where a man, named 
 Robert Welsh, killed an Irishman. He was arraigned, and 
 he, without the slightest difficulty, acknowledged it. "Yes, I 
 did kill him. You can not try me for it, for he was an Irish- 
 man." Instantly he was let out of the dock, on condition, as 
 the Irishman was in the service, at the time, of an English 
 master, he should pay whatever he compelled the master to pay 
 for the loss of his services, and the murderer might go scot - free. 
 "Not only," says Sir John Davis, "were the Irish considered 
 aliens, but they were considered enemies in so much that though 
 an Englishman might settle upon an Irishman's land, there was 
 no redress ; but if an Irishman wished to buy an acre of land 
 from an Englishman, he could not do it. So they kept the 
 land they had, and they were always adding to it by plunder ; 
 they could steal, without even buying more. If any man made 
 ' a will, and left an acre of land to an Irishman, the moment it 
 was found that he was an Irishman, the land was forfeited to 
 the Crown of England, even if it was only left in trust to him, 
 as we have two very striking examples. We read that a certain 
 James Butler left some lands in Meath in trust for charitable 
 purposes, and he left them to his two chaplains. It was proved 
 that the two priests were Irishmen, and that it was left to them 
 in trust for charitable purposes. Yet the land was forfeited 
 because the two men were Irishmen. Later on, a certain Mrs. 
 Dawdall, a pious woman, made a will leaving some land, also 
 for charitable purposes, to her chaplain, and the land was 
 forfeited because the priest was an Irishman. In the year 
 1367, Lionell a third son of Edward III, Duke of Clarence, 
 came to Ireland, held a Parliament, and passed certain laws, 
 in Kilkenny. You will scarcely believe what I am going to 
 tell you. Some of these were as follows : "If any man speaks 
 the Irish language, or keeps company with the Irish, or adopts 
 Irish customs, his lands shall be taken from him and forfeited 
 to the crown of England." If an Englishman married an 
 Irish woman, what do you think was the penalty ? lie was 
 
3* 
 
 sentenced to be half -hanged, to have his heart cut out before 
 he was dead, and to have his head struck off, and every right 
 to his land passed to the crown of England. "Thus," says 
 Sir John Davis, "It is evident that the constant design of 
 English legislation in Ireland was to possess the best Irish 
 lands, and to extirpate and exterminate the Irish people." 
 
 Now, citizens of America, Mr. Froude came here to appeal 
 to you for your verdict, and he asks you to say, was not England 
 justified in her treatment of Ireland 
 
 BECAUSE THE IRISH PEOPLE WOULD NOT SUBMIT? 
 
 Now, citizens of America, would not the Irish people be the 
 vilest dogs on the face of the earth if they submitted to such 
 treatment as this ? (Great and enthusiastic cheers.) Would 
 they be worthy of the name of men if they submitted to be rob- 
 bed, plundered and degraded ? It is true that in all this legis- 
 lation we see this same spirit of contempt of which I spoke in 
 the beginning of my lecture. But remember, it was these 
 Saxon "churls " that were thus despised, and ask yourselves 
 what race they treated with so much contumely, and attempted 
 in every way to degrade while they were ruining and robbing ? 
 Gerald Barry, the liar, speaking of the Irish race, said the Irish 
 came from the grandest race that he knew of on this side of the 
 world, "and there are no better people under the sun." By 
 the word "better" he meant more valiant and more intellect- 
 ual. Those who came over from England were called Saxon 
 hobs " or churls, while the Irish called them Burdeth Sas- 
 senach. These were the men who showed, -in the very system 
 by which they were governed, that they could not understand 
 the genius of freedom that they could not understand the 
 nature of a people who refused to be slaves. .They were slaves 
 themselves. Consider the history of the feudal system under 
 which they lived. According to the feudal system of govern- 
 ment, the King of England was lord of every inch of land in 
 England ; every foot of land in England was the King's, and 
 the nobles who had the land held it from the King, and held it 
 under feudal conditions the most degrading that can be imag- 
 ined. For instance, if a man died and left his heir, a son or 
 
32 
 
 a daughter under age, the heir or heiress, together with the 
 estate, went into the hands of the King. He might, perhaps, 
 leave a widow with ten children ; she would have to support 
 all the children herself out of her dower, but the estate and the 
 eldest son, or the eldest daughter, went into the hands of the 
 King. Then, during their minority, the King could spend the 
 revenues or could sell the castle and sell the estate without 
 being questioned by any one, and when the son or daughter 
 came of age, he then sold them in marriage to the highest bid- 
 der. We have Godfrey of Mandeville buying, for twenty thou- 
 sand marks, from King John, the hand of Isabella, Countess of 
 Gloster. We have Isabella de Linjera, another heiress, offering 
 two hundred marks to King John for what ? For liberty to 
 marry whoever she liked, and not to be obliged to marry the 
 man he would give her. If a widow lost her husband, the mo- 
 ment the breath was out of him the lady and the estate were in the 
 possession of the King, and he might squander the estate or do what 
 he liked with it, and then he could sell the woman. We have 
 Alice, Countess of Warwick, paying King John one thousand 
 pounds sterling in gold for leave to remain a widow as long as 
 she liked, and then to marry any one she liked. This was the 
 slavery called the feudal system, of which Mr. Froude is so 
 proud, and of which he says, "It lay at the root of all that is 
 noble and good in Europe." (Laughter.) The Irish could 
 not understand it small blame to them. (Laughter.) But 
 when the Irish people found that they were to be hunted down 
 like wolves found their lands were to be taken from them, 
 and that there was no redress, over and over again the Irish 
 people sent up petitions to the King of England to give them the 
 benefit of the English law and they would be amenable to it, 
 but they were denied and told that they should remain as they 
 were that is to say, England was determined to extirpate them 
 and get every foot of Irish soil. This is the one leading idea 
 or principle which animated England in her treatment of Ire- 
 land throughout those four hundred years, and it is the only 
 clue you can find to that turmoil and misery and constant fight- 
 ing which was going on in Ireland during that time. Sir James 
 Eusick, the English Commissioner sent over by Henry VIII, 
 
33 
 
 wrote to his Majesty these quaint words : " The Irish be of 
 opinion among themselves that the English wish to get all their 
 land and to root them out completely." He just struck the 
 nail on the head. Mr. Froude himself acknowledges that the 
 land question lies at the root of the whole business. Nay, more, 
 the feudal system would have handed over every inch of land 
 in Ireland to the Norman King and his nobles, and the O'Briens, 
 the O'Tooles, the O'Donnells, and the O'Conors, were of more 
 ancient and better blood than that of William the Bastard Nor- 
 man. 
 
 ENGLAND'S GREAT MISTAKE. 
 
 The Saxon might submit to feudal law, and be crushed into 
 a slave a clod of the earth. The Celt never would. En- 
 gland's great mistake -in my soul I am convinced that the great 
 mistake of all the others the greatest lay in this, that the 
 English people never realized the fact that in dealing with the 
 Irish, they had to deal with the proudest race upon the face of 
 the earth. (Applause.) During these wars the Norman Earls 
 
 the Ormonds, the Desmonds, the Geraldines, the De Burghs 
 
 were at the head and front of every rebellion ; the English 
 complained of them, and said they were worse than the Irish 
 rebels, constantly stirring up disorders. Do you know the rea- 
 son why ? Because they, as Normans, were under the feudal 
 law, and, therefore, the King's Sheriff would come down on 
 them at every turn with fines and forfeitures of the land held 
 from the King ; so, by keeping the country in disorder, they 
 were always able to be sheriffs, and they preferred the Irish 
 freedom to the English feudalisms ; therefore, they fomented 
 and kept up these discords. It was the boast of my kinsmen 
 of Clanricald that, with the blessing of God, they would never 
 allow a King's writ to run in Connaught. (Laughter and ap- 
 plause.) Dealing with this period of our history, Mr. Froude 
 says that the Irish chieftains and there septs, or tribes, were 
 doing this and that the Geraldines, the Desmonds, and the 
 Ormonds. I say, slowly, Mr. Froude, the Geraldines and the 
 Ormonds were not the Irish people ; so don't father their acts 
 upon the Irish. The Irish chieftains have enough to answer 
 for. During these four hundred years, I protest to you that, 
 
 2 
 
34 
 
 in this most melancholy period of our sad history, I have found 
 but two cases two instances that cheer me and both were 
 the actions of Irish chieftains. In one we find that Turlough 
 O'Conor put away his wife ; she was one of the O'Briens. 
 Theobald Burke, one of the Earls of Clanricarde, lived with the 
 woman. With the spirit of their heroic ancestors, the Irish 
 chieftains of Connaught came together, deposed him and drove 
 him out of the place. Later on, we find another chieftain, Brian 
 McMahon, who induced O'Donnell, chief of the Hebrides, to 
 put away his lawful wife and marry a daughter of his own. 
 The following year they fell out, and McMahon drowned his 
 own son-in-law. The chiefs, O'Donnell and O'Neill, came to- 
 gether with their forces and deposed McMahon in the cause of 
 virtue, honor and womanhood. I have looked in vain through 
 these four hundred years for one single trait of generosity or of 
 the assertion of virtue among the Anglo-Norman chiefs, and the 
 dark picture is only relieved by these two gleams of Irish pa- 
 triotism and Irish zeal in the cause of virtue, honor and purity. 
 
 ANOTHER QUESTION. 
 
 Now, my friends, Mr. Froude opened another question in his 
 first lecture. He said that all this time, whik the English 
 monarchs were engaged in trying to subjugate Scotland and 
 subdue their French provinces, the Irish were rapidly gaining 
 ground, coming in and entering the pale year by year ; the 
 English power in Ireland was in danger of annihilation, and the 
 only thing that saved it was the love of the Irish for their own 
 independent way of fighting, which, though favorable to 
 freedom, was hostile to national unity. He says, speaking of 
 that time, "Would it not have been better to have Allowed the 
 Irish chieftains to govern their own people ? Freedom to 
 whom ? Freedom to the bad, to the violent it is no freedom." 
 I deny that the Irish chieftains, with all their faults, were, as a 
 class, bad men and violent men. I deny that they were en- 
 gaged, as Mr. Froude says, in cutting their peoples' throats, 
 that they were a people who would never be satisfied. Mr. 
 Froude tells us, emphatically and significantly, that "the Irish 
 people were satisfied with their chieftains," but people are not 
 
35 
 
 satisfied under a system where their throats are being cut. 
 (Great laughter.) The Irish chieftains were the bane of Ire - 
 land by their divisions ; the Irish chieftains were the ruin of 
 their country by their want of union, and want of generous ac- 
 quiescence to some great and noble head that would save them 
 by uniting them. The Irish chieftains, even in the days of the 
 heroic Edward Bruce, did not rally around him as they ought. 
 In their divisions is the secret of Ireland's slavery and ruin 
 throughout those years. But, with all that, history attests that 
 they were still magnanimous enough to be the fathers of their 
 people and to be natural leaders, as God intended them to be, 
 of their septs, families and namesakes. And they struck what- 
 ever blow they did strike in what they imagined to be the cause 
 of right, justice and principle, and the only blow that came in 
 the cause of outraged honor and purity came from the hand of 
 the Irish chiefs in those dark and dreadful years. 
 
 Now I will endeavor to follow this learned gentleman in his 
 subsequent lectures. Now a darker cloud than that of mere 
 invasion is lowering over that Ireland ; now comes the demon 
 of religious persecution waving over the distracted and ex- 
 hausted land. And we shall see whether this historian has en- 
 tered into the spirit of the great contest that followed, and that, 
 in our day, has ended in a glorious victory for Ireland's church 
 and Ireland's nationality, and which will be followed as assur- 
 edly by a still more glorious future, 
 
SECOND LECTURE. 
 
 IRELAND UNDER THE TUDORS. 
 
 T ADIES AND GENTLEMEN : -We now come to consider 
 LJ the second lecture of the eminent English historian who has 
 come among us. It covers one of the most interesting and ter- 
 rible passages in our history. It takes in three reigns the 
 reign of Henry VIII, the reign of Elizabeth, and the reign of 
 James I. I scarcely consider the reign of Edward VI or of 
 Mary worth counting. The learned gentleman began his sec- 
 ond lecture with rather a startling paradox. He asseVted that 
 Henry VIII was a hater of disorder. 
 
 Now, my dear friends, every man in this world has a hero, 
 whether consciously or unconsciously. Every man selects some 
 character or other out of history which he admires, until, at 
 length, he is constantly thinking of the virtues and the ex- 
 cellencies of this hero until he comes almost to worship him. 
 Before us all lie the grand historic names that are written in 
 the world's annals, and every man is free to select the charac- 
 ter that he likes best, and he selects his hero. Using this privi- 
 lege, Mr. Froude has made the most singular selection of a hero 
 that either you or I ever heard of. His hero is Henry VIII. 
 It speaks volumes for the integrity of Mr. Froude's own mind ; 
 it is a strong argument that he possesses a charity the most sub- 
 lime when he has been enabled to discover virtues in the histori- 
 cal character of one of the greatest monsters that ever cursed the 
 earth. He has, however, succeeded in this, which 'to us ap- 
 
37 
 
 pears impossible he has discovered, among many other shin- 
 ing virtues in the character of the English Nero, a great love 
 for order, a great hatred of disorder. Well, we must stop at 
 the very first sentence of the learned gentleman, and try to ana- 
 ly'ze it, and see how much there is of truth in this word of the 
 historian, and how much there is which is honorable to him, 
 and a truthful figment of his imagination. 
 
 All order in the State is based upon three great principles, 
 my friends, namely : the supremacy of the law, respect for and 
 the liberty of conscience, and a tender regard for that which 
 lies at the fountain-head of all human society namely, the 
 sanctity of the marriage tie. The first element in every State 
 is the supremacy of the law ; in this supremacy lies the very 
 quintessence of human freedom and of all order. The law is 
 supposed to be, according to the definition of Aquinas, "The 
 judgment pronounced by profound reason and intellect, thinking 
 and legislating for the public good." The law, therefore, is 
 the expression of reason reason backed by authority, reason 
 influenced by the noble motive of the public good. This be- 
 ing the nature of law, the very first thing that we demand for 
 this law is, that every man bow down to it and obey it. 
 
 No man in the community can claim exemption from obedi- 
 ence to the law ; least of all, the man who is at the head of the 
 community because he is supposed to represent before the na- 
 tion that principle of obedience without which all national order 
 and happiness perishes among the people. Was Henry VIII 
 an upholder of the law ? Was he obedient to the law ? I deny 
 it, and I have the evidence .of all history to back me up in the 
 denial ; and I brand Henry VIII as one of the greatest enemies 
 of freedom and liberty that ever lived in this world. 
 
 My friends, I will only give you one example. Out of ten 
 thousand, I have selected one ! When Henry broke with the 
 Pope, he called upon his subjects to acknowledge him bless 
 his mark as spiritual head of the Church. There were three 
 abbots of the Charter houses in London namely, the Abbot of 
 London proper, the Abbot of Axiolam, and the Abbot of Bello- 
 ral. These three men refused to acknowledge Henry as the 
 supreme spiritual head of the Church. He had them arrested ; 
 
38 
 
 he had them tried ; he had a jury of twelve citizens of London 
 to sit upon them. Now, the first principle of English law -the 
 grand palladium of English legislative freedom is a perfect 
 
 LIBERTY OF THE JURY. 
 
 The jury in every country must be perfectly free, not only 
 from every form of coercion over them, but from even their own 
 prejudice. They must be free from any pre judgment in the 
 case ; they must be perfectly impartial, and perfectly free to 
 record their verdict. These twelve men refused to convict the 
 three abbots of high treason, and they grounded their refusal 
 upon this : "Never," they said, "has it been uttered in England 
 that it was high treason to deny the spiritual supremacy of the 
 King. It is not law ; and, therefore, we can not find these men 
 guilty of high treason." What did Henry do ? He sent word 
 to the jury that if they did not find the three abbots guilty, he 
 would visit them with the same penalties that he had prepared 
 for the prisoners. He sent word to the jury that they should 
 find them guilty. I brand Henry, therefore, with having torn 
 in pieces the constitution of England's Magna Charta, and hav- 
 ing trampled upon the first great element of English law and 
 jurisprudence namely, the liberty of the jury. Citizens of 
 America, would you, any one of you, like to be tried by a jury, 
 if you knew that the President of the United States had informed 
 that jury that, if they failed to find you guilty, he would put 
 them to death ? Where would there be liberty, where would 
 be the law, if such a transaction were permitted ? But this 
 was done by Mr. Froude's great admirer of order and hero 
 Henry VIII. 
 
 HENRY VIII AND FREEDOM OF CONSCIENCE. 
 
 The second grand element of order is respect for conscience. 
 The conscience of a man, and, consequently, of a nation, is sup- 
 posed to be the great guide in all the relations in which the peo- 
 ple or the individuals stand to God. The conscience is so free 
 that Almighty God Himself respects it ; and it is a theological 
 axiom that, if a man does a wrong act, thinking that he is do- 
 ing right, having in his consciousness the idea that he is doing 
 
39 
 
 right, the wrong will not be attributed to him by the Almighty 
 God. Was this man a respecter of conscience ? Again, out of 
 ten thousand acts of his, I will select one. He ordered the 
 people of England to change their religion. He ordered them 
 to give up that grand system of dogmatic teaching which is in 
 the Catholic Church, where every man knows what to believe 
 and what to do. And what religion did he offer them instead ? 
 He did not offer them Protestantism, for Henry VIII never was 
 a Protestant, and to the last day of his life, if he had only been 
 able to lay his hands upon Martin Luther, he would have made 
 a toast of him. He heard Mass up to the day of his death, and 
 after his death there was a solemn high Mass over his inflated 
 corpse a solemn high Mass that the Lord might have mercy 
 on his soul. Ah, my friends ! some other poor soul got the 
 benefit of it. ' 
 
 What religion did he offer to the people of England ? He 
 simply came before them, and said : "Let every man in the 
 land agree with me. Whatever I say, that is religion." More 
 than this, his Parliament a slavish Parliament every man 
 afraid of his life passed a law making it high treason not only 
 to disagree with the King in any thing that he believed, but 
 making it high treason for any man to dispute any thing that 
 the King should ever believe at a future time. He was not 
 only the enemy of conscience ; he was the ANNIHILATOR OF 
 CONSCIENCE. He would allow no man to have a conscience. 
 "I am your conscience," he said to the nation. "I am your 
 infallible guide in all things. You are to believe me and look 
 to me in all things which you are to do ; and if any man sets 
 up his conscience against me, he is guilty of high treason, and 
 I will stain my hands in his heart's blood." This is THE LOVER 
 OF ORDER AND FREEDOM whom Mr. Froude admires. 
 
 The third great element of order that upon which all soci- 
 ety is based the great key-stone of society is THE SANCTITY 
 OF THE MARRIAGE TIE. Whatever else you interfere with, this 
 must not be touched, for Christ our Lord Himself said : "Those 
 whom God has joined together, let no man put asunder." A 
 valid marriage can only be dissolved by the angel of death. No 
 power in Heaven or on earth much less in Hell can dissolve 
 
40 
 
 the validity of a marriage. Henry VIII had so little respect 
 for the sanctity of the marriage tie, that he put away from him 
 brutally a woman to whom he was lawfully married, and took 
 in her stead, while she was yet living, a woman who was sup- ' 
 posed to be his own daughter. He married six wives. Two 
 of- them he repudiated divorced two of them he beheaded, 
 one of them died in childbirth, and the sixth and last, Catha- 
 rine Parr, had her name down in Henry's book, at the time of 
 his death, among the list of his victims ; he had made the list 
 out, and if the monster had lived a few days longer, she would 
 have been sacrificed. This is all a matter of history. 
 
 And now, I ask the American public, is it fair for Mr. Froude, 
 or any other living man, to come and present himself before an 
 American audience, an audience of intelligent people, and peo- 
 ple that have read history as well as the English historian, and 
 ask them to believe the absurd paradox that Henry VIII was art 
 admirer of order and a hater of disorder. But Mr. Froude says : 
 " Now it is not fair to refer to this. I said in my lecture that I 
 would have nothing whatever to do with Henry's matrimonial 
 transactions." Ah ! Mr. Froude, you were wise. 
 
 HENRY VIII AND HIS DISPOSITION OF IRISH LAND. 
 
 "But at least,'' he says, "in his relations to Ireland, I claim 
 that he was a hater of disorder ;" and the proof he gives is 
 the following : First of all, lie says that one great curse of 
 Ireland was the absentee landlords, and he is right. Now, 
 Henry VIII put an end to that business in the simplest way im- 
 aginable ; he simply took the estates from the absentees and 
 gave them to other people." My friends, it sounds well, very 
 plausible, this saying of the English historian. Let us analyze 
 it a little. During the wars of the Roses, between the houses 
 of York and Lancaster, which preceded the Reformation in 
 England, many English and Anglo-Norman families went over 
 from Ireland to England and joined in the conflict. It was an 
 English question and an English. war, and the consequence was 
 that numbers of the settlers retired from Ireland and left their 
 estates abandoned them entirely. Others again, from disgust, 
 or because they had large English properties, preferred to live 
 
in their own country, and retired from Ireland to live in En- 
 gland. So that when Henry VIII came to the throne of En- 
 gland, there remained within the boundaries of the Pale, one- 
 half of Louth, Westmeath, Dublin, Wicklow and Wexford. 
 Nothing more. Henry, according to Mr. Froude, performed a 
 great act of justice. He took from these absentees their es- 
 tates and gave them to whom? To other Englishmen of his 
 own favorites and friends. Now the historic fact is this, that 
 the Irish people, as soon as the English retired and abandoned 
 their estates, the Irish people came in and possessed themselves 
 of their property. Mark, my friends, that even if the Irish 
 people had no title to that property, the very fact of the En- 
 glish having abandoned it gave them a sufficient title "bona 
 relict a stint primis capientibus " things that are abandoned be- 
 long to the man that gets first hold of them. But much more 
 just was the title of the Irish people to that land, because it was 
 their own ; because they were unjustly dispossessed of it by the 
 very men who abandoned it now. And therefore they came in 
 with a two-fold title, namely : "The land is ours because there 
 is nobody to claim it, and even if there were, the land is ours, 
 because it was always ours, and we never lost our right to it." 
 When, therefore, Henry VIII, the lover of order, dispossessed 
 the absentees of their estates, he sent other Englishmen who 
 would reside there, and handed over these estates to them. 
 Remember, the enforcement of their claims involved driving the 
 Irish people a second time out of their property. There is the 
 whole secret of Henry the Eighth's wonderful beneficence to 
 Ireland in giving us resident landlords. 
 
 AN ILLUSTRATION TO THE POINT. 
 
 Just loook at it yourselves. If you owned property there 
 are doubtless a great many here owners, of property just pict- 
 ure to yourselves the United States Government, or the Presi- 
 dent of the United States, turning you out of your property, 
 taking your houses and lots and land from you and giving them 
 to some friend of his own, and then saying to you : "Now, my 
 friends, you must remember that I am a lover of order. I have 
 given you a. resident landlord. 
 
42 
 \ 
 HENRY THE EIGHTH'S PRETENDED REFORMS. 
 
 Henry, as soon as he ascended the throne, sent over the Earl 
 of Surrey to Ireland, in the year 1520. Surrey was a brave 
 soldier, a stern, energetic man ; and Henry thought by sending 
 him over to Ireland, and backing him with a mighty army, he 
 would be able to reduce to order the disorderly elements of the 
 Irish nation. That disorder reigned in Ireland I am the first 
 to admit, but in tracing that to its cause, I claim that the cause 
 was not in any inherent love for disorder in the Irish character ; 
 they were always ready to fight, I grant but I hold and claim 
 that the great cause of all the disorder and turmoil of Ireland 
 was the strange and incoherent legislation of England for four 
 hundred years previous ; and, secondly, the presence of the 
 Anglo-Norman lords in Ireland, who were anxious to keep up 
 the disorders in the country in order that they might have an 
 excuse from paying their duties to the feudal King. Surrey 
 came over, and tried the strong hand for a time ; but he found, 
 brave as he was, and accomplished in generalship, that the 
 Irish people were a little too many for him, and he sent word to 
 Henry: "These people," he says, "can only be subdued by 
 conquering them utterly" cutting off all of them by fire and 
 sword. Now," he says, this you will not be able to do, be- 
 cause the country is too large, and because the country is so 
 geographically fixed that it is impossible for an army to pene- 
 trate its fastnesses, and to subjugate the whole people. Then 
 he asserted that Henry VIII took up the policy of reconciliation. 
 He could not help it. Mr. Froude makes it a great virtue in 
 Henry, that he tried in this manner to conciliate the Irish peo- 
 ple. He took up that policy because he had to do it ; because 
 he could not help it. 
 
 WHAT SURREY'S LETTERS PROVE. 
 
 Now my friends, there is one passage in the correspondence 
 between Surrey and Henry VIII that speaks volumes, and it is 
 this : When the Earl of Surrey arrived in Ireland, he found 
 himself in the midst of war and confusion, but the people that 
 were really at the source of all that confusion he declares to be 
 not so much the Irish or their chiefs as the Anglg - Norman or 
 
English lords in Ireland. Here is the passage in question* 
 There were two chieftains of the McCarthys McCarthy Con- 
 O'More and McCarthy Rhaud, or Red McCarthy. Surrey 
 writes of these two men, to Henry VIII, and says : "These are 
 two wise men, and more conformable to order than some En- 
 glishmen here." Out of the lips of one of Ireland's bitterest ene- 
 mies I take an answer to Mr. Froude's repeated allegation that 
 the Irish are so disorderly and such lovers of turmoil and con- 
 fusion that the only way to reduce us to order is to sweep us 
 away altogether. 
 
 SURREY'S POLICY. 
 
 The next feature in Surrey's policy, when he found that he 
 could not conquer with the sword, was to set chieftain against 
 chieftain. And so he writes to Henry: " I am endeavoring, " says 
 he, < to perpetuate the animosity between O'Donnell and O^Neill 
 of Ulster ," here are his words "for it would be danger ful 
 to have them both agree and join together " It would be dan- 
 gerous to England. Well may Mr. Froude say that in the day 
 when we Irishmen are united we shall be invincible, and no 
 power on earth shall keep us slaves. "It would be dangerful 
 to have them to agree and join together, and the longer they 
 continue in war, the better it will be for your grace's poor sub- 
 jects here." Now, mark the spirit of that letter. IT MARKS 
 
 THE WHOLE GENIUS AND SPIRIT OF ENGLAND'S TREATMENT OF 
 
 IRELAND. He does not speak of the Irish as the subjects of 
 the King of England. He has not the slightest consideration 
 for the unfortunate Irish whom they were pitting against each 
 other. "Let them bleed ;" he says, "the longer they continue 
 at war, and the greater number of them that are swept away, 
 the better it ivill be for your grace* s poor subjects here." Party 
 legislation, party law, intended only to protect the English 
 settler and exterminate the Irishman. This Sir John Davis 
 himself, the Attorney - General of James I, declared lay at the 
 bottom of all English legislation for Ireland for four hundred 
 years, and was the cause of all the evils and miseries of Ire- 
 land. ^^^ 
 
 V 
 
 lVEHSITY ) 
 
44 
 
 ANOTHER OF MR. FROUDE'S FALLACIES. 
 
