Thomas Davis: Means and Aids to Self-Education

 Educate that you may be Free!

 [The below is taken from Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry"--II. Literary and Historical Essays]

"What good were it for me to manufacture perfect iron while my own breast is full of dross? What would it stead me to put properties of land in order, while I am at variance with myself? To speak it in a word: the cultivation of my individual self, here as I am, has from my youth upwards been constantly though dimly my wish and my purpose."

"Men are so inclined to content themselves with what is commonest; the spirit and the senses so easily grow dead to the impressions of the beautiful and perfect; that every one should study to nourish in his mind the faculty of feeling these things by every method in his power. For no man can bear to be entirely deprived of such enjoyments; it is only because they are not used to taste of what is excellent, that the generality of people take delight in silly and insipid things, provided they be new. For this reason, he would add, 'one ought at least every day to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.'" - Goethe.

We have been often asked by certain of the Temperance Societies to give them some advice on Self-Education. Lately we promised one of these bodies to write some hints as to how the members of it could use their association for their mental improvement.

We said, and say again, that the Temperance Societies can be made use of by the people for their instruction as well as pleasure. Assemblies of any kind are not the best places either for study or invention. Home or solitude are better--home is the great teacher. In domestic business we learn mechanical skill, the nature of those material bodies with which we have most to deal in life--we learn labour by example and by kindly precepts--we learn (in a prudent home) decorum, cleanliness, order--in a virtuous home we learn more than these: we learn reverence for the old, affection without passion, truth, piety, and justice. These are the greatest things man can know. Having these he is well; without them attainments of wealth or talent are of little worth. Home is the great teacher; and its teaching passes down in honest homes from generation to generation, and neither the generation that gives, nor the generation that takes it, lays down plans for bringing it to pass.

Again, to come to designed learning. We learn arts and professions by apprenticeships, that is, much after the fashion we learned walking, or stitching, or fire-making, or love-making at home--by example, precept, and practice combined. Apprentices at anything, from ditching, basket-work, or watch-making, to merchant-trading, legislation, or surgery, submit either to a nominal or an actual apprenticeship. They see other men do these things, they desire to do the same, and they learn to do so by watching how, and when, and asking, or guessing why each part of the business is done; and as fast as they know, or are supposed to know, any one part, whether it be sloping the ditch, or totting the accounts, or dressing the limb, they begin to do that, and, being directed when they fail, they learn at last to do it well, and are thereby prepared to attempt some other or harder part of the business.

Thus it is by experience--or trying to do, and often doing a thing--combined with teaching or seeing, and being told how and why other people more experienced do that thing, that most of the practical business of life is learned.

In some trades, formal apprenticeship and planned teaching exist as little as in ordinary home-teaching. Few men are of set purpose taught to dig; and just as few are taught to legislate.

Where formal teaching is usual, as in what are called learned professions, and in delicate trades, fewer men know anything of these businesses. Those who learn them at all do so exactly and fully, but commonly practise them in a formal and technical way, and invent and improve them little. In those occupations which most men take up casually--as book-writing, digging, singing, and legislation, and the like--there is much less exact knowledge, less form, more originality and progress, and more of the public know something about them in an unprofessional way.

The Caste system of India, Egypt, and Ancient Ireland carried out the formal apprenticeship plan to its full extent. The United States of America have very little of it. Modern Europe is between the two, as she has in most things abolished caste or hereditary professions (kings and nobles excepted), but has, in many things, retained exact apprenticeships.

Marriage, and the bringing up of children, the employment of dependants, travel, and daily sights and society, are our chief teachers of morals, sentiment, taste, prudence and manners. Mechanical and literary skill of all sorts, and most accomplishments, are usually picked up in this same way.

We have said all this lest our less-instructed readers should fall into a mistake common to all beginners in study, that books, and schooling, and lectures, are the chief teachers in life; whereas most of the things we learn here are learned from the experience of home, and of the practical parts of our trades and amusements.

We pray our humbler friends to think long and often on this.

But let them not suppose we undervalue or wish them to neglect other kinds of teaching; on the contrary, they should mark how much the influences of home, and business, and society, are affected by the quantity and sort of their scholarship.

Home life is obviously enough affected by education. Where the parents read and write, the children learn to do so too, early in life and with little trouble; where they know something of their religious creed they give its rites a higher meaning than mere forms; where they know the history of the country well, every field, every old tower or arch is a subject of amusement, of fine old stories, and fine young hopes; where they know the nature of other people and countries, their own country and people become texts to be commented on, and likewise supply a living comment on those peculiarities of which they have read.

