The Life Story of an Old Rebel Part 4

But for a time the storm of bigotry raged fiercely, and, as the following incident will show, while the mania lasted even the police were not entirely free from it.

The site of the n.o.ble Gothic edifice, Holy Cross Church, Great Crosshall Street, Liverpool, was, at this time, occupied by a ramshackle place made into a temporary chapel out of a number of old houses. It was so constructed that from any part you could see the altar, if you could not always hear Ma.s.s.

This was not, however, an unusual thing in Liverpool in the old days, particularly in the Famine years, when our panic-stricken people came into Liverpool like the wreck of a routed army.

The chief feature of the old Holy Cross Chapel was a long narrow flight of stairs, leading from Standish Street, the side street off Great Crosshall Street, up to a higher part of the building which served the purpose of a gallery.

The famous Dr. Cahill came to Holy Cross to preach, and every part of the building was crowded to suffocation. In the middle of the sermon an alarm was raised of a broken beam or something of the kind, and the people commenced to rush down the narrow stairs in a state of panic.

Such of them as could crush their way out, instead of being a.s.sisted, were set upon and a.s.saulted with their batons by several policemen, who were in the street outside. So great was the indignation in the town, that a public inquiry was held, and it was proved that the police not only brutally struck men, women and children, but even a blind man who was trying to grope his way out. They also used foul expressions about "Popery" and the "b.l.o.o.d.y Papists," and it was afterwards proved that these very men had themselves raised the alarm, apparently to get an excuse for breaking the heads of the unfortunate people. An honest police official, whose duty it afterwards became to make a report of what had occurred, came upon the scene, and did what he could to stop the brutality.

When Dowling, the head constable, came to the police office next morning, and saw the official report in the book kept for the purpose, he caused the leaf containing it to be torn out, and another report by one Sergeant Tomlinson to be subst.i.tuted for it. Mr. Mansfield, the stipendiary magistrate, who conducted the inquiry, denounced Dowling and Tomlinson for what he called "the disgraceful and discreditable suppression of the report which," he added, "was no doubt true. He had never heard of more disgraceful proceedings in his life."

Pending a fuller investigation, the police office books were impounded, and, as a result of the inquiry, several of the police were suspended.

Dowling was dismissed from his post as head constable of Liverpool, and lost a retiring pension which, if all had been well with him, he would have come in for a short time afterwards.

An amusing story is told of a Liverpool daily paper in those days. It was struggling with adversity, and the manager, a worthy Scotsman, sat in his office on Monday morning with the weekly statement before him, showing increasing expense and decreasing revenue.

To him entered a Liverpool parson--very determined and very menacing. He had asked for the editor, but that gentleman had not yet come down, and the manager was the only person in authority visible, so he had to make shift with him.

"I am here," the parson said, "as the mouthpiece of a large number of people who are not satisfied with the att.i.tude of the 'Liverpool ----'

on the great question of the hour--Whether Popery is to dominate our liberties or are we to crush Popery?"

"Yes," said the manager, wearily, his mind still on the balance sheet.

"What do you complain of?"

"I wish to tell you, sir," said the parson, with impressive emphasis, "that only this morning I have heard the belief expressed by merchants on 'Change that the 'Liverpool ----' is actually in the pay of the Pope of Rome!"

In a second a ray of light seemed to irradiate the gloom of the manager's soul, as he contemplated in a flash of thought the untold treasures of the Vatican--

"Man!" he exclaimed fervently, "I wish to Heaven it was!"

But the numerous exhibitions of bigotry stirred up in connection with Lord John Russell's Ecclesiastical t.i.tles Act were of trifling consequence compared with the injury done to the Irish people arising out of the same Act. For it led to the ruin of the Tenant Right agitation in Ireland, in which the Irish people, Protestant as well as Catholic, had been united as they had not been since 1798 and the days of Grattan's Parliament.

For the Tenant League and the Irish Party in Parliament had in their ranks some of the greatest rascals who had ever disgraced Irish politics. These, while posing as the champions of Catholicity in opposing Lord John Russell's bill, were simply working for their own base ends, and were afterwards known and execrated as the Sadlier-Keogh gang.