 Surrey retired after two years, and then, according to Mr. 
 Froude, Henry tried "Home Rule" in Ireland. Here, again, 
 the learned historian tries to make a point for his hero. "Irish- 
 men," he says, "admire the memory of this man. He tried 
 Home Rule with you, and he found that you were not able to 
 govern yourselves, and then he was obliged to take the whip 
 and drive you." Let us see what kind of Home Rule Henry 
 tried. One would imagine that Home Rule in Ireland meant 
 that Irishmen should manage their own affairs and make their 
 own laws. It either means this, or it means nothing. It is a 
 delusion, a mockery, and a snare, unless it means that the Irish 
 people have a right to assemble in their parliament and to gov- 
 ern themselves by legislating for themselves, and making their 
 own laws. Did Henry the Eighth's "Home Rule" mean this? 
 Not a bit of it. All he did was to make the Earl of Kildare 
 the Lord Lieutenant or Lord Deputy of Ireland, to please the 
 Irishmen that is to say, an Anglo-Norman Irishman at the 
 head of the State for a few years. In this consists the whole 
 scheme of Home Rule attributed by Mr. Froude to Henry the 
 Eighth. He did not call upon the Irish nation and say to them, 
 " Return your members to Parliament, and I will allow you to 
 make your own laws." He did not call upon the Irish chief- 
 tains, the natural representatives of the nation ; the men in 
 whose veins flowed the blood of Ireland's chieftainship for thou- 
 sands of years. He did not call upon the O'Briens, the O'Neills, 
 the McCarthymores, and the O'Connors, and say to them, "come 
 and assemble, and make laws for yourselves and, if they are 
 just laws, I will set my seal upon them, and allow you to gov- 
 ern Ireland through your own legislation." No ; but he set up 
 a clique of Anglo-Norman lords, the most unruly, the most law- 
 less, and the most restless pack we hear of, or read of, in all 
 history. He set these men to take the government of the coun- 
 try for a time in their hands, and what was the consequence ? 
 No sooner did he leave them to govern than they began to make 
 war on the Irish to tear them to pieces. 
 
 The first thing that Kildare does, after his appointment in 
 1522, is to summon an army and lay waste the territories of 
 
45 
 
 the Irish chieftains around him, to kill their people, and burn 
 their villages. After a time they fell out among themselves. 
 The Anglo-Norman family of the Butlers became jealous of 
 Kildare, who was a Fitzgerald, and they began to accuse him 
 of treason and on two occasions it is really true that Kildare 
 did carry on a treasonable correspondence in the year 1534 
 with Francis I, King of France ; and again, also, with Charles 
 V, Emperor of Germany. He was sent to England for the third 
 time, to answer for his conduct, in 1534, and then Henry put 
 him in prison. While he was in the Tower, in London, his 
 son, Thomas Fitzgerald, who was called "Gilden Thomas'," a 
 brave young man, revolted because his father was in prison, 
 and they told him that Henry intended to put him to death. 
 Henry declared war against him, and he against the King of 
 England ; and the consequence of that war was, that the whole 
 province of Munster and a great part of Leinster was ravaged 
 by the King's armies ; the people were destroyed, and the towns 
 and villages burned, until at length there was not as much left 
 as would feed man or beast. And so, then, under the Home 
 Rule of Henry > the troubles with the Norman lords and the 
 treason of Kildare ended in the ruin of nearly one-half of the 
 Irish people. 
 
 Perhaps you will ask me, did the Irish people take part in 
 that war, so as to justify Henry's share in the awful treatment 
 they received ? I answer, they took no part in it ; it was an 
 English business from beginning to end. O'Carroll, O'Moore 
 of Ossory, and O'Connor these were the only Irish chieftains 
 that sided with the Geraldines at all, and drew the sword against 
 England ; and they were three chiefs of rather small importance, 
 and by no means represented the Irishy, as it was called, of 
 Munster or any other Irish province. And yet upon the Irish 
 people fell the avenging hand of Henry the Eighth's armies. 
 
 MR. FROUDE SIFTED THE ENGLISH STATE PAPERS. 
 
 Mr. Froude goes on to say that the Irish people, somehow or 
 other, got to liking Henry VIII. Well, if they did, I can't ad- 
 mire their taste. 
 
 "Henry VIII pleased them," says Mr. Froude. "Henry," 
 he says, " never showed any disposition to dispossess the Irish 
 
46 
 
 people of their lands, and to exterminate them." Honest 
 Henry ! gentle Henry ! Now, I take Mr. Froude up on that 
 point. 
 
 Fortunately for the Irish historian, the State papers are open 
 to us as well as to Mr. Froude. What do the State papers of 
 the reign of Henry the Eighth tell us ? They tell us that proj- 
 ect after project was formed during the reign of this monarch to 
 drive all the Irish nation into Connaught, over the Shannon. 
 That Henry wished to do away with the Irish Council that gov- 
 erned Ireland by Home Rule ; Henry wished it, and the peo- 
 ple of England desired it, and one of these State papers ends 
 in these words : " Consequently, the promise brought to pass 
 There shall no Irish be on this side of the waters of Shannon, 
 unpersecuted, unsubjected, and unexiled ; then shall the En- 
 glish pale be well two hundred miles long, and more." More 
 than this : we have the evidence of the State papers of the time, 
 that Henry the Eighth immediately contemplated the sweeping 
 destruction and 
 
 UTTER EXTERMINATION OF THE WHOLE IRISH RACE. 
 
 We find even the Lord Deputy and Council in Dublin writing 
 to his majesty, and here are the very words : 
 
 "They told me that his verdict is impracticable ; they say 
 that the land is very large by estimation as large as England 
 so that, to inhabit the whole with new inhabitants, the num- 
 ber would be so great there is no prince in Christendom that 
 conveniently might spare so many subjects to depart out of his 
 regions, and to comprise the whole extirpation and total de- 
 struction of the Irish. It is a marvelous and sumptuous charge, 
 and more impossible, considering the inhabitants are of great 
 hardness. And mor.e than this, the Irishmen can endure both 
 hunger and cold, and even a want of lodging, more than the 
 inhabitants of any other land. For if they, by the precedent 
 of a conquest, have this land, we have not read in any chronicle 
 of such a conquest of the inhabitants of the land ; nor have we 
 heart for seeking the extermination or banishment of a whole 
 people !" 
 
 Great God ! Is this the man that Mr. Froude tells us was 
 
47 
 
 the friend of Ireland, and never showed any desire to take their 
 lands, and dispossess and destroy them ? This is the man 
 the admirer of order and hater of disorder ; surely, he was 
 about to create a magnificent order ; for his idea was, if a peo- 
 ple are troublesome, and you want to reduce them to quiet, the 
 best and the simplest way is to kill them all. Just like some 
 of those people in England those nurses we read of a few 
 years ago -that were farming out children. When the child 
 was a little fractious, they gave him a nice little dose of poison, 
 and they called it quietness. 
 
 HENRY'S POLICY EXPOSED. 
 
 Do you know the reason why Henry the Eighth pleased the 
 Irish ? For there was no doubt about it, they were more 
 pleased with him than with any English monarch up to that 
 time. The reason is a very simple one. He had his own de- 
 signs, but he concealed them ; and while he was meditating, 
 like an anticipated Oliver Cromwell, the utter ruin and destruc- 
 tion of all the Irish race, he had the good sense to keep it to 
 himself, and he only comes out in his state papers. He treated 
 the Irish with a certain amount of courtesy and politeness. 
 Henry, with all his faults, was a learned man an accom- 
 plished man a man of very elegant manners a man with a 
 bland smile who would give you a warm shake of the hands. 
 It is true, he might the next day have your head cut off, but 
 still he had the manners of a gentleman ; and it is a singular 
 fact, my friends, that the two most gentlemanly kings of En- 
 gland were the greatest scoundrels that ever lived Henry the 
 Eighth and George the Fourth. Accordingly, he dealt with 
 the Irish people with a certain amount of civility and courtesy ; 
 he did not come among them like all his predecessors before 
 him, saying : "You are the King's enemies ; you are to be put 
 to death ; you are without the pale of the law ; you are barba- 
 rians and savages ; I will have nothing to say to you." Not a 
 bit of it. Henry came and said : " Let us see if we can not ar- 
 range our difficulties if we can't live in peace and quiet." 
 An4 the Irish were charmed with his manners. 
 
4 8 
 
 A PRACTICAL LESSON. 
 
 Ah ! my friends, it is true that there was a black heart under 
 that smiling face ; and it is also true and veritable that Mr. 
 Froude's statement that Henry the Eighth had a certain amount 
 of popularity among the Irish people proves that if the English 
 only knew how to treat us with respect and courtesy, and with 
 some show of kindness, they would have long since won the 
 heart of Ireland, instead of being embittered as much by the 
 haughtiness and stupid pride of her sons' manners, as well as 
 by the injustice and cruelty of her laws. And this is what I 
 meant when, on last Tuesday evening, I asserted that English 
 contempt for Ireland is the real evil that lies deeply at the root 
 of all the bad spirit that exists between the two nations, for the 
 simple reason that the Irish people are too intellectual, too 
 strong, too energetic, too pure of race and blood, too ancient 
 and too proud to be despised. 
 
 HOW THE IRISH THREW THE POPE OVERBOARD. 
 
 And now, my friends, Mr. Froude went on in his lectures to 
 give a proof of the great love the Irish people had foi Harry the 
 Eighth, he says that we were so fond of this King, that we 
 actually, at the King's request, threw the Pope overboard 
 Now, Mr. Froude, fond as we were of your glorious hero, Harry 
 the Eighth, we were not so enamored of him we had not fal- 
 len so deeply in love with him as to give up the Pope for 
 him. 
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THIS MATTER. 
 
 What are the facts of the case ? Henry, about the year 1530 
 got into difficulties with the Pope, which ended in his denying 
 the authority and the supremacy of the head of the Catholic 
 Church. He then picked out an absolute monk, a man who 
 had given up his faith, a man without a shadow of either con- 
 science, character or virtue, and he had consecrated tre first 
 Protestant Archbishop of Dublin. This was an Englishman by 
 the name of Brown, and he sent George Brown over to Dublin, 
 in 1534, with a commission to get the Irish nation to follow in 
 the wake of England, and throw the Pope overboard and ac- 
 knowledge Henry's supremacy. Brown arrived in Dublin, and 
 
49 
 
 he called the bishops together the bishops of the Catholic 
 Church and he said to them, you must change your allegi- 
 ance, you must give up the Pope and take Henry, the King of 
 England, in his stead. The. Archbishop of Armagh, in these 
 days, was an Englishman ; his name was Cramer ; the moment 
 he heard these words, he raised up at the council-board and 
 said: "What blasphemy is this I hear? Ireland will never 
 change her faith. Ireland will never renounce her Catholicity, 
 and she would have to do it by renouncing the head of the 
 Catholic Church." All the bishops of Ireland followed the 
 Primate ; all the priests of Ireland followed the Primate ; and 
 George Brown wrote a most lugubrious letter home to his pro- 
 tector, Thomas Cromwell, telling him: "lean make nothing 
 of these people, and I would return to England, only I am 
 afraid the King would have my head taken, off." 
 
 THE IRISH PARLIAMENT OF 1537. 
 
 Three years later, however, Brown and the Lord - Deputy 
 summoned a Parliament, and it was at this Parliament of 1537, 
 according to Mr. Froude, that Ireland threw the Pope overboard. 
 Now what are the facts ? A Parliament was assembled from 
 time immemorial in Ireland. Whenever the Parliament was 
 assembled, there were three delegates, called Proctors, from 
 every Catholic diocese in Ireland, who sat in the House of 
 Commons, by virtue of their office three priests from every 
 diocese in Ireland. When the Parliament was called, the very 
 first thing that they did was to banish the three Proctors who 
 came from every diocese in Ireland, and to deprive them of 
 their seats in the House. Without the slightest justice, without 
 the slightest show or pretense of either right, or law, or justice, 
 the Proctors were excluded, and so the ecclesiastical element of 
 Ireland, the Church element, was precluded from that Parlia- 
 ment of 1537. Then, partly by bribes and partly by threats, 
 the venal Parliament of the Pale, the English Pale, the Par- 
 liament of the region of the rotten little boroughs that sur- 
 rounded Dublin in the five half -counties, we have seen them 
 willing to take the oath that Henry VIII was the head of the 
 Church ; an,d this Mr. Froude calls the apostasy of the Irish 
 
5 
 
 nation. With this strange want of knowledge for I can call it 
 nothing else of our religion, he attests that Ireland remained 
 Catholic, even though he asserts that she gave up the Pope. 
 " They took the oath," he says, " bishops and all, took the 
 oath of Henry the Eighth's supremacy, and they didn't become 
 Protestants ; they still remained Catholics, and the reason why 
 they refused to take the same oath to Elizabeth was, that Eliza- 
 beth insisted upon the Protestant religion as well as the su- 
 premacy. 
 
 WHO ARE CATHOLICS ? 
 
 Now I answer Mr. Froude at once, to set him right on this 
 point. The Catholic Church teaches, and always has taught, 
 that no man is a Catholic who is not in the communion of obe- 
 dience with the Pope of Rome. Henry VIII, who was a 
 learned man, had too much logic and too much theology, and 
 too much sense to become what is called a Prot stant. He 
 never embraced the doctrines of Luther, and he held on to 
 every iota of the Catholic doctrine to the very last day of his 
 life, save and except that he refused to acknowledge the Pope, 
 and on the day that Henry VIII refused to acknowledge the 
 Pope, Henry III ceased to be a Catholic. To pretend, there- 
 fore, or to trust, that the Irish people were so ignorant as to 
 imagine that the King threw the Pope overboard, and still re- 
 mained a Catholic, is to offer to the genius and to the intelli- 
 gence of Ireland a gratuitous insult. 
 
 EIGHT BISHOPS APOSTATISED. 
 
 It is true that some eight of the bishops apostatised I can 
 call it nothing else. They took the oath of supremacy to 
 Henry VIII. Their names, living in the execration of Irish 
 history, were Eugene Maginnis, Bishop of Down, in Con- 
 naught ; Roland Burke, I am sorry to say, Bishop of Clon- 
 fert ; Folrence Glanone, Bishop of Clonnacnoise ; Matthew 
 Sanders, Bishop of Lamelas ; Hugh O'Sullivan, Bishop ofClan- 
 forth five bishops apostatised. The rest of Ireland's episco- 
 pacy remained faithful. George Brown, the apostate Arch- 
 bishop of Dublin, acknowledges, in a letter written at this time, 
 that of all the priests in the Diocese of Dublin, he can only 
 
S' 
 
 persuade three to take the oath to Henry VIII. There was a 
 priest down in Cork, he was an Irishman a rector in the 
 See of Shannon and his name was Dominick Terry, and 
 he was offered the Bishopric of Cork, if he took the oath, 
 and he took it. There was a man by the name of William 
 Myrragh, another priest; he was offered the Diocese of Kil- 
 dare, if he took the oath, and he took it. There was a man 
 by the name of Alexander Deveraux, Abbot of Dunbrody, a 
 Cistercian monk ; he was offered the Diocese of Ferns, in the 
 County Wexford, and he took it. These are all the names that 
 represent the national apostasy of Ireland eight men. Out 
 of so many hundreds, eight were found wanting ; and yet Mr. 
 Froude turns around, quietly and calmly, and tells us that the 
 Irish bishops, priests and people were found wanting, and threw 
 the Pope overboard. 
 
 MR. FROUDE BROUGHT UP WITH A ROUND TURN. 
 
 He makes another assertion, and I regret he made it ; I re- 
 gret it because there is much in the learned gentleman that I 
 admire and esteem. He asserts that the bishops of Ireland, in 
 those days, were immoral men ; that they had families, that 
 they were not at all like the venerable men whom we see es- 
 tablished in the episcopacy to - day. Now, I answer, there is 
 not a shred of testimony to bear up Mr. Froude in this wild as- 
 sertion. I have read the history of Ireland national, civil 
 and ecclesiastical as far as I could, and nowhere have I seen 
 even an allegation, much less a proof, of immorality against the 
 Irish clergy and their bishops, at the time of the Reformation. 
 But perhaps when Mr. Froude said this of the bishops, he meant 
 the apostate bishops ; if so, I am willing to grant him whatever 
 he chooses, in regard to them, and whatever charge he lays 
 upon them, the heavier it is, the more satisfied am I to see it 
 coming. 
 
 The next passage in the relations of Henry VIII to Ireland, 
 goes to prove that Ireland did not throw the Pope overboard. 
 My friends, in the year 1541, a Parliament assembled in Dub- 
 lin, and declared that Henry VIII was King of Ireland. They 
 had been four hundred years or more fighting for that title ; at 
 
II 
 
 length it was conferred by the Irish Parliament upon the En- 
 glish monarch. Two years later, in gratitude to the Irish 
 Parliament, Henry called all the Irish chieftains over to a 
 grand assembly at Greenwich, and on the 1st of July, 1643, he 
 gave the Irish chieftains their English titles. O'Neill of Ulster 
 got the title of Earl of Tyrone ; the glorious O'Donnell, the 
 title of Earl of Tyrconnel ; Urick Mac William Burke was 
 called the Earl of Clanricarde ; Fitzpatrick was given the name 
 of the Baron of Ossory, and they returned to Ireland with their 
 new English titles. 
 
 HENRY'S GENEROSITY. 
 
 Henry, free, open - handed, generous fellow as he was for 
 he was really very generous -he gave them not only titles, but 
 he gave them a vast amount of property, which happened to be 
 stolen from the Catholic Church. He was an exceedingly 
 generous man with other people's goods. He had a good deal of 
 that spirit which Artemas Ward made mention of when he said 
 "he was quite content to see his wife's first cousin go to the 
 war." In order to promote reformation, not Protestantism, but 
 his own reformation in Ireland, Henry gave to these Irish Earls, 
 with their English titles, all the abbey lands, all the convents 
 and all the churches that lay in their possessions. The con- 
 sequence was, he enriched them, and, to the eternal shame of 
 the O'Neill and the O'Donnell, MacWilliam, Burke and Fitz- 
 patrick of Ossory, they had the cowardice and weakness to 
 accept the gifts at his hands. Then they came home with the 
 spoils of the monasteries and their English titles. 
 
 Now, mark ! The Irish people were as true as flint on that 
 day when the Irish chieftains were false to their country. 
 Nowhere in the previous history of Ireland do we read of the 
 clans rising against their chieftains ; nowhere do we read of 
 the O'Neill and the O'Donnell being despised by their own 
 people, but on this occasion, when they came home. Mark 
 what follows. O'Brien, Earl of Thomond, when he arrived in 
 Munster, found half of his dominions in revolt against him. 
 The Burkes of Connaught, as soon as they heard that Mac- 
 William, their natural leader the Earl who had accepted the 
 
53 
 
 abbey lands the very first thing they did was to depose him 
 and set up another man, not by the title of the Earl of Clan- 
 ricarde, but by the title of MacWilliam Ulrick De Burgh. 
 When O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, came home to Ulster^ he was 
 taken, by his own son, clapped into jail, and he died there. 
 O'Donnell, Earl of Tyrconnell, came home, and his own son 
 and all his people rose up against him, and drove him from 
 their midst. 
 
 Now, I say, in the face of all this, Mr. Froude is not justi- 
 fied in stating that Ireland threw the Pope overboard ; for, 
 remember these chieftains did not renounce the Catholic relig- 
 ion, according to Mr. Froude, they only renounced the Papal 
 supremacy ; they did not come home Protestants, they only 
 came home schismatics and bad Catholics, and Ireland would 
 not stand that. 
 
 WHAT FOLLOWED AFTER HENRY VIII DIED. 
 
 Henry died in 1547, and I verily believe that, with all the 
 badness of his heart, if he had lived for a few years longer, his 
 life would not have been so much a curse as a blessing to Ire- 
 land, for the simple reason that those who came after him were 
 worse than himself. 
 
 He was succeeded by his child - son, Edward VI. Edward 
 was under the care of the Duke of Somerset. Somerset was a 
 thorough - going Protestant, and did not believe in the Papal 
 Supremacy, in the Mass, in the Sacraments ; in any thing that 
 formed the especial teaching of the Catholic Church. He was 
 opposed to them all, and he sent over to Ireland his orders, as soon 
 as Henry was dead, and when young Edward was proclaimed 
 King, to put the laws in force against Catholics. The churches 
 were pillaged, the Bishops and Priests driven out, and, as Mr. 
 Froude puts it, "The emblems of superstition were pulled 
 down." The emblems of superstition, as Mr. Froude calls 
 them, were the figures of Christ Jesus, crucified, the statues of 
 His Blessed Mother, and the statues and pictures of His saints. 
 All these things were pulled down and destroyed, the crucifix 
 was trampled under foot, and the ancient statues of Our Lady 
 were public ally burned ; the churches were rifled and sacked. 
 
54 
 
 Then, as Mr. Froude eloquently puts it, " Ireland was taught 
 a lesson that she must yield to the new order of things or stand 
 by the Pope." "And Irish traditions," he says, "and ideas 
 become inseparably linked with religion." Glory to you, Mr. 
 Froude ! He goes on to say, in eloquent, language, "Ireland 
 chose its place on the Pope's side, and chose it irrevocably ; 
 and, from that time, the CAUSE OF THE CATHOLIC RELIGION 
 
 AND IRISH INDEPENDENCE BECAME INSEPARABLY ONE." If 
 
 the learned gentleman were present, I have no doubt he would 
 rise up and bow his thanks to you for the hearty manner in 
 which you have received his sentiments. I am sure, as he is 
 not here, he will not take it ill of me when I thank you in his 
 name. 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 Edward died after a short reign, and then came Queen Mary, 
 who is known in England by the name of "Bloody Mary." 
 She was a Catholic, and, without doubt, she persecuted her 
 Protestant subjects. But Mr. Froude makes this remark of 
 her. In his lecture, he says: "There was no persecution of 
 Protestants in Ireland, because there were no Protestants there 
 to be persecuted." He goes on to say, "Those who were in 
 the land fled when Mary came to the throne." 
 
 Now, my friends, I must take the learned historian to task in 
 this. The insinuation is, that if any Protestant had been in 
 Ireland, that the Irish Catholic people would have persecuted 
 them. The impression that he tries to leave on the mind is, 
 that we Catholics are only too glad to imbrue our hands in the 
 blood of our fellow - citizens on the question of religious differ- 
 ences and of doctrine. And he goes on to confirm this impres- 
 sion by saying, " The Protestants that were in Ireland fled." 
 As much as to say, whatever chance they had in another 
 country, they had no chance in Ireland. 
 
 Now what are the historic facts ? The facts are, that during 
 the reign of Edward VI, and during the later years of his 
 father's reign, certain apostates from the Catholic faith were 
 sent over to Ireland as bishops men whom even English 
 history convicts and condemns of every crime. As soon as 
 
55 
 
 Mary came to the throne, these gentlemen did not wait to be 
 ordered out ; they went out of their own accord. It was not a 
 question at all of the Irish people ; it was a question between 
 the Catholics of England and certain English bishops foisted 
 upon the Irish Church. They thought it was the best of their 
 play to clear out and I verily believe they acted very 
 prudently. 
 
 But as far as regards the Irish people, I claim for my native 
 land that SHE NEVER PERSECUTED ON ACCOUNT OF RELIGION. 
 I am proud, in addressing an American audience, to be able 
 to make this high claim for Ireland that the genius of the 
 Irish people is not a persecuting genius. There is not a people 
 on the face of the earth so attached to the Catholic religion as 
 the Irish race. But there is not a people on the face of the 
 earth so unwilling to persecute or to shed blood in the cause of 
 religion as the Irish. And here are my proofs. Mr. Froude 
 says that the Protestants made off out of Ireland as soon as 
 Mary came to the throne. But Sir James Ware, in his annals, 
 tells us: "That the Protestants were being persecuted in 
 England under Mary, and they actually fled over to Ireland for 
 protection." He even gave the names of some of them. He 
 tells us that John Harvey, Abel Ellis, John Edmunds and 
 Henry Hore, all natives of Cheshire, came over to Ireland to 
 avoid the persecution in England. They brought a Welsh 
 Protestant minister, by the name of Thomas Jones, with them. 
 Nay, more : These four gentlemen were received so cordially, 
 and were welcomed so hospitably, that they actually founded 
 highly respectable mercantile houses in Dublin. 
 
 A TELLING INSTANCE OF IRISH LOVE OF FREEDOM OF CON- 
 SCIENCE. 
 
 We have another magnificent proof that the Irish people are 
 not a persecuting race. When James II assembled his Catholic 
 Parliament in Ireland in 1680, though they had been more than 
 a hundred years under the lash of their Protestant fellow - 
 citizens, robbed, plundered, imprisoned and put to death for 
 their conscientious adherence to the Catholic faith. At last the 
 wheel got turned, and, in 1689, the Catholics went up and the 
 
Protestants went down. That Parliament met to the number of 
 228 members. The Celt the Irish Catholic element was in 
 a sweeping majority. What was the first law that they made? 
 The very first law that Catholic Parliament made was as fol- 
 lows : "We hereby decree that it is the law of Ireland, that 
 neither now nor ever again shall any man be persecuted for his 
 religion. That was the retaliation we took on them. Was it 
 not magnificent? Was it not a grand, magnificent specimen of 
 that spirit of Christianity ; that spirit of forgiveness and charity, 
 without which, if it is not within the Christian's heart, all the 
 dogmatic truths that were ever revealed won't save or ennoble 
 him. 
 
 MR. FROUDE AND GOOD QUEEN BESS. 
 
 And now, coming to good "Queen Bess," as she is called, 
 Mr. Froude lays it on her very heavy. He speaks of her rule 
 in language as terrific in its severity as I could, and far more ; 
 for I have not the learning or the eloquence of Mr. Froude. 
 But he says one little thing of her worthy of remark. He says 
 Elizabeth was reluctant to draw the sword ; but when she did 
 draw it she never sheathed it until the star of freedom was fixed 
 upon her banner^ never to pale " That is a very eloquent pas- 
 sage. But the soul of eloquence is truth. Is it true, histor- 
 ically, that Elizabeth was reluctant to draw the sword ? I an- 
 swer it by Irish annals I answer it by the history of Ireland , 
 Elizabeth came to the throne in 1558. The following year, in 
 1559, there was a Parliament assembled, by her order, in Dub- 
 lin. What do you think were the laws that were made in that 
 Parliament ? It was not a Catholic Parliament, but an Irish 
 Parliament. It consisted of seventy-six gentlemen. Generally 
 speaking, the Parliament in Ireland used to have from two- 
 hundred and twenty to two hundred and thirty members. This 
 Parliament of Elizabeth consisted of seventy-six picked men. 
 The laws that Parliament made were, first : "Any clergyman 
 not using the "Book of Common Prayer the Protestant 
 Prayer Book or, using any other form of prayer, either in 
 public or private, the first time he is discovered, is to be de- 
 prived of his benefice for one year, and suffer imprisonment in. 
 
57 
 
 jail for six months. For a second offense he is to forfeit his in- 
 come forever, and to be put into jail, to be let out only at the 
 Queen's good pleasure " whenever she thought proper. "For 
 the third offense he was to be put in close confinement for' life." 
 This is the lady that was reluctant to draw the sword, my 
 friends. Remember, this was the very year after she was 
 crowned Queen. She scarcely waited a year, and yet this was 
 the woman that was reluctant to draw the sword ! 
 
 So much for the priests ; now for the laymen. If any lay- 
 man was discovered using another Prayer Book, except Eliz- 
 abeth's Prayer Book, he was put into jail for a year, and if 
 caught doing that a second time, he was /w^ in prison for the 
 rest of his life. Every Sunday the people were obliged to go 
 to the Protestant Church. If any one refused to go, for every 
 time he refused he was fined about twelve pence that would 
 be about twelve shillings of our present money. And besides 
 the fine of twelve pence, he was to incur the censures of the 
 Church. "The star of freedom," says Mr. Froude, "was 
 never to pale," and " the Queen drew the sword in the cause 
 of the star of freedom." But, my friends, freedom meant 
 whatever in Elizabeth's mind it meant freedom meant a 
 slavery ten-fold increased by the addition of persecution to the 
 other miseries of the unfortunate Irish. If this be Mr. Froude's 
 ideal of the "star of freedom," all I can say is, the sooner 
 such star falls from the firmament of heaven and the world's 
 history, the better. 
 
 THE CONDITION OF IRELAND. 
 
