Irish Confederate Wars

“ Now, however, it is brightening up on the verge of the horizon, and, like chickens, England’s untold acts of infamy and oppression, in regard to Ireland, are coming home to roost. In every city and hamlet, throughout the great Republic of the United States, and in every town and village in Ireland, as well as throughout the rural districts, there exists a regiment or detachment of the vast army of the Irish Republic. No matter how invisible the force may be at any particular point, yet there it exists, awaiting the signal to pounce upon the enemy, and avenge the wrongs of ages ”

“ Popular discontent with misgovernment could be relied upon as one agency; for the Irishman is ever a rebel against tyranny. Centuries of bitter experience have not broken his spirit, nor checked his aspirations.
The American Civil War was another element. The leaders counted on sympathy and aid from the people of the North, sorely grieved by the conduct of England in abetting the South. They counted on the more active support of thousands of Irish-American soldiers who owed a double debt of vengeance to the oppressors of their native land and the enemy of their adopted country. ”

“ In our fallen state, with an island reeking with blood, and the sword at our throat, directed by an administration in the best and in the worst of times hostile to Ireland, we call upon you to assist in rescuing our country from utter and irretrievable ruin—we implore you to interfere [Pg 78] for us with our common Sovereign—to solicit at his paternal hand the removal of those wicked men, who by abusing the confidence of their Sovereign, and sacrificing their duty to his people, to the gratification of ambitious views or native malevolence, have belied the Irish nation ”

“ England sympathised with America. She not only sympathised, but she gave her support to both parties; but who ever heard of an Englishman having been arrested by the United States government for having given his support to the Confederate States of America and placed on his trial for high treason against the government? No such case ever has been. I do not deny that I have sympathised with the Irish people—I love Ireland—I love the Irish people. And, if I were free to-morrow, and the Irish people were to take the field for independence, my sympathy would be with them ”

“ Native Irish life, therefore, throughout the whole of the fifteenth, and during the first half of the sixteenth century, was as free to shape and direct itself, to ends of its own choosing, as it had been at almost any former period in our history. Private wars and hereditary blood-feuds, next after the loss of national unity, were the worst vices of the nation. Deeds of violence and acts of retaliation were as common as the succession of day and night. Every free clansman carried his battle-axe to church and chase, to festival and fairgreen. ”

“ Confederacies of Irish and Anglo-Normans were formed, one following another in endless and hopeless succession. Through all civil strife we may plainly see the steady drift of the peoples to a common patriotism. There was panic in England at these ceaseless efforts to restore an Irish nation, for "Ireland," English statesmen said, "was as good as gone if a wild Irish wyrlinge should be chosen there as king." ”

“ It was, for all who had Irish blood in their veins and Irish sympathies in their hearts, a serious consideration that once again the banner of insurrection against English rule had been unfurled in Ireland, and that on many a spot of Irish earth the organized forces of England were in conflict with the hastily collected, ill-supplied, and almost unarmed levies of Irish patriotism. ”

“ The Confederates, however, failed to take the tide of victory when it served, and wasted their time in a series of futile negotiations with a man who 326certainly had not the power, even if he had the will, to grant them what they haggled for. There is nothing more sad in all Irish History than to read that when Cromwell with a comparatively small army had subjugated Ireland in a few months, 40,000 Irish “swordsmen” took service in foreign countries. ”

“ When, however, we come to dwell on the fact, that outside and beyond her control or reach, another body of Irish, which has been aptly termed a nation within a nation—when it comes to be understood, we say, that on the shores of free America a mighty and invincible Brotherhood has been built up, actuated by every sentiment of hostility which fires the breast of the most implacable of her enemies to-day, and that has for its aim and end an object in common with the people of Ireland at her own doors, then we begin to perceive how harrassed and powerless she must be. ”

“ You are purchasing a legacy of hate and pouring out for yourselves seas of trouble. You are not making the path of loyal men in Ireland, who wish you and your Empire well, any easier by this action. You are sowing your seed on a broad pathway of bloodshed and destruction. You will not kill or conquer or subdue the spirit of the Irish race. It may be too late to appeal to the sense of reason on the part of the Government because reason seems to have forsaken them; but I will tell them that they will get no good either for this country or for the Empire from the course they are pursuing. ”

“ It drained the national resources—it disgusted the national understanding—it made Ireland disunited, and England at once contemptuous of Irish feeling, and suspicious of Irish loyalty. The safety of the empire obviously rendered it impossible to leave in its rear a nation which might throw itself, at a moment’s notice, into the arms of France, Spain, or America—which had actually solicited a French army, and which still carried on transactions amounting to treason at home, and alliance abroad. Thus, the regenerators of Ireland, instead of raising her to a republic, sank her into a province. ”

“ Depute your worthiest citizens to approach the throne, and before that throne let the will of the Irish people be uttered with dignity and decision. If nothing comes of this," he added, "if the constitution opens to us no path to freedom, if the Union be maintained in spite of, the will of the Irish people, if the government of Ireland insist on being a government of dragoons and bombadiers, of detectives and light infantry, then," he exclaimed in the midst of tumultuous cheering, "up with the barricades, and invoke the God of Battles!" ”

“ When you destroy national enthusiasm and pride, you have killed a nation. To destroy Ireland as a nation, she must not only be conquered, she must be obliterated. Her people must be swept away and the land filled with Englishmen. And even then the latent life in the soil, the traditions, the sacrifices, the buried patriotism, would come out like an atmosphere and be breathed into the blood of the newcomers, until in a generation or two they would be as Irish and as distinct as the original Celtic people. Irishmen cannot become provincials. ”

