ARTICLE OCR TRANSCRIBED

FROM THE

BROOKLYN EAGLE

JUNE 7, 1885

Note: OCR [optical character recognition] is an imperfect way of transcribing documents there are always errors in spite of my editing the result. A researcher wanting to be precise in their quotations should consult the actual newspaper as presented online by the Brooklyn Public Library. Copying this transcription for commercial use is prohibited. Any questions should be directed to the staff at the Brooklyn Public Library

Brooklyn Eagle web Page:

http://www.brooklynpubliclibrary.org/eagle/index.htm

 

I

THE FENIAN MOVEMENT

An Account of its Origin, Progress

and Temporary Collapse.

By Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa

 

The '48 demonstration—The Sadlier and Keogh Affair—The Ecclesiastical Titles Bill—The Famine—The Crimean War—Gavan Duffy. The "Corpse on the Dissecting Table"—The Indian Mutiny—The Phenix Society—Corly Batt McCarthy (Sowney)— A Type of the Irish Rebel—The Feelings of the People Toward England—The Volunteers—The Old Parliament —The Union— English Bribery—Irish Recreancy—Tithes and Taxes—Beecher and Talmage Going to Mass.

 

The revolutionary movement of 1848 had failed. Mitchel, Meagher, Doheny, O'Brien, O'Doherty, OMahony, O'Donoghue, O'Gorman, Stephens, MacManus and the chief men connected with it had been banished from the land, the spirits of the people were depressed and the ground was clear for the constitutional agitators to play their game again. The Keoghs and the Sadliers come into the field and laid the foundation of their work, and in 1852 they and their policy had full swing. Sadlier committed suicide on Hemsptead Heath, London, and his death was the precursor of the collapse of the Brass Band, as that band of agitators was then called. The Crimean war was raging in 1853; there was hardly en English soldier left in Ireland; even the ranks of the Irish police were thinned by volunteers to the land transport corps that was organized for service in the Crimea; it was one of those "opportunities" that impractical, theoretical Irishmen are always hoping for, that Ireland was asleep and none of her sons thought of availing of "England's difficulty." I have ever since that time looked with a kind of contempt upon men that I hear talking of England's difficulty being Ireland's opportunity, and upon men that I hear singing "watch and wait and bide your time," The man who wrote " Watch and wait and bide your time"— Michael Joseph Barry—ended his days on earth a sworn servant of England; the man who prate of England's difficulty being Ireland's Opportunity have little better stuff in them than he had. The men who have mettle in them to fight their country's battle for freedom are men who make their opportunities.

During those years of depression in Ireland after '43, Lord John Russell was Prime Minister in England, and in 1851 he thought it would be a good stroke of policy to lower the pretensions of the Catholic hierarchy of Ireland;            he introduced into Parliament the Ecclesiastical Titles bill and had it passed into law. This bill made it a penal offense for any Catholic bishop to call himself bishop of any particular place or diocese; but no sooner was it passed into law than Archbishop McHale wrote a letter to the press and signed it "John, Archbishop of Tuam." This was throwing down the gauntlet to the British ministry, but they did not take it up; they did not prosecute Archbishop although ha dared them to do so; but the Ecclesiastical Titles bill remains still on the stratute books of England, to be revived perhaps at some future time, just as penal laws passed two hundred years ago were revived against the Irish people in the Land League movement a few years ago. England has always a reserve force of law to meet every phase of Irish discontent, or if she has not, she very readily makes a law to meet it.

The population of Ireland in 1845 was about nine millions; in 1851 it was between six and seven millions. Fully two millions of people wore lost to the country by starvation and emigration. Not that the country did not produce food sufficient to support six or nine millions of people—the English statistics show that during these years called "the famine years" Ireland raised food enough to support 16,000,000 of people; but the potato crops failed during the years 1845, 1846 and 1847, and the landlords seized the grain crops and cattle for their rents. From 1848 to 1851 the country and the people seemed stagnant; much of the land remained uncultivated and produced nothing but weeds; many of the landlords themselves became poor and needy, because they could not levy rents and taxes off of thistles, dock leaves and gaosadawns, hence the passage in the English Parliament some time after of a bill called the Incumbered Estates bill, by the power and operation of which many of there lands were sold and passed into the possession of new landlords. The old landlords, though bad, wore not worse than the new ones; the old landlords had their titles from the sword, the new landlords had their titles from their money, and demanded their money's worth from the tenants. They never dream that they paid their money for stolen property. This is a thing the Irish people never forget; the claim to the land of their fathers they never forego. This in the secret of the existence of Fenianism. Fenianism is but the name in our day of that fight which has existed in Ireland against England during the past seven centuries—a fight transmitted from bleeding sire to son. I think it is Thierry, the historian of the Norman Conquest, who says that no nation on earth presents a grander spectacle to the peoples of the world than does this little nation called Ireland, that for six hundred years or more has carried on the fight of right against might. As one generation rose and fought and fell, another generation rose to fight and fall again—ever defeated, but never conquered.

