Page:An Ulsterman for Ireland.djvu/39

AN ULSTERMAN FOR IRELAND taught—expressly taught—in solemn harangues r and even in sermons, that it was their duty to die, and see their children die before their faces r rather than resist their tyrants, as men ought. You can hardly believe that creatures with the gait and aspect of men could have been brought to this. And you cannot wonder that they should have been slow, slow in struggling upward out of such darkness and desolation. But I tell you the light has at length come to them; the flowery spring of this year is the dawning of their day; and before the cornfields of Ireland are white for the reaper our eyes shall see the sun flashing gloriously, if the heavens be kind to us, 'on a hundred thousand pikes.

I will speak plainly. There is now growing on the soil of Ireland a wealth of grain, and roots, and cattle far more than enough to sustain in life and in comfort all the inhabitants of the island. That wealth must not leave us another year, not until every grain of it is fought for in every stage, from the tying of the sheaf to the loading of the ship. And the effort necessary to that simple act of self-preservation will at one and the same blow prostrate British dominion and landlordism together. 'Tis but the one act of volition if we resolve but to live we make our country a free and sovereign State.

Will you not gird up your loins for this great national struggle, and stand with your countrymen for life and land? Will you, the sons of a warlike race, the inheritors of conquering memories—with the arms of freemen in all your homes, and relics of the gallant Republicans of Ninety-eight for ever before your eyes—will you 29