The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1881-10-30
TIE IRISH.
THAR Character and Conduct Ably
Defended by One of Them.
The English Shown Up in a Bad
Light.
Editors Herald:

Editors Herald:
In your issue of last Sunday ap
peared an article headed ''The Irish
at Home" in whic h the writer evil
IDENTIFY takes a pride in constantly
airing his Saxon stupidity. He
starts out by remarking that People
were beginning to think that Irish
affairs were in fair way Of settle
ment, and that Irish discomfort was
| soon to be a thing of the past. But
not so. True to their inherent con-
trariness they seem just now to have
Isuddenly grown more perverSe than
ever" What Mentor the writer
must have been to enable him to
have made such a keen discovery
of the springs which control the
utterances and conduct of Irishmen.
He certainly richly deserves the
high honor of being decorated with
| a leather medal, prepared from the
skin of a certain long-eared animal
as fitting tribute to his wonderful
sagacity.
Are the Irish naturally peryerse
and quarrelsome? Byron didn't
seem to think so for he says
If ought can repress my contempt for a
nation SO servile though sore,
Which though trod like worm will not
turn upon power, a ~
IT'S the glory Of Grsttan and the genius
of Moore.
Phillips says: "Ceme, come your
selves and see this unhappy people;
see the Irishmen, the only alien in
ireland, in rags and Wretchedness,
staining the sweetest scenery ever
eye reposed on; prosecuted by the
middlemen Of some absentee land
lord, plundered by the lay-proctor Of
some rapacious and unsympathizing
incumbent, bearing through life but
insults aud injustice and bereaved
even of hope in death by the heart
rending reflection that he leaves his
children like himself to bear an
abominable bondage"
Moore says:
Thus freedom now SO seldom wakes,
The only throb she gives
Is when some heart indignant breaks
To show that still she lives
Was 1t perverSenesS in the Irish
heart that caused it to rebel against
that enlighted Saxon legislation,
which offered as a premium to the
son who should prove base enough
to dishonOr himself by abjuring the
religion Of his forefathers, the en-
tire property of his parents? Was
it per9ersenesS on the part Of the
Irish that caused them to rebel |
against that other civiliZing law |
which enabled a Protestant toll
possess himself of the property of |
his Catholic fellow-subjects by a
tender of perhaps One-tWentieth OIL
its, value? Was it perVersenesS on
their part that caused them to rebel |
against that other Saxon law which |
made any effort tending towards
their education felony, and which
gave birth to that never-to-be-fO forgot
ten character in Irish history, the |
hedge schOolmaster? Nor was the
enlightened, chivalrouS Saxon slow |
to upbraid the Irish afterWard for
the ignorance, and perhaps brutal |
Ity, which their own ignorant and
brutal legislation had engendered. |
But passing over numerous other
specimens of enlightened, hui
name Saxon legislation in the case
Of Ireland and coming down to our
own time, let me ask, was il Irish
3erverseneSs that caused them
10 rebel against the execution of |
hat other Saxon law which drove
thousands of them, who, through a
failure of their staple food, the pol
5ato, were unable to pay the Excess
i've rents levied upon them by
heir luxurious and rapacious land
Ords, out Of their mud cabins in the
lead of winter, with a couple of feet
If snow on the ground, at the point
If the bayonets of a relocated SOL
iiery, and after confscating their
miserable and worn-out bed cover
pg, left them to perish of hunger
ma cold by the roadside before
This was one of the first
Of humane Saxon rule
hat my young eyes were destined
% look upon in Ireland. And has
lOt James Redpath rehearsed the
same old story of wrong as having
occurred in hundreds of instances
n Ireland but last year? And
when he pictured how the youngt
children, blessed, unfortunatelyI
With an Irish heart, a heart that had |
,een made tender and sorrowful by, i
nd had learned to weep and bleed
yer the recital Of the centuries of |
wrong which Providence it seems I:
lad destined, owing to it's close
to England, should be the
'Ortion Of their race. How these
hildren chung to the door sills of Ii
he cabins that had witnessed their
firth, intuitively diYining that they |
we're the only shelter left them be- s
cath the aegis of a cruel and pitt
ess government. Inhumanity like
his is calculated to move the pity | t
f any but the heart of S
Saxon barbarian, such asi
onstituted the army of that {
cromwell which the writer of Sum !
avs article eulogizes, and which {
ound a delicious pastime in pitch
az the paddy-babies of Droghela '
1tO the air and catching /
hem in their descent On | t
he points OF their bayonets. But I
.r,I@ i 4