That is the alternative, I think it is entirely capable of demonstration that the Irish people can not be exterminated, and extermination being impossible, emancipation is imperative.

Let me explain to you why it is that although these oppressive laws have all been repealed, the conditions they produced still continue. All the history of Ireland ever since the first Norman invasion has been an unbroken record of conquests, and seizure of lands-first the devastation of land always followed by confiscation. But neither conquests not confiscation sufficed to keep the country permanently impoverished. From the first landing of Strongbow in 1172 down to the final overthrow of Irish independence by William III, the Irish people after each invasion and devastation restored prosperity with a celerity and completeness that have been marvels to all historians.

Mountjoy, under Elizabeth, reported to the Queen that everything capable of supporting life in Ireland had been burned to the roots, that the whole Irish population had been exterminated, except a few fugitives who had taken refuge in morasses where they could not be reached, but where, for lack of food, they must inevitably starve. And yet in the very next reign Ireland was blooming like a garden. In the time of Charles I the prosperity of Ireland had already awakened the envy and cupidity of Englishmen; but the Irish, with that peculiar sense of loyalty, which is one of their characteristics-often misdirected because carried to excess-having embraced the side of the King, fell under the vengeance of Cromwell. Again the island was devastated with fire and sword. The whole of the land east of the Shannon was confiscated. The entire native population outside of many thousands who were slain, and other thousands sold into captivity, was transported west of the Shannon to a soil which was believed to be so sterile that it could not afford subsistence to human life. Cromwell's brief statement of his policy was that the Irish must go to hell or to Connaught." Well, they went to Connaught, but they did not go to hell [laughter], because there was always one Irish champion whom, some way or other, the British arms could never overcome, and that was the Irish girl. Any Englishman who received land and settled upon it soon fell under her influence. That was already so clearly apparent in the time of Richard II that he passed the statute of Kilkenny forbidding any Englishman who had received land in Ireland from marrying an Irish woman. But the Irish girl was too strong for statutes. She continued to marry the English settler in the teeth of all prohibitions, and the offspring of those marriages were the strongest Irish patriots.

Although the land had been laid waste with a fury hardly ever paralleled in the annals of mankind by the English Parliamentary forces, first under Cromwell and after him under Ireton and Ludlow, yet when William III in the next generation faced a patriot Irish army, a large part of it was composed of the sons of those Ironsides to whom Cromwell granted land in Ireland. After that dreadful Cromwellian devastation the recovery of her prosperity by Ireland in the reign of Charles II is declared by Macaulay to be the marvel of all history. It is acknowledged even by Fronde--who will not be suspected of any partiality toward Ireland-that in the reign of Charles II practically the entire transportation of goods by sea from the Old World to the New was carried on in Irish bottoms. Irish cattle and horses commanded the highest prices in English markets, and Irish woolen products were considered to be the very finest in the world.

Almost immediately after his accession this king for whose father Ireland had incurred the resentment and fury of Cromwell, yielding to representations by merchants of Bristol, excluded Ireland from the operation of the navigation act. The effect of this was a total destruction of the Irish shipping trade, from which it has never recovered. Next, in obedience to a demand of English agricultural interests, exportation of Irish cattle and horses to England was prohibited. That reduced property in livestock to one-tenth of its former value. But the woolen industry remained, and probably from the fact that the energies of the country were now mainly directed to it, and the whole capital of the nation largely absorbed in it, the manufacture of Irish cloth expanded to a degree unapproached in any other country of the world.

But when William III finally established his authority by the victories of Aughrim and the Boyne, and by his treason at Limerick the surrender of which he accepted on terms that permitted the garrison to march out of the city and the country, while at the same time guaranteeing to the Irish people the right to practice their faith, prosecute their trade and retain their property-a treaty that was violated the moment the Irish army had departed from Ireland), then the system was adopted which Edmund Burke has described in words probably familiar to every one of you. He said the Irish penal code was "as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment and degradation of a feeble people and the debasement in them of human nature as has ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man.' That system produced the conditions which to-day afflict and distress the Irish people and which can be ended only by ending the dominion of England over the country.

After all former confiscations and devastations the country recovered rapidly because the people were allowed to resume possession of the land. But the devilishly ingenious system adopted by William III and his immediate successors precluded any possibility of an Irishman being able to obtain any part of the land on which he lived.