Their infamous betrayal of the Irish tenantry dashed the hopes and destroyed the union of North and South from which so much was expected, besides creating a distrust in const.i.tutional agitation which lasted for nearly a generation.

The after fate of the Sadlier-Keogh gang--including the suicide of John Sadlier and the scarcely less wretched end of Keogh--have ever since been terrible object-lessons to the Irish people.

In his later years I enjoyed the friendship of one of the most distinguished of the Tenant Right leaders, who had also played a prominent and honourable part in the Repeal and Young Ireland movements.

This was Charles Gavan Duffy, whom I met after his return from Australia.

It was the Sadlier-Keogh treason, their selling themselves to the Government after the most solemn promises to the contrary, and the way in which their conduct had been condoned by so many of the hierarchy, clergy and people of Ireland, that caused Gavan Duffy to lose heart for the time, and to declare, as he left the country, in memorable words--"that there was no more hope for Ireland than for a corpse on the dissecting table."

But, as I learned from his own lips on his return to this country, he never lost sight of the National movement while in Australia, where he became first Minister of the Crown in a self-governing colony; and, on his return, his old hope for the success of our Cause had, he a.s.sured me, revived.

Charles Gavan Duffy having sailed for Australia on the 6th of November, 1855, John Cashel Hoey succeeded him as editor of the "Nation," he having, as one of his colleagues, Alexander Martin Sullivan, who afterwards became sole proprietor and responsible editor.

"A.M." Sullivan, as he was always called, was an upright man, who had a very clear conception of his own policy in Irish matters. He frankly accepted the British const.i.tution, and worked inside those lines. To me, when my country was concerned, the British const.i.tution (with the making of which neither I nor my people had ever had anything to do) was a matter of very little moment. Any work for Ireland that commended itself to my conscience and was practicable was good enough. Nevertheless, it will ever be to me a source of pride that, from the moment when we first knew each other to the hour of his death, we were the closest friends.

In connexion with the "Papal aggression" mania, Cardinal Wiseman was the central figure against whom the storm of bigotry was chiefly directed. I remember with pleasure that I took part in the reception given to him in Liverpool by Father Nugent and the students of the Liverpool Catholic Inst.i.tute, by whom the Cardinal's fine play of "The Hidden Gem" was performed in the Hall of the Inst.i.tute during his stay in town. The bringing of the Cardinal to Liverpool was only one of the many occasions when the good Father was the medium through whom, from time to time, a number of distinguished Catholics and Irishmen were brought into intimate contact with their co-religionists and fellow-countrymen in the town for the advancement of some worthy object connected with creed or nationality--most frequently with both.

I have described the St. Patrick's Day annual processions in Liverpool.

Notwithstanding some grand features in connection with them, they were, unfortunately, sometimes the occasion of rioting and intemperance.

Father Nugent was of Irish parentage and sympathies, and possessed of great zeal, capacity, energy and eloquence. He determined to make a new departure in celebrating the national anniversary, for though the processions were magnificent displays, and it was not the fault of their promoters if ever there was any scandal arising out of them, still there was much that was inconsistent with a worthy celebration of the feast of the national saint of Ireland. Calling a number of young Irishmen together, of whom I was one, he, with their help, organised on a grand scale a festival which was held in one of the large public halls of the town. So successful was the first of these that they became an annual inst.i.tution, which superseded the previous out-door celebrations.

On these occasions there were selections of Irish music and song, and oratory from some distinguished Irishman, with an eloquent and stirring panegyric on St. Patrick from Father Nugent himself, making a more creditable and enjoyable celebration of the national festival than had ever been held in the town before.

Such celebrations as these (which have for many years past been held under the auspices of the Irish national political organisation of the day), have become common in the Irish centres of Great Britain. Indeed, it has become one of the recognised duties of the members of the Irish Parliamentary Party to hold themselves in readiness to be drafted off to one or another of these gatherings, which are the means of keeping steadily burning the fire of patriotism in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of our people.

