The Irish standard., 1898-08-27
A SAD STORY OF BRITISH BARBARI1Y.
A TIMELY ARTICLE FOR LOVERS OF
ANGLO-SAXON CULTURE,
HE'LL WAS LET LOOSE IN THE ISLAND.
HE SAYS IT'S IMPIOUS TO BE CALM
ON SUCH A THEME.

Mr.. Stead, editor of The Review of
Reviews, has recently visited Ireland;
and under the heading Of "The Cen
tenary of 1889" he tells the story of the
Irish insurrection of that period with
candor and vividness and fidelity to
truth that will cause the blood of Irish
readers to chill and burn alternately.
1t will be read says the Sligo Cham
pion, by all Irishmen at home and
abroad with great satisfaction. He says
that as an Englishman he returned to
England intensely Inundated and filled
with feeling Of alarm. He declares
that, as strong Imperalist, he grieved
because Ireland was the greatest failure
of the empire-Ireland was Englands
reproach. He next describes how Eng
land one hundred years ago missed its
chance Of governing Ireland as it gov
erned itself, instead of fleeing and
plundering it for their own sovereign
will and pleasure. When Lord Fitz-
william had ceased to be viceroy in Ire
land, Mr.. Stead says:
John Bull hardened his heart and
stiffened his neck, took the bit between
his teeth, and bolted headlong down the
broad way that leadeth to destruction.
Down that road he is plunging still, al
though with occasional haltings, as con-
science pricks MIN and as glimpses of
Judgment to come flash before his eyes.
But If Gods in His heaven and all's
right with the world then that judg-
ment, though it tarry for season, will
fall not. Nor IL our belief in righteous
ness and judgment is not a mere old
wife's fable, ought we then to wish it to
] pass over us. For in world in which
such crime as this escaped unwhipped,
Justice would seem to lie outside the
moral order of the universe"
This noble article is most exhaustive
in dealing with England's treatment of
Ireland. Under eight headings it gives
a succinct and correct history of the
Irish rebellion, which was, he says:
1.-The mere maddened welte of peas
antry deliberately driven frantic by the
wholesale violation of their wives and
daughters, these outrages being set on
foot by the government for this very
purpose. Its suppression was accom-
plishcd by excesses which might have
brought the blush to the cheek of
Turk or Kurd. But, notwithstanding
all this, the Irish insurgents, in their
brief hour of triumph, although they
slew and burnt and administered the
stern laws of rex talionis with scant
mercy never laid foul hand upon
woman. Amid all these atrocities, says
| Mr.. H. Maxwell, horrible and revolving
as their cruelties were, the chastity of
the fair sex was respected. II have not
been able to ascertain" says Gordon,
"one instance to the contrary in the
county Of Wexford, though many beau
their power"
Mr.. Stead said he found it difficult to
write calmly about such record-"on
| such theme tbs impious to be calm"
Under the heading cat the Parting Of
the Ways" he prints the horrors Pitt
had brought on this unfortunate coun-
try, and the next gives an account OF
how the Protestant Peep of Day Boys"
hunted, murdered, and ill-treated gen
orally the Catholics of Ulster, sending
them to hell or to Connaught. The
Orangemen Of the present day are the
SUCCESSES, he sayA of those ruthless
ruftians He speaks Of the indomitable
Wolfe Tones noble efforts to. obtain
helpers across the sea" and how Eng
land was saved by the wind" He
charges tho government with making
the insurrection, and expresses surprise
that any government, let alone NOM
inally Christian and Protestant govern
ment, could deliberately plot and plan to
force it's own subjects into semblance
of insurrection in order that it might
have free license to massacre without
let or hinderance. This is stated by a
Protestant Englishman, who pays the
following tribute to this country:
| "Of all the nations the Irish have pre-
eminence for their fine sense of tho SUI
preme Importance Of stainless chastity.
For the honor of their women is the
point Of honor with this chivalrous and
ardent race. They bear hardships with
out repining, bend submissively before
the oppression of arbitrary power; but
no extreme of privation, no squalid hor-
r0r or overcrowded cabin has broken
down the sense Of profound reverence
with which even the most miserable Irish
kern regards his womankind. There is
no woman in an Irish cabin that is not
to it's inmates, Of the sex of the Ma
DONNA partaking, whether maid or ma
tron, in something of the mystic glory
Of the Mother of God. The Irish might
stand every extremity Of coerciye des-