The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1916-05-27
GREAT IRlSH-AMERICAN ORATOR
ARRAICNS ENCLAND'S CONDUCT

hAAHlONO ENOLAND } VVNUUvl
Continued from page. ~
administered for any other purpose,
But the government of England, from
the day it was established in Ireland.
was avowedly intended to exterminate
the Irish race. And when it was
found impossible to exterminate them.
to degrade them, by persistent refusal
to educate them, it was sought to in.
flame them by every appeal to the
basest passions, every quality that
might develop something in Irishmen
foreign to their natural organization,
Now, my friends, this is no exag-
geration. The history of the Penal
Laws is familiar to everybody. There
nave been penal laws In other coun-
tries. For many centuries, it was a
maxim of government that it wasn't
safe to permit divisions of religious
beliefs; that if the government was
Catholic, Professionals were presumed
to be hostile to it, and. in every coun-
try the established religion prescribed
penalties and difficulties for the minor
ity who rejected it, But in Ireland
they went further than that. In Ire
land, they deliberately organized gov
eminent, not for penalties that were
imposed upon minority, but for the
degradation of the people, morally and
Intellectually, when they could not ex-
terminate them. Moreover, before the
religious divisions began, the essence
OF government in Ireland was exter-
mlnation of the race. The Statute of
Kilkenny, passed as far back as Rich
ard H., openly proclaimed the pur
pose of English rule. Long before
that-by few centuries of Norman
rule-the principle was adopted and
unswervingly pursued of selling lands
from the Irish and comforting them
upon Norman adventurers, in the hope
and expectation that these settlers
would be the garrison Of England
making perpetual war upon the Irish
extending the conquest. But there
was one enemy. The Irish, divided
and unused to war for a century, were
unequal to cope with the trained mill
tary Norman forces that the English
king brought against them; and SC
they were unable to protect their lane
IN open battle, and they were driver
further and further beyond the pale
and wherever an Englishman seizet
land, there was castle expected tt
maintain English authority.
But there was one enemy, one
enemy that the English could never
overcome, and that was the Irish girl
TO her he promptly surrendered, ant
he married her whenever he had {
chance; and he had the chance, mus
say in justice to the Irish girl, who
was the truest patriot, for the off
spring of these marriages were il
every instance the most advanced ant
ardent patriots upon Irish soil. So il
was that the Norman Irish got to BIZ
called, from the English standpoint
more Irish than the Irish themselves.
And it was to meet that that the
Statute of Kilkenny prohibited any
Englishman from marrying an Irisl
girl, on the pain of FORGETTING the lands
that had been bestowed upon him, OF
from speaking the Irish tongue. But
the Irish girl was not to be resisted
by any such enactments as those. She
proceeded to conquer Englishmen, anG
that continued down even to the time
of Cromwell.
We all know the terrible devasta
ton that Cromwell worked in Ireland
We all know what the massacre o.
Drogheda was. 1t is page in the his
tory of the world that has absolutel,
no parallel in all the record of al
civilized nations. But Cromwell, who
wished to dispossess the entire Iris1
people of all the land east of the Shan
non, sending them over to Connaugh
the expression was: ito hell or t.
Connaught"-sold into captivity ii
Bermuda and the West Indies all the
ablebodied young men and women fol
whom any price would be paid-ant
the rest he sent to Connaught, where
he supposed the land was too barrer
to afford subsistence and that they
would die of starvation and save hi
troopers the task and the labor o.
killing them. But those upon whom
he bestowed the land remained there
and they married Irish girls, and thu
descendants of those marriages were
as ardent patriots as ever lived IL
Ireland; so that when William faced
the Irish troops at the Boyne. thu