"But no sooner had they laid down their arms than Cromwell took back his word and slaughtered every man, woman and child in the city, so that five days are said to have been spent in this ghastly massacre. At Wexford the same miserable scenes of treachery and butchery were enacted." (Gregg's Irish History, p. 64.)
"But no sooner had they laid down their arms than Cromwell took back his word and slaughtered every man, woman and child in the city, so that five days are said to have been spent in this ghastly massacre. At Wexford the same miserable scenes of treachery and butchery were enacted." (Gregg's Irish History, p. 64.)
Very few educated people in this country read Irish history. It is a sort of forbidden subject. It might reveal too much. From what I have read of it I am free to say that for stupid injustice, blind, unreasoning, brutal cruelty, treachery and corruption on the part of England from about the middle of the 12th century down to to-night it equals if it does not exceed in atrocity the rule of the Spaniard in South America.
Yet all the wicked things that the atrocity was intended to exterminate are still alive and possibly stronger than they were in the twelfth century. Roman Catholicism is as strong as ever, the language still lives, and there has been a special revival of it within the last two years. The most wonderful part of all is that the Irishman is still alive, still an Irishman with children and grandchildren. He still loves his country, still loves independence and home rule, is still carrying on what you call guerilla tactics; and this very summer made a special outburst of guerillaism in the British parliament itself in the very heart of London.
What does all this show? Simply that the spirit of independence, the natural nation-forming instinct of human beings, when once aroused, is usually inextinguishable except by the annihilation of every individual; and that this is a provision of nature for the formation of human societies in the world. Secondly that men will fight longer and more desperately for justice or against injustice than they will fight for money.
It has been the consciousness of eternal justice that has kept the Irish and Armenians going for seven hundred years, that inspired the Netherlands to resist the Spaniard for eighty years, that kept your ancestor fighting for seven years and determined Washington to resort to "predatory" war rather than yield to the "benevolence and good government" of England.
Justice is far superior to philanthropy, charity, "the white man's burden" or any other pious hypocrisy or fraud that the villainy of man has invented. It is more important than, and it must precede both morals and good government. After you have been just to a people you may begin to preach to them. Good government as well as agricultural, commercial and industrial prosperity, have been rendered impossible in Ireland for centuries because there has been no justice to the native and patriotic party among the people. Justice can purify most of the international horrors of the world far better than "benevolence."
We are on the whole more just than other nations. We founded ourselves upon justice, upon the doctrine that a naturally separated people had a right to their independence, that all men were politically equal and equal before the law, and that no government could be just that did not rest on the consent of the governed. These doctrines are the highest development of justice that has been wrought out in the past and by that great movement called the Reformation. But England has never accepted them.
We have taught England many things. The dread of our influence compelled her to give the Canadian French liberal institutions. Any rights the Canadians, the Australians or the East Indians enjoy are the result of our revolution and the Sepoy Mutiny. Without our example the English lower classes would still be serfs. Real liberty and free government, the rights of the laboring man, have grown during the last century in England out of American precept and example.
We have compelled her to enlarge her elective franchise towards universal suffrage. Only a few years ago there were no cheap newspapers in England. No reform journals or periodicals favoring popular rights, could be started because there was a tax on the paper, a tax on the advertisements and a tax on each copy of the journal, so levied and manipulated that the tory aristocracy could kill at their pleasure any popular journalistic enterprise. But the example of free and cheap newspapers in America, under the guidance of a Gladstone, extinguished those taxes and fromthat time dates the development of popular rights in England. In the same way has England been compelled to adopt our system of the secret ballot in place of her method which placed every tenant at the mercy of the landlord and every mill hand at the mercy of the mill owner. She is now struggling in a comical way to adopt our public school system. It remains for us to teach her to be just to the Boers.
With the greatest esteem for your distinguished ancestor and yourself, I have the honor to remain,
Very truly yours,Sydney G. Fisher.