From The United Irishman, May 19, 1900. It is a response to an article by Fr. Patrick F. Kavanagh on May 12’s edition, titled ‘Some Things and Persons I Do Not Believe In.’
I do not believe that a man can be a good patriot without being virtuous (I use the word in the sense I take Father Kavanagh to mean it) in his private life. I do not say that a man who has been guilty of theft would be fit to be a State Treasurer, but I do say that—assuming, for instance, the man to be a Turk—he might make a very excellent keeper of the Harem. I should think Abdul an idiot were he to appoint some notorious libertine to that post, but were he to appoint the libertine his State Treasurer I do not see, unless the libertine were also a rogue, why he should not prove himself a faithful public servant. I do not believe that a political leader should be deposed for any save a political offence. I believe the Irish people made themselves ridiculous by their treatment of Charles Stewart Parnell. He had committed no political crime. He had not sinned against them. If he deserved stoning to death, it was not the Irish people who had the right to be his executioners.
I do not believe secret societies have always proved failures in this country. We owe what national self-respect we still retain mainly to the secret society of the United Irishmen and the secret society of the Fenian Brotherhood. I do not believe those societies have benefited only the foul brood of spies and informers; they made men of slaves, and curbed the insolence of tyrants. I do not believe they have always either been set on foot or utilised by the Government—I can find no tittle of historical proof of the truth of the statement. I do not believe that secret societies are in themselves good things, but I do believe they are often very necessary. The tyranny of a secret society cannot possibly be worse than that of the worst Government in the world—no secret society can exact from its members more than a tyrant can—their lives. I am aware that secret societies are forbidden by the Church. I am also aware that the Church was at one time a secret society itself, breaking the laws of the State, meeting in defiance of the Government, and preaching and teaching treason against the Established Government and the Established religion. If it were allowable for the early Christian to be secret and seditious, why should the latter-day Christian, enjoying the benefits derived from successful treason, deny the oppressed the right to be at least as little respecters of tyrants’ law as were the primitive Christians?
CUGUAN.