From The Nation, February 5, 1848.
We have been accustomed hitherto, sir, to the utmost unanimity in our public meetings. Reports and resolutions brought up from the council have commonly been passed with acclamation, and as a matter of course—or, if any one dissented from any part of them, he contented himself with the proviso contained in our seventh fundamental rule, that no report or resolution of the body bound a member who had not expressly assented to the same. Yet I believe the meeting will not be surprised at my thinking it necessary to move an amendment to the resolutions proposed by Mr. O’Brien.
First, however, I wish to make public acknowledgment of the candour and manliness of Mr O’Brien’s conduct in this matter. Having made up his mind that the opinions avowed in my letter, and in another letter of my friend Mr. Reilly’s, disqualified us from remaining members of the council, he made no scruple to say so, and to urge by letter than in the list of the new council my name or Mr. Reilly’s should not be included. And now that he has come to town he loses not a single day in bringing the matter to issue by these resolutions, expressly referring to us, and distinctly condemning us and our opinions. This is fair, manly, and above board; and, while, I feel bound to make some defence for myself before my brother Confederates, I beg you to believe that no trace of personal hostility mingles in the feelings with which I regard the honourable mover of these resolutions, or my esteemed friend who has seconded them.
Yet the nature of these resolutions is not to be mistaken. Strictly and literally they are peace resolutions; and, in their practical application, they are intended virtually to exclude not only certain principles, but certain persons; in short, me, and any others who may agree with me—not a few, I apprehend—from the Irish Confederates. Now that in itself is a small matter. If I withdraw to-morrow from the Confederation the cause would suffer little, if at all; and I would to God that I were free to withdraw from it quietly, deeply as I am concerned for its success, rather than be forced into this public antagonism against men with whom I have worked so long and so cordially, and for whom, generally speaking, I feel so strong regard. But, sir, this is not a personal matter; it involves the fundamental principles of the Confederation; and I am not at liberty to avoid unpleasant collision by sneaking out of the affair without making an effort to vindicate and save those fundamental principles. To come to the resolutions before the chair let me omit for the present the first eight of them, and draw your attention for a minute to the ninth, which I regard as the most important of them all, in fact including the whole principle. The ninth resolution is,
‘That this Confederation was established to attain an Irish parliament by the combination of classes, and by the force of opinion exercised in constitutional operations; and that no means of a contrary character can be recommended or promoted through its organisation, while its present fundamental rules remain unaltered.’
Now, let any Confederate present look to the back of his card, and see whether the third rule, or any other rule limits the action of the Confederation within the bounds of the constitution. There is not in the whole of our rules one word about constitution, or about law, or about ‘patience and perseverance,’ or about ‘peace, law, and order.’ I drew up the original draft of these myself, and took good care to put into them no such balmy balderdash.
To be sure, the rule says we expect to achieve our country’s freedom, amongst other things, by the force of opinion. Well, and must the force of opinion always be legal?—always, be peaceful? Does opinion then mean law? Does opinion cease to be opinion the moment it steps out of the trenches of the constitution? Why, sir, I hold that there is no opinion in Ireland worth a farthing which is not illegal. I hold that armed opinion is a thousand times stronger than unarmed—and further, that in a national struggle that opinion is the most potent whose sword is sharpest, and whose aim is surest.
We are told it was opinion and sympathy, and other metaphysical entities that rescued Italy, and scared Austria back from Ferrara without a blow. Yes, but it was Opinion with the helmet of a national guard on his head, and a long sword by his side; it was Opinion, standing, match in hand, at the breech of a gun charged to the muzzle.
Now, I say all this, not to vindicate myself, for I have nowhere recommended the Irish nation to attain legislative independence by force of arms in their present broken and divided condition (as Mr. O’Brien’s resolution imputes to me), not to vindicate myself, but to vindicate the original free constitution of our confederacy. I say there is no sort of agency by which nations ever won freedom barred from us by these fundamental rules; and I will oppose to the last any scheme of policy that would now limit our speech and action within the bounds of law and constitutions, about which Ireland knows only this—that they were invented to enslave, starve, and plunder her.
