St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1886-02-08
VOICE OF TIE PEOPLE.
A Plea for Ireland.
10 the Editor of the Globe:

To the Editor Of the Globe:
MINNEAPoLIs, Feb. 7.-Emboldened by
your outspOken and brilliant advocacy of the
cause of poor. dOwntrOdden Erin. will
ask you to insert in your popular journal
the well-known words: Peace on earth. to
men good will" All. yes, it was the
first Christmastide for many darksome
age at which it was possible to breathe that
prayer with sincerity as between the Irish
and English nations. In that black past (if
indeed it be the past not prayers, but
curses loud and strong. have passed from
shore to shore while the angels chOiTed their
songs of peace through 700 years of
gloomy midwinter nights and balmy summer
days. Upon one side of the channel lay a
nation cruel with the sense of untamed
brute-strength; upon the other an ancient.
proud and gifted race to degrade and wound
and extirpate whom became with the
stronger nation first an object of greedy,
II not hellish, policy, and afterwards of
guilty necessity. The sixty miles of waves,
or, as our mothers used to call it, THAT
turbulent roaring ocean," between the two
islands, which steamer spans in few
hours, became TOphet gulf of
WRONGS AND HATE
which craftsmanship has not been able in
seven dreary centuries to bridge over Has
the golden bridge been discovered at
last? Are the cruel English going
to give over that CALLING MASTER
hood which in all its bloOd-stained
history has never brought anything but az
onies to bleeding Ireland and discomfort
and disgrace to blood-stained England.
Are they about to render it possible for
Irishmen to cast their eyes across that
Irish sea without knitted brows and angry,
beating, violent hearts? Who knows !?
Ii is q solemn, epOch-making hour; one in
which he who chatters wild words on either
side incurs unenviable responsibility in the
watchful eye of history. Sir, we are now
at the parting of the ways. 1t is for the
English statesman to make up his tardy
mind whether we are to tread the radiant
path of amIty which glisiens on the hOri-
zon through this murky Irish sky
or whether we are to plunge
back into that acknowledging of
hell and SOdOm along which the two peo-
and misery. One thing is certain, the
Providence which has cheered that
GENUINE IRISH HEART
unconquerably through 700 St. Patrick's
DAYS of losing battle against Norman and
4.
through three confiscatiOns of the whole
land of Ireland. through penal laws of a
worse type than mid-African barbarity;
through such hell-fre of battle. plumber,
ignominy and misery, of havoc and plague,
famine, and restitution, such as never tried
a nations soul before. has not preserved us
this far to surrender the hopes of our faith
ers to-day. When we are garrisOned twenty
millions strong around the world. pushing
our peaceable way ifTesistibly at home into
every stronghold in which our pampereC
foes were once guarded with fiery dragon:
and intrenched in the very seat of power
shall weask of England's empire kingmaker
and taskmasters-never. Never sOundeS
more joyous. heavenly music of hope arOun,
that isle of WOlftone. Emmett and Davis
Lord Eward and Connell and Edward Law
lor Shiel than now.
MICHAEL KAvANAUGH.