John Mitchel

“ Of course you will pack the jury against us, because all the world knows you dare not bring us to trial before an impartial Jury of our countrymen. It matters little whether you pack or do not pack. Whatever kind of trial you select—a fair one or a fraudulent—a trial for misdemeanour or a trial for felony—or whether you drop justice altogether, and try grape-shot, I tell you that you are met. The game is a-foot; the work is begun: Ireland has now the ‘British Empire’ by the throat; and if she relax her gripe till the monster is strangled, may she be a province, lashed and starved forever. ”

“ Parliament is a very fine thing to talk or sing about. It has historic associations of a theatric sort; but no Irish peasant or working man will ever pull a trigger for the sake of restoring it.
What, then, is the true value of that mighty movement that has stirred the millions of our Catholic countrymen for so many years? What hope—what faith is it that has sustained them through so many famines—that has drawn them together in multitudinous assemblages on a hundred hillsides to call the earth and the heavens to witness their wrongs and their resolves? ”

“ Land in Ireland is life. Just in the proportion that our people contrive to keep or to gain some foot-hold on the soil, in that proportion exactly they will live and not die. All social, all industrial, all National questions resolve themselves now into this—how many Irish cultivators can keep root in the earth during the present year—that so the storm and blight, the famine, and the black flood of pauperism may not sweep them off, away into destruction and outer darkness? ”

“ There is now growing on the soil of Ireland a wealth of grain, and roots, and cattle far more than enough to sustain in life and in comfort all the inhabitants of the island. That wealth must not leave us another year, not until every grain of it is fought for in every stage, from the tying of the sheaf to the loading of the ship. And the effort necessary to that simple act of self-preservation will at one and the same blow prostrate British dominion and landlordism together. ”

“ Why should you pack a jury against us? Remember, my lord, you belong to that liberal and truly enlightened party called ‘Whigs;’ it is only a ‘Tory,’ you know, who packs;—and remember, also, that although I deny the lawfulness of your ‘law’ and your law-courts altogether, and hold a trial for sedition before a packed jury in Ireland quite as constitutional a proceeding as a trial before an unpacked one, yet your lordship cannot take this view of the matter. Your case is that there is law in the land—that we have broken that law, and are to be tried by that law. ”

“ And, what is strangest than all, it seems to be from the Irish that you fear this danger most; the people whom you have been nourishing, cherishing and spoon-feeding, by means of so many kind and well-paid British nurses, for two years—on whom you have lavished so many tons of printed paper, so many millions of cooked rations—these are the people who plot ‘treason,’ and eagerly flock to hear ‘open and advised speaking,’ eagerly devour ‘published, printed, and written’ language all urging them to arm for the overthrow of British rule in Ireland! It is a bad world! ”

“ The farmers of the other three provinces, without a shred of law or custom on their side, are, it is true, here and there making out a law for themselves; but, on the whole, they are yielding, sinking, withering off the earth. From north, south, east, and west, comes a terrible cry of terror and of agony—Spare us, spare us our lives and lands!
In this crisis comes in the ‘Government’ with a ‘Bill to ameliorate the relations of landlord and tenant.’ A fine phrase! a liberal and conciliatory phrase! But the bill, the bill! Surely it legalizes tenant-right at last? ”

“ We must have Ireland, not for certain peers and nominees of peers in College Green, but Ireland for the Irish. I scorn and spit upon "Repeal of the Union." The "Queen, Lords and Commons of Ireland" will never be seen in bodily form upon this earth. "The golden link of the Crown" is as great a humbug as the great Peace principle of the "mighty Leader of the Irish People." ”

“ You need not expect to free it from the mighty power of England by yourselves—you are not able to do it. Drive the Ulster Protestants away from your movement by needless tests and you perpetuate the degradation both of yourselves and them. Keep them at a distance from you, make yourselves subservient to the old and wellknown English policy of ruling Ireland always by one party or the other and England will keep her heel upon both your necks for ever. ”