And what is of consequence from a financial point of view, the proceeds of these gatherings help to provide the sinews of war for carrying on the Home Rule campaign in Great Britain. For over half a century, from the time when I a.s.sisted Father Nugent with his first celebration, I took an active part in organising these gatherings in many places.

I said at the commencement that I knew little of Ireland from personal contact with it. Born there, I was too young to remember being brought to England. For some months I was there again, as I have already mentioned, as a boy of twelve, under the care of my uncle, the Rev.

Michael O'Loughlin. I had often desired to see more of Ireland, and, singularly enough, it was the Crimean War that gave me the opportunity of spending another three months there in the summer of 1855.

A large firm in Liverpool had part of the contract for erecting the wooden houses and other buildings at the camp being erected on the Curragh of Kildare at the time of the war. I made application, and, with my brother Bernard, was employed to go there. Reaching the Curragh, we found that many of the men slept in the huts they were erecting, being supplied by the contractors with the requisite bed and bedding. The contractors also erected a large "canteen," to be used afterwards by the military where the workmen could be supplied with food and drink--too much drink sometimes. These arrangements for food and sleeping were somewhat necessary, as the nearest towns, Kildare, Kilcullen, and Newbridge were each some three miles off.

But we were anxious to see as much of the country and of the people as we could, and, besides, did not care for the mixed company sleeping in the huts. We therefore managed to secure lodgings with the Widow Walsh, on the road leading from the Curragh to Suncroft. The widow's husband had but recently died, leaving her a pretty good farm, and, with the aid of her family--one of them a fine, grown-up young man--she was able to hold on to the land. But the ready cash she got from the Curragh men who came to lodge with her was useful too. It was a good big house of the kind, and the widow made use of every available inch of it, so that she had about a dozen of us in all. Mrs. Walsh, though an easy-going soul herself, had a fine bouncing girl to help her, but, with a dozen hungry men coming with a rush at night, it used to be a scramble for the cooking utensils, as we were largely left to our own devices. We used to leave early in the morning for our work on the Curragh, taking with us the materials for our breakfasts and dinners. As to the cooking, some went to the canteen, while others got their meals wherever they happened to be working. As there were plenty of chips and small cuttings of wood, only fit for that purpose, we used to make of these big fires on the short gra.s.s, and we boiled our water for tea or coffee and our eggs, and frizzled our chops or bacon at the end of a long stick.

I have mentioned before that whenever one finds work particularly laborious he is fairly certain to find Irishmen at it. It was so at the Curragh. When a carpenter or joiner lays down the boarding of a floor, if there is only a small quant.i.ty of it he planes it down himself to make an even surface. But if there is a large quant.i.ty this does not pay, and the contractor brings in another artist called a "flogger,"

who, in nine cases out of ten, in my time, was an Irishman. It was generally given out as "piece work" to one man, the "master-flogger," as you might term him, who employed the others. One of these, a very decent Irishman, Tom Ca.s.sidy, whom I had known in Liverpool, had the contract for the work at the Curragh Camp, and he had about a score of his fellow-countrymen working for him.

Going back to Liverpool for a holiday, while my brother and I were still at the Curragh, honest Tom called on my father and mother, who knew him well. They were glad to hear that he was lodging at the Widow Walsh's, and could tell them all about their boys. This he could do most truthfully without letting his imagination run away with him. "Aye, indeed," he said, "Barney and John are lodging in the one house with me, with a decent widow woman, and many a gla.s.s we had together at Igoe's."

Tom had put in this bit of "local colouring" about Igoe's to show the good fellowship between us, but as their sons were both teetotalers, the old people knew that this could not be true, and the rest of his story was somewhat discredited in consequence.

