Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 1.djvu/306

 Ireland could be found a band of armed fratricides to fight against their own land for the flag of a foreign enemy.

"There are terrible traditions shadowing the word Liberty in Ireland. Let it be our task, men of this generation, descendants of martyrs and sufferers and heroes, to make it a glad evangel of happiness—a reign of truth over fictions and symbols of intellect over prejudice and conventionalism—of humanity over tyranny and oppression."

I contrived to smuggle out of prison, where the discipline had suddenly become vigilant, another appeal to the people printed in the same number:—

"THE TOCSIN OF IRELAND.

"Ireland is, perhaps, at this hour in arms for her rights; in arms for the rights so patiently solicited, so perversely refused, so tyrannically trampled upon.

"The rights which she sought in vain to purchase with her tears; which she springs up at last to purchase with her heart's blood only when the sacred character of manhood, without which our life is lower than the dog's or the slave's, is trampled under the feet of her foreign lords.

"It is her last resource, long evaded, long postponed; the bitter cup which Heaven would not permit to pass away from her; and now, in the face of Europe, in the face of America, in the face of our kindred and our race, in the face of our Great Creator, we declare that this war is and ; that men may enter upon it with a free conscience, and a full assurance that it is Heaven's work.

"We fight for liberty to live. Hundreds of thousands of Irishmen would again die in the tortures of famine; hundreds of thousands of Irishmen would again fly over the wide sea to perish of unknown horrors in the swamps of Canada and the woods of Michigan, if we bowed our necks to the Parliament of England at this hour.

"We fight because there is no remedy but the sword; because in this island, so favoured by Heaven, our traders have been made bankrupts, our peasantry have been transformed into hideous paupers, our gentry have been erected into a hostile garrison, and our educated classes corrupted