 In what state was the Irish Church ? We have the authority 
 of the Protestant historian, Leland, that there were two hun- 
 dred and twenty parish churches in Meat.h, and, in a few years' 
 time, there were only one hundred and two of them left with 
 the roofs on. "All over the kingdom," says Leland, "the 
 people were left without any religious worship, and under the 
 pretext of obeying the orders of the State, they seized all the 
 most valuable furniture of the churches, which they exposed for 
 sale, without decency of reserve. A number of hungry ad- 
 venturers were let loose upon the Irish Church and the Irish 
 
5 8 
 
 people, by Elizabeth. They not only robbed them, but plun- 
 dered their churches, and shed the blood of the bishops, priests, 
 and the people of Ireland, in torrents, as Mr. Froude himself 
 acknowledges. He tells us "that in the second rebellion of 
 the Geraldines, such was the state to which the fair province 
 of Munster was reduced, that you might get through the land, 
 from the furthermost point of Kerry, until you came into the 
 eastern plains of Tipperary, and you would not even hear as 
 much as the whistle of the plow- boy, or behold the face of a 
 living man, and that the trenches and ditches were full of the 
 corpses of the people ;" that " the country was reduced to a 
 howling, desolate wilderness." The poet Spencer describes it 
 in the most terrible and graphic manner ; and he, even case- 
 hardened as he was, being one of the plunderers and persecut- 
 ors himself, he acknowledges that " the state of Munster was 
 such that no man could look upon it with a dry eye." Sir 
 Henry Sydney, one of Elizabeth's own deputies, speaks of the 
 Irish Church, "so deformed," he says, "and overthrown a 
 Church ; there is not, I am sure, in any religion where the 
 name of Christ is professed, such horrible spectacles to behold, 
 as the burning of villages, the ruin of churches, yea, the views 
 of the bones and skulls of the dead, who, partly by murder and 
 partly by famine, have died in the fields, is, in truth, such a 
 sight as hardly any Christian, with any eyes, can behold." 
 Her own minister, her own agent, there is his testimony of the 
 state to which this terrible woman had reduced unhappy 
 Ireland. Strafford, another English authority and statesman, 
 says, " I knew it was bad, very bad, in Ireland, but that it 
 was so terrible I did not believe." 
 
 THE OBJECT IN THIS. 
 
 And, in the midst of all this persecution, there was still a 
 reigning idea in the minds of the English Government it was 
 still the old idea of rooting out and extirpating the Irish from 
 their own land, to which was added the element of religious 
 discord and persecution. It was evident that this was still in 
 the mind of the English people. Elizabeth, who, Mr. Froude 
 says, "never dispossessed an Irishman of an acre of his land " 
 
59 
 
 Elizabeth, during the terrible war which she waged, in the 
 latter days of her reign, against heroic Hugh O'Neil, in Ulster, 
 threw out such hints as these: "The more slaughter there is, 
 the better it will be for my English subjects, the more land they 
 will get." This woman, whom Mr. Froude tells us " never 
 confiscated, and would never listen to the idea of the confisca- 
 tion of property ;" this woman, when the Geraldines were de- 
 stroyed, took the whole of their vast estates millions of acres 
 of the Earl of Detmord, and gave them all quietly and calmly 
 to certain Englishmen from Lancashire, Devonshire, Somerset- 
 shire and Cheshire. And in the face of these truths, recorded 
 and stamped on the world's history, I can not understand how 
 any man can come in and say of this atrocious woman, "What- 
 ever she did, she intended for the good of Ireland." 
 
 In 1602 she died, after reigning forty-one years, leaving 
 Ireland, at the hour of her death, one vast slaughter-house. 
 Munster was reduced to the state in which Spencer described it. 
 Connaught was reduced to a wilderness, through the rebellion 
 of the Clanricarde's of the Burke family. Ulster, through the 
 agency of Lord Mountjoy, was left the very picture of desola- 
 tion. The glorious red Hugh O'Donnell, and the magnificent 
 Hugh O'Neil, were crushed and defeated after fifteen years' war ; 
 and the consequence was, that when James the First succeeded 
 Elizabeth, he found Ireland almost a wilderness. 
 
 JAMES I. 
 
 What did he do ? He, at first, promised the Irish that they 
 should keep their lands. He succeeded to the throne of En- 
 gland in 1603, and for four years I must give him the credit 
 for four years he kept his word. In 1607, through a sham 
 conspiracy, Hugh O'Neill and O'Donnell Tyrconnel fled from the 
 country, and then Sir Arthur Chichester, the agent of the En- 
 glish King, developed one of the most extraordinary schemes 
 that was ever heard of, in the relations between one country 
 and another. They took the whole of the province of Ulster, 
 every square inch of Ireland's richest and finest province, and 
 cleared out THE WHOLE IRISH POPULALION, and handed il over 
 bodily to settlers /rent England and Scotland, It was called 
 
6o 
 
 the " PLANTATION of Ulster." They gave to the Protestant 
 Archbishop of Armagh, forty-three thousand acres of the finest 
 land in Ireland ; they gave to Trinity College, in Dublin, 
 30,000 acres ; they gave to the skinners, drysalters and cord- 
 wainers, those corporations and trades of London, 208,000 
 acres ; they brought over colonies of Scotch Presbyterian, and 
 English Protestants, and gave them lots of 1,000, 1,500 and 
 2,000 acres of land in extent, making them swear, as a condi- 
 tion, that they would not as much as employ one single Irish 
 Catholic, or let them come near them. Thus millions of acres 
 of the finest land in Ireland were taken, at one single blow, 
 from the Irish people, and they were thrust out of all their 
 property. 
 
 MR. FROUDE AGAIN DISSECTED. 
 
 Mr. Froude, in his rapid historical sketch, says: "But all 
 this, of course, bred revenge." He tells us, "In 1641 the 
 Irish rose in rebellion." They did. Now he makes one state- 
 ment, and with the refutation of that statement, I close this 
 lecture. 
 
 I know, my friends, to many among you these lectures must 
 appear dry ; we can not help it ; history generally is a dry sub- 
 ject. Mr. Froude tells us that in the rising under Sir Phelan 
 O'Neill, in 1642, there were thirty -eight thousand Protestants 
 murdered by the Irish. Now, that is a grave charge ; that is 
 one of the most terrific things to accuse .a people of if it be not 
 true. If it be true, all I can say is that I blush for my fathers. 
 But if it be not true, why repeat it ? Why not, in the name of 
 God, wipe it out with disdain from the record of history? Is 
 it true ? The Irish rose under Sir Phelan O'Neill, and at that 
 time there was a Protestant person in Ireland calling himself 
 "a minister of the word of God." He gave his account of the 
 whole transaction in a letter to the people, begging of them to 
 help their fellow-Protestants in Ireland. Here are his words: 
 "It is the intention of the Irish to massacre all the English. 
 On Saturday they were to disarm them, on Sunday to seize all 
 their cattle and goods, and on Monday they were to cut all the 
 English throats. The former they executed, the third one 
 
6i 
 
 this massacre they failed in." Petit, an English authority, 
 tells us that there were 30,000 Protestants massacred at that 
 time. A man by the name of May, another historian, puts it 
 at 200,000; he thought; "In for a penny in for a pound." 
 But there was an honest Protestant clergyman in Ireland, who 
 examined minutely into the details of the whole conspiracy and 
 all the evils that came from it. What does he say? " I have 
 discovered," he says, and gives the proof from state papers and 
 authentic records, "that the Irish Catholics in that rising mas- 
 sacred 2,100 Protestants, that other Protestants said that there 
 were 1,600 more, and that some Irish authorities themselves 
 say that there were 300 more, making altogether 4,000 persons." 
 This is the massacre that Mr. Froude says, as he just tosses it 
 off as calmly as if it were Gospel, " 38,000 Protestants were 
 massacred ;" that is to say, he has multiplied the original num- 
 ber by ten, where, as Mr. Warner, the authority in question, 
 actually says, "That there were 2,100, and," he continues, 
 "I am not willing to believe in the additional numbers that 
 have been sent in." This is the way that history is written ; 
 this is the way that people are left under false impressions. 
 
 THE VERDICT DEMANDED. 
 
 Now, from all we have seen of the terrible nature of the 
 evils which fell upon Ireland in the days of Henry the Eighth, 
 in the days of Elizabeth, in the days of James the First, I ask 
 you, people of America, to set these two thoughts before your 
 mind, contrast them, and give one a fair verdict. 
 
 FATHER BURKE'S PERORATION. 
 
 Is there any thing recorded in history, more terrible than the 
 persistent, undying resolution so clearly manifested by the En- 
 glish Government to root out, extirpate and destroy the people 
 of Ireland ? Is there any thing recorded in history more unjust 
 than this systematic, constitutional robbery of a people, whom 
 the Almighty God created in that island, to whom He gave that 
 island, and who had the aboriginal right to every inch of Irish 
 soil? 
 
 On the other hand, can history bring forth a more magnifi- 
 
62 
 
 cent spectacle than the calm, firm, united resolution with which 
 Ireland stood in defense of her religion, and gave up all things 
 rather than sacrifice what she conceived to be the cause of truth ? 
 Mr. Froude does not believe that it was the cause of truth. I do 
 not blame him. Every man has a right to his religious opinions. 
 But Ireland believed it was the cause of truth, and Ireland 
 stood for it like one man. 
 
 I speak of all these things only historically. I do not believe 
 in animosity. I am not a believer in bad blood. I do not be- 
 lieve with Mr. Froude that the question of Ireland's difficulties 
 must ever remain without a solution. I do not give it up in 
 despair; but this I do say, that he has no right nor has any 
 other man to come before an audience of America OF 
 AMERICA ! that has never persecuted in the cause of religion ; 
 of America, that respects the rights even of the meanest subject 
 upon her imperial soil and to ask the American people to 
 sanction by their verdict the robbery and the persecution of 
 which England was guilty. 
 
THIRD LECTURE. 
 
 IRELAND UNDER CROMWELL. 
 
 LADIES AND GENTLEMEN : I now approach, in answer- 
 ing Mr. Froude, some of the most awful periods of our 
 history, and I confess that I approach this terrible ground with 
 hesitancy, and with an extreme regret that Mr. Froude should 
 have opened up questions which oblige an Irishman to undergo 
 the pain of heart and anguish of spirit which a revision of 
 those periods of our history must occasion. The learned 
 gentleman began his third lecture by reminding his audience 
 that he had closed bis second lecture with a reference to the 
 rise, progress, and collapse of a great rebellion which took 
 which took place in Ireland in 1641 that is to say, somewhat 
 more than two hundred years ago. He made but a passing 
 allusion to that great event in our history, and in that allusion 
 if he has been reported correctly he said simply that the 
 Irish rebelled in 1641 ; that was his first statement that it was 
 a rebellion ; secondly, that this rebellion 
 
 BEGAN IN MASSACRE AND ENDED IN RUIN. 
 
 Thirdly, that for nine years the Irish leaders had the destinies 
 of their country in their hands ; and, fourthly, that those nine 
 years were years of anarchy and mutual slaughter. Nothing, 
 therefore, can be imagined more melancholy than the picture 
 drawn by this learned gentleman of those nine sad years, but 
 
6 4 
 
 yet I will venture to say, and hope to be able to prove, that 
 each of these four statements is without historical foundation. 
 My first position is, that the movement of 1641 was not a re- 
 bellion; my second is, that it did not begin with massacre, al- 
 though it ended in ruin; my third, that the Irish leaders had not 
 the destinies of their country in their hands during those nine 
 years; and my fourth, that whether they had or not, those years 
 were not a period of anarchy and mutual slaughter. They 
 were but the opening to a far more terrific period. 
 
 We must discuss these questions, my friends, calmly and 
 historically. We must look at them like antiquarians prying 
 into the past, rather than with the living, warm feelings of men 
 whose blood boils at the remembrance of so much injustice and 
 oppression. In order to understand these questions fully and 
 fairly, it is necessary to go back to the historical events of the 
 time. We find, then, that James the First had planted Ulster, 
 which means that he had confiscated utterly and entirely six of 
 the fairest counties in Ireland, an entire provinc e, driving out 
 its Catholic inhabitants to a man, and giving the whole country 
 to Scotch and English settlers of the Protestant religion, and 
 the condition was added that the new settlers should not have 
 
 AS MUCH AS AN IRISH LABORER 
 
 employed in their fields. This man James died in 1625, and 
 was succeeded by his son, the unfortunate Charles I. England 
 had been rendered almost an absolute monarchy by Henry VIII, 
 as we know. His absolute power was still continued under the 
 tyrannical Elizabeth, and by Charles' own father, James I. 
 Charles came to the throne with the most exaggerated ideas of 
 royal privilege and royal supremacy. During the days of his 
 father a new spirit had grown up in Scotland and England. 
 The form that Protestantism took in Scotland was the uncom- 
 promising and, - 1 may say, cruel form of Calvinism in its most 
 repellant aspect. The men who rose in Scotland in defense of 
 their Presbyterian religion, rose not against Catholics, but 
 against the Episcopalian Protestants of England. They de- 
 fended what they called the Ark of the Covenant. They 
 fought bravely, I acknowledge, for it, and they ended in es- 
 
b.ttsj.j/x I 
 
 tablishing it as the religion of Scotland. Now Charles I was 
 an Episcopalian Protestant of the most sincere and devoted 
 kind. The Parliament of England, in the very first years of 
 Charles, admitted numbers, who were 
 
 STRONGLY TINGED WITH SCOTCH CALVINISM, 
 
 and they at once showed a refractory spirit toward their King. 
 He demanded certain subsidies and they refused him. He as- 
 serted certain sovereign rights, and they denied them. While 
 this was going on in England, from 1630 to 1641, what was the 
 condition of affairs in Ireland ? One fertile province of the 
 land had been confiscated by James I. Charles I was in need 
 of money for his own purposes, and his Parliament refused to 
 grant any, and the poor, oppressed and down-trodden Catholics 
 of Ireland imagined, naturally enough, that the King, being in 
 difficulties, would turn to them, and extend a little countenance 
 and favor, if they proclaimed their loyalty and stood by fra. 
 Accordingly, the Lord Lieutenant, Lord Falkland, desiring t n- 
 cerely to aid his royal master, hinted to the Catholics, who 1 id 
 been enduring the most terrible penal laws, from the days of 
 Elizabeth and James the First, that perhaps, if they sho ild 
 now petition the King, certain graces or concessions might be 
 granted them. These concessions simply involved permission 
 of riding over English land, and to worship God, according to 
 the dictates of their own conciences. They sought for nothing 
 more, and nothing more was promised them. When their pe- 
 tition was laid before the King, his royal Majesty issued a 
 proclamation, in which he declared that it was his intention, 
 and that he had plighted his word, to grant to the Catholics and 
 the people of Ireland certain concessions and indulgencies, 
 which he named as graces. No sooner did his Majesty's inten- 
 tion become known in England 
 
 THAN THE PURITAN ELEMENT 
 
 in the English Parliament, fighting rebelliously against the King, 
 instantly rose and protested that there should be no relaxation 
 of the penal laws against the Catholics of Ireland. And, 
 Charles, to his eternal disgrace, broke his word to the 
 
 3 
 
66 
 
 Irish Catholics, after they had sent ,120,000 in acknowl- 
 edgement of his promised concessions. More than this. It 
 was suspected that Lord Falkland was too just a man to be 
 Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and after a short lapse of time 
 Lord Wentworth, Earl of Stratford, was sent to Ireland, as 
 Lord Lieutenant. On arrival, Wentworth summoned a Parlia- 
 ment, and they met in the year 1684. He told them that the 
 King was in difficulties, how the Parliament in England had 
 rebelled against him, and how he looked to the Irish Catholics 
 as loyal. Perhaps he told them that, among Catholics, loyalty 
 is not a mere sentiment, but an unshaken principle, resting on 
 conscience and religion. And then he assured them that 
 Charles, the King of England, still intended to keep his word, 
 and to grant them their concessions. Next came the usual de- 
 mand, money, and the Irish Parliament granted six subsidies of 
 ,50,000 each. Strafford wrote to the King, congratulating 
 his Majesty that he had got so much money out of the Irish, 
 for he said : " You and I remember that your Majesty expected 
 only ^30,000, and they have granted ^5 0,000." More than 
 this, the Irish Parliament voted the King 8,000 infantry and 
 1,000 horse to fight his rebellious Scottish subjects and ene- 
 mies. The Parliament .met the following year, in 1634, and 
 what do you think of King Charles' fulfillment of his royal 
 
 PROMISES TO THE CATHOLICS OF IRELAND ? 
 
 After Strafford got the money, there was not a word about 
 the promises of his master the King. He took upon himself, 
 and fixed on his memory, the indelible shame and disgrace of 
 breaking the word he had plighted, and disappointing the 
 Catholics of Ireland. In 1635, the real character of this man 
 came out, and what was the measure of his treachery ? He in- 
 stituted a commission for the express purpose of confiscating, 
 in addition to Ulster, the whole province of Connaught, so as 
 not to leave an Irishman or a Catholic one square inch of ground 
 in that whole land. He called it a Commission of Defective 
 Titles. The members of the commission were to inquire into 
 the title of property, and to find a flaw in it, if they could, in 
 order that the land might be confiscated to the crown of En- 
 
6 7 
 
 gland. Remember how much of Ireland had already been 
 seized, my friends. The whole of Ulster had been confiscated 
 by James the First. The same King had taken the county of 
 Longford from the O'Farrels, who had owned it from time im- 
 memorial. Wexford from the O'Tooles, and several other 
 counties, from the Irish families, who were the rightful pro- 
 prietors of the soil. And now, with the whole of Ulster and 
 the better part of Leinster in his hands, this Minister instituted 
 a commission, for the purpose of obtaining the whole of the pro- 
 vince of Connaught, and of 
 
 ROOTING OUT THE NATIVE IRISH 
 
 population. The description of his plan is given by Leland, 
 the historian, a man hostile to Ireland's faith and Ireland's 
 nationality. Leland thus describes this project : 
 
 It was nothing less, than to set aside the title of every estate in every part 
 of Connaught, a project which when proposed in the late reign, was received 
 with horror and amazement, and which suited the undismayed and enter- 
 prising genius of Lord Wentworth. 
 
 Stratford's commission began in Roscommon, and went thence 
 into Sligo; thence to Mayo, and from Mayo to Gal way. Mark 
 how he managed the tribunal. To pass judgment upon the 
 validity of a title, required a jury of twelve men, and according 
 to their verdict, the title failed or not. Strafford began by pack- 
 ing the jury packing them ! It is the old story over again. 
 The old policy continued to our time, the policy of a packed 
 and prejudiced jury. He told the jury, before the trial began, 
 that he expected them to find a verdict for the King, and, be- 
 tween bribery, and overawing, he got juries to go for him, un- 
 til he came into my own county Galway. And to the honor 
 
 OF OLD GALWAY, 
 
 be it said, that as soon as the commission arrived in that county, 
 they could not find twelve jurors there, base enough or wicked 
 enough, to confiscate the lands of their fellow-subjects. What 
 was the result ? The county Galway jurors were called to 
 Dublin, before the Castle Chamber. Every man 0f them was 
 fined ^"4,000, and put in prison, to be kept there Until the 
 fine was paid f Every square inch of (heir property was taken 
 
68 
 
 from them, and the High Sheriff of Galway, being a man of 
 moderate means, and having been fined ji,ooo, died in jail, 
 because he was not able to pay the unjust imposition. 
 
 Not content with threatening and coercing jurors, Strafford 
 went to the Judges, and told them that they would get four 
 shillings for every pound of property that they confiscated to 
 the Crown, and he boasted, publicly, that he had made the 
 Chief Baron, and the other Judges, attend to this business as if 
 it was their own private concern. 
 
 This is the kind of rule that the learned gentleman asks 
 the honest and upright citizens of this country, to endorse by 
 their approval, and thereby make themselves accomplices of 
 English robbery. 
 
 In the same way this Strafford, instituted another tribunal in 
 Ireland, which he called the Court of Wards, and do you 
 know what this was ? It was found that the Irish people, gen- 
 tie and simple, failed to become Protestants. I have not a 
 harsh word to say to say to any of the Protestants, but I do 
 say that 
 
 EVERY HIGH-MINDED PROTESTANT 
 
 in the world must admire the strength and fidelity with which 
 Ireland, because of conscience, clings to her ancient faith, be- 
 lieving it true. 
 
 This tribunal was instituted to cut off the race of Catholic 
 gentlemn, and bring in the Protestant religion, and to the ac- 
 tion of this Court of Wards is owing the significant fact that 
 some of the best and most ancient names in Ireland, the names 
 of men whose fathers fought for the faith and father-land, be- 
 long to Protestants. All those families bearing my own name 
 which are Protestant can trace the change of their religion to the 
 Court of Wards. Not a drop of Protestant blood flowed in the 
 veins of the Earl of Clanricarde.- Before that court was insti- 
 tuted, there was nothing of Protestantism about the O'Briens of 
 Munster, the O'Donnells and O'Nialls of. Ulster, but they are 
 Protestants to-day. Let no Protestant or American citizen imag- 
 ine that I speak with disdain of his religion, but as a historian 
 it is my duty to point out the means, which every high-min4ed 
 
6 9 
 
 man must brand as nefarious, by which the aristocracy of Ire- 
 land were led to change their religion. 
 
 But matters were becoming desperate between Charles and 
 his Parliament, and in 1640 the King renewed his promises to 
 the Irish Catholics. A Parliament was called, which granted 
 four subsidies, 8,000 men. and 1,000 horse, to fight the Scotch, 
 who had rebelled. Strafford went home after he had got the 
 subsidies. The Parliament, which rebelled, got hold of him, 
 and in the same year his head was cut off, and he is a strange 
 Irishman that can regret it. Mean-time the people of Scotland 
 rose in armed rebellion against their King. They marched into 
 England, and what do you think they made by the movement ? 
 They secured 
 
 FULL ENJOYMENT OF THEIR RELIGION, 
 
 which was not Protestant but Presbyterian. They got ^300, ooo, 
 and got for several months ^850 a day to support their army. 
 Then they retired into their own country, after achieving the 
 purpose for which they revolted. Mean-time the loyal Catholics 
 of Ireland were being ground in the very dust. What wonder, 
 I ask you, was it that they counselled together and said, the 
 King is afraid of the Parliament, though personally inclined to 
 grant graces, which he has plighted his royal word to grant ? 
 The evidence is that if free he would grant those concessions he 
 has promised. But the King is not free, said the Irish, for his 
 Parliament has rebelled against him. Let us rise, in the 
 King's name, and assert our rights. They rose in 1641 
 like one man, every Irishman and Catholic in Ireland rose. On 
 the 23d of October, 1641, they all rose, with the exception of 
 the Catholic Lords of the Pale. I will give you the reasons of 
 their rising, as recorded in the "Memoirs of Lord Castlehaven, " 
 a Lord by no means prejudiced in favor of Ireland : 
 
 The Irish rose for six reasons : first, because they are generally looked down 
 to as a conquered nation, seldom or never trusted after the manner of free- 
 born subjects. 
 
 Here, dear friends, is the first reason given by this English 
 Lord, that the Irish people rose after the English people treated 
 them contemptuously. When will England learn to treat her 
 subjects or friends with common respect. When will that proud, 
 
70 
 
 STUBBORN, ANGLO-SAXON SPIRIT 
 
 condescend to kindness in dealing with those around it. Much 
 as the hatred of Englishmen for Irishmen may affect the Irish, 
 their contempt for us is no less irritating than their terrible an- 
 tagonism. The second reason given by Castlehaven is that the 
 Irish saw six whole counties confiscated by the Crown, and the 
 land gradually passing away from the natives. The third rea- 
 son was that in Charles' time the Saxons laid claim also to the 
 counties of Roscommon, Mayo, Galway, and Cork, with some 
 other parts of territory in Limerick and Wicklow, and seized or 
 tried to seize it. The fourth reason was that, according to the 
 English account of the day, war was declared against the Roman 
 Catholics, a fact which, to a people so fond of their religion as 
 the Irish, was no small matter, no small inducement to make 
 them sober and quiet, for as a race the Irish people are very 
 fond of standing by their religious tenets and adhering to their 
 religious opinions. The fifth reason was, that they saw how the 
 Scots, by making a show of pretended grievances, and taking 
 up arms against their oppressors in order to procure the rights to 
 which they were justly entitled, procured the rights which 
 they sought, secured the privileges and amenities due to a -na- 
 tion anxious to assert its own cause its own independence. 
 They secured 500,000 for their visit to Ireland, and the last 
 reason was, that they saw such a misunderstanding exist between 
 the King and the Parliament, and they consequently believed 
 that the King would grant them any thing that they could in 
 reason demand, or at least as much as they could expect. I ask 
 you were not those sufficient grounds for any claim which the 
 Irish might have made at that time ? I appeal to the people of 
 America. I speak to a gratuitous and generous people, who 
 
 KNOW WHAT RELIGIOUS LIBERTY MEANS. 
 
 I appeal here from this platform to-night for a people whose 
 spirit was never broken, and never will be. I appeal here to- 
 night for a people not inferior to the Saxon, or to any other race 
 on the face of the earth, either in gifts of intellect or bodily 
 energy. I appeal here to-night (and I address myself to the 
 enlightened instincts of this great land) for a people who have 
 been down- trodden and persecuted as our forefathers were, an4 
 
I think it my duty, not as a minister, but as a historian, to 
 stand up here to-night and state my reasons for so doing, believe- 
 ing that I have sufficient justification to stand up here and do 
 so, and considering the fact of the accumulated wrongs that 
 have been heaped upon Ireland, I don't think I would be doing 
 justice to myself or to my country if I didn't take advantage of 
 this opportunity to reply to the wrongs that have been heaped 
 upon my unfortunate country. An English Protestant writer of 
 the time to which I refer, writing in HcnveVs Hibernicon, says 
 that they (the Irish) had sundry grievances and grounds of 
 complaint, in reference to their estates and their consciences, 
 which they pretend to be far greater than those of the Scots." 
 For the Irish at the time believed that even though the Scots 
 should alter their religion, that was no reason why they should 
 have altered their own, for they gloried in the fact that they had 
 neVer altered it. There was another reason why this state of 
 things should not continue. Inasmuch as there was no cause 
 why they should succumb to 
 
 THE WEAKNESS AND FOLLY OF CHARLES, 
 
 for I can call it nothing else, to preside at the head of the Irish 
 Government. Sir George Borlice and Sir William Parsons both 
 were partisans of the Parliament at the same time that they were 
 its bitterest enemies, and they thought that he ( the King ) 
 would be embarrased in his fight with the Parliament in En- 
 gland by the revolution in Ireland, and so the very men who 
 should be the guardians and preservers of the public peace lent 
 themselves to revolution. For instance, six months before the 
 revolution broke out, Charles gave them notice that he received 
 intelligence that the lands were going to waste. They took no 
 notice of the King's advertisements. The Irish Lords who 
 sought to remain faithful to the Crown, and live in peace, asked 
 to be justified by the English residents and patrons of the King 
 in Dublin, and it was refused them. They were refused per- 
 mission to go into the city and escape the Irish rebellion, and 
 the moment the Irish chieftains came near the settlers of the En- 
 glish King, their castles were declared forfeited as well as their 
 estates, and so the Lords of Gormanstown and Trimbleton and 
 
72 
 
 others were forced to join hands with the Irish, and draw their 
 swords in the glorious cause they so applauded and maintained. 
 They were forced to this. Moreover the Irish knew that their 
 friends and fellow countrymen were earning distinction and 
 honor and glory upon all the .battle-fields of Europe in the 
 service of Spain, France, and Austria, and they held, not with- 
 out reason, that these, their countrymen, would help them in the 
 hour of their need. Accordingly, on the 23d of October, 1641, 
 
 THEY AROSE. 
 
 What was the first thing they did, according to Mr. Froude? 
 The first thing was to massacre all the Protestants they could 
 lay their hands on. Well, my friends, this, as I will endeavor 
 to show, is not the fact. The very first thing that their leader, 
 Sir Phelim O'Neill, did, was to issue a proclamation, on the very 
 day- of the rising, in which he declares : 
 
 We rise in the name of our Lord the King ; we rise to assert the power and 
 prerogative of the King; we declare we do not wish to make war on the 
 King or any one of his subjects ; we declare moreover, that we do not intend 
 to shed blood except in legitimate warfare, and that any man of our tribes 
 that robs, plunders, or sheds blood shall be severely punished. 
 