Again, where the members of a family can read aloud, or play, or sing, they have a well of pleasant thoughts and good feelings which can hardly be dried or frozen up; and so of other things.

And in the trades and professions of life, to study in books the objects, customs, and rules of that trade or profession to which you are going saves time, enables you to improve your practice of it, and makes you less dependent on the teaching of other practitioners, who are often interested in delaying you.

In these, and a thousand ways besides, study and science produce the best effects upon the practical parts of life.

Besides, the first business of life is the improvement of one's own heart and mind. The study of the thoughts and deeds of great men, the laws of human, and animal, and vegetable, and lifeless nature, the principles of fine and mechanical arts, and of morals, society, and religion--all directly give us nobler and greater desires, more wide and generous judgments, and more refined pleasures.

Learning in this latter sense may be got either at home or at school, by solitary study, or in associations. Home learning depends, of course, on the knowledge, good sense, and leisure of the parents. The German Jean Paul, the American Emerson, and others of an inferior sort, have written deep and fruitful truths on bringing up and teaching at home. Yet, considering its importance, it has not been sufficiently studied. Upon schools much has been written. Almost all the private schools in this country are bad. They merely cram the memories of pupils with facts or words, without developing their judgment, taste, or invention, or teaching them the application of any knowledge. Besides, the things taught are commonly those least worth learning. This is especially true of the middle and richer classes. Instead of being taught the nature, products, and history, first of their own, and then of other countries, they are buried in classical frivolities, languages which they never master, and manners and races which they cannot appreciate. Instead of being disciplined to think exactly, to speak and write accurately, they are crammed with rules and taught to repeat forms by rote.

The National Schools are a vast improvement on anything hitherto in this country, but still they have great faults. From the miserably small grant the teachers are badly paid, and, therefore, hastily and meagrely educated.

The maps, drawing, and musical instruments, museums and scientific apparatus, which should be in every school, are mostly wanting altogether. The books, also, are defective.

The information has the worst fault of the French system: it is too exclusively on physical science and natural history. Fancy a National School which teaches the children no more of the state and history of Ireland than of Belgium or Japan! We have spoken to pupils, nay, to masters of the National Schools, who were ignorant of the physical character of every part of Ireland except their native villages--who knew not how the people lived, or died, or sported, or fought--who had never heard of Tara, Clontarf, Limerick, or Dungannon--to whom the O'Neills and Sarsfields, the Swifts and Sternes, the Grattans and Barrys, our generals, statesmen, authors, orators, and artists, were alike and utterly unknown! Even the hedge schools kept up something of the romance, history, and music of the country.

Until the National Schools fall under national control, the people must take diligent care to procure books on the history, men, language, music, and manners of Ireland for their children. These schools are very good so far as they go, and the children should be sent to them; but they are not national, they do not use the Irish language, nor teach anything peculiarly Irish.

As to solitary study, lists of books, pictures, and maps can alone be given; and to do this usefully would exceed our space at present.

As it is, we find that we have no more room and have not said a word on what we proposed to write--namely, Self-Education through the Temperance Societies.

We do not regret having wandered from our professed subject, as, if treated exclusively, it might lead men into errors which no afterthought could cure.

What we chiefly desire is to set the people on making out plans for their own and their children's education. Thinking cannot be done by deputy - they must think for themselves.

John Mitchel: Extract from 'The Last Conquest of Ireland (Perhaps)' pertaining to the Famine

The following is an extract from John Mitchel's work "The Last Conquest of Ireland (Perhaps)" (1876). It deals with the policies and actions of the British in the decades leading up to the Famine - and how the mass starvation was a culmination of British policy. 

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In 1843, the Government sent forth one of their endless "Commissions" the famous "Landlord and Tenant Commission" to travel through Ireland, collect evidence, and report on the relations of landlord and tenant in Ireland. In '44 it travelled and investigated; and the next year its report came out in four great volumes. The true function and object of this Commission was to devise the best means of getting rid of what Englishmen called "the surplus population" of Ireland. Ever since the year 1829, the year of Catholic Emancipation, British policy had been directing itself to this end. We shall see how it worked.

As a condition of Catholic Emancipation, the "forty shilling franchise" had been abolished, so that the privilege of voting for members of Parliament should be taken away from the great mass of the Catholic peasantry. This low franchise had theretofore induced landlords (for the sake of securing political power), to subdivide farms and create voters. The franchise abolished, there was no longer any political use for the people; and it happened about the same time that new theories of farming became fashionable. "High farming" was the word. There was to be more grazing, more green cropping; there were to be larger farms; and more labour was to be done by horses and by steam. But consolidation of many small farms into one large one could not be effected without clearing off the "surplus population;" and then, as there would be fewer mouths to be fed, so there would be more produce for export to England. The clearance system, then, had begun in 1829, and had proceeded with great activity ever since; and as the tenants were almost all tenants-at-will, there was no difficulty in this, except the expense.

