The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1904-06-04
family at his sad death.
JOHN REDMOND"

; Mr.. William O'Brien telegraphed
from Westport: 1.-THE bad news is a
| shocking blow. One Of poor Ireland's
bravest and truest soldiers gone Will
liam O'Brien." Mr.. O'Brien travelled
/ from Westport to attend the funeral
Similar messages of sympathy We're
sent by William Abraham, NJ. P. for
northeast Cork, the constituency in
which Mr.. Barry resided; Capt. A. ].
G. Donelan, NJ. P. east Cork; Thomas
]. Condor and John Cullinane, two of
the representatives of Tipperary in the
Irish party, and Messrs. Eugene
Cream, NJ. P. southeast Cork; Edward
Barry, NJ. p. south Cork, and j. G.
Flynn, NJ. T. for north Cork.
Mr.. Barry was in the prime of life,
being only about 40 years old at the
time of his death.
Tom Barry was nodded of no COM
mon clay. He was one of that type of
Irishmen who have made English rule
in Ireland impossible for centuries
past. Modest, retiring. energetic. pa
tent. possessed of determination
which. employed against his countrys
enemy, made any cause with which he
was linked irresistible.
OF a genial, kindly. hospitable ma
ture, frank and outspoken under all
circumstances, and having little of the
arts which are sometimes in America
described as 'pushful,' he, by force
of his sterling character and true
worth, was unanimously recognized as
a leader in his sphere.
For honors he cared little, unless
they We're bestowed by the plain peo-
pie of his country, for whom alone he
toiled. An honor bestowed by them he
appreciated: the honors which before
his time had been bestowed by an alien
government. he despised. His thoughts.
his toll. his aspirations We're all in the
interest of the plain people of his ma
tive land.
Mr.. Barry was not classical schol-
ar in the sense in which the classics
have recently been interpreted in Ire
land as in other countries But he did
at least one mans share to see that
Irish classics shall henceforth be given
a place in Irish history. And in doing
so, he taught within his own sphere
the men who had little sympathy with
Ireland, to respect Irish classics as he
knew and was teaching them.
In doing so he had, as Il matter of
course, to come in conflict with the in
situations which had previously ruled
the country and whose destruction was
the object of the movement in which
he engaged, and at every point in the
great drama in which he played such
Il leading part he always rang true
to his motherland.
Now in prison, now on the hillside,
again in the meeting place of the local
public authority and anon on the
magisterial bench, from which he had
listened to his own sentence pronounc-
ed, in each and every ordeal Tom Bar
ry was true to the national faith which
he possessed.
In looking back to-day on the
changes that have taken place in Irish
public life and sentiment, in the poll
teal and social conditions as they now
exist compared with what they We're
quarter of a century ago and of the
silent, stern determination of the peo-
pie that the end has not yet been seen,
we are apt sometimes to forget, or fail
to properly appreciate how much the
quiet, earnest, retiring, true hearted
men like Tom Barry have done to
bring about the conditions prevailing in
the newer Ireland of to-day, and
which we hope to see accentuated in
the Ireland of tomorrow.
l have sat-and it is one of my
prOudest recollections-besi Mr.. Bar
ry in the courthouse of Fermoy, coun-
ty Cork, when he was called upon to
explain why he should have forced his
way through a Gordon of police sent
there to overawe and terrorize the peo-
pie while they were being mulcled for
a police tax imposed by the Dublin
castle government in the interest of
their own officials. Knowing the con-
sequences that would follow, he swept
aside the minions of foreign tyranny
and insisted on his legal rights as an
Irishman living in his own country.
For doing so, he was sentenced to i'm
lprisonment for two months in the coun-
ty Jail at Cork, and there, too, it was
my privilege to meet him, the same
CHEEKY, outspoken, hearty and patriotic
Irishman that he was wherever duty
called him. His Jail experience was re-
peated nearly dozen times. He, more
than all other men, broke the power
of Clifford Lloyd and "Pasha" Plum
kett in Munster twenty years ago.
In the expressions Of national feel
ing called forth by Mr.. Barry's death,
from the leader Of the Irish party, Mr..
John Redmond; Mr.. William O'Brien,
who knew him from boyhood; from
practically the entire Irish Parlamell-