“ In the meantime, it appears plain, from all authorities, that there is a ‘surplus’ either of the one class or the other;—you, the million, seem pitted in deadly straggle against them, the eight thousand; and either you or they, it is feared, must die.
But it is a great truth, ‘that the Life of one peasant is as precious as the Life of one nobleman or gentleman. ”

“ And for the "institutions of the country," I loathe and despise them. We are sickening and dying of these institutions fast; they are consuming us like a plague, degrading us to paupers in mind, body, and estate—yes, making our very souls beggarly and cowardly. They are a failure and a fraud, these institutions. From the topmost crown jewel to the meanest detective's notebook there is no soundness in them. God and man are weary of them. ”

“ The broad land of Ireland, which was given to you by GOD, has been given by various Kings and Queens of England to some few thousand persons, who now claim it as absolutely theirs, with the growth upon it, and the minerals beneath it, and the air above it, "from the centre"—so says the Law—"up to the Heavens." But as you, the "millions" and "masses" cannot live without earth and air, these few thousand persons, having a monoply of the articles, and finding that men will give anything and do anything rather than die of hunger, cry out Free trade! ”

“ Moral Force, and "Patience and Perseverance," are scattered to the wild winds of Heaven. The music my countrymen now love best to hear, is the rattle of arms and the ring of the rifle. As I sit here, and write in my lonely cell, I hear, just dying away, the measured tramp of ten thousand marching men—my gallant Confederates, unarmed and silent, but with hearts like bended bow, waiting till the time comes. ”

“ To impose penalties on your worship?—To take forfeited estates from Saxon aristocrats and vest them in Milesian aristocrats?—To enjoy the honour and glory of seeing Irish nobles and gentlemen sitting in College Green?
My good friends, what Irish Repealers really want is, that they may have leave to live, and not die; they want to be made sure that what they sow they shall also reap; they want a home and a foothold on a soil, that they may not be naked and famishing beggars in their own land. In one word—they demand Ireland for the Irish—not for the Irish gentry alone. ”

“ Yes, of course you will prosecute before long; in self-defence, I hope, you must ;—that you will bid the sheriff to bid Mr. PONDER (that, I think, is the gentleman’s name) not to pack the jury. A high-minded English nobleman, a conciliatory and ameliorative nobleman, so gracious at Lord Mayor’s feasts, so condescending at Antient Concerts, so blandly benignant at reunions of literary persons,—surely such a nobleman as this will not play with loaded dice, or with marked cards, to juggle away an accused man’s liberty or life. ”

“ When I speak of your destruction, my lord, I mean only official extinction; the abolition of that Government of which you are agent ;—when I speak of ours, I mean our death on field or scaffold, by your weapon of ‘law,’ or your weapon of steel. I mean, simply, that we will overthrow your Government, or die, This trifling prosecution for ‘sedition’ is but a beginning: you have invited us to fight you on the battle-ground of ‘law’—depend upon it you shall have enough of it: the resources of this ‘law’ of yours will be taxed to their very uttermost ”

“ In short, I determined to walk, before the eyes of this down-trodden people, straight into the open jaws of ‘Law,’ to draw his fangs, to tear out his lying tongue, and fling his carcass to be trampled on by those who had trembled at his nod. I may be devoured, it is true; We may be destroyed; we will not be defeated. ”

“ Thus, every scheme for what is called the amelioration of this country, seems based on the assumption that the first thing to be done, is to weed the Irish population out of the Irish soil. Pauper labour, pauper farms, pauper schools of industry, pauper life, and pauper spirit—these are the basis on which our law-makers would have us re-construct society in this island.
It is tenant-right alone that can stay this plague. ”

