The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1913-03-18

We love Ireland and recall on this night her history, trials, troubles, her beautiful hills valleys and rivers and her people, true, open hearted, thrifty, enterprising, courageous, loyal hon est and God fearing men and women.
 Why tell the story of Irish history
 of ages past in 1913? So that those of this day will keep alive and re-
 member the past and what the Irish
 have endured and suffered
 It is true that the Irish men, Wo-
 men and children have suffered more for the cause of liberty and religious
 rights in their own land than any other class of people in their native
 country, but the Irish men and wo- men away from Ireland, considering
 how they started in life and the dis
 advantages they labored under, have
 passed many others by the wayside. Wherever Irish men and lovers of liberty are assembled this night the cruelties, barbarous treatment inf1ict-
 ed on the Irish people by the English government is recalled by the pages
 of history spotted with blood, coer- cion, starvation, imprisonment and | death; all because the Irish people
 were aggressive, loved liberty and de- sired to rule their own country and practice, teach and perpetuate the re-
  | their ancestors in.
 What of today; are any of our race
 forgetting the land of their fathers
 and mothers? Do we owe our parents
 a duty? Arc we forgetfu1 of our an cestors whose heroism has won the admiration of the world?
 Think today, 1913, of those patriots
 that died on the gal1ows, been trans ported. imprisoned for believing in hu-
 man rights and self government. You men of today must not forget the heart rendering scene witnessed in many an Irish, village in the past; l family after family evicted from their homes, house after house leVeled to the ground farm after farm evacuat- ed, towns nearly depopulated, starva- ton greeting them on every side, and when Christian. charitable American citizens were sending to Ireland food to keep the human frame alive and clothing to protect them from the ele- ments in the unfortunate time, Eng land had nineteen millions of bullion
 in the treasury and let half million
 of people starve and die in Ireland. Some people. claim we should be friendly with the English government and that a treaty should be passed
 and the Irish people should ratify the same, our answer is, we don't forget
 reading in history of the trials of our ancestors and the laws you passed to
 protect the Irish fox and game in Ireland and at the same time took away the manufacturing industries and trade and tried to make Ireland a grazing ground for the cattle of the capitalists of England
 More than that, the English gov ernnent passed other laws making ii
 a crime for a Roman Catholic priest to celebrate mass and a crime to at tend divine service and worship God in the faith St. Patrick established in Ireland, then again, men were taken from their wives and children, tortur- ed exiIed from their native land where they first saw the light of day
 because they desired to live as free and Independent men and raise their children to- honor God and believed in a, free Republic.
 Their ambition and honorable desire was to live under 8, government where
 human beings are equal before the law, not slaves, and worship God ac- cording to their own conscience. Liberty and local self government then was just the same to those Irish patriots as liberty and self govern nent is today in America
 The star of liberty was as dear to men and women in Ireland as in Eng land and they were at least ent1tled to equality before the law, but that was denied and the people of every nation, loving liberty as life, and ap- preciating in no uncertain terms the noble fight the sons and daughters or Ireland have made in the past and IT arbitration and amicable adjustment cannot give to the Irish people thelr liberty some patriotic son may yet fire the shot that will warn the world that Ireland is struggling for 1nde- nendence and that shot may awaken the sterling sons of nations to grant assistance to struggling Ireland and he the means of producing another alarm on English soil as the shot fired in Lexington, Massachusetts, in April 1775, awakened the civilized world to the justice of Americas In dependence
 The taking away of the industries or Ireland all bear resentment and they
 have been encouraged back before to- day. the trade of Ireland is restored in part but the coercion of the Irish people by the English government re- mains in full force.
 The King of England from his throne said at the opening of Parffa- 1nept a. few years ago:
 'sMy ministers have under consider ation plan for improving and eff fectinE economies in the system of government for Ireland and for in troducing there1nto means for asso- soia ting the people with the conduct of Irish affairs. It is my desire that
 the government of the country in re-
 Iiance upon the ordinary law should
 be carried on so far as existing c1r-