Upon this ninth resolution, therefore, I first take issue; and I ask you to consider well before you make a solemn declaration which will narrow the basis of our confederacy, which will break faith with many of its members, and which at least attempts to bring about a new secession upon the identical grounds on which we all left Conciliation Hall a year and a half ago. Before leaving this discussion, the ‘force of opinion’ and I say it will break faith with us. Mr. O’Brien says if you admit the expression of such doctrines as mine you will break faith with influential and worthy aristocratic persons who may have joined us in the belief that they would not be alarmed by such seditious suggestions. Now, I say, if you vote to-night that the Confederation is to be henceforth a strictly legal and constitutional society, you break faith with me and many other man, who never would have joined it with any such view.
Now, before leaving this expression, the power of opinion, and the proper interpretation to be put upon those words, I will remind you that three months ago, at the Belfast meeting, it devolved upon me to expound the rules of this Confederation to the people of the north; and there, in presence of Mr. Smith O’Brien I gave the following explanation of this third rule (I quote from THE NATION):—
‘The force of opinion here mentioned does not exclude any kind of operation consistent with morality and duty. It does not exclude an organisation to resist and defeat foreign laws for instance; neither does it prohibit a resort to arms should the time ever come when we shall have the power to use them.’
Upon this exposition of mine followed no disavowal, contradiction, or comment, until to-night.
I now come to that clause in the same ninth resolution which refers to the ‘combination of classes.’ It seems to imply that the writers of the terrible letters in question, did or said something to prevent a combination of classes. Now for my part I only said that recent circumstances had made me despair of such combination, how much soever I might desire it.
I only said that in my opinion the landlords of Ireland had taken their side with the English, and against their own countrymen, and that it was useless to keep courting and wooing armed and sanguinary enemies. That was all. I did desire, sir, I do desire. I would this night give my right hand to bring about a combination of the various orders of Irishmen against English dominion.
I do believe that such a union would be the salvation of all those classes, of social order, and of many thousands of human lives. But, I tell you, I despair of such combination. And what think you? I ask my brother Confederates do they, in their souls and consciences, believe that the landlords of Ireland will help them to set this island free.
Of course, I mean the landlords as a class. There are noble exceptions—two of them here to-night—but so few, that they amply prove the rule. I say, do you believe it? Have we all been dreaming these last few months? Is it a fact, or not, that the Irish gentry have called in the aid of foreigners to help them to clear their own people from the face of the earth, to help them to crush and trample down, in blood and horror, the rightful claim of the tenant classes to a bare subsistence on the land they till? Is it a fact that they invented a sham council, called the ‘Irish Council,’ and talked what they called nationality there for a few meetings, until they got what they wanted, a bill to disarm and transport the Irish—and where is their nationality now? My friends, I was weak enough to put some trust in that sham nationality, and I laboured for a time anxiously on the committees of the Irish Council, trying in good faith to extract what good I thought was in it. And I will say now that, democrat as I am, by nature, habits, education, and position, I would have followed the aristocracy of Ireland in the march to freedom with zeal and loyalty, if they had only led. But they cheated me—they cheated you—and they are now laughing at us all. I, for want of some one more competent, tried and tested them on several questions—first, on the prevention of food exports from a starving country; but in this they would not lift a finger. ‘How,’ they said, ‘how were tenants to pay their rents if they did not send their corn to England?’ Next I raised a discussion on tenant-right—succeeded in exciting public attention to the debate—succeeded in framing my motion so that Mr. Sharman Crawford was able to support it; but what did the national landlords do? Why, they slunk away and hid themselves, and the division took place amongst empty benches. And in what position do we see these landed proprietors now? Are they flocking to our standard, as we have so often invited them to do? Are they marshalling us the way to win our freedom from the English? Have they not taken pay from the English against us, and are they not now turning upon us sword in hand?
