Ridgeway | Page 8

driven from his native shores to seek an asylum beyond the seas, she had sent forth an agent of her own destruction, that would colonize, in common with his exiled brethren, the whole world with a sense of her infamy, and build up, on this free continent, an opposition so tremendous to her interests in every connection, that it should command the attention of every civilized people under the sun, and shake her institutions and existence to their very centre. As is invariable in such cases, she administered the antidote with the poison; and transformed the victims of her wrongs and cruelties into enemies and soldiers; and now that, in the aggregate, they assume the proportions of a powerful and antagonistic nation outside her borders, they only await the hour when they shall descend upon her to the hoarse music of their ancient war cry, and, on the banks of the Shannon, and by the Blackwater, smite her hip and thigh, as of old; but this time without generously escorting her broken and disabled ranks to the borders of the Pale, or permitting them, in the hour of defeat, to recruit their exhausted forces, so that the fight may become more equal.
From the landing of Strongbow, in 1171, at Port Largi, then on subsequently called also the Harbor of the Sun, near Waterford, down to the sacking and burning of Magdala, the capital of King Theodoras, in the present year of grace 1808, the history of English rule and conquests has been one of bloodshed, perjury and crime. Look where you may, and you encounter continuous atrocities similar to the massacres of Elizabeth and Cromwell, or the blowing of the Sepoys of India from the mouth of the cannon of the invader. Well may the ensign of England wear an encrimsoned hue; for, from time immemorial, it has been stooped in the blood of the nations: and that too, without her people having ever fought a proud or decisive battle single-handed. Her fame, in this connection, rests solely upon the influence of her gold and the power of foreign bayonets. Scotland and Ireland have been the main stay of her armies; her native element, per se, affecting their composition in but a secondary degree. The muster rolls of the Peninsula, and the supplementary field of Waterloo, have attested this assertion to the fullest. The fact is, her laurels, for the most part, have been gathered by Irish hands. Taking advantage of the proud daring and chivalry of our people, in connection with the poverty and oppression which she had wrought among them, she shook her gold in their half-starved faces, as she does to-day, and lured them into her service whenever she had a point to attain in the field. Through this channel, and through it alone, the fame of her arms became established; the true aspirations of her own sons seldom exceeding the exalted limits of a bread riot, or the sudden exploits incident to some poaching expedition. As a general thing, the English are traders and diplomats, rather than soldiers. Their character for bravery has been won through the lavish use of their subsidizing gold, rather than through any innate warlike propensities on their part. They have never fought for a myth, or an abstract, chivalrous idea; but always for some bread and beef object, however apparently unconnected with the project said to be had in view. In the exemplification of their Christian missionary spirit, too, this feature of their character is abundantly set forth. Wherever they have succeeded in introducing the Gospel among the heathen, they have subsequently inserted the wedge of civil discord, to be followed on their part by the sword of conquest. No more forcible illustration of this can be found than that presented by India, and other of their dependencies that we could name. In Ireland, also, the same spirit has been evinced; but under different circumstances. She was already civilized and Christianized when the invader first landed upon her shores; but in no way was he enabled to totally overthrow her independence, except through the instrumentality of the brand of religious discord, which, for upwards of two hundred years, he had kept flaming at the foundations of her nationality. It was the hostility bitterly fomented between the Protestants and the Catholics of Ireland, from 1782 to the year 1800, that led to the so-called Union, and from this latter period left her, to the present hour, at the mercy of one of the most relentless and unprincipled despotisms that has ever disfigured the annals of the human race.
Edmund Burk was right when he declared in his place in Parliament, if we remember correctly, that the Penal Laws enacted by England against Ireland, were characterized by an ingenuity the most fiendish on record,