The Code of Cheap Ejectment was therefore improved for the use of Irish landlords. As the laws of England and of Ireland are extremely different in regard to franchise and to land-tenure; and as the Ejectment-laws were invented exclusively for Ireland, to clear off the "surplus population," I shall give a short account of them.

There had been an Act of George the Third (1815) providing that in all cases of holdings, the rent of which was under £20 - this included the whole class of small farms - the Assistant Barrister at Sessions (the County Judge) could make a decree at the cost of a few shillings to eject any man from house and farm. Two years after, the proceedings in ejectment were still further simplified and facilitated, by an Act making the sole evidence of a landlord or his agent sufficient testimony to ascertain the amount of rent due.

By another Act of the first year of George the Fourth, it was declared that the provisions of the cheap Ejectment Act "had been found highly beneficial" (that is to say, thousands of farms had been cleared off) -"and it was desirable that same should be extended." 

Thereupon it was enacted that the power of summary ejectment at Quarter Sessions should apply to all holdings at less than £50 rent; and, by the same statute, the cost of procuring ejectments was still farther reduced. In the reigns of George the Fourth and Victoria, other Acts were made for the same purpose, so that the cost and trouble of laying waste a townland and levelling all its houses, had come to be very trifling. It must be admitted that there is cheap justice in Ireland, at least for some people.

In many parts of the island extermination of the people had been sweeping. At every Quarter Sessions, in every county, there were always many ejectments; and I have seen them signed by Assistant-Barristers by hundreds in one sheaf. They were then placed in the hands of bailiffs and police, and came down upon some devoted townland with more terrible destruction than an enemy's sword and torch. Whole neighbourhoods were often thrown out upon the highways in winter, and the homeless creatures lived for a while upon the charity of neighbours; but this was dangerous, for the neighbours were often themselves ejected for harbouring them. Some landlords contracted with emigration companies to carry them to America "for a lump sum," according to the advertisements I cited before. Others did not care what became of them; and hundreds and thousands perished every year, of mere hardship.

All this seems a tale of incredible horror. But there are in these United States, this moment, at least one million of persons, each of whom knows the truth of every word I have written, and could add to my general statement, circumstances of horror and atrocity, that might make one tremble with rage as he reads.

The Irish are peculiarly attached to their homesteads; and, like all people of poetic temperament, surround their homes and hearths with more tender associations than a race of duller perception could understand. Take, from a volume published in '44, one ejectment tableau;

"Having swept from every corner towards the door, she now took the gatherings by handfuls, and flung them high into the air, to be scattered by the winds. Having next procured some salt upon a plate, she went again through every part of the dwelling, turning the salt over and over with her fingers as she went. This lustral visit finished, she divided the salt into separate parcels, which she handed to those without, with directions for its farther distribution."She now wrenched from the threshold the horse shoe which the Irish peasantry generally nail upon it, imputing to it some mystic influence; after which, standing erect, with one foot within the house and the other outside, she signed the sign of the Cross on her brow and on her breast. This strange ceremony was concluded by a sweeping motion of the hand towards the open air, and a similar one in the contrary direction, attended by a rapid movement of the lips, as though she muttered some conjuration. A reverent inclination of her body followed, and again she made the holy sign; then, drawing herself up to her full stature, she took her place among the children, and, without casting a look upon the desecrated cabin, she departed from the place."

It is but fair to tell, that sometimes an ejecting landlord or agent was shot by desperate, houseless men. What wonder? There were not half enough of them shot. If the people had not been too gentle, forgiving, and submissive, their island could never have become a horror and scandal to the earth.

There was a "Poor Law" in Ireland since 1842 - a law which had been forced on the country against its will, on the recommendation of an English tourist (one Nichols); and workhouses, erected under that law, received many of the exterminated people. But it is a strangely significant fact, that the deaths by starvation increased rapidly from the first year of the poor law. The Report of the Census Commissioners, for 1851, declares that, while in 1842 the deaths registered as deaths by famine amounted to 187, they increased every year, until the registered deaths in 1845 were 516. The "registered" deaths were, perhaps, one-tenth of the unregistered deaths by mere hunger.

Such, then, was the condition of Ireland in 1844-5; and all this before the "Famine."