A succession of statutes enacted during 50 years resulted in a body of laws under which no Catholic-that is to say no native Irishmancould hold land. The whole surface of the island had been confiscated. The original owners of the soil were allowed to dwell upon it merely as tenants at will. The confiscated lands were not bestowed, as in former cases, upon English soldiers who settled in Ireland, but upon favorites of the English court in large areas of 5,000, 10,000, 15,000 and even 30,000 acres, who never lived in Ireland, who never intended to live in it, who seldom if ever visited it. Every Catholic was prohibited not merely from holding land but from leasing it for a period longer than 5 years. He could not own a horse worth over 5 pounds. If a Catholic appeared in a public place mounted on a horse any Protestant could take possession of the animal by tendering the rider a 5-pound note. Beyond impoverishing the Irish people it was sought to accomplish their degradation by forbidding the education of youth. The only element of the community capable at that time of imparting education was the clergy, and the priest who taught a school was declared guilty of a capital offense. The spectacle was common of a priest's dead body hanging in chains, executed for no other offense than that of having undertaken to instruct an Irish

boy. Not content with seeking to accomplish the intellectual degradation of the people these statutes sought to corrupt their morals by undermining the foundations of the family. The son who accused the father of being a Catholic and proved it could at once take possession of the estate. The wife who informed on her husband was at once accorded a separate and independent interest in his property. So that wifely loyalty and filial piety; every emotion which in civilized countries is considered necessary to the well-being of a community, and therefore to be encouraged by government, was perverted in Ireland to the injury of morals and the disruption of society.

Under this system the people hardly ever came in contact with the owners of the soil. In almost every instance an agent represented the alien landlord. The value and efficiency of that agent were determined by the amount of rent which he could extort from the unfortunate occupants of the land. If a man by dint of arduous labor improved the soil he occupied and made it more valuable, the agent at once descended upon him and raised the rent. Not merely were all the fruits of his own labor confiscated but all his neighbors were promptly informed that unless they made their soil equally fruitful and raised the same amount of crops, that is to say, paid the same rent, they would be evicted. And eviction was death. Not merely was industry made unprofitable by this hellish system; it was made unpopular. The laborious man did not benefit himself, but he brought disaster upon his whole neighborhood. The unfortunates who were evicted were left to starve on the highways. There was no other occupation in which they could find a livelihood because, by a refinement or cruelty that is almost inconceivable, the only industry that survived the hostile legislation of Charles II-the woolen industry was entirely destroyed by William III. It was not taxed out of existence. It was not made to bear burdens imposed avowedly for support of the State, which prevented it from being prosperous. It was prohibited absolutely and unconditionally. All existing factories were suppressed and the people were forbidden, under heavy penalties, from attempting to engage in the woolen trade. More than that, the Irish wool, at that time-the Australian wool not yet having become available for the world's necessities-was of a peculiarly valuable character. Not merely was the manufacture of woolen goods prohibited in Ireland but exportation of Irish wool was prohibited to any place except six English cities, the idea being that the English manufacturers by these restraints would be enabled to obtain Irish wool on his own terms. But there was an extensive woolen industry in the low countries where a great demand arose for Irish wool as soon as its manufacture was suppressed in Ireland.

Wool that would bring 6 pence at Bristol commanded 1 shilling and 7 pence in Ypres and in other Flemish towns. Quite naturally smuggling of Irish wool to the Continent became one of the chief occupations of the Irish people. But the worst feature of this oppressive measure was not the loss of money or of property that it entailed. It was this: Wool being contraband, trade in it could not be prosecuted through bills of exchange and other devices of banking which govern commerce. It could only be bartered for some commodity not easily discovered, for everywhere the Irish coast was patrolled by British officers charged with the duty of preventing smuggling where they could, and punishing the smugglers where prevention

was impossible. Wool was exchanged mainly for Flemish wines. This extensive importation of wines was the cause and the beginning of that intemperance that has been the curse, Senator [turning to Senator Phelan], of your country and of mine, of your race and mine, for 250 years. Before the beginning of the seventeenth century the Irish were a temperate race. But the example of the wellto-do consuming expensive wines soon caused a demand for coarser and cheaper intoxicants by the less prosperous. To meet this demand the manufacture of illicit whisky became extensive and the people gradually sank into that dreadful intemperance from which they have suffered both at home and abroad ever since. Mr. Chairman, the curse of this intemperance has been Ireland's, the shame of it is England's.