 Did they keep to the word and the letter of this declaration ? 
 Most infallibly. I assert, in the name of history, that there was 
 no massacre of Protestants, and this I will prove from Protestant 
 authority. We find that on the 25th the 27th of the same 
 month in which is given that account of the rising of the Irish 
 . people we 'find that according to Protestant accounts they 
 complain, and tell us that the Irish stripped them, stripped 
 their Protestant fellow-citizens, took their cattle, took their 
 houses and their property, but not one single word of complaint 
 is there about 
 
 ONE SINGLE DROP OF BLOOD 
 
 being shed. And, my friends, if they (the Irish) took their 
 cattle and houses and property, you must remember that they 
 were only taking back what was their- own. And very shortly 
 afterward the massacre began, but who began it, and where? 
 The Irish, claiming and seeking protection, brought their lives 
 with them to Carrickfergus, and what followed ? They entered 
 
73 
 
 the town of Carrickfergus and they found a garrison of Scotch 
 Puritans. Now, in the confusion that arose, the poor country 
 people all fled into an obscure part of the country near Carrick- 
 fergus, called Island Magee. They were there collected to the 
 number of more than three thousand. The very first thing these 
 English Puritans and Scotch garrison did was to steal out of 
 Carrickfergus in the night - time, so as to go in among them, an 
 unarmed people, and slaughtered every man, woman and child 
 they could find. They left 3,000 human beings dead behind 
 them. Leland, the English Protestant historian, says, "This 
 is the first massacre that occurred in Ireland on their side." 
 This the first massacre ! How in the name of Heaven can any 
 man be so learned as Mr. Froude and make such untruthful as- 
 sertions as he has advanced? How can he, in the name of 
 history, assert that these (the Irish people) began by massacre- 
 ing 38,000 of his fellow-countrymen his fellow- religionists, 
 when we have in the month of December, four months after, a 
 commission issued to the Dean Kilmore and 
 
 SEVEN OTHER PROTESTANT CLERGYMEN 
 
 to make sedulous inquiry about the English and Scotch Protest- 
 ants who were plundered, and not a single inquiry about those 
 who were murdered. Here are the words of Castlehaven : 
 
 The Catholics were urged into rebellion, and the Lords Justices were often 
 heard to say that the more in rebellion, the more lands would be derived (or 
 pilfered) from them. 
 
 It Was the old story ; it was the old adage of James the First, 
 4 'Root out the Catholics ; root out the Irish ; give Ireland to 
 English Protestants and Puritans, and immediately regenerate 
 the land." Oh! from such regeneration of my own or any 
 other land or people, O Lord, deliver us ! This rebellion, 
 says Mr. Froude, began in massacre, and it ended in ruin. It 
 ended in ruin the most terrible, ^ and if it began in massacre, 
 you must, Mr. Froude, acknowledge that the massacre was on 
 the part of your countrymen and co-religionists. Then having 
 come to this pass in regard to this matter, it must be understood 
 to be a war between the Puritans and Protestants of Ulster and 
 Other parts of Ireland, the former being aided by constant re- 
 
74 
 
 sources in the way of armies who came over to them from 
 England. It was a war that continued for eleven years. It 
 was a war in which the Irish chieftains held the destiny of the 
 nation in their own hands. 
 
 THEY WERE OBLIGED TO FIGHT, 
 
 and fight like men, in order to try and achieve a better destiny 
 and a better future for their people. Who can say that the Irish 
 chieftains did not hold the destinies of Ireland in their hands 
 during those nine years or more, when they had to fight against 
 hostile forces, one after the other, that came successively against 
 them, inflamed with religious bigotry, hatred and enmity that 
 the world has scarcely ever seen the like of? Then Mr. Froude 
 adds that these were years of anarchy and slaughter. Let us 
 see what evidence history has of the facts. 
 
 They (the bishops) were called together in a synod on the 
 1 8th of May, 1642. The bishops of all Ireland joined and met 
 together, and they founded what is called the Confederation of 
 Kilkenny. Among other members selected they (the English 
 rulers) selected for a Supreme Council three archbishops, two 
 bishops, four lords and fifteen commoners. These men were to 
 meet and to remain in permanent session, to watch over the 
 country, make its laws, watch over the army, and, above all, 
 they were to prevent cruelty, robbery or murder." A regular 
 government was formed. They 
 
 ACTUALLY ESTABLISHED A MINT, 
 
 and coined money for the Irish nation, and they established an 
 army under Lord Mount Cashel, Lord Preston, and afterward 
 under the command of the immortal Owen Roe O'Neill. 
 
 It is true that during the first months they gained some suc- 
 cess. Many of the principal cities in Ireland opened their 
 gates to them. The garrisons were carefully saved from 
 slaughter, and their opponents who laid down their arms were 
 saved. Not a drop of unnecessary blood was shed by the Irish. 
 In reference to that Supreme Council, I defy any man to say 
 (to prove) that there was a single act of that Supreme Council 
 for the purpose of promoting bloodshed or slaughter, 
 
75 
 
 NoW, after a few months of success, the armies of the Con- 
 federation experienced some reverses. The English armies 
 came upon them, and the command was given to Sir Charles 
 Coote, and I want to read some of that gentleman's exploits for 
 you. Sir Charles Coote's exploits in Ireland are described by 
 Clarendon in these words : 
 
 Sir Charles, besides plundering and burning the town of Clontarf at that 
 time, did massacre sixteen of the town's people, men and women, besides 
 suckling infants, and in that very same week fifty-six men, women and 
 children in the village of Bullock, being frightened at w*hat was done at 
 Clontarf, went to sea to shun the fury of a party of soldiers who came out 
 from Dublin under command of Col. Clifford. Being pursued by the sol- 
 diers in boats,gthey were overtaken and thrown overboard. 
 
 Sir William Borlice advised the Governor, Sir Charles Coote, 
 that the Irish were burning the corn, and he gave men, 
 women and children to the sword ; and Sir Anthony Loftus 
 wrote of the same fact at the time. Well, 
 
 THIS PRECIOUS DOCUMENT 
 has the following, This is it : 
 
 It is resolved that it is fit, (and mind this is authenticated by the Ear! o 
 Ormond; that his Lordship doth endeavor to wound, kill, slay, and destroy, 
 by all the ways and means that he may, all the said rebels, their adherants 
 and relatives, and burn, spoil, waste, consume, destroy, and demolish all the 
 places, towns, and houses where the rebels are or have been relieved or har- 
 bored, and all the hay and corn there, and kill and destroy all the men there 
 inhabiting capable of bearing arms. Given at the Castle of Dublin on the 
 23d day of February, 1641, and signed by six precious names. 
 
 Listen to this : "Sir Anthony Loftus, Governor of Naas, 
 marched out with a force of horse. He was met on the way 
 and joined by the Marquis of Ormond, and they both together 
 killed such of the Irish as they met, and did not stop to inquire 
 whether they were rebels or not." 
 
 But the most considerable slaughter was where the people 
 were driven to the furze, having been alarmed by the whole- 
 sale massacre going on around them. Now, Sir Anthony having 
 discovered that the people had taken refuge in the furze, set 
 fire to it on all sides where the people were, and burned men, 
 Women and children, "I saw," said Castlehaven, "the bodies 
 amidst the furze while burning." 
 
 In the year 1641-42, many thousands of poor, innocent 
 
people of the county of Dublin, fearing the rage of the English 
 soldiery, endeavored to escape, and as many as endeavored to 
 escape and were arrested 
 
 WERE BURNED. 
 
 Seven thousand of our people, men^ women and children, with- 
 out discrimination, were destroyed by these demons. We find 
 also that there was a law made that if any Irishmen were found 
 on board ships by his Majesty's cruisers, they were to be de- 
 stroyed. "The Earl of Warmouth" (this is also in Claren- 
 don's account) " as often as he met an Irish frigate, took all 
 the seamen prisoners who belonged to the nation of Ireland, 
 and taking them on deck, threw them overboard into the sea, 
 without distinction as to their condition, if they were only Irish- 
 men. In this manner many poor men perished day after day, 
 all of which the King knew nothing*- because his Majesty could . 
 not complain of it without being concerned in favor of the re- 
 bellious in Ireland. 
 
 Again, the Marquis of Ormond sent Capt. Anthony Willough* 
 by, with 150 men, to look after the Irishmen who were in the 
 service of the King and actually fought for him. They were 
 all taken by Capt. Squarley, who 
 
 THREW THE OFFICERS AND SOLDIERS OVERBOARD, 
 
 although these same soldiers had faithfully served his Majesty 
 against the rebels during the time of the war. You will ask 
 me : Was that Captain punished for the slaughter the inhuman 
 butchery? Here is the punishment he got. In June, 1864, we 
 read, in the journals of the English House of Commons, that 
 Capt. Squarley had given to him by the English House of 
 Commons 200 in gold, and Capt. Smith had 100 given him. 
 Sir Richard Greenville was very much esteemed by the Earl of 
 Leicester, because he plundered the Irish and found among 
 them less property than he expected. In a word he committed 
 atrocities which I am ashamed and afraid to mention. They 
 (the soldiers) tossed the infants taken from their dead mothers' 
 bosom on their bayonets ; and it was a common thing to throw 
 children into the air and for the soldier to spit them with his 
 bayonet, and he loved and enjoyed such frolic. They brought 
 
77 
 
 the children into the world before their time by a Caesarian pro- 
 cess, and brought the poor, helpless infant thereby from its 
 mother's womb to death, 
 
 AN APPALLING DEATH, 
 
 while the dead mother they immolated and sacrificed in a 
 most cruel and terrible manner. 
 
 Yes, such are the facts, my friends; I am afraid I say again 
 I am afraid to tell you the hundredth part of the cruelties 
 those terrible men, put by them upon our race. Now, I aslc 
 you to compare this with the manner in which the Irish troops 
 behaved. A garrison of 700 English surrendered, at Naas, and 
 the Irish commandant surrendered them up, unharmed and un- 
 injured^ on condition that under the like circumstances the En- 
 glish would do the same thing with him. An Irish party 
 capitulated a few days afterward. The Governor of the town 
 and all the party were arrested and put to death. Sir Charles 
 Coote, coming into Munster, slaughtered every man, woman 
 and child he met on his march, and among others was Philip 
 R^an, whom he put to death without the slightest hesitation. 
 This occurs in Cart's life of Ormond. Great numbers of the 
 Eiglish, miraculously preserved in those days through the in- 
 strumentality of the Irish, were suffered to go into the county 
 cf Cork by the courtesy and kindness of the inhabitants of 
 Cashel. ' 
 
 In 1649, Cardinal Renocini was sent over by the Pope to 
 preside over the Supreme Council of the Confederation of Kil- 
 kenny, and about the same time news came to Ireland that 
 
 THE ILLUSTRIOUS OWEN ROE O'NEILL 
 
 had landed in Ireland on the coast of Ulster. This man was one 
 of the most distinguished officers in the Spanish service at the 
 time when the Spanish infantry were acknowledged to be the 
 finest troops in the world. He landed in Ireland, organized an 
 army, drilled them and he met Gen. Monroe on the Black- 
 water. The battle raged through the early hours of the day, 
 and before evening, England's army was flying in confusion, 
 and her vast array of soldiers were stretched on the field and 
 darkened the plains of Benburb, while the Irish soldiery stood 
 
78 
 
 triumphant on the field on which it had shown its valor and won 
 its victory. Partly through the treachery of Ormond and 
 Preston, and mainly through the agency of the English lords 
 who were coquetting with the English Government, the Con- 
 federation suffered the most disastrous defeats, and Ireland's 
 cause was already broken and all but lost, when, in the year 
 1649, Oliver Cromwell landed in Ireland. Mr. Froude says, 
 and truly, that he di$ not come to make war with rose-water, but 
 with the thick, warm blood of the Irish people. And Mr. Froude 
 prefaces the introduction of Oliver Cromwell in Ireland by tell- 
 ing us that the Lord Protector was a great friend of Ireland, 
 that he was a liberal-minded man, and intended to interfere 
 with no man's liberty of conscience ; and he adds that : 
 
 "IF CROMWELL'S POLICY WERE CARRIED OUT 
 in full, probably I would not be here speaking to you of our 
 difficulties with Ireland to-day.' 1 He adds, moreover, that 
 Cromwell had formed a design for the pacicfiation of Ireland 
 which would have made future troubles there impossible. 
 What was this design ? Lord Macaulay tells what this design 
 was. Cromwell's avowed purpose was to end all difficulties in 
 Ireland, whether they arose from the land question or from the 
 religious question, by putting a total and entire end to the Irish 
 race by extirpating them off the face of the earth." This vas 
 an admirable policy for the pacification of Ireland and the cre- 
 ation of peace ; for the best way and the simplest way to keep 
 any man quiet is to cut his throat, The dead do not speak ; he 
 dead do not move ; the dead do not trouble any one ; and 
 Cromwell came to destroy the Irish race and the Irish CathoLc 
 faith, and so put an end at once to all claims for land and to 
 all disturbances arising out of religious persecutions. 
 
 But I ask this learned gentleman, (Mr. Froude) does h 
 imagine that the people of America are either so ignorant or sc 
 wicked as to accept the monstrous proposition that the man 
 who came into Ireland with such a purpose as this can be de- 
 clared the friend of the real interests of the Irish people ? 
 Does he imagine that there is no intelligence in America, that 
 there is no manhood in America, that there is no love for free- 
 
79 
 
 dom, for religion and for life in America ? And a man must 
 be an enemy of freedom, of religion and of life itself before he 
 can sympathize with 
 
 BLOOD-STAINED OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 Mr. Froude says the Lord Protector did not interfere with any 
 man's liberty of conscience. " Interfere with no man's con- 
 science," says Cromwell ; "but if by conscience you Catholics 
 mean having priests and the Mass, you will never have them so 
 long as England has power." Mr. Froude says : 
 
 T Acknowledge the mass is abeautifnl rite, ancient and beautiful, but you 
 must remember that in Cromwell's day the mass meant the system that was 
 shedding blood all over Europe, the system of the church that never knew 
 mercy, and therefore he was resolved to have none of it. 
 
 Ah ! my friends, if the mass was the symbol of slaughter, 
 Oliver Cromwell would have had more sympathy with the mass. 
 Anl so the historian seeks to justify cruelty in Ireland against 
 the Catholics, by alleging cruelty on the part of Catholics 
 agiinst their Protestant fellow-subjects in other lands. 
 
 The blood that was shed in Ireland at this particular time was 
 shed exclusively on account of religion ; for when in 1 643 Char- 
 Is I made a treaty or a cessation of hostilities with the Irish 
 tirough the Confederation of Kilkenny, the English Parliament, 
 is soon as they heard that the King had ceased hostilities for a 
 ime with his Irish Catholic subjects, at once came in and said 
 that 
 
 THE WAR MUST GO ON ; 
 
 we won't allow hostilities to cease ; we must root out these Irish 
 papists, or else we will incur danger to the Protestant religion. 
 I regret to say, my Protestant friends, that the men of 134.3, the 
 members of the Puritan Houses of Parliament in England, have 
 fastened upon that form of religion which . you profess the formal 
 argument and reason why Irish blood should flow in torrents 
 lest the Protestant religion might suffer. In these days of ours, 
 when we are endeavoring to put away all sectarian bigotry, we 
 deplore the faults committed by our fathers on both sides. Mr. 
 Froude deplores that blood that was shed as well as I do ; but, 
 my friends, it is a historical question, arising upon historic facts 
 
8o 
 
 and evidence, and I am bound to appeal to history as well as 
 my learned antagonist, and to discriminate and put back the 
 word which he puts out, that toleration is the genius of Protest- 
 antism. He asserts and it is an astounding assertion in 
 this his third lecture, that religious persecution was hostile to the 
 genius of Protestantism. I wish that the learned gentleman's 
 statement could be proved. Oh, how much I desire that in 
 saying these words he had spoken the strict truth ! No doubt he 
 believed what he said. 
 
 All this I say with regret. I am not only a Catholic, but a 
 priest, not only a priest, but a, monk, not only a monk, but a 
 Dominican monk, and from out of the depths of my soul, I re- 
 pel and repudiate the principle of religious persecution of aiy 
 kind, in any land. 
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL, 
 
 the apostle of blessings to Ireland, landed in 1649, and wen*, 
 to work. He besieged Drogheda, defended by Sir Arthui 
 Aston and a brave garrison. When he made a breach in th< 
 walls, and when the garrison found that their position was nc 
 longer tenable, they asked in the military language of the 
 honors of war if they were to be murdered. Cromwell prom- 
 ised to grant them quarter, if they would lay down their 
 arms. They did so, and the promise was kept, until the town 
 was taken. When the town was in his hands, Oliver Cromwell 
 gave orders to his army for the indiscriminate massacre of the 
 garrison, and every man, woman, and child in that large city. 
 The people, when they saw the soldiers, slaying around them 
 on every side, when they saw the streets of Drogheda flowing 
 with blood for five days, flocked, to the number of one thousand 
 aged men, women, and children, and took refuge in the great 
 church of St. Peters in Drogheda. Oliver Cromwell drew his 
 soldiers around that church, and out of that church he never 
 let one of those thousand innocent persons escape alive. He 
 then proceeded to Wexford, where a certain commander named 
 Stratford delivered the city over to him. He massacred the 
 people there also. Three hundred of the women of Wexford, 
 with their little children, gathered around the great market 
 
Si 
 
 cross in the great public square of the city. They thought in 
 their hearts that, cruel as he was, he would respect the sign of 
 man's redemption, and spare those who were collected around it. 
 How vain the thought ! J Three hundred, poor defenseless 
 women, screaming for mercy 
 
 UNDER THE CROSS OF JESUS CHRIST, 
 
 Cromwell and his barbarous demons slaughtered without per- 
 mitting one to escape, until they were ankle - deep in the blood 
 of the women of Wexford. 
 
 Cromwell retired from Ireland, after he had glutted himself 
 with the blood of the people, winding up his work by taking 
 80,000, and some say 100,000, of the men of Ireland, and 
 driving them down to the south ports of Munster, where he 
 shipped them 80,000 at the lowest calculation to the sugar 
 plantations of the Barbadoes, there to work as slaves; and in six 
 years from that time, such was the treatment that they received, 
 that out of 80,000 there were only twenty men left. He also 
 collected six thousand Irish boys, fair, and beautiful stripling 
 youths, put them on board ships, and sent them off also to the 
 Barbadoes, there to languish and die, before they came to man- 
 hood. Great God ! is this the man that has an apologist in 
 the learned, the frank, the courteous and gentlemanly historian, 
 who comes in oily words to tell the American people that 
 Cromwell was one of the bravest men that ever lived, and one 
 of the best friends to Ireland ! 
 
FORTH LECTURE. 
 
 T ADIES AND GENTLEMEN: I have perceived in the 
 LJ public papers that Mr. Froude seems to be somewhat irri- 
 tated by remarks that have been made as to his accuracy as an 
 historian. Lest any word of mine might hurt, in the least degree, 
 the susceptibilities of an honorable man, I beg beforehand to 
 say, that nothing was farther from my thoughts than the slight- 
 est word, either of personality or disrespect for one who has 
 won for himself so high a name as an English historian. And, 
 therefore, I sincerely hope that it is not any word of mine, which 
 may have fallen from me, even in the heat of our amicable con- 
 troversy, that can have given the least offense to that gentle- 
 mSn. Thus, as I would expect from him, or any other learned 
 gentleman, the treatment which one gentleman is supposed to 
 show to another, so do I also wish to give him the same treat- 
 ment. 
 
 And now, my friends, we come to the matter in hand. Last 
 evening I had to traverse a great portion of my country's 
 history, in revieving the statement of the English historian, and 
 I was obliged to leave almost untouched one portion of the 
 story, namely the period which covers the reign of Queen 
 Anne. This estimable lady, of whom history records the un- 
 womanly vice of an overfondness for eating, came to the En- 
 glish throne on the demise of William of Orange, in 1702, and 
 pn that throne she sat until 1714. As I before remarked, it 
 
83 
 
 was perhaps natural that the Irish people the Catholics of 
 Ireland,, trodden into the very dust that they should have 
 expected some relief from the daughter] of a man for whom 
 they had shed their blood, and from the grand-daughter of the 
 other Stuart King, for whom they had fought so bravely in 
 1649. The return that the Irish people got from this good 
 lady was quite of another kind from what they might have ex- 
 pected. 
 
 QUEEN ANNE AND THE PROTESTANT ASCENDANCY. 
 
 Not content with the atrocious laws that had been already 
 enacted against the Catholics of Ireland not content with the 
 flagrant breach of the articles of Limerick, of which her royal 
 brother-in-law, William, was guilty, no sooner does Annie come 
 to the throne, and send the Duke of Ormond as Lord-Lieuten- 
 ant to Ireland, than the English ascendancy, that is to say, 
 the Protestant faction in Ireland, got upon their knees to the 
 Lord-Lieutenant to beg of him, for the sake of the Lord, to 
 save them from these desperate Roman Catholics. Great Lord ! 
 A people robbed, persecuted, and slain until only a miserable 
 remnant of them were left, without a voice in the nation's 
 councils ; without a vote even at the humblest board that sat to 
 transact the meanest parochial business ; these were the men 
 against whom the strong Protestant ascendancy of Ireland 
 made their complaint in 1703. And so well were these com- 
 plaints heard, that we find edict after edict going out, de- 
 claring that no Papist shall be able to inherit or possess land, 
 or to buy land, or have it even under a lease ; declaring that if 
 a Catholic child wished to become a Protestant, that that child 
 became the owner and master of his father's estate, and his 
 father remained only his pensioner or tenant for life, upon the 
 bounty of his own apostate son ; declaring that a child, no 
 matter how young- even an infant conformed and become 
 Protestant, that moment, that child was to be removed from the 
 guardianship and custody of the father, and was to be' handed 
 over to some Protestant relation. Every enactment that the 
 misguided ingenuity of the tyranical mind of man could 
 suggest was adopted, and put in force. " One would be in- 
 
clined ," says Mr. Mitchell, "to suppose that Papacy had been 
 already sufficiently discouraged, seeing that the bishops and 
 clergy had been banished, that the Catholics were excluded by 
 law from all honorable employments, carefully disarmed and 
 plundered of almost every acre of their ancient inheritance. " 
 But enough had not yet been done to make the Protestant in- 
 terest feel secure, consequentely these laws came in, and clauses 
 were added by this good Queen Anne, declaring that no Papist 
 or Catholic could live in a walled town, especially in the towns 
 Limerick and Galway. If any Catholic came, and even entered 
 into the suburbs of the town, they were obliged to remain out- 
 side of the town, as if they were lepers outside of the towns, 
 where they would contaminate and degrade their sleek and 
 pampered Protestant fellow- citizens in the land. The persecu- 
 tion went on. In 1711 we found them enacting new laws, 
 and later, on the very last day of Queen Anne's reign, thus we 
 find them enacting their laws, hounding on their magistrates 
 and the police of the country, and the informers of the country, 
 offering them bribes and premiums to execute these atrocious 
 laws, and to hunt the Catholic people and the Catholic priests 
 of Ireland, as if they were fierce, untameable wolves. And, 
 my friends, Mr. Froude justifies this on two grounds. Not a 
 single word of compassion has he for the people who were thus 
 treated ; not a single word has he of manly protest against the 
 shedding of that people's blood by unjust persecution, as well 
 as the robbery by legal enactment. But, he says, there were 
 two reasons which, in his mind, seemed to justify the atrocious 
 action of the English government. The first of these was, 
 "that, after all, these laws were only retaliation upon the 
 Catholics of Ireland for the dreadful persecutions that were 
 suffered by the Huguenots or Protestants of France, " and he 
 says that the Protestants of Ireland were only following the ex- 
 ample of King Louis XIV, who revoked the edict of Nantes. 
 Let me explain this to you. 
 
 THE EDICT OF NANTES 
 
 The edict of Nantes was a law, that gave religious liberty 
 to the French Protestants, as well as the Catholics. It was a 
 
law founded injustice. It was a law founded on the sacred 
 rights that belong to man, and this law was revoked. Conse- 
 quently, the Protestants of France were laid open to persecution. 
 But there is this difference between the French Protestants and 
 the Catholics of Ireland. The French Protestants had nevet 
 their liberty guaranteed to them by treaty ; the Irish Catholics 
 had their liberties guaranteed by the treaty of Limerick the 
 treaty they won by their own brave hands and swords. The 
 Edict of Nantes was revoked, but that revocation was no breach 
 of any royal word pledged to them. The treaty of Limerick 
 was broken with the Catholics of Ireland, and in the breach of 
 it the King of England, the Parliament of England, the aristoc- 
 racy and the people of England, as well as the miserable 
 Irish Protestant faction at home, became treacherous before history 
 and the world. Here are the words of the celebrated Edmund 
 Burke, on the subject of the revocationof this edict : * this act of in- 
 justice," says the great Irish statesman, "which let loose on that 
 monarch, Louis XIV, such a torrent of invective and reproach, 
 and which threw so dark a cloud over the splendor of that most 
 illustrious reign, falls far short of the case of Ireland." Re* 
 member, he is an Englise statesman, though of Irish birth, and 
 a Protestant, who speaks. '' The privileges which- the Protes- 
 tants of France enjoyed, antecedent to this revocation, were 
 far greater than the Roman Catholics of Ireland ever aspired to 
 under the Protestant establishment. The number of their 
 sufferers, if considered absolutely, is not half of ours ; and if 
 considered relatively to the body of the community, it is per- 
 haps not a twentieth part. Then the penalties and incapacities 
 which grew from that revocation are not so grievous in their 
 nature* or so certain in their execution, or so ruinous, by a great 
 deal, to the people's prosperity in that State, as those which 
 were established for a perpetual law in the unhappy country of 
 Ireland." In fact, what did the revocation of the Edict of 
 Nantes do ? It condemned those who relapsed into the Protes- 
 tant faith, without having renounced it; it condemned them, 
 not indeed to the confiscation of their goods-*-there was no 
 confiscation, except in cases of relapse, and in cases of quitting 
 the country. There was nothing at all of that complicated 
 
86 
 
 machinery which we have described in referring to Ireland's 
 persecutions; there was nothing said of beggaring one portion 
 of the population, and giving its spoils to the other part ; 
 while, side by side with this, we find the Irish people ruined, 
 beggard, were persecuted and hunted to death ; and the English 
 historian comes and says : "Oh! we were only serving you as 
 your people, and your own fellow-religionists in France, were 
 serving us." The other reason which he gave to justify these 
 persecutions was, that " the Irish Catholics were in favor of 
 the Pretender " that is to say of the son of James II " and 
 consequently were hostile to the Government." Now, to that 
 statement I can give, I think, a most emphatic denial 
 
 THE IRISH PEOPLE AND THE STUARTS. 
 
 The Irish Catholics had quite enough of the Stuarts ; they 
 had shed quite enough of their blood for that treacherous and 
 shameless race ; they had no interest whatever in the succes- 
 sion, nor cared they one iota whether the Elector of Hanover, 
 or the son of James Stuart succeeded to the throne of England. 
 For well they knew, whether it was a Hanoverian or a Stuart 
 that ruled in England, the faction at home, in Ireland, and the 
 prejudices of the English people would make him, whoever he 
 was, a tyrant over them and over their nation. And thus the 
 persecution went on, and law after law was passed to make 
 perfect the beggary and the ruin of the Irish people ; until, at 
 length, Ireland was reduced to such a state of misery that the 
 very name of an Irishman was a reproach. At length, a small 
 number of the glorious race had the weakness to change their 
 faith and to deny the religion of their fathers. The name of 
 an Irishman was a reproach. 
 
 DEAN SWIFT ON THE IRISH. 
 