Now, the "Landlord and Tenant Commission" began its labours in '44. The people were told to expect great benefits from it. The Commissioners, it was diligently given out, would inquire into the various acknowledged evils that were becoming proverbial throughout Europe and America; and there were to be parliamentary "ameliorations." This Commission looked like a deliberate fraud from the first. It was composed entirely of landlords; the chairman (Lord Devon) being one of the Irish absentee landlords. It was at all times quite certain that they would see no evidence of any evils to be redressed on the part of the tenants; and that, if they recommended any measures, those measures would be such as should promote and make more sweeping the depopulation of the country. "You might as well," said O'Connell, "consult butchers about keeping Lent, as consult these men about the rights of farmers."

The Report of this set of Commissioners would deserve no more especial notice than any of the other Reports of innumerable Commissions which the British Parliament was in the habit of issuing, when they pretended to inquire into any Irish "grievance" - and which were usually printed in vast volumes, bound in blue paper, and never read by any human eye, - but that the Report of this particular "Devon Commission" has become the very creed and gospel of British statesmen with regard to the Irish people from that day to this. It is the programme and scheme upon which the Last Conquest of Ireland was undertaken in a business-like manner years ago; and the completeness of that conquest is due to the exactitude with which the programme was observed.

The problem to be solved was, how to get rid of the people. There was a "surplus population" in Ireland - this had long been admitted in political circles - and the alarming masses of powerful men who had trooped to the summons of O'Connell, and had been by him paraded "in their moral might," as he said, at so many points of the island, brought home to the bosoms of Englishmen a stern conviction of the absolute necessity that existed to thin out these multitudinous Celts.

One of the strongest demands and most urgent needs of these people, had always been permanence of tenure in their lands; - O'Connell called it "fixity of tenure," and presented it prominently in his speeches, as one of the greatest benefits to be gained by repealing the Union. It was indeed the grand necessity of the nation - that men should have some security -that they who sowed should reap - that labour and capital expended in improving farms should, in part, at least, profit those who expended it. This would at once prevent pauperism, put an end to the necessity of emigration, supersede poor-laws, and prevent the periodical famines which had desolated the island ever since the Union. It is a measure which would have been sure to be recommended as the first, or indeed, the only measure for Ireland, by any other Commission than a Commission of Irish landlords.

In the northern province of Ulster, there was, as before mentioned, a kind of unwritten law, or established custom, which, in some counties, gave the tenant such needful security The "Tenant-Right of Ulster" was the name of it. By virtue of that Tenant-Right, a farmer, though his tenure might be nominally "at will," could not be ejected so long as he paid his rent; and if he desired to move to another part of the country, he could sell his "good will" in the farm to an incoming tenant. Of course the greater had been his improvements, the larger price would his Tenant-Right command; in other words, the improvements created by his own or his father's industry were his. The same custom prevented rents from being arbitrarily raised in proportion to the improved value; so that in many eases which came within my own knowledge, in my profession, lands held "at will" in Ulster, and subject to an ample rent, were sold by one tenant-at-will to another tenant-at-will at full half the fee-simple value of the land. Conveyances were made of it. It was a valuable property, and any violent invasion of it, as a witness told Lord Devon's Commission, would have "made Down another Tipperary."

The custom was almost confined to Ulster. It was by no means (though this has often been stated), created or commenced by the terms of the Plantation of Ulster in the time of King James the First; but was a relic of the ancient free social polity of the nation, and had continued in Ulster longer than in the other three provinces, simply because Ulster had been the last part of the island brought under British dominion, and forced to exchange the ancient system of tribe-lands for feudal tenures. Neither is the custom peculiar to Ireland. It prevails in Italy, in Spain, in Hungary, in all Austria. In France and Prussia it has ripened into full peasant proprietorship; and nowhere, perhaps, in all Europe, is it denied or disallowed to the tillers of the soil, except in Galicia (the Austrian part of Poland), and in the three Southern provinces of Ireland.

Surely it was fair, it was not unnatural, that Tipperary should seek to become another Down; and if, throughout all Munster, Leinster, and Connaught, there was idleness and indifference to improvement of farms, who could expect it to be otherwise, seeing that if a man was so insane as to improve, to drain, to fence, to build a better cabin, his landlord was quite sure to serve him with a "notice to quit." In fact, on many estates those notices were always served regularly from six months to six months - so that at every Quarter Sessions the whole population of such estates was liable to instant extermination.

The people of Ireland are not idle.

They anxiously sought opportunities of exertion on fields where their landlords could not sweep off all their earnings; and many thousands of small farmers annually went to England and Scotland to reap the harvest, lived all the time on food that would sustain no other working men, and hoarded their earnings for their wives and children. If they had had Tenant-Right they would have laboured for themselves, and Tipperary would have been a peaceful and blooming garden.