About the year 1854 Charles Gaven Duffy was member of Parliament for New Ross; I was in the town of Tralee one day; I bought a copy of the Dublin Nation newspaper, I read in it an address from Gavan Duffy to the people of New Ross and of Ireland; he said he lost all hope of being able to do any good for Ireland in the English Parliament. Ireland was 54 a corpse on the dissecting table, and he was going to leave it and seek his fortune In Australia. He went, sought his fortune there, found it, got honors and knighthood from England's governor in the far off land; is back to Ireland again and writing with seeming sorrow that he had abandoned the ship when she seemed sinking.

In 1857 the Indian mutiny broke out; it put England to the pin of her collar to put it down; she again drew her forces from Ireland and hardly a redcoat was to be seen in the land. Some young men in the south of Ireland, in a town where I lived, called Skibbereen, had started a society with a view to educate themselves and educate the country around into national life and activity. I was among these young men. Colonel Patrick J. Downing, now of Washington; Daniel O'Crowly, city register, Springfield, Ill.; John O’Driscoll, school teacher, Boston, and some others at present scattered through America, were among them. The society was called or christened the Phenix National and Literary Society. Ireland was dead, but from the ashes of her martyred nationality she should phenix-like, arise again. I think I used those words when proposing the name for the society. Patrick Downing seconded the motion. Daniel O'Crowley proposed a different name, but the Phenix carried the day. The name was adopted by the Irishmen of America, and a paper was started by John O’Mahony, called the Phenix, but the name Fenian was subsequently substituted for the organization in America, and by degrees came to be given to the organization in Ireland. The organization started in Ireland by James Stephens was the I. R. B., the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood, but that too got the name of the Phenix Society at first; it was as a member of the Phenix Society I was prosecuted before Judge Keogh, in 1859, though it was in connection with the working of the I. R. B. Society I was arrested. The Phenix Society was a national literary society, having no oath of membership. The English Government were in the dark at the time, and confounded one with the other. The Phenix Society was literary end educational. It also fostered the spirit of nationality, and to spread that spirit the members held correspondence with acquaintances they had in distant towns and cities, held soirees and parties, made speeches and had them published in the papers. Some of these speeches, made at a soiree given in the Phenix Rooms on the night of New Year's day, 1857, were published in the Dundalk Democrat. The paper reached John O’Mahony and James Stephens. They saw there was growing national life in Ireland, and, ever watchful to forward the cause both had suffered for, they resolved to try Ireland again. In the month of May, 1858, James Stephons visited Skibbereen; he brought with him to one of the members of our society a letter of introduction from O'Mahony, of Bandon, a brother to the Rev. Thaddeus O'Mahony, of Trinity College, Dublin. The day after James Stephens visited Skibbereen I was sworn in a member of the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood, and I was commissioned to swear in others. It was work such as I wanted, such as I was longing for, and I went at it with a will. I was at home, and I knew all the people in the five parishes around, and the people in the five parishes knew me and all belonging to me. I had no bad drop in me; and when I asked a man would he become a soldier for Ireland he had no fear I was going to betray him, and I had no difficulty in swearing him in. I swore in Colonel Downing, of Washington, the day after I was sworn in myself. I swore in Morty Moynahan—a man who did more than any other man in the south of Ireland to spread the organization in its early days. Morty was chief clerk to McCarthy Downing, one of the principal attorneys in the County Cork; he used to accompany him to all the sessions and Assizes held in all the towns from Skibbereen to Cork; no client could approach the attorney without first being handled by Morty, and where Morty met a man of good old Irish stock, with the hatred of England impregnated in his blood, he never let him out of his hands until he swore him in. Both man and master are now dead. Few men I mot in the movement truer to Ireland or more devoted to her cause then Morty Moynahan; to write of that cause and to forget him and his work would be treason.