 My friends, Dean Swift was born in Ireland ; Dean Swift is 
 looked upon as a patriotic Irishman, yet Dean Swift said : "I 
 do not consider myself an Irishman, because I happened to be 
 born in Ireland, any more than an Englishman, chancing to be 
 born in Calcutta, would consider himself a Hindoo." Of the 
 degradation of the Irish, and their utter prostration, he went on 
 so far as to say, < he would not think of taking them into ac- 
 
count, on any matter of importance, any more than he would of 
 consulting the swine." Lord Macauley gloats over the state of 
 the Catholics in Ireland then, and Mr. Froude views, perhaps 
 not without some complacency, their misery. Lord Macauley 
 calls them Pariahs, and says that they had no existence, that 
 they had no liberty, even to breathe in the land, and that land 
 their own ; and we find, through 'Swift, at this very time, the 
 Lord Chancellor rising in an English court an Irish court 
 laying down the law quite coolly and calmly, and saying that, 
 "in the eye of the law, no Catholic was in existence." Chief 
 Justice Robison made a similar declaration. Here are the 
 words of his lordship, the Chief - Justice : " It appears," he says, 
 1 that the law does not suppose any such person to exist as an 
 Irish Roman Catholic." And yet, at that very time, we find 
 Irishmen proclaiming their loyalty, and saying: "Look at the 
 Catholics of Ireland, how loyal they are." Mr. Froude says 
 that they favored the Pretender at the very time when the Gov- 
 ernment itself was attributing the quietude of the people in Ire- 
 land, not to their prostration, not to their ruin, as was the real 
 case, but to their devoted loyalty to the crown of England. 
 Well did the brave Irish gentleman Mitchell reject it. "They 
 were," he says, "as degraded as England could make them ; 
 but there was another degradation that could only come through 
 themselves, and that they were not guilty of, and that would be 
 the degradation of loyalty." Now, my friends, we have, at 
 this very time, an Irishman of the name of Phelim O'Neill, 
 one of the glorious old line of Tyrone ; one in whose veins 
 the blood of the great and the heroic Red Hugh, who purpled 
 the Blackwater, who struck the Saxon at the Yellow Ford, and 
 purpled the stream of the Blackwater with his blood ; one 
 in whose blood flowed the perhaps still nobler blood of the im- 
 mortal Owen Roe O'Neill, the glorious victor of Benburb. 
 And this good Phelim O'Neill changed his religion, and be- 
 came a Protestant. But it seemed to him a strange and un- 
 natural thing that a man of the name of O'Neill should be a 
 Protestant, so he changed his name from Phelim O'Neill, and 
 called himself Felix Neale. There has been a good deal said 
 lately about the pronunciation of proper names and what they 
 
88 
 
 rhyme with; this man made his name rhyme with eel the 
 slippery eel. Now, on this change of the gentleman's name 
 and religion, an old parish priest wrote some Latin verses, 
 which were translated by Clarence Mangin. I will read them, 
 just to let you know how things were in Ireland at that time. 
 
 " All things has Felix changed ; he changed his name, 
 Yet in himself he is no more the same; 
 Scorning to spend his days where he was reared, 
 To drag out life among the vulgar herd, 
 And trudge his way through bogs, in tracks and brogues. 
 He changed his creed, and joined_*the Saxon rogues; 
 By whom- his sires were robbed, and laid aside 
 The arms they bore for centuries with pride ; 
 The ship, the salmon, and the famed Red -hand, 
 And blushed when called O'Neill in his own land. 
 Poor paltry skulker from thy noble race, 
 In Felix, Felix, weep for thy disgrace." 
 
 THE PROTESTANT ASCENDANCY* 
 
 But, my friends, the English ascendancy, or the Protestant 
 ascendancy in Ireland, if you will, seeing now that they had 
 got every penal law that they could ask for ; seeing that the 
 only thing that remained for them was utterly to exterminate 
 the Irish race and. this they had nearly accomplished, for they 
 had driven them into the wilds and waters of Connaught, and 
 they would have killed them all, only that the work was too 
 large, and that there was a certain something in the old blood, 
 in the old race, that still terrified them when they approached 
 it ; and they had so far subdued the Catholics, that they 
 thought, now, at least, their hands were free, and nothing re- 
 mained for them but to make Ireland, as Mr. Froude says, a 
 garden. They were to have every indulgence and every privi- 
 lege. Accordingly, they set to work. They had their own 
 Parliament. No Catholic could come near them, or come into 
 their towns they were forbidden to present themselves at all. 
 They were greatly surprised to find that the Catholics were 
 crushed into the very earth ; England began to regard the very 
 Cromwellians themselves with fear and hatred. What ! They, 
 the sons of the Puritans ! They, the brave men that had 
 slaughtered so many of the Irish and of the Catholic religion, 
 
8 9 
 
 are they to be treated unjustly? Was their trade, or their com- 
 merce, or their Parliament to be interferred with ? 
 
 MR. FROUDE FINDS TEARS AT LAST. 
 
 Ah ! now, indeed, Mr. Froude finds tears, and weeps them 
 over the injustice and over the folly of England, because En- 
 gland interfered with the commerce, and with the trade of the 
 Protestant ascendancy in Ireland. They made a law these 
 Protestant tradesmen were first-class woolen weavers, and, at 
 last, the cloth they made became the very best, and their cloth 
 took the very best prices in all the markets of Europe, because 
 the wool of the Irish sheep was so fine. The English Parlia- 
 ment made a law that the Irish traders were not to sell any 
 more cloth ; they were not to go into any more markets to rival 
 their English fellow -merchants. They were to stay at home ; 
 they had the island, and they might make the most of it ; but 
 no freedom in trade, nothing that would enrich Ireland that 
 the English Parliament denied. 
 
 Now, Mr. Froude speaks of this, in his lecture, to this ex- 
 tent : f That England, at that time, happened to be under the 
 dominion of a paltry lot of selfish money - jobbers and mer- 
 chants." Mere accident, according to him an accident which, 
 he confesses, so discontented the Orange faction in Ireland that 
 many hundreds of them emigated, and came over to America 
 to settle in the New England States. There, as he asserts, 
 they carried their hatred with them, and that feeling was one 
 to break up the British Empire. I have another theory on this 
 great question. I hold that it was no accident of the hour at 
 all, that made England place her restrictive laws on the Irish 
 commerce and trade. I hold that it was the settled policy of 
 England. These men who were now in the ascendancy in Ire- 
 land imagined that, because they had ruined and beggared the 
 ancient race, and the men of the ancient faith, therefore they 
 were friends, and they would be regarded as friends by En- 
 gland. I hold it was at that time, and, in a great measure, is 
 to - day, the fixed policy of England to keep Ireland poor, to 
 keep Ireland down, to be hostile to Ireland, no matter who 
 
9 o 
 
 lives in it, whether he be Catholic or Protestant, whether he be 
 Norman, Cromwellian or Celt. 
 
 THE IRISH "JAILORS." 
 
 "Your fathers," says Curran, speaking to the men of his time 
 a hundred years afterward, "your ancestors thought themselves 
 the oppressors of their fellow-subjects, but they were only their 
 jailors ; and the justice of Providence would have been frustrat- 
 ed if their own slavery had not been the punishment for their 
 baseness and their folly." That slavery came, and it fell on 
 commerce. The Protestant inhabitants of Ireland, the Protes- 
 tant rivals of Ireland, the planters and the sons of the planters, 
 were beggared by the hostile legislation of England, simply be- 
 cause they were now in Ireland and had an interest in the Irish 
 soil and the welfare of the country. The inimitable Swift, 
 speaking on this subject, makes use of the following quaint fable 
 of Ovid. He says : "The fable which Ovid relates of Arachne 
 and Pallas is to this purpose. The goddess had heard of a 
 certain Arachne, a virgin renowned for spinning and weaving. 
 They both met upon a trial of skill, and Pallas, the goddess, 
 rinding .herself almost equalled in her own art, stung to rage, 
 after knocking her rival down, turned her into a spider and en- 
 joined her continually to weave forever out of her own bowels 
 and in a very narrow compass. I confess," the Dean goes on, 
 ' that from a boy I always pitied poor Arachne, and never could 
 heartily love the goddess on account of so cruel and unjust a 
 sentence, which, however, is fully executed upon us by England, 
 with the further addition that while she required the greatest 
 part of our bowels, they are extorted without leaving us 'the 
 liberty of spinning or weaving." Thus he writes of this strange 
 piece of legislation, which Mr. Froude acknowledges as unjust. 
 The Irish wool was famous and the English were outbid for it 
 by the French manufacturers. The French were willing to give 
 three shillings a pound for the wool, and the English passed a 
 law that the Irish people could not sell their wool any-where but 
 in England, so they fixed their price on it and they took the 
 wool, made cloth, and, as the Dean says, poor Arachne, Ireland 
 had to give her bowels without the pleasure of spinning or weav- 
 
9 1 
 
 ing. Then the Dean goes on to say : "The Scriptures tell us 
 that opression makes the wise man mad, therefore the reason 
 that some men in Ireland are not mad is because they are not 
 wise men. However, it were to be wished that oppression would 
 in time teach a little wisdom to fools." Well, we call Dean 
 Swift a patriot. How little did he think, for as great a man as 
 he was, that the oppression compared with which the restriction 
 upon the wool was nothing, the oppression that beggared and 
 ruined a whole people, that drove them from their land, that 
 drove them from every pleasure in life, that drove them from 
 their country, that maddened them to desperation, and all be- 
 cause they had Irish names, Irish blood, and because they would 
 not give up the faith which their conscience told them was true . 
 
 THE PETITION OF 1775. 
 
 And now, my friends, Mr. Froude, in his lecture, comes at 
 once to consider the consequences of that Protestant emigration 
 from Ireland, and he says "the manufacturers of Ireland and 
 the workmen were discontented, and they shipped off and came 
 to America ;" and then he begins to enlist the sympathies of 
 America upon the side of the Protestant men who came over 
 from Ireland. If he stopped here, I would not have a word 
 to say to the learned historian. When an Englishman claims 
 the sympathy of this, or of any other land, for men of his peo- 
 ple and of his religion, if they are deserving of that sympathy, 
 I, an Irishman, am always redy, and the first to grant it to them, 
 with all my heart. And, therefore, I do not find the slightest 
 fault with this learned Englishman when he challenges the 
 sympathies of America for the Orangemen of Ireland, and the 
 Protestants who came to this country. If those men were de- 
 serving of America's sympathy, why not let them have it? But 
 Mr. Froude went on to say that, whilst he claimed sympathy 
 for the Protestant emigrants from Ireland as staunch Republi- 
 cans and lovers of American liberty; that the Catholics of Ireland, 
 on the other hand, were clamoring at the foot of the throne 
 telling King George III that they would be only too happy to 
 go out at his command, and to shoot the American people in 
 his cause, Was that statement true, or not? My friends, the. 
 
learned gentleman quoted a petition that was presented to Sir 
 John Blackier in 1775, the very year America began to assert 
 her independence. In that petition he states that Lord Fingal 
 and several other Catholic noblemen of Ireland speak in the 
 name of the Irish people, and pronounce the American Revolu- 
 tion an unnatural rebellion, and manifesting their desire to go 
 out and devote themselves, for the best of kings, to the suppres- 
 sion of American liberty. First of all, I ask when, at any 
 time in our history, was Lord Fingal, or Lord Hope, or Lord 
 Kenmore, or any one of these Catholic Lords of the Pale, as 
 they were called when, at any time in our history, has any 
 one of them .been authorized to speak in the name of the Irish 
 people ? Their presence in Ireland, although they have kept 
 the Catholic faith ; their presence in Ireland in every struggle, 
 in every national manifestation, has been a cross, and a hinder- 
 ance, and a stumbling-block to the Irish nation, and that peo- 
 ple know it well. But, not doubting Mr. Froude's word at all, 
 and only anxious to satisfy myself by historic research, 1 have 
 looked for this petition. I have found, indeed, a petition in 
 "Curren's Collection," a petition signed by Lord Fingal and 
 by a number of other Catholic Irish noblemen, addressed to his 
 majesty, the King, in which they protest their loyalty in terms 
 of the most slavish and servile adulation ; but in that petition I 
 have not been able to discover one single word about the Amer- 
 ican Revolution, not a single word of address to the King ex- 
 pressing a desire to destroy the liberties of America. Not one 
 word. I have sought, and my friends have sought, in the rec- 
 ords, and in every document that was at our hands, for this 
 petition of which Mr. Froude speaks, and I could not find it. 
 There must be a mistake somewhere or other. It is strange that 
 a petition of so much importance would not be published amongst 
 the documents of the time. We know that Sir John Blackier 
 was Secretary to the Lord - Lieutenant of Ireland ; naturally 
 enough, the petition would go to him, not to rest with him, but 
 to be presented to the King. And yet, I think I may state with 
 certainty that the only petition that was presented to the King 
 in 1775 was the one of which I speak, and in which there was 
 not a single word about America or about the American Revolu- 
 
. 93 
 
 tion. But the learned historian's resources are so much more 
 ample than mine ; his resources of time, of preparation, and of 
 talent; his resources in the varied springs of information, amongst 
 which he has lived and passed his years, that no doubt he will 
 be able to explain, this. In any case, the petition of which he 
 spoke must have passed through Sir John Blackier's hands 
 for he was the Secretary of the Lord -Lieutenant then passed 
 through him to the Lord - Lieutenant, to be inspected by him ; 
 then to the Prime Minister of England, and then to the King. 
 We have an old proverb in Ireland which indicates the way they 
 manage these things at home : < To speak to the maid, to speak 
 to the minister, to speak to the master." 
 
 THE SYMPATHIES OF IRELAND. 
 
 In that glorious year of 1775, the Catholics of Ireland were 
 down in the dust; the Catholics of Ireland had no voice not 
 as much as a vote for a Parish-beadle, much less for a member 
 of Parliament. And does Mr. Froude mean to tell the Ameri- 
 can people that these unfortunate wretches would not have 
 welcomed the cry that came from across the Atlantic ; the cry 
 of a people who rose like a giant, although, as yet, only an in- 
 fant in age, to proclaim the eternal liberty of man and of na- 
 tions ; to proclaim that no people on the earth should be taxed 
 without representation, and to give the first blow, right across 
 the face of English tyranny, which that old tyrant had received 
 for many years ; a blow before which England reeled, and 
 which brought her to her knees? 
 
 Does he mean to tell you or me, citizens of America, that such 
 an event as this would be distasteful to the poor Irish Catholics 
 of Ireland ? It is true that they had crushed them as far as they 
 could, but they had not taken the manhood out of them. Now, 
 here are the proofs of this : Lord Howe, the English General, 
 in that very year of 1775, writes home to his Government in 
 England, from America, and says: "Send me but German 
 troops." You know England was in the habit of employing 
 Hessians. I don't say this with the slightest feelings of disre- 
 spect ; I have .the deepest respect for the great German element 
 in this country, but in those times, certain it is, and it is an 
 
94 
 
 historic fact, that the troops of Hesse Castle, Hesse Darmstadt, 
 and other of the smaller German States, were hired out by their 
 Princes to whoever took them, and engaged them to fight their 
 battles. " Send me out German troops," he says, "for I have 
 a great dislike for the Catholic soldiers, as they are not at all 
 to be depended upon." t They sent out four thousand troops 
 from Ireland ; but listen to this : Arthur Lee, an agent of the , 
 American Government in Europe, writes home to his Govern- 
 ment in 1775, and he says : "That the resources of our enemy, 
 that is to say of England, are almost so annihilated in Ger- 
 many, that their last resort is to the Roman Catholics of Ire- 
 land. We have already experienced their unwillingness to go 
 over to America. Most of the regiments resisted, there in Ire- 
 land ; last year they were obliged to ship them off tied and 
 bound" When the Irish Catholic soldiers heard that they 
 were to go to America to cut the throats of the American 
 people, and to scalp them, they swore they never would do it ; . 
 and they had to take them, tie them, and carry them on board 
 the ships. But Arthur Lee goes on to say, "And, most cer- 
 tainly, they will desert more than any other troops whatsoever." 
 Louden, an historian of the time, tells us that -the war against 
 America was not very popular, even in England. "But in 
 Ireland," he says, "the people assumed the cause of America 
 through sympathy." Let us leave Ireland, and go to America. 
 Let us see how the great men who are building up the mag- 
 nificent edifice of their country's freedom ? laying the foundation 
 in their own best blood, in these days, how they regarded the 
 Irish . 
 
 WASHINGTON AND THE CATHOLICS. 
 
 In 1790 the immortal George Washington received an 
 address from the Catholics of America, signed by Bishop 
 Carroll, of Maryland, and many others. Replying to that 
 address, the calm, magnificent hero makes use of these words : 
 "I hope," he says, "ever to see America among the foremost 
 tnations in an example of justice and liberty, and I presume 
 hat your fellow-citizens will not forget the patriotic part which 
 yoy. took in the accomplishment of their revolution^ and in the 
 
95 
 
 establishment of their Government, or the important assistance 
 they received from a nation in which the ROMAN CATHOLIC RE- 
 LIGION was professed" In the month of December, 1781, the 
 Friendly Sons of Saint Patrick, in Philadelphia, elected George 
 Washington a member of their Society. These Friendly Sons 
 of Saint Patrick were great friends of the great American 
 father of his country. When his army lay at Valley Forge, 
 twenty-seven members of the Society of the Friendly Sons sub- 
 scribed between them in July, 1780, one hundred and three 
 thousand five hundred pounds sterling, principally of the 
 Pennsylvania currency, for the American troops, who were in 
 want of means. George Washington accepts the fellowship of 
 their Society and^ays: "I accept, with singular pleasure, the 
 ensign of so worthy a fraternity as that of the Sons of Saint 
 Patrick ; a Society distinguished for the firm adherence of its 
 members to the glorious cause in which we are embarked." 
 During that time what greater honor could have been bestowed 
 by Washington than that which he bestowed upon the Irish ? 
 When Arnold betrayed the cause at West Point, the traitor 
 Arnold, a name handed down to eternal execrations in the 
 history of America, Washington was obliged to choose the very 
 best and most reliable soldiers in his army, and send them to 
 that point to West Point to take the place that was so well- 
 nigh being betrayed by the trairor. From his whole army he 
 selected the celebrated Pennsylvania Line, as they were called, 
 and these men were mainly made up of Irishmen. Nay, more ! 
 not merely of Protestant Irishmen, or North American men, or 
 of those who, in that time, were called Scotch Irish, for that 
 was the name which, in the year of the revolution, designated 
 Mr. Froude's friends, who emigrated from Ulster. But looking 
 over the muster-roll of the Pennsylvania Line, we find such 
 names as Duffy, Maguire and O'Brien ; these were the names 
 these, and such as these, are the names, not of Palatines, not of 
 Scotch planters in Ireland, but they are the names of thorough- 
 bred Irish Celts. They fought and bled for Washington, and 
 Washington loved them. 
 
9 6 
 
 THE PENNSYLVANIA LINE. 
 
 And now I wish to give you a little incident of that celebrat- 
 ed corps, to let you see how their hearts were in relation to 
 America. < During the American Revolution," says Mr. 
 Carey, < a band of Irishmen were embodied in the defense of 
 the country of their adoption against the country of their birth ; 
 they formed the major-part of the celebrated Pennsylvania Line ; 
 they bravely fought and bled for the United States ; many of 
 them sealed their attachment with their lives, but their adopted 
 country neglected them somewhat ; the wealthy, the independ- 
 ent and the luxurious, for whom they fought, rioted in the 
 superfluities of life, while their defenders were literally half- 
 starved, half-naked ; their shoeless feet marked with blood 
 their tracks upon the highway. They Iqng bore their griev- 
 ances patiently ; they had long murmured ; they remonstrated 
 imploringly for the necessities of life, but in vain. A deaf ear 
 was turned to their complaints ; they felt indignant at the cold 
 neglect and ingratitude of their country, for four thousand of 
 their companions-in-arms had expired on the crimson field of 
 battle; they held arms in their hands, and they mutinied. 
 Well, as soon as the English commanders had heard that the 
 Irish soldiers had mutinied, what did they do? Intelligence 
 was carried to the British camp, and it spread joy and gladness. 
 Lord Howe hoped that the period had arrived for the end of 
 the rebellion, as it was termed, and that there was a glorious 
 opportunity to crush the half- formed embryo republic. He 
 counted firmly on the intense resentment of the natives of the 
 " Emerald Isle" well he knew how irritable their tempers 
 were ; he calculated upon diminishing the strength and the 
 numbers of the rebels, and an accession of the same numbers 
 to the royal army. Messengers were dispatched to the muti- 
 neers, and they had a carte blanche to make their own terms. 
 Promises were to be made to them as to prodigal children feed- 
 ing upon husks, that they should return to the plentiful fields 
 of their royal masters. Liberality itself presided in their 
 house, with abundant supplies, and provisions ample enough for 
 their heart's desire ; all arrears of pay, and abundant pardon 
 for past offenses were offered to them. There was not, how- 
 
97 
 
 ever, any hesitation among these poor, neglected warriors ; they 
 refused to renounce poverty, nakedness, suffering and ingrat- 
 itude. Splendid temptations were held out to them in vain ; 
 there was no Judas, there was no Arnold among them ; they 
 seized upon their tempters, and trampled upon their shining 
 gold. They sent them to their General, and these miserable 
 wretches paid their forfeited lives for attempting to seduce a 
 band of ragged, forlorn, deserted, but illustrious heroes. "We 
 prate," he says, "about the old Roman and Grecian patriot- 
 ism. One-half of it is false, and in the other half there is 
 nothing that excels these noble traits in our army, which are 
 worthy of the pencil of a West or a Trumbull." 
 
 HOW AMERICA REGARDED IRELAND. 
 
 Mark how it is that America regarded them mark the testi- 
 mony of some of America's greatest men. Mr. Froude seems 
 to think that the American people look upon the Irish nation 
 and the Irish people pretty much with the eyes with which the 
 men of the last century would look upon them in Ireland, where 
 the Irish nation meant 'the Protestant people of Ireland, and the 
 Catholics did not exist at all. Was this the view that America 
 and her statesmen took of it ? No ! Here is the testimony of 
 George William Park Curtis, the adopted son of Washington : 
 " The Irish," he says, in 1829 won Catholic Emancipation ; 
 and before that time, when they were struggling for emancipa- 
 tion, they appealed for sympathy and moral support to Amer- 
 ica." 'And now this is how this great American gentleman 
 speaks of them : "And why is this imposing appeal made for 
 our sympathies ? It is an appeal from them, from Ireland, 
 whose generous sons, alike in the days of our calamity and of 
 our glory, shared in our misfortunes and joyed in our success. 
 Who, with undaunted courage, breasted the storm which once 
 threatened to overwhelm us, and hurled with fearful and deso- 
 lating fury throughout this now happy land ; who, with aspira- 
 tions deep and fervent for our cause, whether under the walls of 
 the Castle of Dublin or in the shock of our battles, or in the 
 feeble and expiring accents of famine and misery, or amid the 
 horrors of the prison ship, cried, from their hearts, < GOD SAVE 
 
98 
 
 AMERICA ! " Oh ! tell me not," he goes on to say ; tell me 
 not of the aid which we received from another European nation, 
 in the struggle for independence ; that aid was most needed, and 
 and all-essential to our ultimate success ; but remember the 
 years of the conflict that had rolled away ; the capture of Bur- 
 goyne had ratified the Declaration of Independence ;' the re- 
 newed combats on the Heights of Charlestown and Fort Moul- 
 trie ; the bloody and disastrous days of Long Island and Ger- 
 mantown ; the glories of Brandywine, Newton, Princeton and 
 Monmouth ; all had occurred and the rank grass had grown 
 over the grave of many a poor Irishman who had died for 
 America, before the flag of the Allies floated in the field by the 
 side of the Star Spangled Banner." 
 
 IRISH LOVE FOR AMERICAN LIBERTY. 
 
 "But," he adds, "of the brave heroes of the war I mean the 
 soldiers up to the coming of the French Ireland furnished a 
 ratio of one hundred men for any one of any foreign nation 
 whatever." Then this generous American gentleman, to whom 
 Ireland appealed for sympathy for Mr. Froude's is not the 
 first appeal that has been made to the people of America this 
 high-minded gentleman goes on to say : "Then all honor be 
 paid for all the good service of the sons of Erin in that war of 
 Independence. Let the shamrock be intertwined with ihe 
 laurels of the Revolution ; let truth and justice guide the pen 
 of history, and subscribe on the tablets of America's remem- 
 brance ETERNAL GRATITUDE TO IRISHMEN." Remember that 
 this was Washington's son ; remember that he tells us that the 
 old, gray-headed, crippled veterans, who had fought under his 
 father's banner in that war of independence, were accustomed 
 to come to his house, and there he would receive them at the 
 door and bring them in ; and he tells us most affectingly of one 
 old Irishman who had fought in the wars ; who, after drinking 
 the health of the gentleman who had entertained him, lifted 
 up his aged eyes, and, with tears, he said : " Now, let me 
 drink to General Washington, who is in Heaven this day." 
 He says, on the same occasion: "Americans, recall to your mind 
 the recollections of the heroic time when Irishmen were our 
 
99 
 friends; when in the whole world we hadn't a friend besides." 
 
 AN IRISH HURRAH" FOR AMERICA. 
 
 * Look to the period that tried men's souls, and you will find 
 that the sons of Erin rushed to our ranks, and amid the clash of 
 steel, on many a memorable day, many a John Byrne was not 
 idle." Remember, he does not say, many a Spraggs or many 
 a Gibbs, or men that came over with Cromwell, but honest 
 John Byrne. Who was this honest John Byrne of whom he 
 speaks ? He was an Irish soldier of Washington's, who, taken 
 prisoner by the English and put on board a prison-ship, on the 
 authority of Mr. Curtis, " he there was left in chains in the hold 
 of the ship pestilence being on board. He was more than 
 half-starved ; he was scarcely able, when he was summoned on 
 deck, to crawl, like a poor stricken creature, to the command- 
 er's feet to hear what sentence was to be pronounced upon him . 
 And then the English Commander offered him liberty, life, 
 clothing, food and money if he would give up the cause in 
 which he was taken prisoner, and join the ranks of the British 
 army. In a voice scarcely able to speak ; with a hand scarcely 
 able to lift itself up, the Irishman looked to Heaven, and throw- 
 ing up his hands, cried out Hurrah for America !' " In the 
 face of such facts ; in the face of such testimony; in the pres- 
 ence of the honored name and record of George Washington, 
 testifying to what the Irish Catholic men have done for Amer- 
 ica, Mr. Froude speaks as faintly as if he were speaking to the 
 hurricane that sweeps over his head, when he tries to impress 
 the American mind and the American people with any prejudice 
 against the poor Catholics of Ireland. What does MacNevin 
 tell us of the year 1809, when America was preparing for a 
 second war with England ? MacNevin records that one of the 
 offenses charged upon the Irish, and among the many pretexts 
 for refusing redress to the Catholics of Ireland, was that sixteen 
 thousand of them fought on the side of America. But he adds, 
 "That many more thousands are ready to maintain the Declara- 
 tion of Independence, and that will be their second offense." 
 
 Now, my friends, there are other testimonies, as well as these, 
 gf the rnen of the time ; we have the testimony of American 
 
literary gentlemen such, for instance, as that of Mr. Paulding, 
 Here are the words of the distinguished American : 
 
 HOW AMERICANS HAVE SPOKEN OF IRELAND. 
 