Igoe's was a public house just on the corner of the road leading from the Curragh to Suncroft. What between the workmen at the Camp and the soldiers and the militia, Igoe's must have been doing a roaring trade at this time. Which reminds me that I one day saw John O'Connell (son of the Liberator), then a captain in the Dublin militia, trying to get a lot of his men, who were the worse for liquor, out of Igoe's. It could not be said that he did not give an edifying example to his men, for I saw him, on another occasion, going to Holy Communion, at the Soldiers'

Ma.s.s, where the altar was fixed up under a verandah in the officers'

quarter, the men being a.s.sembled in the open square in front. He was a well-meaning man, and tried to carry on the Repeal a.s.sociation after his father's death, but it soon collapsed, for the mantle of Dan was altogether too big for John.

Although he generally showed himself bitterly opposed to the Young Irelanders, he was a poetical contributor to the "Nation," where I find him represented by two very fine pieces--"Was it a Dream?" and "What's my Thought Like?" In the latter piece he pictures Ireland--

No longer slave to England! but her sister if she will-- Prompt to give friendly aid at need, and to forget all ill!

But holding high her head, and, with serenest brow, Claiming, amid earth's nations all, her fitting station now.

I never met his brother Maurice, but I could imagine his a more congenial spirit with the "Young Irelanders" than any other of the O'Connell family. He, too, is represented in "The Spirit of the Nation"

by his rousing "Recruiting Song of the Irish Brigade" which, sung to the air of "The White c.o.c.kade," has always been a favourite of mine.

A fine, genial old priest, full of gossip and old-time stories, was Father MacMahon, of Suncroft. If he met one of us on the road he would stop to have a gossip, and was always delighted when he found, as he often did, along with an English tongue an Irish heart. From him it was I heard the legend of St. Brigid's miraculous mantle and the origin of the Curragh--how the saint, to get "as much land as would graze a poor man's cow" made the very modest request from the king for as much ground as her mantle would cover; how he agreed, and she laid her mantle down on the "short gra.s.s;" how, to the king's astonishment, it spread and spread, until it covered the whole of the ground of what is now the Curragh; and how it would have spread over all Ireland but that it met with a red-haired woman, and that, as everybody knows, is unlucky.

Whenever, in our rambles along the country roads we afterwards met a red-haired woman, we used to wonder was she a descendant of the female who stopped the growth of the Curragh of Kildare.

Father MacMahon could also tell us of the gallant fight made by the men of Kildare, and the ma.s.sacre of the unarmed people on the Curragh in 1798. Many of the men from the Curragh used to come to Ma.s.s on Sundays at Suncroft, and often in his sermons--which were none the less edifying because they were given in the same free and easy style as his gossips with us on the road--he would tell his people of the talks he had had with the men from the Camp, and what good Irishmen he found among them.

They, in their turn, were very fond of the good father, and most of them took a practical way of showing their feeling when it came to the offertory.

Dear old Father MacMahon! I took up an Irish Church Directory the other day and looked for the little village of Suncroft, in the dioceses of Kildare and Leighlin, to see if your name was still there, foolishly forgetting that it is over fifty years since we met--you an old man and I a young one. I am an old man now, and you--you dear good old soul--must have gone to your reward long ago, where you in your turn will be hearing from St. Brigid herself, and from the fine old Irish king who gave the Curragh, the true story of the miraculous mantle; and how the king did not make such a bad bargain after all, for, in exchange for his gift, he now, doubtless, has what St. Brigid promised, a kingdom far greater than even her mantle would cover--the Kingdom of Heaven.

On Sundays we used to have long walks. We did not often go near Newbridge--it was too much like an ordinary English military station. We preferred going to Kildare, where stands the first Irish Round Tower I ever saw, and where the fine old ruined church of St. Brigid put us in mind of the patron saint of Ireland; or to Kilcullen, where the brave Kildare pikemen routed General Dundas in 1798; and to others of the neighbouring places. We reviewed, too, every part of the famous Curragh itself, so full of memories--glorious and sad--of Irish history.

As fast as we finished them, the huts we were building were occupied by the military, and, whether regulars or militia, I found among them, driven to wear the uniform by stress of circ.u.mstances, as good Irishmen as I ever met. Coming home from work one evening, I met on the road to the Curragh a party of them, carrying, for want of a better banner, a big green bush, and singing "The Green Flag." Then, as they came in sight of the famous plain itself, a man struck up:--