Is the American mind able to conceive it possible that noble lords and gentlemen, the landlords and legislators of an ancient and noble people, should deliberately conspire to slay one out of every four - men, women, and little children - to strip the remainder barer than they were - to uproot them from the soil where their mothers bore them - to force them to flee to all the ends of the earth - to destroy that Tenant-Right of Ulster where it was, and to cut off all hope and chance of it where it was not? No; I can hardly suppose that an American is able to grasp the idea; his education has not fitted him for it; and I hesitate to make the assertion of this deliberate conspiracy. Take the facts and documents, and draw such inferences as they will bear.

First, then, for the Report of the Devon Commission. As first printed, it fills four stupendous "Blue Books." But it contained too much valuable matter to be buried, like other Reports, in the catacombs which yawn for that species of literature. The Secretary of the Commission, therefore, was employed to abstract and condense, and present the cream of it in two or three octavo volumes. This had the advantage, not only of condensation, but of selection; the Commissioners could then give the pieces of evidence which they liked the best, together with their own recommendations. Now, those volumes have been the Bible of British legislators and Irish landlords; the death-warrant of one million and a half of human beings, and the sentence of pauper banishment against full a million and a half more. It is worth while to examine so portentous a volume. It is called a "Digest of the Evidence," &c., is published by authority, and has a preface signed "Devon."

Much of the volume is occupied with dissertations and evidence respecting "Tenant-Right," which the North had, and the South demanded. The Commissioners are clearly against it in every shape. They term it "unphilosophical;" and in the preface they state that the Ulster landlords and tenants look upon it in the light of a life-insurance - that is, the landlord allows the sale of Tenant-Right, and the incoming tenant buys it, lest they should both be murdered by the outgoing tenant. The following passage treats this Tenant-Right as injurious to the tenant himself:

"It is even questionable whether this growing practice of Tenant-Right, which would at the first view appear to be a valuable assumption on the part of the tenant, be so in reality; as it gives to him without any exertion on his own part an apparent property or security, by means of, which he is enabled to incur future incumbrance in order to avoid present inconvenience - a practice which frequently terminates in the utter destitution of his family, and in the sale of his farm, when the debts thus created at usurious interest amount to what its sale would produce."

It appears, then, that it is injurious to the tenant to let him have anything on the security of which he can borrow money; a theory which the landlords would not relish if applied to themselves. Further, the Commissioners declare that this Tenant-Right is enjoyed without any exertion on the part of tenants. Yet they have, in all cases, either created the whole value of it in the sweat of their brows, or bought it from those who did so create it.

The Commissioners "foresee some danger to the just rights of property, from the unlimited allowance of this Tenant-Right.'' But they suggest a substitute: "Compensation for future improvements;" surrounding, however, that suggestion with difficulties which have prevented it from ever being realized.

Speaking of the consolidation of farms, they say:

"When it is seen in the evidence, and in the return of the size of the farms, how small those holdings are, it cannot be denied that such a step is absolutely necessary."

And then, as to the people whom it is thus "necessary" to eject, they say:

"Emigration is considered by the committee to be peculiarly applicable as a remedial measure."

They refer to one of their Tables (No. 95, p. 564), where;

"The calculation is put forward, showing that the consolidation of the small holdings up to eight acres [An Irish acre is to an English one in the proportion of eight to five, nearly.] would require the removal of about one hundred and ninety-two thousand three hundred and sixty-eight families."

That is, the removal of about one million of persons.

Such was the Devon programme: Tenant-Right to be disallowed; one million of people to be removed, that is, swept out on the highways, where their choice would be America, the poor-house, or the grave. We shall see with what accuracy the details were carried out in practice.

The "Integrity of the Empire" was to be menaced no more by half-million Tara meetings: those ordered masses of the "Irish Enemy," with their growing enthusiasm, their rising spirit, and their yet more dangerous discipline, were to be thinned, to be cleared off: but all in the way of "amelioration." They were to be ameliorated out of their lives: there was to be a battue of benevolence. Both government and landlords had been thoroughly frightened by that vast parade of a nation: and they knew they had only been saved by O'Connell and his Peace-principle: and O'Connell was not immortal.

When I say there was a conspiracy of landlords and legislators to destroy the people, it would be unjust, as it is unnecessary, to charge all members of the Queen's Government, or all or any of the Devon Commissioners, with a privity to that design. Sir Robert Peel knew how Irish landlords would inquire, and what report they would make, just as well as he knew what verdict a jury of Dublin Orangemen would give. Sir Robert Peel had been Irish Secretary. He knew Ireland well; he had been Prime Minister at the time of Catholic Emancipation; and he had taken care to accompany that measure with another, disfranchising all the small farmers in Ireland. This disfranchisement, as before explained, had given a stimulus and impetus to the clearance system. He had helped it by cheap Ejectment Acts. But it had not worked fast enough.