In May, 1858, the I. R. B. work commenced in Skibbereen, and before August we had some 3,000 men enrolled; they expected a fight immediately, and were calling for drill instruction and arms. Of course, we told our men, as told to us, that the whole of Ireland  was similarly organized, and that when we came to fight it would be a fight general throughout all Ireland. "Bheirim le Dia," said Curly Batt McCarthy (Sowney) to me one nay, “if all Ireland have as little trouble with their share of the English garrison as we will have, it will be easy work with them, because we could take all the enemy in this part of the country and eat them fur breakfast without having a surfeit from them.” This was the acme Corly Batt who, when Stephens was telling him in my house that after the war, landlordism would be abolished and I every man would be his own landlord, cried out : "Dar Fis, captain, that won't satisfy me; I won't be satisfied till I make them pay back the back rents they have n been drawing from us those long and many years past." Corly belonged to old Irish family of the MacCarthys, who had owed the vary land for which he was then paying rent to an English landlord who had ownership of it through descent from one of the Cromwellian troopers. Corly Batt McCarthy was about 60 years of age when I swore him into the organization; he is dead now, but his spirit lives at home, and as long as that spirit lives England's power is in peril.

Why such movements as the Fenian movement exist in Ireland and never die is because that the count try is peopled north, south, east and west by men and women who hold such traditions as this Curly Batt McCarthy had—traditions that tell them they are the victims of English greed and plunder, and that they would be cravens and recreant to the spirit of their martyred dead if they ever gave up the fight for which those martyred ancestors of theirs fought and bled. Corly was a fair representative type of an Irishman. His like is to be met with in every barony in Ireland, and the cause of the existence of Fenianism will be understood better by readers when I tell of his circumstances and surroundings. He was one of the good old Irish stock; his family or clan having for centuries been bred, born and reared in the locality; he was more or less remotely or immediately connected with every other old Irish clan or family in the barony, and his history is the history of the Irish people. He would tell of how his fathers had lost the greater portion of their lands in the big confiscations and how they had lost what remained of them because they would not give up the old faith; how they were fined and confined because they would not go to church or cease going to Mass, till at length the fines became so numerous and so heavy, that the very houses in which they lived were auctioned off to pay them. Every child of Ireland learns this history of Ireland at his mother's knees—learns how in olden times his people were a great people and had estates of their own till the Sassenagh invader came in and plundered them. Corly Batt and men like him at the weddings and wakes of the people would tell how, after they were stripped of all their worldly goods by the Sassenegh, the Sassenagh would then order them to leave the country for fear in their poverty they would be an expense or a trouble to the English settlers. I learned those historical facts before I learned to read; many of my readers now may think they are not historical facts and may question the accuracy or authenticity of these traditions the Irish people carry with them, so just here I will give a few extracts from the statute books of England, which may be seen in the Brooklyn Public Library, showing that all I say on this head is true:

In the first year of the reign of Elizabeth this law was passed:

Statute Section 8—And that from and after the Feast of tine Nativity of Saint John Baptist next coming all and every person and persons inhabiting within this realm, or any other, the Queen's Majesty's dominions, shall diligently and faithfully, having no lawful or reasonable excuse to be absent, endeavor themselves to resort to their parish church or chapel accustomed, or, upon reasonable lot thereof, to some usual place where common prayer and such service of God shall be held in such time of lot, upon every Sunday and other days ordained and need to be kept as holy days, and then and there to abide orderly and soberly during the time of the common prayer, upon pain of punishment by the censures of the church, and also upon pain that every person so offending shall forfeit for any such offense twelve pence, to be levied by the church wardens of the parish where such offense shall be done, of the goods, lands and tenants of such offender by way of distress.

 

Now comes a fine of 100 marks and a year's imprisonment for hearing mass:

Statute 23, Elizabeth, Chapter I—And be it likewise enacted that every person which shall say or sing mass, being thereof lawfully convicted, shall forfeit the sum of 200 marks and be committed to prison In the next jail, there to remain for the space of one year, and thenceforth till he have paid the said sum of 200 marks; and that every person which shall hear mass shall forfeit the sum of 100 marks and suffer imprisonment for a year.

Be it, also further enacted by the authority aforesaid that every person above the age of sixteen years which shall not repair to some church, chapel or usual place of common prayer, but forbear the same, contrary to the tenor of the statute made in the first year of her Majesty's reign, and being thereof lawfully convicted, shell forfeit to the Queen's Majesty for every month after the end of thin session of Parliament £20 of lawful English money, and that, over and beside the said forfeitures, every person so forbearing by the space of twelve months shall for his or her obstinacy be bound with two sufficient sureties in the sum of £200, at the least, to be of good behavior and so to continue bound until such time as the persons so bound do conform themselves and come to the church.

