From The United Irishman, March 25, 1848. Speech given at a ‘most numerous meeting of the inhabitants of Dublin… held on the open space of ground at the North Wall, for the purpose of adopting an address to the citizens of the French Republic’ on 20 March, 1848.
It has been entrusted to me to bring up an address to the citizens of the French Republic. I hope, sir, we have all assembled here to-day in a spirit of due humility. Nobody here, I trust, imagines that in offering our congratulations to the sovereign citizens of France we are addressing our equals, or that the triumph of liberty, equality, fraternity in Paris, is any triumph to us in Dublin. This is no gala day, indeed, for us. We, natives of Ireland—inhabitants of Dublin—not citizens of any place—strangers at home, and surplus sojourners in the land that bore us—come together under the guns of a foreign garrison, and by permission of the military governor who holds our island for the English, to felicitate another people on the achievement of their freedom. And that is not all: our own neighbours and fellow-slaves and brother surplus have many of them shunned even this timid and cautious demonstration of sympathy, lest some too-presumptuous young man—some enthusiastic and unconstitutional pauper, forgetting that he is an Irishman—should, in the excitement of the moment, touch a note somewhat too proud and defiant, that might provoke our masters to scourge us back with ignominy to our homes.
These are the conditions under which we find ourselves assembled this day in our own city; and so humiliating are they that I for one should take shame to attend this meeting at all if I did not feel within me the assurance that our day is coming. We congratulate the French to-day with bated breath and whispering humbleness; but if there be faith in man—if there be truth and manhood upon earth, or justice in heaven—the day is near at hand when France shall, in her turn, congratulate us on freedom won; and when Ireland will have no need to hold down her head or muffle her voice, as she joins in the jubilant chorus of liberated nations.
On this subject, sir, I wish to restrain myself here to-day. There may be men present who hold a hundred different views as to forms of government and systems of national policy, and also as to our immediate duties, arising out of this grand event in Paris. On all these points I have, indeed strong opinions, and in proper times and places have not failed, and shall not fail, to promulgate and enforce them; but in moving this address, no word shall escape my lips that might for a moment jar the harmony of our meeting, or lessen the cordiality wherewith I am sure every man here desires to greet the great and gallant French nation.
On one point, too, we are sure of unanimity. We have all exulted together in the downfall of the false and greedy tyrant of the barricades. Who amongst us did not feel his heart bound stronger and his blood run quicker, when he heard of that mighty and generous nation arising in her majesty, and, at a single effort, flinging off the strongest tyranny in Europe, with its endless chains of fortresses, barracks, and batteries, like dew-drops from the lion’s mane?
Why, here is a new charter and muniment of title to the earth, proving at last that the man of the nineteenth century, with all his ignorant enlightenment and sleek civilization, has not yet lost his manhood. And truly it needed proof. The nations had lain in a trance too long, and the virtue seemed to have gone out of them, insomuch that men thought the world was waxing old. Parchment treaties, devised by certain crowned conspirators at Vienna three-and-thirty years ago, seemed to lie like a spell upon their hearts and arms. France, the old pioneer of freedom, seemed enslaved for ever by her own hired servant. She who was wont to make and unmake dynasties with a blast of her cannon—who was wont to bind Kings in chains and nobles with fetters of iron—had become, it was thought, a mere appanage at last to a royal gambler and his brood.
Poland had risen to protest against the parchment blasphemy, and had sunk once more in her blood. Italy was fast bound, like Prometheus, by Strength and Force, to her rock; the two-headed black vulture of Austria was gnawing her liver undisturbed, and the blood of her Bandieras, done to death by an English right hon. detective, seemed to have sunk into the earth without even a cry for vengeance. Spain had become a mere stake for the royal gamesters of Paris and St. James’s; and Ireland! Ireland! Over Ireland had settled a deeper and darker pall than ever. Black hate, and strife, and suspicion, had shattered her power, and baffled every effort for freedom; and her children lay dying by myriads round her coasts, mourned only by the hoarse Atlantic. On all sides the horizon of the world was gloomy and hopeless enough, when suddenly on a signal from gallant Sicily, the right noble and right royal workmen of Paris broke the accursed spell, and sounded in thunder the reveillez of sleeping Europe—and with a certain blazing throne hard by the Column of July, they have reared a pillar of fire to guide the nations through the darkness.