Let us not deceive ourselves—this country is in a state of war—a most unequal and ill-matched struggle, indeed, for the slaughter on one side exceeds the casualties on the other as ten thousand to one. The broken-spirited and famished peasants have only heart for a few coward assassin shots from behind a hedge; but a sheriff’s bailiff, with a deadly weapon called a habere, has often exterminated a whole country side in a few hours. The habere is more destructive than grape shot, or shell, or Captain Warner’s long range—it blows the roofs off a score of houses at once, tears up the hearthstones, obliterates the very foundations, and leaves the naked and famishing inmates to the legislative charity of a poorhouse, which is worse than death.
It is a cruel and criminal warfare on both sides, and it seems to me one of the bitterest of mockeries to call upon the tenant and labouring classes while this war is raging to combine with their landlords against English government, when it is too plain those landlords and that government are combined against them. But I will show you that the Confederation has always acted on the assumption that this hope of combining classes might probably fail, and that on its failure we must seek our freedom otherwise. Let me read you the last paragraph of an ‘address to the resident landlords of Ireland,’ brought up and adopted at our meeting of the 7th April last—
‘We have been told that we may despair of the co-operation of the Irish landed proprietors in this great national movement, and that the cause of Ireland’s liberty must proceed without you. To that suggestion we are unwilling to yield. (This was ten months ago.) Our country cannot well afford to have so powerful a class against her in her righteous struggle—besides time have come upon us to soften men’s hearts and open their eyes to the truth; and in that kindly influence, as well as in the meaner instinct on self-preservation we have still some hope (it was ten months ago). Shall this hope be vain? The middle and the humbler classes have not a day to lose in the formation of an alliance for the protection of their own lives. At the present rate of mortality their ranks are daily diminished by hundreds. It will be apparent to you that if they are to make any efforts whatever for self-preservation they must do so forthwith. In our conscientious duty to them we must aid, assist and hasten their decision in this matter—and we must in candour declare that a principal end of this address is to ascertain whether we are to reckon you as with or against your country.’
And at the very same meeting a man who generally means what he says, and whose unavoidable absence to-night we must regret—I mean Mr. Meagher—used this language—
‘I now make this last appeal to the aristocracy of Ireland. I do so, that in our day of triumph we may lead no fellow-countryman in chains, nor scout him as an alien from our ranks. There is not an hour—no, not an instant to be lost. (This was ten months ago.) Every grave that opens to receive a victim of English rule, widens and deepens the chasm that has for years divided the two great classes of the country. (How wide, then, and how deep is that chasm now). Sir, it is useless to argue it—the people without the aristocracy, when driven to the last extremity, have the power to win their freedom. One thing at least is certain—the people will not consent to live another year in a wilderness and a grave yard.’
Well, ten months of the year have passed. In short, it seems to have been always understood that our experiment upon the aristocracy was but an experiment, and must have an end some time or other. The difference is only as to time. We were not to go on for ever inviting the lamb to lie down with the wolf, and the kid to play upon the cockatrice’s den. We must absolutely draw the line somewhere—and for me I draw it at the coercion act. So far as to the technical question of the original rules; but, sir, nobody here imagines the question before us to be a merely technical one.