See. 6. And be it further enacted that if any person or persons shall keep or maintain any schoolmaster which shall not repair to church as in aforesaid, he shall forfeit and lose for every month so keeping him £10. And any such schoolmaster or teacher presuming to teach contrary to this act, and being thereof lawfully convicted, shall be disabled to be a teacher of youth and shall suffer imprisonment, without bail or main prize, for one year.

The Irish were not becoming Englishly religious enough, or the work of stripping them of their lands and money was not going cm fast enough so the 29^th of Elizabeth, section 3, enacts, "That every such offender in not repairing to Divine service, but forbearing the same contrary to the said statute, as hath been heretofore convicted for such an offense, and hath not made submission, shall without any other indictment or conviction pay into the receipt of the said exchequer all such sums of money, as according to the rate of twenty pounds for every month since the same conviction. And if default shall be made in any part of any payment aforesaid, that then and so often the Queen's Majesty shall and may take, seize and enjoy all the goods, and parts as well of all the lands, tenements and hereditaments, leases and farms of such offenders, leaving the third part only of the same lands, tenements and hereditaments, leases and farms to and for the maintenance and relief of the same offender, his wife, children and family." 

Then again, the thirty-fifth of Elizabeth, section one, declares that the offenders who will obstinately remain Catholics "shall be committed to prison, there to remain without bail or main prize until they shall conform and yield themselves to come to the usual place of common prayer."      

At that time the English, it seems, had the Irish prisons full of Irish people whom they had robbed of all their worldly goods, and whom they could not persuade to "turn" to the English church for consolation; they must have found that the expense of supporting them in prison was no small thing; so they became magnanimous enough to give them their liberty  on condition of quitting the country, and never showing their faces in it again. To carry out that part of the programme this law was passed:           

35th of Elizabeth: chapter 2, section 6—And to the       end that the realm be not pestered or overcharged with the multitude of such seditious and dangerous people as is aforesaid, who having little or no ability to answer or satifie any competent penalty for their contempt and disobedience of the said laws and statutes, and being committed to prison for the same, do live for the most part in better ease there than they could if they were abroad at their own liberty. The Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and the Commons in this present Parliament assembled, do most humbly and instantly beseech the Queen's Majesty that it may be further enacted that any such person or persons, being a Popish recusant, etc., shall abjure this realm of England, and all other, the Queen's Majesty's dominions forever, and thereupon shall depart out of this realm, at such haven or port, and within such time as shall in their behalf be assigned and appointed by the said justices of the peace or coroner before whom such abjurations shall be made, unless the same offenders be letted or stayed by such lawful and reasonable means or causes, as by the common laws of this realm are permitted and allowed in cases of abjuration or felony.

There were two forms of the oath of abjuration.

This was one:

You shall swear that you shall depart out of this realm of England and out of all others the King's Majesty's dominions; and that you shall not return hither, or come again into any of his Majesty's dominions, but by the license of our said Sovereign Lord the King. So help you, God.

Here was the other form:          

This hear you, Sir Coroner, that I, ------------- am a Popish recusant, and in contempt of the laws and statutes of this realm of England, I have and do refuse to come to hear divine service there read and exercised. I do, therefore, according to the intent and meaning of the statute, made in the thirty-fifth year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, late Queen of this realm of England, abjure the land and realm of King Charles, now King of England, Scotland, France and Ireland; and I shall haste me toward the Port of -------, which you have given and assigned to me. And that I shall not go out of the highway leading thither, nor return again, and if I do, I will that I be taken as a felon of our said Lord the party King. And that at ----- I will diligently seek for passage, and I will tarry there but one flood and ebb if I can have passage; and unless I can have it in such place, I will go every day into the sea up to my knees essaying to pass over. So help me God and His holy judgment.

When I heard stories in my youth, of how our people were great people in olden times and how they had houses and lands and estates of their own—all which they lost because of their sticking to the true faith—I thought in my innocence that our people were only putting on airs, but when I came to read in history the very stories I heard before I was able to read I began to see how historically true wore the tradition of the people. While the Irish people have those traditions—and it is very likely they will have them forever—they can never be reconciled to English rule.

For never can true reconcilement grow

Where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep.