J.F Lalor - The Rights of Ireland

 "Ireland her own, and all therein, from the sod to the sky. The soil of Ireland for the people of Ireland" 

THE RIGHTS OF IRELAND.

 (From the first number of the Irish Felon, June 24th, 1848). 

To found a paper like the Irish Felon for the mere purpose, in whole or in part, of making a fortune or making a farthing, would be a felon's crime indeed, deserving no hero's doom, lamented death or honoured exile, but death on the scaffold, amid the scoff and scorn of the world. For years we have seen men in Ireland alternately trading on the government and trading on the country, and making money by both ; and you do not imagine, perhaps, to what degree the public mind has been affected with a feeing of suspicion by the circumstance — a feeling deepened, extended and justified, by all we see or know of ourselves. For, indeed, the craving to get money — the niggard reluctance to give money — the coward fear of losing or laying out money — is the bad and coarse point that is most apparent in the character of all ranks and classes of our people ; and I often fear it argues an utter absence of all heroism from our national temperament, and of all the romantic passions, whether public or private. In other countries men marry for love ; in Ireland they marry for money. Elsewhere they serve their country for their country's thanks or their country's tears — here they do it for their country's money. At this very time, when Ireland, to all appearance, is stripping for her last struggle on this side of ages, there are, I am convinced, many persons among the middle classes who refuse to fall into the national march, or countenance the national movement, merely from the hope — in most cases as vain as it is vile — of obtaining some petty government place ; or from the fear of losing some beggarly employment or emolument ; and I know myself in this country many and many a sturdy and comfortable farmer who refuses to furnish himself with a pike, merely and solely because it would cost him two shillings. For ourselves — I say nothing of others — let us aim at better rewards than mere money rewards. Better and higher rewards has Ireland in her hands. If we succeed, we shall obtain these ; and if we do not succeed, we shall deserve none. In cases like this, the greatest crime that man can commit is the crime of failure. I am convinced it has become essential to our fame and our effectiveness — to the success of our cause and the character of our country, to keep clear and secure ourselves from the suspicion, that our only object may be nothing more than a long and lucrative agitation. The Confederation pledged its members to accept no office or place of profit from an English government. That pledge was efficient, perhaps, for its own professed purposes, but not for others — for an "agitation" has places and profits of its own to bestow. Let them say of us whatever else they will — let them call us felons, and treat us as such, but let them not, at least, have the power to call us swindlers. We may be famous: let us not become infamous.

For these and other still more important reasons, needless to be stated as yet, I certainly could have wished that this journal had been established on a subscribed capital, and the effective ownership vested in a joint-stock company of, say eight hundred or a thousand proprietors. What is there to hinder that this arrangement should be made even now ? It would contain securities, and create powers, which no other could offer or pretend to. There are, indeed, some practical difficulties in the way, but they might easily, I think, be overcome. Whether any such arrangement be adopted or not, I believe, however, that I am fully warranted in desiring — and I think our own true interest and honour concur in demanding — that the Felon office shall not be a commercial establishment, but organised and animated as a great political association. And, for my part, I enter it with the hope and determination to make it an armed post, a fortress for freedom to be, perhaps, taken and retaken again, and yet again ; but never to surrender, nor stoop its flag, till that flag shall float above a liberated nation.

Without agreement as to our objects we cannot agree on the course we should follow. It is requisite the paper should have but one purpose ; and the public should understand what that purpose is. Mine is not to repeal the Union, or restore Eighty-two. This is not the year '82 this is the year '48. For repeal I never went into " Agitation '' and will not go into insurrection. On that question I refuse to arm, or to act in any mode ; and the country refuses. O'Connell made no mistake when he pronounced it not worth the price of one drop of blood; and for myself, I regret it was not left in the hands of Conciliation Hall, whose lawful property it was and is. Moral force and Repeal, the means and the purpose, were just fitted to each other — Arcades ambo, balmy Arcadians both. When the means were limited, it was only proper and necessary to limit the purpose. When the means were enlarged, that purpose ought to have been enlarged also. Repeal, in its vulgar meaning, I look on as utterly impracticable by any mode of action whatever ; and the constitution of '82 was absurd, worthless, and worse than worthless. The English government will never concede or surrender to any species of moral force whatsoever ; and the country-peasantry will never arm and fight for it — neither will I. If I am to stake life and fame it must assuredly be for something better and greater, more likely to last, more likely to succeed, and better worth success. And a stronger passion, a higher purpose, a nobler and more needful enterprise is fermenting the hearts of the people. A mightier question moves Ireland to-day than that of merely re- pealing the Act of Union. Not the constitution that Wolfe Tone died to abolish, but the constitution that Tone died to obtain — independence; full and absolute independence for this island, and for every man within this island. Into no movement that would leave an enemy's garrison in possession of all our lands, masters of our liberties, our lives, and all our means of life and happiness — into no such movement will a single man of the greycoats enter with an armed hand, whatever the town population may do. On a wider fighting field, with stronger positions and greater resources than are afforded by the paltry question of Repeal, must we close for our final struggle with England, or sink and surrender.