“ You are grossly unjust to them and their splendid sacrifice on your behalf. I sometimes hear people refer to the sacrifice of Ireland in the War, but they have little understanding of the noble way in which the Irish nation responded to the call in the first two years of the War and how gloriously they have served you in many a trying battle in Gallipoli and on the Western Front. You are being brutally unjust to these men. You are destroying the worth of their sacrifice, and if you had taken their opinion you would find that they would not be behind in the course you have now adopted. ”

“ They were soon, by reason of the constant border wars all around the Pale, declared "alien and enemies." And these expressions became, in the eyes of the English lawyers, identical with the Irish race and the Irish nature; so that at all times, peace or war, even when the Irish fought in the English ranks, aiding the Plantagenets in their furious contests with the Scotch or the French, they were still "Irish enemies;" "aliens" unworthy human rights, villeins in whose veins no noble blood could flow, with the exception of five families. ”

“ Yet not merely civilization, but the extreme grandeur and magnificence of Ireland in "former times," is the first postulate of all Irish discontent. It is because England has dimmed her glory and overthrown her royal state that Irishmen burn with patriot indignation, and not by any means because she has merely left barbarism and disunion still barbarous and disunited after seven centuries, and has checked, instead of encouraging, the industry and commerce of the land. ”

“ Throughout every single hour of seven hundred long years, Ireland has been secretly plotting or openly fighting against England. Not one solitary reign, from Henry II down to Victoria I, but has been marked with Irish dissatisfaction of English rule. Either in the aggregate or in detail, the Irish people have, throughout that long period, been constantly asserting their right to independence, and their unalterable antipathy to the presence of a foreign power upon their shores. ”

“ Thanks to that national force,—a true civic guard, quartered during winter on the inhabitants, and ever popular, which proves that it knew how to preserve intact the tradition of Celtic virtues,—Ireland, alone almost among European nations, escaped a Roman invasion. After twelve hundred years the remembrance of the Fenians has remained so vivid in the hearts of the people that the Irish Republicans of America, when they resumed in our own days the struggle in arms against England, naturally chose the name of the ancient defenders of national independence. ”

“ He then traced the history of the Irish Confederation, establishing, from the manifestoes published in the Felon and Nation newspapers, that the determination of these confederates was to entirely abolish the imperial government; to take away from the queen all authority in Ireland; to annihilate all the rights of property; to hold up the hope of plunder to those who would break their oaths of allegiance and join in rebellion; and to hold up the threat of depriving all those of their property who would remain fast to their allegiance, and refuse to assist in the insurrection. ”

“ Ireland has had far graver causes for disaffection towards the English Government than any of the reasons alleged for the secession of Virginia; but Irish officers and Irish soldiers have always been perfectly loyal to England. The reason of the difference is obvious; the officers of the English army have never been distracted by the difficulties of divided allegiance. Make Ireland one of the States of a Confederacy, and these difficulties will at once arise. ”

“ Whoever could help Ireland were their friends. Such a Party encamped within the walls of Parliament, would, in the language of a high Conservative authority, be "more formidable than armed insurrection."
For success it was altogether indispensable that they should be the authentic representatives of the Irish nation, and their main business would be to increase and fortify national opinion at home, from which their authority would spring. The Confederates at home must labour to secure the election to the corporations and boards of guardians of men of trust, intelligence, and perseverance. ”

“ The attempts of the Irish at physical resistance to English authority have been steadily diminishing in gravity during the present century—witness the descent from the rebellion of 1798 to Smith O'Brien's rebellion and the Fenian rising of 1867. On the other hand the power of the Irish to act as a disturbing agency in English politics has greatly increased, and the reason is that the stream of Irish discontent is fed by thousands of rills from the United States. ”

“ A section of the Anglo-Irish Confederates imagining themselves still English, looking only towards England, and never dreaming that a day might come when they with the poet Spenser’s grandsons would be forced to transplant to Connaught as Irish Papists, urged the granting of a truce, and though the Old Irish protested against this throwing away of their advantages, they respected the Oath of Confederation too much to make any violent opposition. ”

“ And we cannot do so, for, as a nation Ireland has never recognized England as her conqueror, but as her antagonist, as an enemy that must be fought. And this attitude has succeeded in keeping the soul of Ireland alive and free.
For the conquest of a nation is never complete till its soul submits, and the submission of the soul of a nation to the conqueror makes its slavery and subjection more sure. But the soul of Ireland has never submitted. ”

“ The king's affairs grew desperate, and overtures were made to the Irish Confederates by the king's adherents in Ireland, the principal of whom were the Earls of Clanricarde and Ormond. The Confederates held out with great tenacity for their stipulated measures of redress; yet these the king, even in his direst extremity, refused to concede. But through the intrigues of the two royal agents, the councils of the Confederation were at last distracted; two parties, one for the king, and one for Catholic right, were formed ”

“ If this Government had not blundered, if the War Office had not grossly and malignantly mishandled the situation, you would have had Ireland at this moment as loyally on your side as any part of your wide Dominions. You have not trusted Irishmen. ”

“ That was the record when Irish sentiment was completely out of touch with British; what would it be now, when Irish sentiment was wholly with Great Britain in the war? The little groups of Irishmen who were opposing enlistment were the bitterest enemies of the Nationalists. Ireland felt now that the British democracy had kept faith with her; she was specially moved by the fact that the war was undertaken in defence of small nations and oppressed peoples. ”