Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 1.djvu/254

 will never bite, but only bay; but there is another matter to settle between us and England."

He demeaned himself to the end of this memorable letter like the Sibyl proffering the inestimable books to a people to whom they brought the only chance of salvation.

"Is there any apology required for addressing you in this manner? I don't know. Perhaps I have no right—though I have been a Seceder since I ceased to be a child. I owe to you some gratitude. You have given me a country. Before your time I was an alien and an exile, though living in my own land. I hope you won't make me one again."

There was nothing that repelled me in this startling programme. If by the method proposed, or by any other method, the people could be saved, and the sceptre of authority replaced in the hands of Ireland, it would be thrice welcome. I circulated the letter among my colleagues, and invited Lalor, instead of addressing himself to my private ear, to broach his theory in the Nation, and let the country judge of it. In our unhappy case his proposal was, good or bad, not in proportion to its natural equity (there were already too many acknowledged equities which could not be enforced), but in proportion to its power of getting itself accomplished. He accepted my counsel, and addressed himself first to the landlords. He painted in glowing colours the position they might attain in Ireland if they resolved to do solid justice to the tiller of the soil.

"Ireland is yours for ages yet, on the condition that you will be Irishmen—in name, in faith, in fact. Refuse it, and you commit yourselves, in the position of paupers, to the mercy of English Ministers and English members; you throw your very existence on English support, which England soon may find too costly to afford; you lie at the feet of events; you lie in the way of a people and the movement of events and the march of a people shall be over you."

And he warned them of the perils which he undoubtedly believed would attend their refusal. A section of them, he assumed, had already practically refused.

"And so, it seems, you have doomed a people to extinction, and decreed to abolish Ireland? The undertaking is a large one. Are you sure your strength will bear you through it?