Ireland her own — Ireland her own, and all therein, from the sod to the sky. The soil of Ireland for the people of Ireland, to have and hold from God alone who gave it — to have and to hold to them and their heirs for ever, without suit or service, faith or fealty, rent or render, to any power under Heaven. From a worse bondage than the bondage of any foreign government — from a dominion more grievous and grinding than the dominion of England in its worst days — from the cruellest tyranny that ever yet held its vulture clutch on the body and soul of a country — from the robber rights and robber rule that have turned us into slaves and beggars in the land which God gave us for ours — Deliverance, oh Lord, Deliverance or death — Deliverance, or this island a desert. This is the one prayer, and terrible need, and real passion of Ireland to-day, as it has been for ages. Now, at last it begins to shape into defined and desperate purpose; and into it all meaner and smaller purposes must settle and merge. It might have been kept in abeyance, and away from the sight of the sun — aye, even till this old native race had been finally conquered out and extinguished, sub silentio, without noise or notice. But once propounded and proclaimed as a principle, not in the dust of remote country districts, but loudly and proudly in the tribunes of the capital, it must now be accepted and declared as the first and main Article of Association in the National Covenant of organised defence and armed resistance : as the principle to take ground, and stand, and fight upon. When a greater and more ennobling enterprise is on foot, every inferior and feebler project or proceeding will soon be left in the hands of old women, of dastards, imposters, swindlers, and imbeciles. All the strength and manhood of the island — all the courage, energies, and ambition — all the passion, heroism, and chivalry — all the strong men and the strong minds — all those things that make revolutions will quickly desert it, and throw themselves into the great movement, throng into the larger and loftier undertaking, and flock round the banner that flies nearest the sky. There go the young, the gallant, the gifted, and the daring ; and there, too, go the wise. For wisdom knows that in national action littleness is more fatal than the wildest rashness ; the greatness of object is essential to greatness of effort, strength, and success ; that a revolution ought never to take its stand on low or narrow ground, but seize on the broadest and highest ground it can lay hands on ; and that a petty enterprise seldom succeeds. Had America aimed or declared for less than independence, she would, probably, have failed, and been a fettered slave to-day.

Not to repeal the Union, then, but the conquest — not to disturb or dismantle the empire, but to abolish it utterly for ever — not to fall back on '82, but act up to '48 — not to resume or restore an old constitution, but found a new nation and raise up a free people, and strong as well as free, and secure as well as strong, based on a peasantry rooted like rocks in the soil of the land — this is my object, as I hope it is yours ; and this, you may be assured, is the easier as it is the nobler and the more pressing enterprise. For Repeal, all the moral means at our disposal have in turns been used, abused, and abandoned. All the military means it can command will fail as utterly. Compare the two questions. Repeal would require a national organization ; a central representative authority, formally elected ; a regular army, a regulated war of concentrated action and combined movement. On the other question all circumstances differ, as I could easily show you. But I have gone into this portion of the subject prematurely and unawares, and here I stop — being reluctant, besides, to trespass too long on the time of her Majesty's legal and military advisers.

