Irish National League

“ Redmond explained the objects of the League as follows:-
"The United Irish League is not merely an agrarian movement. It is first, last, and all the [pg 182] time a National movement; and those of us who are endeavouring to rouse the farmers of Ireland, as we endeavoured twenty years ago in the days of the Land League, to rouse them, are doing so, not merely to obtain the removal of their particular grievances, but because we believe by rousing them we will be strengthening the National movement and helping us to obtain our end, which is, after all, National independence of Ireland." ”

“ Irish National Land League of Great Britain, Irish National League of Great Britain, and United Irish League of Great Britain—has been in existence since 1873, working in accordance with and taking the name of whatever has been the recognised organisation for the time being in Ireland. ”

“ It would take too much of my space to recount all the varied activities of the League, all that it did to preserve ancient Irish culture, to make the past live again in the lives of the people, to foster national sports and recreations, to organise Gaelic festivals of the kind that flourished in Ireland's artistic past, to create an Irish Ireland and to arrest the decadence of manners and the Anglicisation which had almost eaten into the souls of the people and destroyed their true Celtic character. ”

“ Upon thousands also of Americans, interested more or less intelligently in British affairs, but neither familiar, nor caring to be, with the details of the political situation in Great Britain, this appearance of the British Premier, as the champion of Home Rule for Ireland, denouncing the “base [pg li] ness and blackguardism” of Pitt and his accomplices, the framers of the Union of 1800, naturally produced a very profound impression. What might be almost called a “tidal wave” of sympathy with the Irish National League, and with him as its ally, made itself felt throughout the United States. ”

“ The Irish National League was, however, founded in October to take up the work of the defunct Land League, and the country continued to be disturbed. The law was paralysed, for no jury could be trusted to convict even on the clearest evidence, and the National League branches assumed judicial functions. Men were openly tried all over the country for disobeying the revolutionary decrees, and private spite was often the cause of their being accused. ”

“ On the other hand, the triumph of the National League on its present lines of action would diminish the value for good or evil of any man’s hold upon the Irish people, for the obvious reason that by driving out of Ireland, and ruining, the class of “landlords” and capitalists, it would leave the country reduced to a dead level of peasant-holdings, saddled with a system of poor-rates beyond the ability of the peasant-holders to carry, and at the mercy, therefore, of the first bad year. ”

“ To repress what was in fact a rebellion fed by foreign aid, to uphold the law, and rescue life and industry in Ireland from the lawless tyranny of the National League, as it was called, the government, as was its plain duty, sought and obtained extraordinary powers, and threw a number of the leaders of the rebellion into prison. It was time, when loyal citizens were joining the League for protection in their callings, which the queen’s government could no longer afford. When the Irish rose against the draft in New York, the Americans shot down several hundreds of them without process of law. ”

“ We don’t.’ Most certainly I do not expect to found anything on robbery, or administer anything by falsehood, but I do not in the least believe that the National League either expects or desires to found an Irish republic at all! Neither do I believe that the Leaguers will long retain the administration of such small measure of Home Rule, as I now (since the late utterances of Mr. Parnell and Mr. Gladstone) believe we are going to get. ”

“ The establishment of this separate Parliament is necessary, because we must give Ireland the opportunity of doing what we ourselves are unable to do, to find the best machinery they can to carry on the business of government. But, when this machinery is once found and invested with the resources and influence of a Government, we cannot suppose that our troubles will be at an end. If disputes arise in the working out of the new Irish Constitution, the popular majority will not be slow to call in the aid of the American Irish who have founded the National League. ”

“ Were the enthusiasm of the Gaelic League that is to say, the national enthusiasm linked to the economic life of such communities, were Irish music, Irish dance, Irish history and Irish tale-telling provided in its halls, of a winter's evening, the flowing together of both streams would make these communities, not only stateships, but centres of national life as they were in the days of old. They would maintain their own musicians and their own historians and professors, would vie with one another in their excellence and exchange them with one another. ”

“ Thousands of us lost our lives, all of us risked our lives, with the hope of achieving a national unity which could never be built on the basis of regarding no man as an Irishman who did not speak, or at least desire to speak, Gaelic for his mother tongue. The action of Irish soldiers was thwarted and frustrated by the action of a very few separatists, with a very small expense to themselves in bloodshed. But the tribute to the work of the Gaelic League is that Ireland accepted them and rejected us. None can deny that it has been a potent stimulus to national education ”

“ They know the moral influence of leagues and combinations; they do not reflect that a Parliament or House of Commons in sympathy with resistance to Imperial demands would possess tenfold the moral authority of any National League. Note too that the Irish Ministry and the Irish Parliament would play into one another's hands, and would further be strengthened by their Irish allies at Westminster, as also by the Irish electoral vote in England. ”

“ What we would remind our readers is that for nearly twenty years past he has, in the main line of his public life, notwithstanding some convulsive oscillations, pursued with the pertinacity of one possessed the policy of which the present Irish organization is the natural and the logical development. The National League represents the spirit to which Mr. Gladstone appealed at Southport in 1867. In the December of that year he charged the new voters, in words of solemn adjuration, to look at Ireland from the Irish point of view. ”

“ The desire for further winnings possessed them, as the passion of a gambler. Mr. Parnell's triumphant personality was the first thought in their minds. He had already taken 20 per cent. off their rents. Next time they were confident he would take off 50 per cent. or abolish rent altogether.
The Liberals who had been dreaming complacently about the happy results of Mr. Gladstone's Irish policy awoke to find Ireland in possession of the powerful, well-organized, hostile, combination known as the National League. ”