 "The history of Ireland's unhappy connection with England 
 exhibits, from the first to the last } a detail of the most persever- 
 ing* galling, grinding, insulting and systematic oppression to be 
 found any where, except among the Helots of Sparta. There 
 is not a national feeling that has not been insulted and trodden 
 under foot, or a national right that has not been withheld, un- 
 til fear forced from the grasp of the English all the dear an- 
 cient prejudices that have not varied in that obstinate country. 
 As Christians, the people of Ireland have been denied, under 
 the penalty of disqualification, the exercise of the right of the 
 Catholic religion venerable for its antiquity, admirable for its 
 unity, and consecrated in the belief of some of the best men 
 that ever breathed. As men, they have been deprived of the 
 common right of British subjects, under the pretext that they 
 were incapable of enjoying them, for which pretext they had 
 no other foundation than their resistance to oppression, only the 
 more sore by the long sanction of it by the law. England first 
 denied them the right of improvement, and then insulted them 
 with the imputation of barbarism." Another distinguished 
 American, Mr. Johnson, says ; "There is no instance, even in 
 the Ten Persecutions, of such severity as that which has been 
 exercised over the Catholics of Ireland." Thus think, and thus 
 spoke the men whose names are bright in the records of Literary 
 America. Taking, again, the unanimous address agreed to by 
 several members of the Legislature of Maryland, speaking of 
 Ireland, these American Senators and legislators say : "That 
 dependency of Great Britain has long languished under an op- 
 pression reprobated by all humanity, and discountenanced by 
 all just policy. It would argue a penury of feeling an igno- 
 rance of human rights, to submit patiently, through centuries, 
 to wrongs which have caused perpetual risings in Ireland ; but 
 only with partial success. Rebellion and insurrection have 
 continued with but short intervals of tranquility. America has 
 opened her arms to the oppressed of all nations, No people 
 
have availed themselves of the asylum with more alacrity, or 
 in greater numbers than the Irish. High is the meed of praise, 
 rich is the reward that Irishmen have merited through the 
 gratitude of America. As heroes and statesmen, they honor 
 their adopted country." Bravo ! Until such glorious words as 
 these are wiped out of the records of the American history ; un- 
 til the generous sentiments which inspired them have ceased 
 to be a portion of the American nature, then, and not before 
 then, will Mr. Froude get the verdict which he seeks from 
 America to -day. 
 
 I have looked through the American Archives, and I have 
 found that the foundation of these sympathies lies in the simple 
 fact that the Catholics of Ireland were heart and soul with you, 
 American gentlemen, with you and your fathers, in that glori 
 ous struggle. I find that in the third volume of the American 
 Archives, a letter from Ireland, dated September 17, 1775, to 
 a friend in New York, in which the American gentleman writ- 
 ing said : "Most of the people here wish well to the cause in 
 which you are engaged. They are raising recruits throughout 
 this kingdom. The men are told that they are only going to 
 Edinburgh to learn military discipline, and then to return." Be- 
 fore they got a single Irishman to enlist, they had to tell him a 
 lie, well knowing they were going to arm him, and to send him 
 to America to fight against the American people ; well knowing 
 that they would never have entered the ranks of the British 
 army for any such purpose. 
 
 A certain Major Roche went down to Cork, to recruit up for 
 America, and he made a great speech to them ; it was very 
 laughable. He called upon them as Irishmen, by all that they 
 held sacred, the glorious nationality to which they belonged, 
 the splendid monarch that governed them, and, in fact, the 
 very words, almost, which Mr. Froude alleges to have been 
 used by Lord Fingal, were used by Major Roche to these poor 
 men ; and then he held up the golden guineas and the pound 
 notes before them, and here is the record, in the third volume, 
 again, of the American Archives, accounting for the success of 
 Major Roche, in raising recruits to fight against America. The 
 service was so distasteful to the people of Ireland in general 
 
that few of the recruiting officers could prevail upon the men to 
 enlist and fight against their American brothers." That same 
 year, in the British House of Commons, Mr. Johnson says : "I 
 maintain that the sons of the best and the wisest men in this 
 country are on the side of the Americans, and in Ireland, three 
 to one are on the side of the Americans." In the House of 
 Lords, in the same year of 1775, the Duke of Richmond makes 
 this statement : "Attempts have been made to enlist the Irish 
 Roman Catholics, but the minister knows well that these attempts 
 have been proved unsuccessful." We find, again, the Congress 
 of America addressed the people of Ireland in that memorable 
 year of 1775, and here are the words: 
 
 AMERICA'S GREETING TO IRELAND 
 
 That America's first Congress sends over the Atlantic waves 
 to the afflicted, down-trodden Catholic Irish, and says, "ac- 
 cept our most grateful acknowledgement for the friendly dis- 
 position you have always shown toward us. We know that 
 you are not without your grievances; we sympathize with you 
 in your distress, and we are pleased to find that the design of 
 subjugating us has persuaded the administration to dispense 
 to Ireland some vagrant rays of ministerial sunshine with the 
 tender mercies of the Government that has long been cruel to 
 you. In the rich pastures of Ireland many hungry parasites 
 were fed, and have grown strong laboring in her destruction." 
 We find such. words as these addressed not to the Palatines and 
 planters, for if the Congress of America were addressing the 
 Planters and Cromwellians in Ireland, they would not have 
 nsed such language as this: "In the rich pastures of Ireland, 
 many hungry parasites were fed, and have grown strong labor- 
 ing in its destruction." 
 
 THE PENAL LAWS: " REQUIESCAT IN PACE." 
 
 Benjamin Franklin, glorious and immortal name ! was in 
 Versailles as Minister from tht American Government. He 
 writes to the people of Ireland, in October 1778, and says: 
 "The years of misery and distress which that ill-fated country 
 has been so frequently exposed to, and so often experienced by 
 
io 3 
 
 such a combination of rapine, treachery and villainy as would 
 have disgraced the name of the most arbitrary government of the 
 world, has most sincerely affected us, and your experiences 
 have engaged the most serious attention of Congress in 
 America." 
 
 Now I come to another honored name. We find, in the 
 testimony of Verplanck, when the Catholic Emancipation Act 
 was passed, there was a banquet in the City of New York to 
 celebrate the event, and this distinguished American gentleman 
 proposed a health or a toast, and it was a Catholic toast, ' The 
 Penal Laws: Requiescat in Pace ( May they rest in peace ) ." 
 
 And now, again," continues Mr. Verplanck, "I have a good 
 word to say for them." What was that good word? Here it 
 is: "That in the glorious struggle for our independence, and 
 in our more recent contest for national rights, those laws gave 
 to the American flag the support of hundred and thousands of 
 brave hearts and strong arms, and with that good, too," he 
 says, "at the same time contributing an equal portion of intellect- 
 ual and moral power." 
 
 WM. H. SEWARD'S TESTIMONY. 
 
 Coming down to our own time, passing over the magnificent 
 testimony of Henry Clay, and his sympathy for Catholic Ire- 
 land, America, even at this hour, is mourning over the grave of 
 a great man. But a few days ago a nation accompanied to its 
 last resting-place the remains of William H. Seward. And this 
 illustrious* American statesman said, in 1847: "Ireland not 
 only sympathized profoundly with the Transatlantic Colonies in 
 their complaints of her usurpation, under which she suffered 
 more sorely than they, but with an interest, benevolence and 
 ardor, she yielded at once to the great American idea of uni- 
 versal emancipation, ready to fight and to war for the rights of 
 human nature under a propitious God, who seemed to lead the 
 way." 
 
 Finally, with one more extract, and I have done with this 
 portion of my lecture. I find that such were the relations be- 
 tween Ireland and America in that struggle that a certain 
 Captain Wicks, of the ship " Reprisal," in the summer of 1776, 
 
captured three prizes near the West Indies, which were English 
 property. He detailed some of his own men on board of them, 
 and sent them to the nearest port to be adjudged as prizes. 
 Shortly after he came across another vessel and he let her go, 
 finding she was Irish property. The Marquis Chasteloux, a 
 distinguished Frenchman, who was in America in 1783, writes 
 thus : " An Irishman, the instant he sets his foot on American 
 soil, becomes ipso facto an American. *This was uniformly the 
 case during the whole of the late war." Remember this French- 
 man was righting for you. " While Englishmen and Scotch- 
 men were hated with jealousy and distrust, even with the best 
 recommendations of zeal and attachment to the cause, the native 
 of Ireland stood in need of no other certificate than his dialect," 
 which shows that the Irishman that our French friend is speak- 
 ing of was not a Palatine, nor a Planter, but a genuine Paddy, 
 and no mistake about it. His sincerity was never called in 
 question ; he was supposed to have a sympathy with suffering 
 and every one decided, as it were, instantly in his favor. In- 
 deed," he adds, "their conduct in the late war amply justified 
 this favorable opinion, for whilst the Irish emigrant was fight- 
 ing the battles of America by sea and by land, the Irish mer- 
 chants, principally of Charlestown, Baltimore and Philadelphia, 
 labored with indefatigable zeal at all hazards to promote the 
 spirit of enterprise and increase the wealth and maintain the 
 credit of the country. Their purse was always open and their 
 persons were devoted to the country's cause, and, on more than 
 one imminent occasion, Congress itself, and the very existence of 
 America probably, owed its preservation to the fidelity^and firm- 
 ness of the Irish. I had the honor, " he says, < of dining with 
 an Irish Society composed of the steadiest merchants and others 
 of the city, in the city tavern of Philadelphia, on St. Patrick's 
 Day." Mr. Froude must not run away with the assertion that the 
 Irish merchants of Charlestown and Baltimore and Philadelphia 
 were the Puritan settlers. If they had been they would have 
 gone home and eaten a cold dinner on St. Patrick's Day." 
 
 THE VOLUNTEERS OF 1782. 
 
 So much for America and Ireland's relations with her. When 
 
IDS 
 
 the 4,000 men were asked by the English Government to go out 
 and fight the Americans, they offered to send to Ireland 4,000 
 Protestant Hessians, and the Irish Parliament which was there 
 had the grace to refuse the Hessians. They said "No ! if the 
 country is in danger we can arm some of our Protestant people 
 and they can keep the peace." 
 
 Out of this sprang the Volunteers of '82." Mr. Froude has 
 little or nothing to say of them. Consequently, if I am answer- 
 ing or trying to answer him, I must restrict also their record. 
 All I can say is this, Ireland, in 1776, began to arm. This 
 movement was altogether a Protestant one, and confined to the 
 North. The Catholics of Ireland were ground into the very 
 dust. No sooner did the Catholics of Ireland hear that their 
 Protestant oppressors were anxious to do something for the old 
 land, than they came and said to them, < We will forgive every 
 thing you have done to us ; we will leave you the land of our 
 country, the wealth and the commerce ; all we ask you is to 
 put a gun into our hands for one hour. At first they were re- 
 fused, and, my friends, when they found they would not be 
 allowed to enter the ranks of the Volunteers, they had the 
 generosity, out of their poverty, to collect money and to hand it 
 over to clothe the army of their Protestant fellow - citizens. 
 Any thing for Ireland. Any thing for the man that would lift 
 his hand up for Ireland, no matter what his religion was. The 
 old generous spirit was there ; the love that never could be ex- 
 tinguished was there ; self- sacrifice as of old. Aye, the hum- 
 ble love for any man, no matter who he was, that was a friend 
 of their native land. Was there ever such a generous act as 
 this of the people the O'Conors, the O'Briens, the O'Neills 
 and the O'Connells ? 
 
 But after a time our Protestant friends in the Volunteers began 
 to think that these Catholics, after all, were fine, strapping fel- 
 lows. Somehow, centuries of persecution could not knock the 
 manhood out of them. "They be strong men," says an old 
 writer, "and can bear more of hard living, hunger and thirst, 
 than any other people that we know of." God knows, their 
 capability, of enduring nakedness, hunger and thirst, and every 
 pther form pf misery was well tested ! 
 
io6 
 
 Accordingly, we find that in 1780 there were fifty thousand 
 Catholics amongst the Volunteers. Every man of them with an 
 arm in his hands. Mr. Froude says that, "Grattan the im- 
 mortal Grattan that whilst he wished well for Ireland that 
 whilst he was irreproachable in every way, public and private, 
 that at this time he was guilty of a great mistake. Ah !" says 
 the historian, " England had long ruled Ireland badly, but had 
 learned a lesson from America, and she was now anxious to 
 govern Ireland well, and no sooner was an abuse pointed out 
 than it was immediately remedied, and if just laws were wanted 
 they were immediately granted, and the mistake Grattan made 
 was, that instead of insisting on just legislation from England, 
 he insisted for the legitimate independence of Ireland ; that the 
 Irish should have the making of their own laws." Thus, ac- 
 cording to Mr. Froude, "the energies of the nation which were 
 wasted in political contention could have been husbanded to 
 induce England to grant just and fair laws." But he goes on the 
 assumption, my dear American friends the gentleman goes 
 on the assumption that England was willing to redress grievan- 
 ces, to repeal the bad laws and make good ones, and he proves 
 this assertion by saying, "that she struck off of the wrists of 
 the Irish merchants the chains of their commercial slavery, and 
 that she restored to Ireland her trade." You remember that this 
 trade was taken away from them. The woolen trade and nearly 
 every other form of trade was discountenanced or ruined. 
 
 ENGLAND'S UNGENEROUS POLICY. 
 
 Now, I wish, for the sake of the honor of England, that she 
 was as generous or even as just as Mr. Froude represents her, 
 and as he no doubt would w r ish her to be ; but we have the fact 
 before us that in 1779, when a movement was made to repeal 
 the laws restricting the commerce of Ireland, that the English 
 Parliament, the English King, the Lord-lieutenant of Ireland, 
 and the English Government opposed it to the very death. They 
 would not have it not one fetter would they strike off from 
 the chain that encumbered even the Protestants and the Planters 
 of Ireland. And it was only when Grattan rose up in the Irish 
 Parliament and insisted that Ireland should get back her trade; 
 
to; 
 
 it was only then that England consented because there were 
 fifty thousand volunteers armed outside. 
 
 The state of Ireland at the time is thus described : " Such is 
 the constitution that three millions of good faithful subjects, in 
 their native land, are excluded from every trust, power, and 
 emolument in the State, civil and military ; excluded from all 
 corporate rights and immunities; excluded from grand juries; 
 and restrained in petty juries ; excluded in every direction from 
 every trust, from every incorporated society, and from every 
 establishment, occasional or fixed, that was instituted for public 
 defense; from the bank, from the bench, from the exchange, 
 from the university, from the college of physicians, and from 
 what were they not excluded?" asks the writer. There is 
 no institution which the wit of man has invented, or the progress 
 of society has produced, which private charity or public munifi- 
 cence has founded, for the advancement of education around us, 
 for the permanent relief of age, infirmity and misfortune, from 
 the participation of the benefits of which, on all occasions, the 
 Catholics of Ireland were not carefully excluded." 
 
 FREE TRADE FOR IRELAND GAINED. 
 
 Grattan rose up in the Senate, and lifting up his heroic hand 
 and voice to Heaven, he swore before the God of Justice that 
 that should come to an end. The English Government heard 
 him with a determination as great as that of the Irish patriot, 
 and swore equally that that should remain the law. Was it not 
 time to assert for Ireland her independence ? Mr. Froude 
 claims that England willingly consented to give up the restric- 
 tions on Irish commerce when Grattan proposed it in the House. 
 An official of the Government, named Hussey Bird, rose up, to 
 the astonishment of the Government, and seconded Grattan's 
 resolution ; to the rage and consternation of the Government 
 factions by the unequivocal demonstration of the Executive of 
 the Ministerial Bench. Hussey Bird was one of the most fas- 
 cinating men of the day ; he, of whom it was thought patriotism 
 was impossible, moved "that we take up the question and rep- 
 resent to his Majesty that it was not by any temporary expe- 
 dients, but by free trade alone that this nation is now to be 
 
lo8 
 
 saved from impending ruin. While they were fighting the 
 Government within, Grattan took good care to have the Volun- 
 teers drawn out in the streets of Dublin ; there they were in 
 their thousands ; armed men, drilled men ; and they had their 
 cannons with them* and about the mouths of the guns they had 
 tied a label, or card with these words : "FREE TRADE FOR 
 
 IRELAND, OR ELSE -." 
 
 So it happened that Lord North was obliged, greatly against 
 his will, to introduce measures to restore to Ireland her trade. 
 Now, I ask, was not Henry Grattan justified, seeing .that by 
 pointing cannons at them it threw off the restrictions, when he 
 said, "This English Parliament will never do us justice, and, in 
 the name of God, now that we have our men armed around us, 
 let us demand for Ireland a perfect independence of the people 
 from the Parliament of England, and the rights to make what- 
 ever laws that are most conducive to the welfare of our own 
 people." 
 
 THE OLD IRISH PARLIAMENT. 
 
 It is perfectly true that Grattan failed ; it is perfectly true 
 that, although that declaration of independence was proclaimed 
 by law, and, as Mr. Froude observes, " Home Rule was tried 
 in Ireland from '82 to '99, and it was a failure." All this is 
 true ; but why was it so, my friends ? Reflect upon this ; the 
 Irish Parliament did not represent the nation ; the Irish Par- 
 liament consisted of three hundred members, and of these three 
 hundred there were only seventy-two that were elected by the 
 people; all the others were from "Nomination Boroughs," as 
 they were called. Certain great lords, barons and noblemen 
 had three or four little towns in their estates, which towns re- 
 turned a member of Parliament, and the poor people who had 
 the votes were at the mercy of the landlord, who made the 
 regular Nominations," and put up whoever he desired, and 
 the people were compelled to vote for him or suffer the conse- 
 quences. Just as in the Protestant Church, whenever a Bishop 
 dies, the Queen comes and writes to the clergy, and says you 
 will name such a one for Bishop and then they elect him. Only 
 seventy-two members, were in some sense, representatives of 
 the people. But whom did they represent ? There were nearly 
 
109 
 
 three millions of Irishmen in Ireland, men of intellect and of 
 education, in spite of all the laws that were made against schools 
 and colleges for Catholics ; there were three millions of Irish 
 Catholics in the land and not a man of them had a vote, even 
 for a member of Parliament. And therefore this wretched Par- 
 liament that only represented one-tenth of the nation, if it was 
 venal and corrupt, it is no disgrace to the Irish people and it is 
 no argument that they did not know how to govern themselves. 
 Meantime, the volunteers made the most tremendous mistake, 
 and that was by letting Catholics in amongst their ranks. 
 Here I have my Lord Sheffield. Here is what he says, (I de- 
 sire you clearly to understand, ladies and gentlemen of Amer- 
 ica, how the English people looked upon us Irish a hundred 
 years ago ; as they ever looked upon you, until you taught 
 them by the sword to look upon you with more respect.) "It is 
 now necessary," said Lord Sheffield, in 1778, "to take notice of 
 a phenomenon that has begun to appear at this time ; it is a 
 wonderful thing." What was it ? 
 
 A PHENOMENON. 
 
 "The like has never been seen in any country, at least 
 where there was an established government to describe it; it is 
 an army unauthorized by the laws, generally known by the 
 name of the Volunteers of Ireland. The arms issued from the 
 public stores were insufficient to supply the rapid increase of 
 the volunteers, the rest were procured by themselves, and the 
 necessary accoutrements, with a considerable number of field- 
 pieces. All speak highly of them, and the supporters of the 
 Government in both countries mention them with civility." It 
 is not easy to be uncivil to an army of 95,000 men. "The 
 wonderful efforts of England in America were, somehow or 
 other, wasted to no purpose." Wasted to no purpose ! There 
 happened to be a man in the way, and that man was George 
 Washington. He goes on to speak of the Volunteers, 
 "The many-headed monster," he calls it now, "began to think 
 it would be proper to reform the State, and to purge the Par- 
 liament of Ireland, in order to reform the Parliament." 
 
 Henry Grattan said, "I will never claim freedom for 600,000 
 
110 
 
 of my countrymen while I have two millions of more ot them in 
 chains. Give the Catholics of Ireland their civil rights and 
 their franchise. Give them the power to return members to the 
 Irish Parliament, and let the nation be represented ; put an end 
 to the rotten Nomination Boroughs ; let the members represent 
 the people truly, and you will have reformed your Parliament 
 and established forever the liberties which the Volunteers have 
 won." This was what the Volunteers wanted, and for this Lord 
 Sheffield called them by the very gentle name "the many- 
 headed monster." But they did something else very strange: 
 " So far the events that went on might be expected, but there 
 is another part of their conduct neither national nor rational. 
 Some of the corps, for the purpose of increasing their members, 
 perhaps, or, possibly, without consideration, admitted Roman 
 Catholics. They must have been mad they did it without 
 consideration, and others, perhaps, enrolled them latterly for 
 the sake of acquiring members and strength to force a reform of 
 tha Government of England, to force a reform which the gov- 
 ernment of England never would permit." Because she wanted 
 to have a rotten Parliament in her hands, and through that Par- 
 liament to destroy the country. "Well, but that Protestants 
 should allow and encourage this also, and form a whole corps 
 of Roman Catholics, is scarcely to be believed, considering the 
 pretensions of the latter. To fill their number up, it becomes the 
 system of the Roman Catholics to enroll as many of us as pos- 
 sible, particularly since the peace of last spring, and there is 
 nothing incredible or unequivocal in this. Already, perhaps, 
 thousands of these are in arms, and, in a year or less, ten to 
 one, all the Protestants will gradually quit the service, and it is 
 necessary to prevent the Volunteer arms from falling into more 
 dangerous hands 4o counterbalance the Catholics." Then he 
 goes on to say : 
 
 " If they were only one-fifth instead of four-fifths of the peo- 
 ple, the writer of the observations would be the last man to 
 suggest about their getting into power. But they are the men 
 who do not forget the Constitution under which their ancestors 
 lived ; they are not blind to what they might have acquired. 
 Persevering for upward of two centuries, under every form of dis- 
 
ITT 
 
 couragement, under every severity ; subjected to every disad- 
 vantage, does not prove indifference to the principles of their 
 religion, thinking as they do, feeling as they do, being as they 
 are, they would not be men if they did not wish for a change. 
 Nor would Protestants be worthy of the description of reasona- 
 ble creatures if they did not take precautions to prevent it." 
 
 NO REFORM ALLOWED BY ENGLAND. 
 
 Thus it is a fact, that the English government steadily op- 
 posed Reform. It would not hear of Reform ; because they 
 wanted to have a venal, corrupt, miserable seventy-two in their 
 hands. It is to this fact, and not to any mistake, that we owe 
 the collapse of that magnificent revolution. Well, England 
 now adopted another policy. We have clear evidence of it. As 
 soon as William Pitt came into office as Premier, his first thought 
 was to put an end to this Irish difficulty. He would have no 
 more laws made in Ireland for Irishmen. So he united the two 
 Parliaments into one, and would not leave Ireland a single shred 
 of its legislative independence. This being the programme, 
 how was it .to be worked out ? Mr. Froude says, or seems to 
 say, "that the rebellion of '98 was one of those outbreaks of 
 Irish ungovernable passion and of Irish inconstancy, accompanied 
 by cowardice and by treachery of which we are but too familiar 
 in the history of Ireland." Now, we have another account of '98. 
 Mr. Froude says, " that the rebellion arose out of the disturb- 
 ance of men's minds, created by the French Revolution," and 
 there is a great deal of truth in this. " It set all the world in a 
 blaze, and the flames spread, no doubt, to Ireland. Mr. Froude 
 goes on to say, "that the Irish Government was so hampered by 
 this free Parliament this Parliament of Grattan's that, al- 
 though they saw the danger approaching, they could not touch 
 it ; their hands were bound ; nay more !" He adds : "The 
 government was bound by constitutional law, and Parliament 
 could not touch one of the United Irishmen until they had com- 
 mitted themselves by some act of treason in other words, by 
 first rising in arms." Now, according to this historian, "there 
 was nothing done to molest, slay or persecute the people of 
 Ireland until they rose in arrns in '98," My friends, the rising 
 
112 
 
 in 1798 took place on the 23d of May. On that day the United 
 Irishmen rose. I ask you, now, whether the government had 
 any share in that rising or creating that rebellion. 
 
 THE RISING OF '98. 
 
 As early as 1797 the country was beginning to be disturbed, 
 according to Mr. Froude, and we find, during the first three 
 months of January, February and March in '97, Lord Moira 
 giving his testimony as to the action of the English government. 
 My lords," he says, in the House of Lords, " I have seen in 
 Ireland the most absurd, as well as the- most disgusting tyranny 
 that any nation ever groaned under. I have been myself a wit- 
 ness to it in many instances ; I have seen it practised unchecked, 
 and the effects that have resulted from it have been such as I 
 have stated to your lordships : I have seen in that country a 
 marked distinction between the English and the Irish ; I have 
 seen troops that have been sent there full of this prejudice 
 that every inhabitant of that kingdom is a rebel to the British 
 government ; troops were sent into Ireland under these instruc- 
 tions that every man you meet is a rebel, I have seen the 
 most wanton insults practiced upon men of all ranks and condi- 
 tion." They sent their thousands into Ireland in preparation 
 for the rebellion ; they had, between - Welch, and Scotch and 
 Hessian regiments, and between English and Irish militia, an 
 army of one hundred and thirty thousand men prepared for the 
 work, and thus, I say, they goaded the people on to rebellion. 
 The rack, indeed, was not at hand, but the punishment of pick^ 
 eting was in practice, which had been for some years abolished 
 as "too unhuman even for the treatment of servants. Lord Moira 
 goes on to say : < That he had known of a man who, in order 
 to extort confession of a crime from him, was picketed until he 
 actually fainted" (picketing meant putting them on the point 
 of a stake upon one foot) ; and picketed a second time until 
 he fainted : and again, as soon as he came to himself, picketed 
 the third time until he fainted, and this on mere suspicion." 
 Not only was this punishment used, but every species of torture; 
 men were taken and hung up until they were half-dead, then 
 threatened with repetition of the cruel treatment unless they 
 
made confession of imputed guilt. They sent the soldiers into 
 the country, and they quartered at what was called " free 
 quarters ; " the English yeomanry and the Orange yeomanry 
 lived upon the people ; they violated the women, they killed 
 the aged ; they plundered the houses; they 'set fire to the vil- 
 lages; they exercised every form of torture the most terrible, 
 did this dastardly soldiery. 
 
 IRELAND GOADED INTO REBELLION. 
 
 All this took place before a single rising in Ireland before 
 the rebellion in '98 sprung up at all. We have a brave and gal- 
 lant man sent to Ireland at that time, Sir Ralph Abercrombie, 
 and he declares he was so frightened and disgusted at the con- 
 duct of the soldiers that he refused to keep the command of the 
 forces in Ireland any longer. He issued a general order in 
 February, '98 the rebellion did not begin until May in these 
 words: "The disgraceful frequency of great cruelties and 
 crimes, and the many complaints of troops in this kingdom, un- 
 fortunately prove the army to be in a state of licentiousness, and 
 renders it formidable to every one, except the enemy." Then 
 he threw it up in disgust. General Lake was sent to command 
 in Ireland. He says : " The state of the country and its occu- 
 pation previous to the insurrection is not to be imagined, except 
 by those who witnessed the atrocities of every description com-, 
 mitted by the military and the Orangemen that were let loose 
 upon the defenseless population." Then he gives a long list of 
 terrible hangings, burnings and murderings. We read "that 
 at Dunlaven, in the County Wicklow, previous to the rising,, 
 thirty-four men were shot without any trial," but it is useless to. 
 enumerate or continue the list of cruelties perpetrated. It will 
 suffice to say that, when the military were placed on "free 
 quarters," that all kinds of crime were committed ; but the 
 people were no worse off than those living where no soldiers 
 were quartered, for in the latter places the inhabitants were 
 called to their doors and slain without ceremony, and every 
 house plundered or burned." Nay, more ! We have Mr. 
 Emmett, in his examination, giving his evidence, and declaring 
 "that it was the fault of the Government, this rebellion of '98.,'*' 
 
The Lord Chancellor put the following question to Mr. Emmett: 
 
 " Remember, Mr. Emmett " this was in August '98 " what 
 
 caused the late insurrection." To which Mr. Emmett replied : 
 "Free quarters, house burnings, tortures, and all the military 
 executions in the counties of Kildare, Carlow and Wicklow." 
 Before the insurrection broke out, numbers of houses, with their 
 furniture, were burned in which concealed arms had been found ; 
 numbers of people were scourged, picketed, and otherwise put 
 to death, daily, to force confession of concealed crime or faults ; 
 outrageous acts of severity were often committed by persons 
 not in the regular troops. But we have the evidence of the 
 brave Sir John More, the hero of Corunna. He was in Ireland 
 at the time in military command, and he bears this testimony. 
 Speaking of Wicklow, the very hot-bed of the insurrection, he 
 says : That moderate treatment by the Generals of the peo- 
 ple, and the preventing of the troops from pillaging and mo- 
 lesting them, would certainly soon restore tranquility ; the lat- 
 ter would soon be quiet if the revengeful yeomanry would be- 
 have with tolerable decency, and not seek to gratify their revenge 
 upon the poor." 
 
