Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 1.djvu/104

 which became known as the Mallow Defiance, the purpose of which did not seem to admit of misconception:—

"Do you know (he said) I never felt such a loathing for speechifying as I do at present. The time is coming when we must be doing. Gentlemen, you may learn the alternative to live as slaves or die as freemen. But, gentlemen, as long as they leave us a rag of the Constitution we will stand on it. We will violate no law, we will assail no enemy; but you are much mistaken if you think others will not assail you. [A Voice: We are ready to meet them.] To be sure you are. Do you think I suppose you to be cowards or fools?"

Later he added—

"Are we to be trampled under foot? Oh! they shall never trample me, at least (no, no). I say they may trample me, but it will be my dead body they will trample on, not the living man."

To Europe and America, and to the great bulk of the people of Ireland, this declaration seemed to be the signal of pending revolution. The Repeal Association ordered a statue of the leader in white marble with the Mallow Defiance engraved on the pedestal, in eternal memory of a great wrong adequately encountered. By some of us, at least, the idea was not taken up with levity or insouciance. Contending with a people so much stronger in numbers, resources, and organisation, complaint and remonstrance (it may well seem) were the only weapons Ireland could employ, but the system was a painfully tedious and wasteful one. Agitation for twenty or thirty years for some single concession was like the economy of ancient Egypt, where the labour of an entire generation was expended to raise a pyramid. And the agitators came out of the contest like soldiers from a long campaign, unfit for any other work and indifferent to the ordinary means and methods by which a people become prosperous. If the conflict could be brought to a close by a fierce encounter in arms it was not too high a price to pay for permanent peace. Letters from soldiers to the Nation were not unfrequent. One sergeant, a man of considerable ability and experience, kept me acquainted with the sentiments of those whom he named " Irishmen with red coats but green hearts." The captain of his company was peculiarly offensive, and directed