“ I should like to meet the Northern farmer or labouring man who would tell me in so many words that he prefers dear government to cheap government; that he likes the House of Brunswick better than his own house; that he would rather have the affairs of the country managed by foreign noblemen and gentlemen than by himself and his neighbours; that he is content to pay, equip, and arm an enormous army, and give the command of it to those foreign noblemen and to be disarmed himself or liable to be disarmed as you are, my friends, at any moment. ”

“ In France and Belgium complete religious equality has long been acknowledged. In Italy, the moment they saw Austria's back turned, complete religious equality was proclaimed. Whenever any of the German States becomes its own master religious equality is the first thing the people insist upon. In truth, religious penalties and disqualifications are now nowhere to be found save as the worn-out tools and engines of some old tyranny or other. The people have no interest in them at all, see no meaning in them, and desire, above all things, to have done with them for ever. ”

“ Now as Heaven is above us, it is a Bill deliberately framed to destroy tenant-right where it is,—to cut off all hope of it where it is not,—to rob the north,—to exterminate the south,—to take care that ‘property’ in Ireland shall support poverty, not by dividing the property, but by slaying the surplus poverty. ”

“ Yes, indeed, after the reading of that short paper, it was "felony" for anyone to write and print,or openly and advisedly to say (what is, however, God's truth) , that the said "Government" is a Government of fraud and blood, and ought to be overthrown by force of arms, or otherwise; and that no people on earth would have endured the like half so long as the Irish people. We may think this, we may know it, but if we say it, there is "crime." ”

“ I laughed outright here on Tuesday night last at the suspicious warmth with which Dublin merchants, as if half afraid of themselves, protested so anxiously that they would yield in loyalty to none. They, democrats by nature and position, meeting there without a nobleman to countenance them, with the Queen's representative scowling black upon them from his castle, are—they declare it with most nervous solemnity—loyal men. ”

“ And indeed, my lord, this ‘vigorous’ policy will prove an effectual check upon us Irish ‘revolutionists’ provided the men with whom you have to deal are fools, braggarts, traitors, and cowards. If we have undertaken the trade of patriotism for profit—if we have played the game of patriotism for notoriety—if we have been merely aspirants to the cheap martyrdom of two years’ imprisonment, with fetes, and levees, and couchees—why, in that case, the thing is at an end—you have tamed us— sedition is crushed—and the Queen’s ‘Crown and Government’ are safe for this time. ”

“ But your lordship, on the other hand, maintains, I presume, that the thing called a Government is not a Foreign usurpation, but one of the ‘institutions of the country’—that the persons composing it are not robbers and butchers, but statesmen— that their object is not the plunder and starvation of the people, but the good order and peace of society, the amelioration of social relations, and the dispensation of justice between man and man. ”

“ With the ruin of the tillers of the soil, all is ruined —in vain shall you adopt manufacture pledges—hold meetings to develop resources—form companies—make speeches—insist upon National rights, a National legislature, a National flag;—once let the farmers be swept off this Irish soil, and there is an utter end of us and of our cause. ”

“ There is no doubt that the acknowledgment of such a right in the tenants would virtually give them a joint proprietorship in the fee-simple of the land, and might therefore be called, to some extent, a transfer of property. But if, at the same time, it stimulated industry, greatly increased production, and added immensely to the national wealth, then it can be easily conceived how it would add to the substantial wealth of the landlord, as well as of the tenant, making the latter an independent man, without taking a farthing from the rent of the former. ”

“ It is this conspiracy of " gentry " and "capitalists," "doing what they like with their own," fearing not God, neither regarding Man, that have established such free trade in human bodies and souls that they sit now at ease as the gods of this lower world, and by the alembic of Money, and the crucible of starvation, extract from your blood, and sweat, and brain and marrow whatever there is in you marketable, whereby they may turn a penny and leave the offal of you to the poor houses or the fever hospital. ”

“ In one word, land is life: and for the possession of land there is now a deadly struggle going on in every part of Ireland. The farmers of Ulster are in utter dismay, seeing their ancient tenant-right slipping away from them day by day, and the monster pauperism coming nearer and nearer to the door. ”