All the ameliorations that all the Parnells in creation could got passed in the Parliament could not reconcile the Irish to English rule, England knows this,  and this, no doubt, is at the bottom of her desire to see the Irish living in any other land on earth than Ireland; this, no doubt, was at the bottom of the desire she had last year to get rid of the Irish paupers she had made by shipping them to America; that, together with getting rid of the expense of supporting them in a poorhouse prison.

Ancther of the causes that make Fenianism, or any other movement of opposition to English government rife in Ireland is this: That Ireland has knowledge that England has destroyed Irish trade and manufacture; that England bee passed laws aimed deliberately at the destruction of the industries of the Irish people that she has done this to compel the Irish people to use the goods manufactured by the English people When Ireland's population war less than it is now, Ireland had her factories for the manufacture of every thing that was necessary to a people and to a nation and she exported to other nations much of her native produce. England killed all that. The Irish people have traditions that they one time had shipping of their own and traded with Spain and Portugal and France and Italy and other countries. England laid tax or embargo on everything that was conveyed in ships that were not English and thus destroyed the Irish shipping trade. The Irish people know that they once had a parliament of their own, and , had and bigoted as that parliament was for a long time, England destroyed that, too. She spent a couple of millions of pounds sterling—name ten millions of dollars—in bribing the members of it, who were half English already, and they voted that an Irish Parliament was a humbug.. It really was a humbug, because it would not allow a Catholic Irishman to be a member of it, while four-fifths of the Irish people were Catholics. I don't see why the Irish people cry so much about it. Henry Grattan, who was a member of it—one of the greatest of its members—would not even allow a Catholic to become a member of the Irish Volunteers, even when the question was proposed in that Irish Parliament that Catholics be eligible for membership in the Irish Volunteers. “What!” said he, “we have hitherto been the armed property; are we now to become the armed beggary?”

The Irish Volunteers were officered by the English landlords of Ireland. I could never bring myself to cry after them; they would have no liberty that would give freedom to Catholic Irishmen, and, as I say, four-fifths of the people were Catholic. The freedom that would not hold emancipate and free the whole people of a nation is not worth having or worth fighting for. I would not risk the shredding of a drop of blood for a native Irish Parliament such as Grattan and those people had in Ireland one hundred years ago.

A true history of Ireland cannot be written without writing of religion and the use that was made of it for purposes of conquest. When the cause of the existence of Fenianism is considered it must be considered how England latterly made use of religion to give confirmation to her conquest in Ireland — indeed, not latterly but formerly as well. When England became Protestant she tried to make Ireland Protestant, and the Irish did not “turn;” but when England came to Ireland first, and when both countries remained Catholic for 300 years, England struck Ireland as mercilessly during those first 300 years that she was Catholic she struck during the last 300 years that she is Protestant. The feeling naturally grew into the minds of the Irish people that the plunderers and the Protestants were one and the same people. They had their traditions of how their fathers were fined and confined for not going to church (as the Protestant place of worship is called in Ireland), and they had their experience of how they themselves had to pay the tenth part of their worldly wealth to support the Protestant Church. The war of the tithes was a war of our own day; the people resisted the tax gatherers, or the tithe gatherers, who used to come into the Catholic fields, and with their spade handles measure out every tenth ridge of potatoes and put a mark on it that made it sacred to the use of Protestant ministers. The riots that used to take place over the digging of those Catholic potatoes for the Protestant minister induced the English Government to change the manner of collecting the minister's tithes, The tenth part of the tenants rent was collected from the tenant's landlord, but when that law was made, the landlord said he was not going to be the loser by it; so he gave notice to the tenant that he would have to pay an increased rent in future. Those tithes wore abolished altogether lately; it was no relief to the Irish tenant farmers except a sentimental one; it did not reduce the tenant's rent a penny or a pound. It was the landlord was paying the tithes; it was the landlord's grievances were redressed. When the tithes were put upon his shoulders, he raised the rent on the tenant ; when they wore taken off his shoulders he did not take the increased rent off the shoulders of the tenant. It strikes me that the people of any country would be as rebelliously disposed as the Irish if they were similarly treated by their governors. It strikes me that Mr. Talmage or Mr. Beecher would protest against having his household goods seized by a bailiff because he was not going to Bishop Lougblin’s mass every Sunday morning, or because he was not paying a tenth part of his industry's earnings to support Bishop Loughlin's house. These you may think are continental grievances in Ireland now; they were not in my day, they are not to-day, The English alien government is in Ireland; it has its agents there collecting taxes in one shape or another. It is to benefit England not to benefit Ireland the English are in Ireland. It is to drive the English out the Fenian movement was started.