“ The Skirmishing Fund was entirely sustained by them. The National League lives, in a manner, upon their subsidies. When Mr. Parnell went to visit the United States, they were powerful enough to induce the Senate of Washington to give him the honours of the sitting—an exception which stands unique in history.
The independence of Ireland is their dream, their ambition, their hope, their luxury in life. The day when this is accomplished, England will perhaps realize that the Irish emigration has been a political blunder, as it is an economical mistake and a moral crime. ”

“ These very institutions, the National League and the Plan of Campaign, which would vanish into thin air upon a rational settlement of the Irish difficulty, might with their power drive such deep roots into the soil, they might acquire such a mastery, if not over the understandings, over the passions of the people, for passions in these cases will always be let loose, they might acquire a strength which may enable them hereafter to offer serious hindrances to government which is good. ”

“ The people flock in their thousands to witness matches for the principal league contests or cup ties. But the greatest crowds of all go to see Gaelic football, the national game; and to hurling, also distinctively Irish, they foregather in serried masses. Since the Gaelic Athletic Association was founded both football and hurling have prospered exceedingly. They are essentially popular forms of sport, and the muscular manhood of city and country finds in them a natural outlet for their characteristic Celtic vigor. ”

“ Butt, a man of social sensibility and refinement, unfitted for an aggressive part. The agitation under Parnell combined agrarianism with repeal, thus giving the political part of the movement a hold upon the people and a force and a formidable extension in Ireland which by itself it had never had. The Land League, becoming the National League, almost supplanted the queen’s government in Ireland. ”

“ While giving his experiences in connection with the revolutionary movement, he declares that no one can blame the Irish people for having recourse to any means which may enable them to remain on their native soil. They have, he says, to use whatever means have been left to save themselves from extermination and Ireland from becoming a desert. He, therefore, declares his sympathy with the later movements of the Irish people—the Land League, the National League, and the United Irish League, while never abandoning the principles of '98, '48 and '67. ”

“ From the moment of his arrival in Chicago, he went in enthusiastically for Irish politics, and took a leading part in both Revolutionary and Land League matters. He identified himself with the Clan-na-Gael, and was prominent at all gatherings of the Irish of every kind. He was strong in social instincts, and was quite a figure at social gatherings, where he used to great advantage the fine tenor voice of which he was possessed, singing national songs especially with great spirit and enthusiasm. ”

“ The Ministry had not been a week in office, when the most advanced and outspoken of the Irish leaders, Mr. John Dillon, presiding at a meeting of the National League, frankly declared 'he never felt more inclined to say nothing than to-day, the present Ministry had been formed on one question and on one question alone, and that was the rights of the Irish nation.' With Mr. Gladstone in office, the policy of the League was to [Pg 561] apply the policy of silence so often inculcated by Mr. Parnell. Speaking out might only embarrass their new allies. ”

“ Parnell seemed at first reluctant to extend the land movement to the whole of Ireland, but he was easily convinced of the necessity. In October 1879 the National Land League of Ireland was founded at a convention in Dublin, and Parnell was chosen president. The league announced the two-fold aim of bringing about a reduction of rackrents and of promoting the transference of the ownership of the land to the occupiers. A manifesto, addressed by the executive to the Irish race, appealed for support for the league on these terms. ”

“ The Irish party instantly proceeded to identify the lords who had rejected the Compensation for Disturbance Bill with the government which had brought it in, and to stir up popular feeling throughout Ireland against the whole English connection. The autumn and winter were marked by one continuous struggle between Forster and the Land League on the one hand, and Forster and the more 'advanced' section of his colleagues in the government on the other. ”

“ But he ceased to play an active part in Irish-American politics. Like O'Leary and the Fenians generally, he regarded the home rule movement under Butt and Parnell with distrust, and he was open in his condemnation of the Land League agitation. ”

“ There were throughout the nineteenth century various short and ineffective attempts at a revival of Irish industries, but the first [Pg 8] evidence of a sense of spiritual loss was the successful attempt in the eighties at a revival and strengthening of Irish games and athletics, which resulted in the removal of English games and athletics from the dominant position and their gradual decline to their proper position as the games of a Garrison. But the turning point of all modern Irish development was the foundation of the Gaelic League in 1893. ”

“ The continuance of the League as a beneficent force, or indeed a force at all, seems to me, as in the case of the co-operative organisation to which I have compared it, to be vitally dependent on a scrupulous observance of that part of its constitution which keeps the door open to Irishmen of every creed or political party. Only thus can the League remain a truly national body, and attract from all classes Irishmen who are capable of forwarding its true policy. ”

“ Well, I am sorry, but if he can’t keep from making enemies, what chance is there for the like of us?”
He was one of the vice-presidents of our Society for a while and we are always grateful to him for that Twisting of the Rope in which he played with so much gaiety, ease, and charm. But in founding the Gaelic League, he had done far more than that for our work. It was a movement for keeping the Irish language a spoken one, with, as a chief end, the preserving of our own nationality. ”

“ A conspiracy to boycott is punishable, but boycotting is not in itself an offence. Hence the great part of the country has passed under the dominion of the United Irish League. What the future will actually bring forth for “poor, distressed Ireland” it is impossible to predict, but it may be presumed that other lands will go on enriching themselves by the accumulation, as citizens, of the flower of Ireland’s flock, and that this is in fact but a natural enough thinning-out process, which has obtained among other nations before now. ”