I call those workmen royal, sir, because Labour is the only king in France now, and in his clemency, gentleness, and wisdom, as well as in his prowess, he is every inch a king. And I say that the burning throne of the sceptered stockjobber is a pillar of fire to guide mankind—not on account of the establishment thereby of any peculiar form of government, but because with the dynasty of Orleans has sunk the more terrible and fatal tyranny of capital over industry.
Yes, as that rotten old throne burned and crackled far more mounted skyward than the smoke and sparks of its embers. It was found to be stuffed with the political economy of Adam Smith; its supporters were fair competition, able-bodied pauperism, free trade, and starvation. To pinch the vitals of the working men, in order to swell the money-bags of the millionaire—to take a full twelve hours of toil, and give half a day’s food in return—and to do all this by the mere operation of free trade, and the liberal doctrine of supply and demand; such were the maxims, principles, creeds, and gospels of the Orleans throne; and as it sunk in red ashes on that day of glory, they, too, as recognized principles, disappeared from French social life, we may hope for ever.
It is well that we should all fix in our minds the actual gain, the real substantial thing done by each of the three French revolutions. For, after all, the change of outward symbols of government, the setting up or the burning down of thrones and sceptres, is a small thing. A fleur-de-lis is, in itself, as good as a tri-colour; and a tri-colour, with the blue next the flagstaff, is every bit as good as one with the red. But, what was done?—what was won? I will tell you what was won;—the first revolution destroyed landlordism, and gave the soil of France, in small lots, to its own tillage farmers, to have and to hold to them and their heirs for ever.
That was the first revolution, sixty years ago. The second, in 1830, abolished the outrageous claim of legitimacy, and affirmed the right of France to choose her own rulers in spite of the holy allies and all the world. And the third has established the rights of labour, and specifically its right to combine in order to secure to itself fair remuneration and Christian usage. Hereafter, in France, the men who weave the cloth will get some of it to wear; those who raise the food will eat their share of it; those who build houses will have a roof over their heads; and those who maintain the state will rule the state.
These, sir, have been the three trials, the three labours of France; and as they have all three to be gone through here, and there can be no rest for Irishmen until they are accomplished, I will only add, that I am for beginning without delay. I will now read the address:—
TO THE CITIZENS OF THE FRENCH REPUBLIC.
THE ADDRESS.
As slaves should address freemen—as a land which has yet its independence to assert, and its social freedom to attain, should address a sovereign state and a republic, we address you, citizens!
Had we a national government, a recognised centre willing and competent to act and speak for us, it would have long since boldly declared the admiration of your heroism, the sympathy with your cause, the delight in your victory which we feel, but are, from our condition, incapable of uttering. Foreign dominion and distraction among ourselves choke the best and noblest feeling of our hearts, and turn into empty wind the voice of millions.
Receive from us, citizens, all the congratulations we can offer; and be assured that beneath them there is much that cannot be uttered—behind them, the longings and passions of suffering and enslaved men. You who have only but yesterday broken through even a mild despotism, and yet who were compelled to hide in your hearts for eighteen years the hate of that despotism which now you have so nobly vindicated—you, citizens, you can understand us.
We recognise in the French Republic the work of working men. We see in its every act justice to the rights of labour; and in its victories, its glories, its success, and enduring justice, we, working men, participate.
But, enslaved as we are, we can only offer you our individual sympathy and friendship; and we ask, in return, that you will look upon the sufferings of the oldest and most persecuted sister of our common Celtic race with commiseration and sorrow. We ask you not to blush for our shame and our slavery, but to retain for us reciprocal friendship and sympathy till our liberated country can deserve it.
RICHARD O’GORMAN, Chairman
P. BARRY, BARTHW. REDMOND, Secretaries.
I have the honour to move that this address be adopted by the meeting, and presented in Paris by a deputation.