The real issue here is whether the Irish Confederation shall now definitely shape itself into a organisation for purely constitutional or parliamentary agitation, to the utter exclusion of those who, like me, take no interest in that kind of procedure, or whether it shall be open, as before, to those who think it is only by a steady passive resistance to English laws that Ireland’s independence is to be won. For my part, I admit that I am weary of constitutional agitation, and will never lift a finger to help it more. I believe we have not the materials for it, and that the show of constitutional power we possess was exactly devised by our enemies to delude us into an endless and driftless agitation. We have miserable franchises, and every day makes them worse. We have a government that first makes us poor, and then tempts our poverty with bribes and promises. We have few men of public virtue and national spirit, and in a sinking and debased province we cannot hope to rear such men more abundantly. Then, if we had them, where should we get constituencies to elect them, or so much as know them when they see them? And I put no faith in the promises of any set of gentlemen who say, ‘Ah! true, the old parliamentary agitation failed because it was dishonestly conducted; but place yourselves in our hands—begin over again—seek out good men—organise, educate, conciliate—and in seven years you shall see what a parliamentary party we shall have.’
Sir, I think the country ought to be done with this. I will assist at the planting of no more bean-stalks on which one day we are to reach the sky. I am tired
‘Dropping of buckets into empty wells,
And growing old in drawing nothing up.’
Instead of ‘agitate, agitate,’ I would say to the people, ‘arm! arm!’ Instead of ‘register, register,’ I would say, ‘hold your lands and eat of the fruits thereof and be filled,’ and establish universal tenant right, that so the graves and poorhouse may not swallow up the very material of our nation. I would say leave the English for the present all the responsibilities of what they call governing us; be not idiots enough to help, countenance, or comfort them in that business; but, above all, be armed, be armed, then when Louis Phillippe dies, you may be ready to repel the French invasion.
I will now, sir, move my amendment—it is a very simple one—it neither breathes blood and murder, nor bristles with pike-heads, nor smells of gunpowder. It is a mere reference to one of our own fundamental rules, on which, as your only safe basis, I advise you to rely in this emergency. You will remember that these resolutions are introduced expressly to condemn certain views of two of your members published in the newspapers, and which do not necessarily come before you at all. My amendment therefore is—
‘That this Confederation does not feel called upon to promote either a condemnation or approval of any doctrines promulgated by any of its members in letters, speeches, or otherwise, because the seventh fundamental rule of the Confederation expressly provides ‘That inasmuch as the essential bond of union amongst us is the assertion of Ireland’s right to an independent legislature, no member of the Irish Confederation shall be bound to the adoption of any principle involved in any resolution, or promulgated by any speaker in the society, or any journal advocating its policy, to which he has not given his special consent, save only the foregoing fundamental principles of the society.’
That is my amendment; and now, before sitting down, I will complain of the only passage in Mr. O’Brien’s speech, which I can characterise as decidedly unfair. I think it was unfair to speak of the man who murdered Mr. Hill, in Limerick, as a disciple of my doctrines. I ask you whether in any letter or speech of mine I have given grounds for such an imputation as this—where and when have I ever justified, or palliated, or recommended, or hinted at assassination? I have said, indeed, that the tenant-right must be established everywhere in Ireland as it is in Ulster by the strong public opinion of men in arms. But in Ulster, sir, there are no agrarian murders. There, in the tenant-right districts, they openly and in day light gather in arms to resist ejectment or distress where there is a gross and signal violation of the popular right; but in Munster, sir, they first submit to be hunted from their dens like foxes or badgers, and then basely lurk behind a hedge and shoot the landlord or the bailiff. It is therefore the practice of Ulster I recommend, and not the example of Mr. Hill’s murderers in Limerick.
I have now done, sir, but one thing I beg the Confederation to keep in mind. If they confirm my amendment it will leave the Confederation precisely in the same unfettered position in which it stood when we entered this room to-night; but if they adopt the resolutions proposed by Mr. O’Brien, they will for the first time exclude certain Repealers from the Confederation who do not happen to agree in policy with the majority of its Council. I do not desire to prevent Mr. O’Brien from continuing in our society, nor from fully and freely urging his own views of policy, but he does desire to do so by me. Remember, therefore, in giving your vote that I don’t want to expel Mr. O’Brien or anybody also, and I demand of you that you will interpose, and for the sake of your own credit and character, for the sake of his credit and character, that you will prevent him from expelling me.