The principle I state, and mean to stand upon, is this, that the entire ownership of Ireland, moral and material, up to the sun and down to the centre, is vested of right in the people of Ireland ; that they, and none but they are the land-owners and law-makers of this island ; that all laws are null and void not made by them, and all titles to land invalid not conferred or confirmed by them ; and that this full right of ownership may and ought to be asserted and enforced by any and all means which God has put in the power of man. In other, if not plainer words, I hold and maintain that the entire soil of a country belongs of right to the entire people of that country, and is the rightful property, not of any one class, but of the nation at large, in full effective possession, to let to whom they will, on whatever tenures, terms, rents, services and conditions they will ; one condition, however, being unavoidable and essential, the condition that the tenant shall bear full, true, and undivided fealty and allegiance to the nation, and the laws of the nation, whose land he holds, and own no allegiance whatsoever to any other prince, power, or people, or any obligation of obedience or respect to their will, orders or laws. I hold further, and firmly believe, that the enjoyment by the people of this right of first ownership in the soil, is essential to the vigour and vitality of all other rights ; to their validity, efficacy, and value ; to their secure possession and safe exercise. For let no people deceive themselves, or be deceived by the words and colours, and phrases, and form of a mock freedom, by constitutions, and charters, and articles and franchises. These things are paper and parchment, waste and worthless. Let laws and institutions say what they will, this fact will be stronger than all laws, and prevail against them— the fact that those who own your lands will make your laws, and command your liberties and your lives. But this is tyranny and slavery ; tyranny in its widest scope and worst shape ; slavery of body and soul, from the cradle to the coffin — slavery with all its horrors, and with none of its physical comforts and security ; even as it is in Ireland, where the whole community is made up of tyrants, slaves, and slave-drivers. A people whose lands and lives are thus, in the keeping and custody of others, instead of in their own, are not in a position of common safety. The Irish famine of '46 is example and proof. The corn crops were sufficient to feed the island. But the landlords would have their rents, in spite of famine and defiance of fever. They took the whole harvest and left hunger to those who raised it. Had the people of Ireland been the landlords of Ireland, not a human creature would have died of hunger, nor the failure of the potato been considered a matter of any consequence.

There are, however, many landlords, perhaps, and certainly a few, not fairly chargeable with the crimes of their orders ; and you may think it hard they should lose their lands. But recollect the principle I assert would make Ireland, in fact as she is of right, mistress and queen of all those lands ; that she, poor lady, had ever a soft heart and grateful disposition ; and that she may, if she please, in reward of allegiance, confer new titles or confirm the old. Let us crown her a queen ; and then — let her do with her lands as a queen may do.

In the case of any existing interest, of what nature soever, I feel assured that no question but one would need to be answered. Does the owner of that interest assent to swear allegiance to the people of Ireland, and to hold in fee from the Irish nation ? If he assent he may be assured he will suffer no loss. No eventual or permanent loss I mean; for some temporary loss he must assuredly suffer. But such loss would be incidental and inevitable to any armed insurrection whatever, no matter on what principle the right of resistance should be resorted to. If he refuses, then I say — away with him — out of this land with him — himself and all his robber rights, and all the things himself and his rights have brought into our island — blood and tears, and famine, and the fever that goes with famine.

Between the relative merits and importance of the two rights, the people's right to the land, and their right to legislation, I do not mean or wish to institute any comparison. I am far, indeed, from desirous to put the two rights in competition or contrast, for I consider each alike as the natural complement of the other, necessary to its theoretical completeness and practical efficacy. But considering them for a moment as distinct, I do mean to assert this — that the land question contains, and the legislative question does not contain, the materials from which victory is manufactured ; and that, therefore, if we be truly in earnest, and determined on success, it is on the former question, and not on the latter, we must take our stand, fling out our banner, and hurl down to England our gage of battle. Victory follows that banner alone — that, and no other.

This island is ours, and have it we will, if the leaders be but true to the people, and the people be true to themselves.

The rights of property may be pleaded. No one has a higher respect for the real rights of property than I have ; but I do not class among them the robber's right, by which the lands of this country are now held in fee from the British crown. I acknowledge no right of property in a small class which goes to abrogate the rights of a numerous people. I acknowledge no right of property in eight thousand persons, be they noble or ignoble, which takes away all rights of property, security, independence, and existence itself, from a population of eight millions, and stands in bar to all the political rights of the island, and all the social rights of its inhabitants, I acknowledge no right of property which takes the food of millions, and gives them a famine — which denies to the peasant the right of a home, and concedes, in exchange, the right of a workhouse- I deny and challenge all such rights, howsoever founded or enforced. I challenge them, as founded only on the code of the brigand, and enforced only by the sanction of the hangman. Against them I assert the true and indefeasible right of property — the right of our people to live in it in comfort, security, and independence, and to live in it by their own labour, on their own land, as God and nature meant them to do. Against them I shall array, if I can, all the forcesthat yet remain in this island. And against them I am determined to make war, — to their destruction or my own.

These are my principles and views. I shall have other opportunities to develop and defend them. I have some few other requisitions to make, but I choose to defer them for other reasons besides want of time and space. Our first business, before we can advance a step, is to fix our own footing and make good our position. That once done, this contest must, if possible, be brought to a speedy close.

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The above is sourced from the following book: