Ireland Under Coercion - vol. 1 | Page 6

of Polish nationality. It is perhaps even less open to
question than the right of Americans not of Irish race, and of
Frenchmen not of Polish race, to express such sympathies; and
certainly less open to question than the right of Englishmen or
Americans to express their sympathy with Cubans bent on sundering
the last link which binds Cuba to Spain, or with Greeks bent on
overthrowing the authority of the Sultan in Crete.
But for all American citizens of whatever race, the expression of such
sympathies ceases to be legitimate when it assumes the shape of action
transcending the limits set by local or by international law. It is of the
essence of American constitutionalism that one community shall not
lay hands upon the domestic affairs of another; and it is an undeniable
fact that the sympathy of the great body of the American people with
Irish efforts for self-government has been diminished, not increased,
since 1848, by the gradual transfer of the head-quarters and machinery
of those efforts from Ireland to the United States. The recent refusal of
the Mayor of New York, Mr. Hewitt, to allow what is called the "Irish
National flag" to be raised over the City Hall of New York is vastly
more significant of the true drift of American feeling on this subject
than any number of sympathetic resolutions adopted at party
conventions or in State legislatures by party managers, bent on
harpooning Irish voters. If Ireland had really made herself a "nation,"
with or without the consent of Great Britain, a refusal to hoist the Irish
flag on the occasion of an Irish holiday would be not only churlish but
foolish. But thousands of Americans, who might view with equanimity
the disruption of the British Empire and the establishment of an Irish
republic, regard, not only with disapprobation, but with resentment, the
growing disposition of Irish agitators in and out of the British

Parliament to thrash out on American soil their schemes for bringing
about these results with the help of Irishmen who have assumed the
duties by acquiring the rights of American citizenship. It is not in
accordance with the American doctrine of "Home Rule" that "Home
Rule" of any sort for Ireland should be organised in New York or in
Chicago by expatriated Irishmen.
No man had a keener or more accurate sense of this than the most
eloquent and illustrious Irishman whose voice was ever heard in
America.
In the autumn of 1871 Father Burke of Tallaght and San Clemente,
with whom I had formed at Rome in early manhood a friendship which
ended only with his life, came to America as the commissioned Visitor
of the Dominican Order. His mission there will live for ever in the
Catholic annals of the New World. But of one episode of that mission
no man living perhaps knows so much as I, and I make no excuse for
this allusion to it here, as it illustrates perfectly the limits between the
lawful and the unlawful in the agitation of Irish questions upon
American soil.
While Father Burke was in New York Mr. Froude came there, having
been invited to deliver before a Protestant Literary Association a series
of lectures upon the history of Ireland. My personal relations with Mr.
Froude, I should say here, and my esteem for his rare abilities, go back
to the days of the Nemesis of Faith, and I did not affect to disguise from
him the regret with which I learned his errand to the New World. That
his lectures would be brilliant, impressive, and interesting, was quite
certain; but it was equally certain, I thought, that they would do a world
of mischief, by stirring up ancient issues of strife between the
Protestant and the Catholic populations of the United States.
That they would be answered angrily, indiscreetly, and in a fashion to
aggravate prejudices which ought to be appeased on both sides of the
questions involved, was much more than probable. All this accordingly
I urged upon Father Burke, begging him to find or make time in the
midst of his engrossing duties for a systematic course of lectures in
reply. What other men would surely say in heat and with virulence

would be said by him, I knew, temperately, loftily, and wisely. Three
strenuous objections he made. One was that his work as a Catholic
missionary demanded all his thought and all his time; another that he
was not historically equipped to deal with so formidable an antagonist;
and a third that America ought not to be a battle-ground of Irish
contentions. It was upon the last that he dwelt most tenaciously; nor did
he give way until he had satisfied himself, after consulting with the
highest authorities of his Church, and with two or