“ If it needs all your crop to keep you alive, you will be justified in refusing and resisting payment of any rent, tribute, rates, or taxes whatsoever.
This is the true doctrine of Political Economy. All economists write that the rent of land, for instance, is the overplus, remaining after the cost of labour and the reasonable profit of the farmer. ”

“ Truly, it was high time. I am no advocate for ‘liberty of the Press;’ To think no man can commit a much graver crime than exciting discontent against government and laws, wherever there are government and laws. ”

“ Did you ever hear of an uncivilised and savage country so very uncivilised and savage that those who cultivated the soil, regularly delivered up the produce to others and died of hunger when they had reaped the harvest? ”

“ What the people want to see in their leader is individual heroism; is the determination to do themselves what they incite others to do: and seeing that, I believe they will follow, though it were to the gibbet’s foot or the cannon’s muzzle.
As you have deliberately pitted this British ‘law’ against the Irish nation, there is one little matter I should like to arrange with you. I have already broached the subject to my Lord CLARENDON - but there is no use talking to him—he is too hopelessly committed to bad company, and involved in evil courses. I mean, of course, the packing of the jury. ”

“ The Irish noble and the British statesman want the very same thing: they are both a tail. The grand master knows that if you stick by your loyalty and uphold the British connection you secure to him his coronet, his influence, and his rental—discharged of tenant-right and all plebeian claims. And Lord Clarendon knows on his side that if you uphold landlordism and abandon tenant-right and bend all your energies to resisting the "encroachments of Popery" you thereby perpetuate British dominion in Ireland and keep the "Empire" going yet a little while. ”

“ But let the tillers of the soil be once uprooted,—let the forest be cleared, and the prostrate, withered nation is fit for railway sleepers; the living forest is dead and gone;—the living nation is undone for ever, and the peace that knew it shall know it no more. ”

“ Now, I confess that I am a "revolutionist,"—that is to say, I desire by any means, peaceable or otherwise, to alter the system of Government and distribution of property in this land, so that men willing to earn their bread may have leave and opportunity to earn it—so that those who till the soil may be sure that they will have enough of the produce to live upon. ”

“ Yet there is one lesson you must learn—fraternal respect for your countrymen of the South, and that sympathy with them and faith in them without which there can be no vital nationality in Ireland. You little know the history and sore trials and humiliations of this ancient Irish race; ground and trampled first for long ages into the very earth, and then taught—expressly taught—in solemn harangues r and even in sermons, that it was their duty to die, and see their children die before their faces r rather than resist their tyrants, as men ought. ”

“ It may be laid down as a rule, admitting of no exception, that in these later ages, wherever the sovereignty,of the People is established, there religious ascendancy can stand no longer.
But the reason why your grand masters and grand chaplains endeavour to represent the national movement in Ireland as a movement for religious ascendancy is tolerably plain. It is merely to disguise from you the true meaning and drift of it. "Repeal," they tell you, involves a religious war, and penal laws against Protestants and seizure of forfeited estates. ”

“ You can hardly believe that creatures with the gait and aspect of men could have been brought to this. And you cannot wonder that they should have been slow, slow in struggling upward out of such darkness and desolation. But I tell you the light has at length come to them; the flowery spring of this year is the dawning of their day; and before the cornfields of Ireland are white for the reaper our eyes shall see the sun flashing gloriously, if the heavens be kind to us, 'on a hundred thousand pikes. ”

“ Repeal is a Papist movement, and Papists want ascendancy, and if we had not Protestant England to back us the number of Catholics in Ireland would so preponderate that they could carry anything they liked against us. Now, I do assure you, my friends, that, except yourselves, there is nobody in all Ireland dreaming of religious distinctions in politics, and such nonsense is kept alive only by our worshipful grand masters with their prate about Jezebel and the Man of Sin. ”