 We have Lord William Napier, an Irishman, but a brave 
 English soldier, saying : Oh ! what manner of soldiers were 
 these fellows who were let loose upon the wretched districts in 
 which the Ascendancy was placed, killing and confiscating every 
 man's life and property ; and, to use the venerable Abercombie's 
 words, 'they were formidable to every body but the enemy.' 1 
 We, ourselves, were young at the time, yet being connected 
 with the army, we were continually among the soldiers, listen- 
 ing with boyish eagerness to their experience, and we well re- 
 member, with horror, to this day, the tales of lust, of bloodshed 
 and of pillage ; the recital of their actions against the misera- 
 ble peasantry which they used to relate." 
 
 THE INFAMY OF THE ENGLISH GOVERNMENT. 
 
 I ask you, after all this, who was accountable for the goad- 
 ing of the people into rebellion, if not the infamous government 
 which, at that time, ruled and disgraced all Ireland? I ask 
 you. are the Irish people accountable, for, from the time the 
 
myrmidons of England had been let loose upon them, ravaging 
 like demons, violating every instinct of Irish love of land, of 
 Irish purity, of Irish faith ? Is it not a terrible thing that after 
 all these provocations which they deliberately put before the 
 people, in order to goad them into the rebellion of '98, and so 
 prepare the way for that union which followed, that Mr. 
 Froude says several hot-headed priests put themselves at the 
 head of their people. There was a Father John Murphy in the 
 County of Wexford, who came home from his duties, one day, 
 to find his house burned, his chapel destroyed, and to find the 
 houses of the poor people sacked and burned around them, to 
 find his unfortunate parishioners huddled about the blackened 
 walls of the chapel, crying: "What are we to do? Where are 
 we to flee from this persecution that has come upon us ?" What 
 wonder if Father John Murphy got the pikes, put them in their 
 hands, and put himself at their head ? 
 
 WHAT IRELAND WILL BE. 
 
 My friends, I have endeavored to give you some portions of 
 the Irish side of the story, resting and basing my testimony upon 
 the records of Protestant and English writers, and upon tne tes- 
 timony which I have been so proud to put before you, of noble, 
 generous American people. I have to apologize for the dryness 
 of the subject or the imperfect manner in which I have treated 
 it, and also for the unconscionable length of time in which I 
 have tried your patience. On next. Monday evening we shall 
 be approaching ticklish ground, "Ireland since the union, Ire- 
 land to-day, and Ireland as my heart and brain tells me she 
 will be in some future day." 
 
FIFTH LECTURE. 
 
 T ADIES AND GENTLEMEN. This day a paragraph came under my 
 I-/ notice in a New York paper, which caused me much pain and anguish 
 of mind, for it recorded an act of discourtesy shown to Mr. Froude, my 
 learned antagonist, by Irishmen in Boston. In the name of the Irishmen of 
 America, I tender to the learned gentleman my best apologies, and I beg 
 to assure him, on the part of my Irish countrymen in this land, that we have 
 no inclination to treat him otherwise than with that courtesy and hospitality 
 which Ireland has never refused, even to her enemies. Mr. Froude has not 
 come among us as an enemy of Ireland. He professes that he loves the Irish 
 people, and I am willing to believe him, and when I read, in the report of 
 his last lecture, to which I am. about to reply to-night, that he said he 
 yielded to no one in his love for the Irish people, I feel inclined to repeat 
 to him what the great O'Connell said to Lord Derby, when the noble Lord 
 said, in the House of Lords, that he would yield to no one in his love for Ire- 
 land. The great Tribune replied : " Any man who loves Ireland can not 
 be my enemy. Let us shake hands !" I am sure, therefore, that I speak the 
 sentiments of every true Irishman when I assure this gentleman that he will 
 receive, in this land, at the hands of the Irish citizens of America, nothing 
 but the same courtesy, the same polite hospitality and attention that he boasts 
 of having received from her people in their native land. I beg to assure him 
 that we Irishmen iniAmerica know well that 
 
 IT IS NOT BY DISCOURTESY 
 
 or any thing approaching to rudeness or violence, that the Irish citizens of 
 America can expect to make their appeal to this great nation. If ever the 
 reign of intellect and of mind has been practically established in this world, 
 it is in glorious America. Every man who speaks the truth, and preaches 
 the truth, whether it be religious truth or historical truth, will find appreci- 
 ation in America ; and I hope I may never find an Irishman oflering dis- 
 courtesy or violence to any man for speaking what- he believes or imagines to 
 be truth. 
 
 I have said so much in reference to the newspaper paragraph to which my 
 attention was called, and I now come to the last of Mr. Froude's lectures, 
 and the last of my own. The learned gentleman, in his fourth lecture, told 
 the American people his view of the movement of 1772, and of the subse- 
 quent Irish rebellion of 1798. According to Mr. Froude, the Irish made a 
 great mistake in 1782, by asserting the independence of the Irish Parliament. 
 
"They abandoned," says this learned gentleman, " the paths of political re- 
 form and they clamored for political agitation." 
 
 No'w political agitation is one thing, and political reform is another thing. 
 Political reform, my friends, means the correcting of great abuses, the re- 
 S^ft^ws/and the passing of good measures salutary and useful for 
 die welfare and well - being of the people. According to this learned gentle- 
 man England was taught, by her bitter American experience, that coercion 
 wSf not answer with the people, and that it is impossible to thrust unjust laws 
 upon a people." According to him, England was only too willing, too hap. 
 Tm thlyear 1780, to repeal all the bad laws that had been passed in the 
 bUnd and bigoted ages gone by, and to grant to Ireland real, redres of all 
 her grievances. " But the Irish people, says Mr. Froude " instead of de* 
 mand?ng from England the redressof this grievance insisted on their national 
 and Darllamentary independence. And they werefools in this,' he said, for 
 t^tverySdepeAdenceledto interior contention, contention to conspiracy, 
 conspiracy to rebellion, and rebellion to tyranny." 
 
 Now I am as great an enemy of political agitation as Mr. Froude or any 
 other man I hold, and I hold it by experience, that political agitation dis- 
 tracts men's minds from the more serious and more necessary avocations of 
 life thai political agitation distracts men's minds away from their business 
 and' from their safe pursuit of industry; that it creates animosity and bad 
 Mood between citizens ; that it affords an easy and profitable ^^^ 
 
 Ldeavoring P to extract good laws from an unwilling and a tyrannical govern 
 ment May I ask the learned historian what were the wars of the seventeenth 
 nturv in France, in Germany, and in the Netherlands -the wars that Mr. 
 
 - 
 
 
 orS for poHticm agitation, in 1780, when they might have obtain 
 re ''" 
 
 ign power except 
 
England. England then fixed her price, and, as Mr. Froude himself said, al- 
 though the French might be offering for Irish wool, the Irish merchant could 
 not sell t them, but he was 
 
 OBLIGED TO SELL TO THE ENGLISH MERCHANT, 
 
 at his own price. When the Irish people demanded this just measure, I ask, 
 was England willing to grant it? Was England, as Mr. Froude says, only 
 anxious to discover unjust laws, in order to repeal them, and to discover 
 grievances in order to redress them ? I answer : No ! England nailed her 
 colors to the mast. She said : " I never will grant a repeal of restriction du- 
 ties on Irish trade. Ireland is down, and I will keep her down 1" 
 
 The proof lies here. The English Government resisted Grattan's demand 
 for the emancipation of Irish industry until Henry Grattan brought 50,000 
 volunteers, and the very day that he rose in the Irish Parliament and pro- 
 claimed that Ireland demanded her commercial rights, the Volunteers in Col- 
 lege Green, and St. Stephen's Green, in Dublin, had their artillery out and 
 planted at the gates of the English House of Commons, and around the 
 mouths of the cannons was tied a label, a significant label " Free trade for 
 
 Ireland, or " If England was so willing to redress every Irish grievance, 
 
 and if the Irish people had only to say : " Look here ; there is this law in ex- 
 istence ; take it away, for it is strangling and destroying the trade of this 
 country !" if England was so willing to take away that law if she was 
 only anxious to hear of a bad law only to remedy it, in the name of God, 
 why, on that day, in 1780, did she hold out until, at the very cannon's mouth, 
 she was obliged to yield commercial independence to Ireland? Is it any 
 wonder that the Irish people thought, with Henry Grattan, that, if every 
 measure of reform was to be obtained from England in this way, the kingdom 
 would be always kept in a state of perpetual revolution? Is it any wonder 
 that men said : " Why, if we have to go out to fight for every law, to de- 
 mand every act of justice, we must always be ready with our torches lighted 
 and our cannons loaded"? Is it any wonder that the Irish people said, on 
 that day, with their immortal leader : " It is far better for us to have our own 
 Parliament, free and independent, to take up the making of our own laws, 
 to consult our own interest, and, in peace and quietness and harmony, to take 
 thoughts on the wants of Ireland, and to legislate for them?" And this is 
 what Mr. Froude calls 
 
 " CLAMORING FOR POLITICAL AGITATION." 
 
 Thus we see, my friends remember this evening, fellow- countrymen, that 
 I am emphatically and especially appealing to America ; that I expect my 
 verdict this evening, as Mr. Froude got his and it is not from Dr. Hitch- 
 cock. It is not the puny crow of a barn - door fowl, but it is the 
 
 SCREAMING OF AMERICA'S EAGLE THAT I EXPECT IT FROM. 
 
 Thus we see that the action of 1892, by which Grattan obtained chiefly 
 the independence of the Irish Parliament, did not originate in any innate 
 love of the Irish for political agitation, but in the action of the British Gov- 
 ernment that forced on them only two alternatives "Remain subject to 
 me, to my Parliament, but I never will give you any thing, except at the 
 cannon's mouth ; or you will have to take your own liberty, and legislate for 
 yourselves." Oh I Henry Grattan, you were not a Catholic, and yet I, a. 
 Catholic priest, here, to - night, call down ten thousand blessings on thy name, 
 and on thy memory. It is true that the emancipated Parliament of 1782 
 
millions and a half of Irishmen in Ireland at that day. 
 
 THREE MILLIONS WERE CATHOLICS, 
 
 . A half a million were Protestants, and the Parliament of 1782 only 
 miserable village of 
 
 HALF A DOZEN WRFTCHED HUTS, 
 
 s: SSssi a ,5SK= . s -s '~5S Eras 
 
 FIRST NAMES AND CHARACTERS IN IRELAND. 
 
 The inal society included the first intellects of the nation, banded 
 
cordial union among all the people of Ireland, to maintain that balance which 
 is essential to the preservation of our liberties and to the extension of our 
 commerce." Resolution No. 2 : That the only constitutional means by 
 
 WAS THERE ANY THING TREASONABLE IN THIS? 
 
 was there any thing reprehensible, was there any thing deserving of impris- 
 onment, banishment or death, in such resolutions as these? Who opposed 
 and hindered that reform ? Who stood between the Irish people and their 
 Parliament, and said, " No, there will be no reform ; they must remain the 
 
 nu oir jonn moore, me nero 01 ^orunna, tnai ine 
 iously and originally the work of the British Govc 
 
 GOADED THE IRISH PEOPLE INTO REBELLION. 
 
 And we have also seen, a moment ago, that the United Irishmen was not a 
 conspiracy, but a public society ; a magnificent reunion of the best men and 
 the best intellect in Ireland, for a splendid purpose, to be accomplished by 
 fair, loyal. and legitimate means. But the principle on which the United 
 Irishmen were formed was the principle of effecting a union among all Irish- 
 men, and this was enough to alarm the Government which, from time imme- 
 morial and for many centuries, had ruled Ireland. The motto, the word, 
 which Mr. Froude so wisely said : " In that day, when Irishmen are united, 
 Ireland will be invincible" that was present in the mind of every man of 
 them. England's Prime Minister, the celebrated Mr. Pitt, then resolved 
 upon three things. He resolved first, to disarm the volunteers ; secondly, to 
 force the United Irishmen to become a secret society or conspiracy ; and, 
 thirdly, through them to force Ireland into a revolt, that he might have her ' 
 at his feet. How did he bring these three things about? Remember, I am 
 reviewing all this historically. I have no prejudice in the matter. I de- 
 clare to you, with the exception of the private ebullition of feeling boiling 
 up of feeling in my study, when I am perusing and preparing these lectures 
 
121 
 
 I feel nothing about them. I am not like others. I believe, for instance, 
 that Mr. Froude has no business to write history, because he is a good 
 philosopher. A philosopher is a man who endeavors to trace effects to their 
 causes who has a theory and tr/*es to work it out ; he is the last man in the 
 world 
 
 WHO OUGHT TO WRITE HISTORY. 
 
 And why ? Because a historian is supposed to be a dry narrator of facts, and 
 not to deal in theories or fancies at all. I believe that my learned antagonist 
 is too good a philosopher to be a good historian and I also believe that he 
 is too good a historian to be a good philosopher. 
 
 The first of 'these three designs Mr. Pitt accomplished. In 1785 he in- 
 creased the standing army in Ireland to fifteen thousand men, and he ob- 
 tained from the Irish Parliament a grant of twenty thousand pounds to clothe 
 and organize a militia. Between the army on one side and the militia on the 
 other, he took the volunteers between them in the centre, and they were dis- 
 armed. In the day when the last volunteer laid down his musket, Ireland's 
 hopes for the time were laid down with it. 
 
 The second of these, namely : the forcing of the United Irishmen into a 
 secret conspiracy, he effected in this manner : In February, 1793, he passed 
 two bills through Parliament, called the " Gunpowder Bill " and the " Con- 
 vention Bill." A public meeting'of the United Irishmen was held in Dublin 
 a public meeting with nothing secret about it to protest against the inquisi- 
 itorial measures of certain agents of a secret committee of the House of Lords 
 men who 
 
 WERE GOING INTO PEOPLE'S HOUSES, 
 
 at any hour of the day or night, without any warrant or authority, on the 
 pretended information that there was gunpowder concealed in the house. 
 For this public meeting, held legally and constitutionally, the Hon. Mr. 
 Simon Butler, who was President of the meeting, and Mr. Oliver Bond, who 
 was Secretary of the meeting, were imprisoned for six months and fined 500 
 each. When this illustrious society found that they were thus persecuted, 
 they were obliged to take refuge in secresy, and thus it was that the United 
 Irishmen were forced to become a conspiracy. 
 
 The first really treasonable project that was ever put before the United 
 Irishmen was put before them in April, 1794, by the Rev. William Jenkins, 
 a Protestant clergyman who came over commissioned by the French Con- 
 vention, and the Rev. Mr. Jenkins was accompanied, in that mission, by 
 John Cockayne, an English lawyer from London, who was the agent of 
 William Pitt, the Prime Minister of England. Thus did the society of 
 United Irishmen become the seat of conspiracy, and this was the action of 
 the English Government. Before that it was perfectly legitimate and con- 
 stitutional. Ah ! but it had an object which was far more formidable to the 
 English Government than any action of treason. The English Government 
 is not afraid of Irish treason, but the English Government trembles with fear 
 at the idea of Irish union. The United Irishmen were founded to promote 
 union among Irishmen of every religion, and the Englishman has said in his 
 own mind : " Treason is better than union ; it will force them to become 
 treasonable conspirators in their projects, and union will be broken up." It 
 is well that you should hear, my American friends, what was the oath that 
 was demanded of the United Irishman. 
 
 LET US SUPPOSE I WAS TO BE SWORN IN : 
 
 " I Thomas N. Burke, in the presence of God, do pledge myself to my 
 
122 
 
 country, that I will use all my abilities and influence in the attainment of an 
 impartial and adequate representation of the Irish nation in Parliament ; and 
 as a most absolute and immediate necessity for the attainment of this chief 
 good of Ireland, I will endeavor, as much as lies in my ability, to forward 
 and perpetuate the identity of interests, the union of rights and the union of 
 power, among Irishmen of all religious persuasions." 
 
 I pttest before high Heaven to-night, that, priest as I am, if I was asked 
 in 1779 to take that oath, I would have taken it and tried to keep it ! Re- 
 member, my friends, that it was no secret oath ; remember that it was no 
 treasonable oath ; remember that it was an oath that no man could refuse to 
 take, unless he was a dishonorable man and a traitor to his country. 
 
 The founder of this society was Theobald Wolfe Tone. I admit that Mr. 
 Tone was imbued with French revolutionary ideas ; but he certainly never 
 endeavored to impress these views upon the society until Mr. William Pitt's, 
 (the Prime Minister) influence forced that society to become a secret organi- 
 zation. 
 
 The third object of the Premier of the Government, namely : to create an 
 Irish rebellion, was accomplished by the cruelties and abominations of the 
 soldiers, who were quartered at free quarters upon the people and destroyed 
 them ; they violated the most sacred and inviolable sanctity of Irish maiden- 
 hood and womanhood ; burned their villages, plundered their farms, demol- 
 ished their houses, until they made life even more intolerable than death it- 
 self, and compelled the people to rise in the rebellion of '98. 
 
 Yes ; I answer Mr. Froude's a$ertion that the Irish people left the paths 
 of political reform for political agitation, from agitation to conspiracy, and 
 from conspiracy to rebellion. Now, you may ask what advantage was this 
 to William Pitt, the Premier, to have conspiracy and rebellion in Ireland ? 
 I answer you, that William Pitt was a great English statesman, and a great 
 Englishman statesman meant in those days an enemy to Ireland. 
 
 The object of great statesmanship, from time to time, is the great object 
 of concentration. A fatal principle a fatal principle whenever it is enforced 
 against the principles and time-honored traditions, and the genius of a 
 people. 
 
 HE SAW THAT IRELAND WAS IN HARMONY, 
 
 tree and independent, making her own laws and consulting her own inter- 
 ests. He said : " This will never do ; this country will be happy and pros- 
 perous it will never do ; it interferes with my business. What do I care 
 for Ireland ? I only care for the British Empire. I may have to cross their 
 >urposes." He made up his mind to destroy the Irish Parliament. He 
 .new well, as long as Ireland was happy, peaceable and prosperous, he never 
 :ould affect them. He knew it was only through humiliation he could ac- 
 complish the destruction of Ireland. Ah ! cruel man as he was, he resolved 
 to plunge the country into rebellion and bloodshed in order to carry out his 
 own imperial English State policy. 
 
 And yet, dear friends, and especially dear American friends my grand 
 jury for I feel as if I was a lawyer : I feel as if I was a lawyer engaged in 
 the cause of the poor defendant, whose case has been in court for many long 
 years ; the plaintiff is a great, rich, powerful woman ; the poor defendant has 
 nothing to commend her but a heart that never yet despaired, a spirit that 
 never yet was broken, and a loyalty to God and to man that never yet was 
 violated by one act of treason. I ask you, the grand-jury of America, to 
 consider how easy it was to conciliate this poor mother, Ireland I mean to 
 make her peaceful and happy. He (Pitt) himself had a proof of it in '94. 
 
 P 1 
 ki 
 
Suddenly the imperious, magnificent Premier of England seemed to have 
 changed his mind, and he adopted a policy of conciliation and kindness 
 toward Ireland ; he recalled the Irish lord-lieutenant, Lord Westmoreland, 
 and sent Earl Fitzwilliam, who arrived there on the 4th of January, 1795. 
 Lord Fitzwilliam was a man of liberal mind, and of most excellent character ; 
 he felt kindly to the Irish people, and before he left England he made an ex- 
 press contract with William Pitt, if he was made Lord-lieutenant of Ireland, 
 that he would govern the country on principles of conciliation and kindness. 
 He came, and found in Dublin Castle a certain Secretary Cooke, and a great 
 family by the name of Beresford, who, for years, had monopolized all the 
 State offices and all the emoluments of the State. He dismissed them all, 
 and sent them to the " right about." He surrounded himself with men of 
 liberal minds like himself ; he began by telling the Catholics of Ireland that 
 he would 
 
 LABOR FOR THEIR EMANCIPATION, 
 
 and sudden peace and joy spread throughout the nation every vestige of 
 insurrection and rebellion seemed to vanish out of Ireland, and happiness 
 and joy, for the time being, was the portion of the Irish people. How long 
 did it last ? In an evil hour Pitt returned to his own designs. Fitzwilliam 
 was recalled on the sth of March, and Ireland enjoyed her peace for only 
 two short months. When it was found that Lord Fitzwilliam was about to 
 be recalled, scarcely a parish in Ireland that did not send in a petition to the 
 British Government to leave them their Lord-lieutenant ; but all was in 
 vain. Pitt had made up his mind to carry out his own views. On the day 
 that Lord Fitzwilliam left Dublin the principal citizens of Dublin took the 
 horses from his carriage and drew the carriage themselves down to the 
 water-side. All Ireland was in tears a whole nation was in mourning. 
 How easy it was, my American friends, to conciliate these people, whom 
 two short months of kindness could so change. It shows to the English 
 Government, English Parliament, and English people, that if they could only 
 realize to themselves the mine of affection, the glorious heart, and the 
 splendid gratitude that lies there in Ireland, and which they have never ap- 
 pealed to yet, and never touched. This turns the very honey of human 
 nature into the gall of bitterness and of hatred. The rebellion broke out, 
 and it was, as Mr. Froude truly says, the victors took away the old privileges, 
 and made the yoke heavier. By the old privileges Mr. Froude means the 
 Irish Parliament, which was taken away. I hope, citizens of America, that 
 this English gentlemstn, who has come here to get a verdict from you, will 
 be taught by that verdict^ that the right of home legislation is not a privilege, 
 but the right of every nation on the earth. 
 
 Then, in the course of his lecture, going back to strengthen his argument, 
 he says : " You must not blame England for being hard upon you Irishmen. 
 She took away your Parliament ; she inflicted upon you a heavier yoke than 
 you bore before ; but she could not help it it was your own fault ; 
 
 WHAT MADE YOU REBEL?" 
 
 This is the argument which the learned gentleman uses. He says the penal 
 laws never would have been carried out, only for the revolution in Ireland, 
 in 1600. Now, the revolution of 1600 meant the war that Hugh O'Neill 
 made in Ulster, against Queen Elizabeth. According to this learned histo- 
 rian, the penal laws were the result, effect, and consequence of that revolu- 
 tion. Remember, he fixes that date himself, 1600. Now, my friends, what 
 i the record of histgry? The penal laws began to operate, in Ireland in 
 
124 
 
 1534- I n *$37> tne Archbishop of Armagh, the Primate of Ireland, .who was 
 an Englishman by the name of Cromer, was put into jail, and left there, for 
 denying the supremacy of Henry the Eighth over the Church of God. Pas- 
 sing over the succeeding years of Henry the Eighth's reign, passing over the 
 enactments of Somerset, under Edward the Sixth, we come to Elizabeth's 
 reign, and we find that she assembled a Parliament in 1560 forty years be- 
 fore Mr. Froude's revolution. Here is 
 
 ONE OF THE LAWS PASSED BY THAT PARLIAMENT : 
 
 " All officers and ministers, ecclesiastical or lay," that took in us, " were 
 bound to take the oath of supremacy." They were bound to swear that 
 Queen Elizabeth was Popess. That she was the Head of the Church ; that she 
 was the successor of the Apostles ; that she was the representative of St. Peter, 
 and through him of the Eternal Son of God Queen Elizabeth ! AH were 
 obliged to take this oath under pain f forfeiture and total incapacity. Any 
 one who disputed her claims to spiritual supremacy was to forfeit, for the 
 offense, all his estate, real and personal, and if he had no estate that was not 
 worth more than twenty pounds, he was put for one year in jail ; and for the 
 second and third offenses, he was guilty of high treason, and put to death. 
 These laws were made, and commissioners appointed to enforce them. Mr. 
 Froude says they were not enforced ; but we have the acts of Elizabeth's 
 Parliament appointing magistrates and officers to go out and enforce 
 these laws, and these were made forty years before the revolution of 1600. 
 How, then, can that gentleman ask us to regard the penal laws as the effect 
 of that revolution ? In my philosophy, and I believe in yours, citizens of 
 America, the effect generally follows the cause. But this English philo- 
 sophical historian puts the effect forty years ahead of the cause. As we say 
 in Ireland, that is putting the cart before the horse. 
 
 But my friends, Mr. Froude tells us, if you remember, in his second lecture, 
 that the penal laws of Elizabeth were occasioned by the 
 
 POLITICAL NECESSITY OF HER SITUATION. 
 
 Here is the argument as he gives it. He says : " Elizabeth could not afford 
 to let Ireland go Catholic, because, if Ireland were Catholic, Ireland must be 
 hostile to Elizabeth. I may tell you now, and I hope the ladies here will 
 pardon me for mentioning it, that Queen Elizabeth was not a legitimate 
 child. Her name, in common parlance, is too vile for me to utter, or for 
 the ladies present to hear. Suffice it to say that Elizabeth's mother was not 
 Elizabeth's father's wife. The Queen of England knew the aitcient abhor- 
 rence that Ireland had for such a vice. She knew that abhorrence grew out 
 of Ireland's Catholicity, and therefore she could not allow Ireland to remain 
 Catholic, because Ireland would be hostile to her, and Ireland remained 
 Catholic. 
 
 The only way the amiable Queen could root out the Catholics in Ireland 
 was by penal laws ; making it a felony for any Irishman to remain in Ireland a 
 Catholic. Therefore, the English historian says " that she passed the laws 
 because she could not help herself, and that she was coerced by the necessity 
 of her situation." I ask, in reply to this argument of Mr. Froude's, why, if 
 Elizabeth were obliged, whether she would or not, to pass these penal laws, 
 does he turn round and say that these laws were the effects of Hugh O'Neill's 
 revolution ? If they were the result of Elizabeth's necessity, then they were 
 not the result of the immortal Hugh O'Neill's brave effort. His next asser- 
 tion is, "That after the American war, England was only too well disposed. 
 
125 
 
 to do justice to Ireland," and the proof lies here. He says " that the laws 
 against the Catholics were almost repealed before 1798." Vry well. Now 
 I ask you, dear friends, to reflect upon what the 
 
 LARGE MEASURES OF INDULGENCE 
 
 to the Catholics were, of which Mr. Froude speaks. Here they are. In the 
 year 1771, Parliament passed an act to enable Catholics to take a long lease 
 on fifty acres of bog. My American friends, yeu may not understand the 
 word bog. It means a marsh which is almost irreclaimable : which you may- 
 drain and drain, until dooms- day, and it will remain the original marsh. 
 You may sink a fortune in it, in arterial drainage, in top dressing, as we call 
 it in Ireland ; and if it is left a couple of years, if you come back, you will 
 find the bog has asserted itself once more. However, my friends, the Par- 
 liament was kinder than you imagine, for whilst they granted to the Catho- 
 lics a long lease for 
 
 FIFTY ACRES OF BOG, 
 
 they also stipulated that if the bog was too deep for foundation, that they 
 might take half an acre of arable land, upon which to build a house. Half 
 an acre ! For the life of him, not more than half an acre. This holding, 
 such as it was, should not be within a mile of any city or town. Oh, no ! 
 and mark this : If half the bog was not reclaimed, that is five -and- twenty 
 acres, within twenty - one years, the lease was forfeited. 
 