I am not saying this on my own authority. Here again, sir, I am quoting from James Anthony Froude the apologist of English excesses in Ireland-who, indeed, seems to complain that if these enormities had gone further the race would have been exterminated and the Irish question settled finally and without appeal.

Now it is quite true that these proscriptive laws have all been repealed. They began to disappear in the latter half of the eighteenth century. And it is to the credit and glory of this country that their disappearance began when fugitive Irishmen Presbyterians who fled from the enforcement of the test acts and settled in Pennsylvania, and Catholics who had fled from other parts of the Island-were found fighting side by side under the banner of Washington for freedom, justice, and right. Up to that time religious proscriptions were not confined to Ireland. They were universal. They were based on the assumption that anything like diversity of religious faith among the people of a State weakened it, and therefore, it should be prevented by the Government. The Hugenots were placed under serious disabilities in France, so were the Catholics in England. But in Ireland it was the distinctive feature of these proscriptive measures that they were not intended to discourage Catholicism or encourage Protestantism, but to degrade the whole people by plunging them into ignorance, and by corrupting every avenue through which could be reinforced those virtues and qualities that are considered essential to the well-being of every State. In Ireland the faith professed by the people was proscribed with a violence which nowadays can hardly be understood. And this fact must be borne in mind when you consider the Irish question. It is the only country in the world where the people have remained steadfast to a faith that had been proscribed. In every other country the people adopted in a body the religion that its Government established. England became almost uniformly Protestant, or at least non-Catholic under Henry VIII; almost uniformly Catholic again under Queen Mary; Protestant once more under Queen Elizabeth; and it was ready for another change to Catholicism-according to the historians-if James II had but governed with a little more sense. And so the religious complexion of the French people was decided by the result of the religious

wars.

But in Ireland the majority of the people remained immovably attached to the faith that was proscribed and prohibited under drastic penalties, though they had to sacrifice for it not merely every element of property they possessed but every hope of improving their

condition. The extraordinary thing about their tenacity in this respect is that it was maintained, without those aids to fervor which the Catholic liturgy affords. Such a thing as a great religious ceremonial had not occurred in the country, at the time of which we are speaking, for 150 years. Their lands confiscated, their faith proscribed, they practiced the rites of their church crouching in garrets and hiding in out-houses. Driven from the towns and villages, they took refuge in some mountain glen, and there, under the broad canopy of heaven, the rains falling on them, oftentimes knee-deep in mud, with sentinels posted at each end of the glen watching for the priest hunter, who was an established feature of these conditions, all cotemporary writers agree in saying they worshipped with a fervor never shown in the stateliest cathedral ever raised by the hands of piety to the worship of God. Even after they had regained the right to practice their faith it has been remarked that they showed very little regard for its ceremonials. But nothing could swerve them from attachment to its tenets and teachings. And as they remained immovably attached to their faith, so also have they always been unswervingly steadfast in maintaining their national life. It is a peculiar feature of this determination to maintain their national existence that it does not seem to be based on any hope for the future. This is clearly reflected in their poetry, which is perhaps the most melancholy in the world, as it certainly is among the most beautiful. I am one of those who believe that sorrow has always been the source of exquisite poetry. I have never known a sublime note to be inspired by prosperity. Not merely is there a vein of profound melancholy through all Irish poetry, but it never expresses any hope for the future. there is never a note of despair in it. Every line of it breathes the determination of Irishmen to love the old sod, maintain the old faith, preserve the old race, though they never again should see the light of freedom. Moore describing the Harp of Tara, silent, abandoned, the chord alone that breaks during the night, telling the tale of its ruin, concludes:

Thus Freedom now so seldom speaks,

The only throb she gives,

Is when some heart indignant breaks,
To show that still she lives.

Freedom has indeed lived in the hearts of Irishmen under all circumstances; under the darkest skies without any hope of deliverance. Even when there was no chance for Irish arms to fight for it, there was always an Irish heart ready to break for it. Freedom, though denied them as a possession, has always remained an aspiration from which they never could be separated. Such a people can not be seduced from their ideals nor diverted from asserting their right to nationhood. Such a people can not be dubdued, and, therefore, Senators, I submit to you with all frankness and perfect confidence that the only alternative which the Irish question presents is extermination or emancipation of the Irish people. You Senators, to whom is confided the treaty-making power of this Government, will not suffer the destruction of such a race as this, and if you will not suffer it to be destroyed, then you must insist that it be free. There is no alternative. [Applause.]