 Dear friends, the scripture tells us that King Pharoah, of Egypt, was very 
 cruel to the Hebrews, because he ordered them to make bricks without straw, 
 but here is an order to the unfortunate Irishmen to reclaim twenty -five acres 
 of bog, or else give it up. Now, beggarly as this occasion was, the very 
 Parliament that passed it was so much afraid of the Protestant ascendancy in 
 Ireland, that in order to conciliate them for the slight concession, they 
 passed another bill, granting /io additional to 30 already for every Popish 
 priest duly converted to the Protestant religion. In October, 1777, the news 
 reached England that Gen. Burgoyne had surrendered to Gen. Gates. The 
 moment that the news reached Lord North, who was Prime Minister of En- 
 
 land, he immediately expressed an ardent desire to relax the penal laws on 
 
 atholics. In January, the following year, 1778, the 
 
 INDEPENDENCE OF AMERICA 
 
 was acknowledged by glorious France. And the moment that piece of news 
 reached England, the English Parliament passed a bill for the relaxation of 
 the laws on Catholics. In May, of the same year, the Irish Parliament passed 
 a bill now mark ! to enable Catholics to lease land to take a lease for 
 999 years. So it seems we were to get out of the bog at last. They also, in that 
 year, repealed the unnatural penal law which altered the succession in favor 
 of the child that became Protestant, and gave hi m'his father's property; also, re- 
 pealing the law for the prosecution of priests, and' for the imprisonment of Pop- 
 ish schoolmasters. In the year 1793, they gave back to the Catholics the power 
 of electing a member of Parliament the power of voting. And that is what 
 Mr. Froude calls the total repeal of the law against Catholics. The Catho- 
 lics still could not go upon the bench ; could not be magistrates; and this En- 
 glish historian comes and says : " You are fools ; you were almost free." 
 Well, people of America, if these be Mr. Froude's notions of civil and re- 
 ligious freedom, I appeal to you, for Ireland, not to give him the verdict, 
 
 gl 
 C 
 
126 
 
 " THE INSURRECTION OF '98," 
 
 continues the learned gentleman, " threw Ireland back into confusion and 
 misery, from which she was partially delirered by the act of union." The 
 first part of that proposition I admit ; the second I emphatically deny. I ad- 
 mit that the unsuccessful rebellion of '98 threw Ireland back into a state of 
 misery. Unsuccessful rebellion is one of the greatest calamities that can be- 
 fall a nation, and the sooner Irishmen and Irish patriots understand this, the 
 better it will be for them and their country. I emphatically deny, that by 
 the act of union there was any remedy for these miseries ; that it was any 
 healing remedy whatever for the wrongs of Ireland ; that it was any thing 
 in the shape of a benefit or blessing. I assert that the union of 1800, by 
 which Ireland lost her Parliament, was a pure curse for Ireland from that day, 
 and nothing else, and it is an evil that must be remedied if the grievances of 
 Ireland are ever to be redressed. I need not dwell upon the wholesale brib- 
 ery and corruption by which the 
 
 the political apostate, carried that detestable act of union. Mr. Froude had 
 the good taste to pass by the dirty subject without touching it, and I can do 
 nothing better. 
 
 He says : "It was expected that whatever grievances Ireland complained 
 of would be removed by legislation after the act of union." It was expected ; 
 it was quite true. Even Catholics expected something. They were prom- 
 ised, in writing, by Lord Cornwallis that Catholic emancipation would 
 be given them, if they only accepted the Union. Pitt himself assured them 
 that he would not administer the Government unless Catholic emancipation 
 was made a Cabinet measure. The honor of Pitt, the honor of England was 
 engaged ; the honor of the brave, though unfortunate, Lord Cornwallis, .was 
 engaged. But the Irish as Tom Moore says, " I admire the hopes that 
 leave me ;" they were left to 
 
 MEDITATE IN BITTERNESS OF SPIRIT 
 
 upon the nature of English faith. Now let me introduce an honored name 
 that I shall return to by and by. At that time, the Parliament of Ireland 
 was bribed with money and with titles, and the Catholic people were bribed 
 by promised emancipation after they would sanction the union. 
 
 Then it was that a young man appeared in Dublin, speaking for the first 
 time against the union, in the name of the Catholics of Ireland, and that 
 young man was the 
 
 GLORIOUS DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
 
 Two or three of the bishops gave a kind of tacit negative assent to the meas- 
 ure, in the hope of getting Catholic emancipation. I need hardly tell you, 
 my friends, that the Catholic lords of the Pale were only too willing to pass 
 any measure that the English Government required. O'Connell appeared 
 before the Catholic Committee in Dublin; and here are his words. Remem- 
 ber, they are the words of the people, and of the Catholics of Ireland. He 
 said : " It is my sentiment, and I am satisfied it is the sentiment not only of 
 every gentleman that hears me, but of the Catholic people of Ireland, that 
 they are opposed to this injurious, insulting, and hated measure of union. 
 And if its rejection was to bring upon us the renewal of the penal laws, we 
 would boldly meet the proscriptive oppression, and throw ourselves once 
 more on the mercy of our Protestant brethren, before we will give our assent 
 
127 
 
 to the political murder of our country." " I know," he says, " I do know 
 that although exclusive advantages may be ambiguously held forth to the 
 Irish Catholic to seduce him from the sacred duty that he owes to his country, 
 yet I know that the Catholics of Ireland will remember that they have a 
 country, and they will never accept of any advantage, as a sect, of that which 
 would depose and destroy them as a people." Shade of the great departed ! You 
 never uttered truer words. Shade of the great O'Connell, every true Irish- 
 man, priest and layman subscribes to this glorious sentiment, wherever that 
 Irishman is this night. 
 
 Now Mr. Froude goes on, in an innocent sort of way. He says, " It is 
 strange, that after the Union was passed, that the people of Ireland were still 
 grumbling and complaining. Yet they had no foundation for their com- 
 plaints ; they were not treated unjustly." Here are his words : Good God ! 
 people of America ! what idea can this gentleman have of justice? What 
 loss did the Union, which he admired so much, and which he declares 
 that England will maintain, bring to Ireland? What gain did it bring to 
 Ireland, and what loss did it inflict on her ? I answer from history. The 
 gain to Ireland was absolutely nothing, and I ask you to consider two or 
 three of the losses. 
 
 First of all, remember, my friends, that Ireland, before the Union, had her 
 own national debt, as she had her own Parliamentary establishment. She 
 was a nation. 
 
 THE NATIONAL DEBT OF IRELAND, 
 
 in 1793, did not amount to over three millions of money. In the year 1800 , 
 the year of the Union, the national debt amounted to over 28,000,000 ot , 
 money. They increased it nine-fold in six years. How? I will tell yon. 
 England had in Ireland, for her own purposes, at the time of the Union, 
 126,500 soldiers. Pretty tough business, that, of keeping Ireland down in 
 those days. She made Ireland pay for every man of them. She did not pay 
 a penny of her own money for them. In order to carry the Union, England 
 spent enormous sums of money for bribes to spies and informers, and to 
 members of Parliament. She took every penny of the money out of the 
 Irish Treasury. There were eighty-four rotten boroughs disfranchised at the 
 time of the Union, and England paid to those who owned those boroughs, 
 or who had the nomination of them, actually paid them one million two 
 hundred thousand pounds sterling, for their loss the loss being the nomina- 
 tions the loss by the proprietor of the corrupt influence in returning these 
 members to Parliament. O'Connell, speaking on this subject some years 
 later, says : " Really, it was strange that Ireland was not asked to pay for 
 the knife with which, twenty years later, Castlereagh cut his throat." 
 
 If the debt of Ireland was swollen from 3,000,000 before the Union to 
 26,000,000, I ask you to consider what followed. We now come to the 
 period after the Union. Mark, my friends. In January, 1801, you may say 
 the year of the Union, the debt of England was 450,000,000 and a half 
 pounds sterling, and to pay that debt they required 17,708,800, consequent- 
 ly, they had to raise by taxation 18,000,000 to pay the interest on the debt of 
 450,000,000 in that year. Such was the condition of Ireland. In 1817, six- 
 teen years after, the same debt of England had risen from 450,000,000 to 
 735,000,000 nearly double]; and they had an annual debt of 28,000,000 odd 
 to pay. So yon see they doubled, their national debt in the sixteen years 
 through which Pitt had waged war with Napoleon. They were obliged to 
 subsidize and to pay Germans, Hessians, and all sorts of people, to fight 
 against France. At one time William Pitt was supporting the whole Aus- 
 
128 
 
 trian army. The Austrians had the men, but no money. Now mark this : 
 In Ireland, the debt in 1801, was 28,000,000 and a half, and, consequently, 
 the annual taxation was ^1,250,000. In the year 1817, the same Irish debt, 
 which sixteen years before was only 28,ooo,ooo,was now ^112,704,000, and 
 the taxes amounted to ^4,105,000. In other words: In sixteen years the 
 debt of England was doubled, but the debt of Ireland was made four times 
 as much as it was in the year that the Union was passed. How did that 
 happen? It happened from the very fact that, being united to England, 
 having lost their Parliament, the English Chancellor of the Exchequer took 
 and kept the money and the Irish accounts, and the Irish kept the bogs. 
 Ireland lost the privilege of keeping her own accounts. And this is the ac- 
 count he brought against Ireland in 1817. 
 
 IRELAND WAS SO LIGHTLY BURDENED WITH DEBT 
 
 at tne time of the Union, as compared with England, that the English did 
 not ask us when they united the Parliament with theirs ; they did not pre- 
 sume to ask us ; they had not the presumption to ask us to take share and 
 and share alike in the taxes. Why should they ? We only owed 20,000,000, 
 and they owed 450,000,000. Why should we be asked to pay the interest on 
 their debt ? They were rich and could bear that taxation ; Ireland was poor 
 and she could not bear it. Ireland was, consequently, much more lightly 
 taxed than England. It was very much easier to pay interest on ^26,000,000 
 than on 400,000,000. But there was an agreement made^with Castlereagh by 
 the Irish Parliament. It was this. He said : " That if the Irish national 
 debt came up to one-seventh of the national debt of England, then we will 
 throw it all in together, and tax them share and share alike. The object of 
 running up the Irish debt was to bring it up within one-fourth of the English 
 <iebt. This they accomplished in 1817. Then the Irish and the English 
 were taxed indiscriminately, and they all alike ; we were obliged to pay the 
 taxes for the interest on the 450,000,000 of debt that the crown of England 
 had incurred before the Union had taken place. 
 
 " The people," says Mr. Froude, "were not treated unjustly." Ah! 
 But says Mr. Froude, " consider the advantages of the Union ; you had the 
 same commercial privileges that the English had." To this I answer, in the 
 words of the 
 
 ILLUSTRIOUS, HONEST AND HIGH-MINDED JOHN MITCHELL. 
 
 " It is true," says Mr. Mitchell, " that the laws regulating trade are the same 
 in the two islands. Ireland may export even woolen cloth to England ; 
 she may import her own tea from China and sugar from the Barbadoes. 
 The law which made these acts penal offenses no longer exists. Why? 
 Because they are no longer needed. England is fully in possession, and by 
 the operation of these old laws Ireland was utterly ruined. England has the 
 commercial marine ; Ireland has it to create. England has the manufactur- 
 ing machinery and skill of which Ireland was deprived, by express laws for 
 that purpose. England has the current of trade established so strongly in her 
 own channels, while Ireland is left dry to create or recover, at this day, those 
 great industrial and commercial resources, and that in the face of wealthy 
 rivals that are already in full possession, is manifestly impossible without one 
 or the other of these two conditions, namely : the immense command of 
 capital or effective protective duties. But by the Union our capital is drawn 
 away to England, and by the Union we were deprived of the power of im- 
 posing protective duties." 
 
It was to this very end that the Union was forced upo.n Ireland by treach- 
 ery. "Don't unite with us, sir," says the honest old man, Dr. Samuel 
 Johnson, when addressed on the subject of unity, in his day. 
 
 DON'T UNITE WITH US, WE SHALL ROB YOU. 
 
 In the very first year after the Union was passed, Mr. Foster stated, in the 
 English House of Parliament, that there was a falling off in the linen trade 
 of Ireland of 5,000,000 less of yards exported. The same gentleman, three 
 years later, stated, that in 1800 the net produce of the Irish revenue was 
 more than 2,800,000, while the debt was only ^25,000,000. Three years 
 later, after three years' experience of the Union, the debt was increased to 
 ^53,000,000, and the revenues had diminished by ^11,000. Ireland was 
 deserted. That absenteeism that was the curse of Ireland iii the days of 
 Swift had so increased by the Union that Dublin became almost a deserted 
 city, and all the cities in Ireland had the appearance and became as places 
 in the wilderness. At this very day, in Dublin, the Duke of Leinster's city 
 palace is turned into a museum of Irish industry ; Marlborough House, on 
 the same street, has become a draper's shop ; Tyrone House is a schoolhouse. 
 The house of the Earl of Beresford was pulled down, a few years ago, to 
 build a Scotch Presbyterian meeting-house on the place. Charlemont House 
 was sold, about six months before I came to America, and it is now the head 
 office of the Board of Works ; and Belvidere House is a convent. So fashion, 
 trade, commercial activity, intellectual enterprise, political interest every 
 thing has gone to London, and Ireland may 
 
 FOLD HER HANDS AND SIGH OVER THE RUIN 
 
 that is left to her now. And that is the result of the Union. The crumbling 
 liberties of Dublin attest the decay and ruin of Ireland ; the forsaken harbors 
 of Limerick and Galway tell of the destruction of her commerce ; the palace 
 of Dublin, abandoned to decay, announces no longer the residence of the 
 nobility ; the deserted custom-houses tell of the income transferred elsewhere. 
 What do we get in England for all this? Absolutely nothing. Every Irish 
 question goes now to London to be debated, and the moment an Irish mem- 
 ber stands up in the House, the first thing he expects is to be coughed down, 
 sneered down, or crowed down, unless, indeed, he has the lungs of an 
 O'Connell, and turns upon them like an African lion, and, with a roar, puts 
 down their beastly bellowing. 
 
 Pitt promised emancipation. Six months after the; Union was passed, he 
 retired from office on the pretense, indeed, that the King would not grant em- 
 ancipation, and would notkeephis word. But it is well known that the true 
 reason why Pitt retired was that his continental policy had failed. The peo- 
 ple of England were tired of his wars, and were clamoring for peace. He 
 was too proud to sign even a temporary peace with France, and he retired 
 in sullen pride and disgust. He retired under the pretext that he would not 
 be allowed to carry Catholic emancipation. Some time later, after the Ad- 
 dington administration was broken up, Mr. Pitt returned again to be the 
 Premier of England. Not one word escaped from him then about Catholic 
 emancipation, and he resisted it until his death. He was as great an enemy 
 to the Catholics of Ireland as ever poor, old, foolish, mad George IV was. 
 And it was only after twenty-nine years of heroic effort that the 
 
 GREAT O'CONNELL RALLIED THE IRISH NATION; 
 and he succeeded for a time in uniting all the Catholics of Ireland as one 
 
13 
 
 man, as well as a great number of our nobled-hearted Protestant fellow-Irish- 
 men. And when O'Connell came and knocked at the doors of the British 
 Parliament with the hand of a United Irish people; when he spoke with the 
 voice of eight millions, then and only then, even as the walls of Jericho 
 crumbled at the sound of Joshua's trumpet, did the old, bigoted threshold of 
 the British House of Commons tremble while its doors burst open and let in 
 the gigantic Irishman that represented eight millions of the people of Ireland. 
 The English historian goes on to say that 
 
 ENGLAND GRANTED CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION WILLINGLY. 
 
 She granted it as a man would yield up a bad tooth to the dentist. O'Con- 
 nell put the forceps into that false, old mouth; the old tyiant wriggled and 
 groaned; the bigote profligate, who then disgraced England's crown, shed 
 is crocodrile tears upon the bill; the eyes that were never known to weep 
 over the ruin of female virtue, the face that never was known to change color 
 in the presence of any foul deed or accusation of vice, grew pale, and George 
 IV wept with sorrow that he had to sign it. The man who had conquered 
 Napoleon upon the field of Waterloo, the man who was declared to be the 
 invincible victor and the greatest of warriors, stood there with the bill in his 
 hands, and said to the King of England: " I would not grant it, your Ma- 
 jesty, any more than you; but it is forced from you and me. You must either 
 
 sign that paper or prepare for civil war and revolution in Ireland!" 
 
 I regret to be obliged to say it, but really, my friends, the history ot my 
 native land proves to me that England never granted any thing from love, or 
 
 CRAVEN FEAR OF CIVIL WAR, 
 
 or of some serious inconvenience to herself. Now, having arrived at this 
 point, Mr. Froude glances in a masterly manner over the great questions that 
 have taken place since the day that emancipation was demanded. He speaks 
 words the most eloquent and compassionate over the terrible period of '46 
 and '47 words, reading which brought tears to my eyes, words of compas- 
 sion that he gave to the people who suffered, for which I pray God to bless 
 him and reward him. He speaks words of generous, enlightened, statesman- ' 
 like sympathy for the peasantry of Ireland, and for these words, Mr. Froude, 
 if you were an Englishman ten thousand times over, I love you. I now at- 
 tempt to speak of the future of Ireland. Perhaps it is a dangerous thing for 
 me to attempt ; yet, I suppose that all that we have been discussing in the 
 past must have some reference to the future. For, surely, the verdict that 
 Mr. Froude looks for is not a mere verdict of absolution for past iniquities. 
 He has come here though he is not a Catholic he has come to America, 
 like a 
 
 MAN GOING TO CONFESSION, 
 
 and he cries out loudy, " We have sinned ! we have sinned ! we have griev- 
 ously sinned !" The verdict which he calls for must, surely, regard the future 
 more than the past ; for how, in the name of God, can this great historian, 
 or any other man, ask a verdict justifying the iniquity and heart-rending rec- 
 ord of cruelty and injustice, the traditions of robbery and bloodshed which 
 we have suffered ? My friends, there must be a future. What is that future ? 
 Well, my friends first of all, my American Grand Jury, you must remember 
 that I am only a monk, not a man of the world, and I do not understand 
 much about these things; and there are wiser heads than mine, and I will 
 
gtve you their opinion. There is a particular class of men who love Ireland 
 
 love Ireland truly, and love her sincerely, and think, in their love or Ire- 
 land, that if ever she is to be freed it is by insurrection, by rising in arms 
 men who hold that Ireland is enslaved, if you will. Well, if the history which 
 Mr. Froude has given, and which I have attempted to review, if it teaches us 
 any thing, it teaches us, as Irishmen, lhat there is no use appealing to the 
 sword, or to armed insurrections in Ireland. Mr. Froude says that, to suc- 
 ceed, there are two things necessary, namely ; union as one man, and a 
 
 DETERMINATION NOT TO SHEATHE THAT SWORD 
 
 until the work is done. I know that I would earn louder plaudits, citizens of 
 America, and speak a more popular language in the ears of my auditors, if I 
 were to declare my adhesion to this class of Irishmen. But there is not a 
 living man that loves Ireland more dearly than I do. There are those who 
 may love her more fervently, and some love her with greater distinction. 
 But there is no man living that loves Ireland more tenderly or more sincerely 
 than I do. I prize, citizens of America, the good-will of my fellow-Irishmen; 
 I prize it next to the grace of God. I also prize the popularity which, how- 
 ever unworthily, I possess with them. But I tell you, American citizens, for 
 all that popularity, for all that good-will, I would not compromise one iota of 
 my convictions ; nor would I state what I do not believe to be true. I do not 
 believe in insurrectionary movements in a country so divided as Ireland. 
 
 There is another class of Irishmen who hold that Ireland has a future a 
 glorious future ; that that future is to be wrought out in this way. They say 
 
 and, I think, with a good right that wealth, acquired by industry, brings 
 with it power and political influence. They say, therefore, to the Irish at 
 home, " Try and accumulate wealth ; lay hold of industry ; develop the re- 
 sources of your country ; try in the meantime to effect that blessing of union, 
 without which there never can be a future for Ireland. That union can be 
 effected by largeness of mind, by generosity and urbanity toward your fellow- 
 citizens ; by rising above the miserable bigotry that carries religious differen- 
 ces and religious hatreds into relations of life that don't belong to religion. 
 
 " Meantime," they say to the men of Ireland, 
 
 " TRY TO ACQUIRE PROPERTY AND WEALTH ; 
 
 and this can only be done by peaceful, assiduous industry : and that industry 
 can only be exercised so long as a country is at peace, so long as there is a 
 truce to violent political agitation." Then these men say again to the Irish- 
 men in America : " Men of Ireland in America, men of Irish birth, men of 
 American birth but Irish blood, we believe that God has largely intrusted the 
 destinies of Ireland to you. America demands of her citizens only energy, 
 industry, truthfulness, temperance, obedience to the law. 
 
 " Accordingly, the man that has these can not fail to realize the future, and 
 a glorious future, in this grand Republic. And if you are faithful to America 
 in these respects, America will be faithful to you. And in proportion as the 
 grand Irish element in America rises in wealth it will rise in political influence 
 and power a political influence and power which in a few years is destined 
 to overshadow the whole world, and to bring about peace, justice, and a far 
 greater revolution in the cause of honor and the cause of humanity than has 
 ever been effected by the sword. This is the programme of a second class of 
 Irishmen. Now, I tell you candidly, that to this programme I give my 
 heart and soul. 
 
132 
 
 You will ask me, what about separation from England? Well, that is a 
 tickleish question, gentlemen and ladies. I dare say you will remember that 
 when Charles Edward, the son of the pretender to the throne of England, 
 was alive, there was a toast which the Jacobite gentleman used to give. It 
 was this : [Here the speaker raised a glass of water which stood on the 
 table.] 
 
 " God bless the King, our noble faith's defender ; 
 Long may he live; and down with the Pretender. 
 But which may be Pretender which be King, 
 God bless us all that's quite another thing !" 
 
 DECAY OF NATIONS. 
 
 And yet, with the courage of an old monk, I'll tell you my mind upon this 
 very question. History tells us that empires, like men, run the sycle of the 
 years of their life, and then die. No matter how extended their power, no 
 matter how mighty their influence, no matter how great their wealth, no 
 matter how invincible their army, the day will come, the inevitable day, that 
 brings with it decay and disruption. 
 
 Thus it was with the empire of the Medes and Persians ; thus it was with 
 the mighty empire of the Assyrians ; thus it was with the Egyptians of old ; 
 thus with Greece, and thus with Rome. Who would have imagined, for in- 
 stance, one thousand five hundred years ago, before the Goths first stood be- 
 fore the walls of Rome- who would .have imagined that the greatest power, 
 that was to sway the whole Roman Empire, would be the little, unknown 
 island, .flnng out in the Western Ocean, known only as the last spot of earth 
 the ultima thule the Island of Tin, in the far ocean. This was England. 
 Well, the sycle of time has come to pass. Now, my friends, England has 
 been a long time at the top of the wheel. Do you imagine she will always 
 remain there? I do not want to be one bit more disloyal than Lord Mac- 
 aulay ; and he describes a day when a traveler from New Zealand " will 
 take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge, and sketch the ruins of 
 St. Paul's." 
 
 Is England rising, or falling? Is England to-day what she was twenty 
 years ago ? England, twenty years ago, in her first alliance with Napoleon, 
 had her finger in every pie in Europe. Lord John Russell, and Lord Palmers- 
 ton, were busy-bodies of the first order. England, to-day, has no more to 
 say in the affairs of Europe than the Emperor of China has. You see it in 
 the fact I am only talking philosophy you see it in the fact that the three 
 great Emperors of Germany, Austria and Prussia came together in Berlin to fix 
 the map of Europe, and didn't ask England in to know what she had to say 
 about it. 
 
 The army of England to-day is nothing a mere cipher. The German 
 Emperor can bring his 1,200,000 men into the field. England can scarcely 
 muster 200,000. An English citizen a loyal Englishman wrote a book 
 called "The Battle of Dorking," in which he describes a German army 
 marching on London. This Englishman was loyal ; and why should I be 
 more loyal than he? 
 
 England's navy is nothing. Mr. Reed, Chief Constructor of the British 
 Navy, has written an article in a London paper, in which he declares and 
 proves, that at this moment the British fleet would be afraid to go into Rus- 
 sian waters, not being able to meet the Russians. Why should I be more 
 loyal than Mr. Reed? An empire begins to totter and decay when it aban- 
 
133 
 
 dons its outlying provinces, as in the case of the Roman Empire when it 
 abandoned Britain. England to-day says to 
 
 CANADA AND AUSTRALIA : 
 
 " Oh take your government into your own hands ; I don't want to be bothered 
 with it any more !" England that, eighty years ago, fought for the United 
 States bitterly as long as she could put a man into the field. How changed it 
 is. Secondly, an empire is crumbling into decay when she begins to buy off 
 her enemies, as in the case of the Roman Empire, when she began to buy off 
 the Scythians, the Dacians and other barbaric forces that were rising upon 
 her. 
 
 England, a few days ago, was presented with a little bill by America. She 
 said : 
 
 " WHY, JONATHAN, I OWE YOU NOTHING." 
 
 And John Bull buttoned up his pocket, and swore he would not pay a cent. 
 Then America said: " Look here, John, I don't like this ;" and she took out 
 the sword, and put the hilt in one hand and the blade in the other, and she 
 said: "Which end do you choose?" John Bull paid the bill. My friends, 
 it looks very like as if the day of Lord Macaulay's New Zealander was rap- 
 idly approaching. 
 
 In that day, my position is, Ireland will be mistress of her own destinies 
 with the liberty that will come to her, not from man, but from God, whom 
 she never deserted. There is another nation that understands Ireland, whose 
 statesmen have always spoken words of brave encouragement, of tender 
 sympathy, and of manly hope for Ireland in her dark days and that nation 
 is the United States of America the mighty land, placed, by the Omnipotent 
 hand, between the far East on the one side, to which she stretches out her 
 glorious arms over the broad Pacific, while, on the other side, she sweeps, 
 with uplifted hand, over the Atlantic and touches Europe. A mighty land, 
 including,Mn her ample bosom, untold resources of every form of commercial 
 and mineral wealth ; a mighty land, with room for 300,000,000 of men, and 
 millions of the oppressed, all the world over, flying to her more than imperial 
 bosom, there to find liberty, and the sacred rights of civil and religious free- 
 dom. 
 
 America will require an emporium for her European trade, and Ireland 
 lies there right between her and Europe, with her ample rivers and vast 
 harbors, able to shelter the vessels and fleets. America may require a great 
 European storehouse, a great European hive for her manufactures. Ireland 
 has enormous water-power, now flowing idly to the sea, but which yet, in a 
 future day, may be busy in turning the wheels set upon their streams by 
 American and Irish capital and industry. If ever that day comes, if ever 
 that union comes, it will be no degradation to Ireland to join hands with 
 America. She does not enslave her States. She accepts them on terms of 
 glorious equality ; she respects the rights of the people. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 Now that I have done with this subject, and with Mr. Froude, I have one 
 word to say before I retire. If, during the course of these .five lectures, one 
 single word personally offensive to this distinguished gentleman has escaped 
 my lips, I take that word back now ; I apologize to him before he asks me, 
 and beg to assure him that such a word never came willingly from my mind 
 or from my heart. He says he loves Ireland. I believe, according to his 
 
134 
 
 light, he does love Ireland. Our light is very different from his; still, 
 Almighty God will judge every man according to his light. 
 
 When the reiterated cheering for Father Burke had subsided, the Very 
 Rev. Father Starrs, Vicar General of the diocese, addressed the audience 
 briefly as follows : 
 
 " LADIES AND GENTLEMEN I have merely a few words to say to you 
 before we separate this evening. You all know that this is the last lecture of 
 the Very Rev. Father Burke, in reply to Mr. Froude, the English historian. 
 And I know very well that you all must feel satisfied with the manner in- 
 which he has replied to the lecture of that learned gentleman. I now move 
 a vote of thanks to the Very Rev. Father Burke, for the able, dignified and 
 learned manner in which he has made that reply." 
 
 Voices I second the motion. 
 
 When the Vicar General put the question as seconded, the building rang 
 with the ready and unanimous "Aye" that responded from the voices and 
 hearts of the immense audience ; and thus closed, for the present, one of the 
 rarest intellectual treats that has ever been the good fortune of an American 
 audience to enjoy. We notice that Mr. Froude will reply to Father Burke, 
 and other critics, on Saturday evening, the soth inst., when, after Father 
 Burke 's return from the South, we may expect another telling rejoinder. 
 
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