STANDING FOR TRUTH AND FREEDOM
O'Reilly, John Boyle
Standing for Truth and Freedom Tree of Liberty Would Die of Drought if Watered by the Blood of Tyrants; People Must Have Justice. By JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY The following address was delivered by Mr....
...But already the guaranty has cost $261,140,751.49, and additional claims are already made of about $370,000,000...
...Among eminent persons," says Emerson, "those who are most dear to men are not of the class which the economist calls producers...
...This is wholly a tax on business that must be shifted to the consumer, especially reducing the city workman's ability to purchase from the farmer...
...and in that dock, manacled, gagged and bleeding, stands the accuser and the judge...
...The estimated cost of the guaranty has already jumped from $400,000,000 to $631,000,000...
...Editor's Note...
...they have not cultivated corn nor made bread...
...The remarks of Mr...
...So much for federal legislation as a remedy...
...The motive beneath the act was golden, and the few men who went into open rebellion at Kil-clooney Wood in 1867 were heroes as true in defeat as the world would have hailed them in success...
...they have nothing in their hands...
...The vitality of men and nations may be measured by their devotion to exalted and unchangeable principles...
...Under the Winslow Act the total will reach $800,-000,000 to $900,000,000...
...The highest honor that a man can bear in life or death is the scar of a chain borne in a good cause...
...The greatest service a man can do for a good cause is to die for it...
...England would not dare give their bodies to Ireland...
...This will strike vigorously at the roots of the great monopolies of natural resources...
...Their names are honored and their death is reverently commemorated in many countries today...
...The monument was in the shape of an Irish round tower...
...There is no seed so infallible and so fruitful as the seed of human sacrifice...
...WE have come together today for the purpose of honoring the memory of a man who was found true in a day of supreme trial...
...In the bright future which is swiftly coming to Ireland, the names of those who died for her will be written in the porch of the national temple...
...and that flower will drop a seed of even greater and more perfect beauty for a future day...
...The Irish have never lost a man in their long fight, for no man is lost who is as strong in death as in life...
...A rebel is never so terrible as when the tyrant has killed him...
...No man's life or work, however illustrious, is so potential as a martyr death...
...A few months later he was put on trial before an English judge, dealing out English law against a helpless enemy of England, who passed upon him the abominable sentence that we have carved upon this granite block, in order that the people of a free land may read in passing, and reflect on the meanings of such words as Royalty, Invasion, Oppression, Law, Justice, and Rebellion...
...Secondary or inferior natures pride themselves on selfish and material qualities, on their organizing capacity for securing wealth, luxury, and domination...
...In the name of liberty not only crimes have been committed, but principles more vicious than any crime, being the crystallization of a thousand evils, have been enunciated...
...ture...
...It is our instrument for relief...
...Stood By His Country STANDING here by the grave of a man who lived and died humbly, modestly, and poorly, we look not for powers or achievements, we are not deceived by lowliness, by poverty, nor even by errors...
...A cool gift of almost $1,000,000,000 from the publio funds to the railroad interests of the United States...
...The cause for which men are willing to die can never be destroyed...
...23, 1885, when a monument was uncovered in Mount Hope Cemetery, Boston, over the grave of John Edward Kelly, an Irish patriot who took part in the fight at Kil-clooney Wood in 1867, and was sentenced to be hanged, "drawn and quartered...
...Let judges and criminals be transposed," says the greatest of American poets...
...Looked at from a superior height, what are the true relations of an English judge who passes this atrocious sentence on an Irish, Canadian or East Indian patriot...
...let the prison-keepers be put in prison—let those that were prisoners take the keys...
...Here was the cry of a shallow soul, drunk with license, uttering a word without weight...
...But they only tell the world that they are not of the stuff to keep up a losing fight for seven hundred years with odds of five to thirty number and five to a million in organization and wealth...
...He was a Protestant in religion...
...Side by side with Dr...
...The tree of liberty," shouted Barrere, of the Reign of Terror, "only grows when watered by the blood of tyrants...
...The highest duty that ever comes to a man is not to do a deed of prowess or win a material victory, but to endure, suffer and die for truth or freedom...
...When the transportation act was passed it was estimated that $400,000,000 would cover the cost of the guaranty...
...Tyrants are part of the people themselves—the diseased part, and this disease is not local, to be cured with a knife, but constitutional, and only to be reached by the medicine of equity, morality, and self-respect...
...we find that, after the shifting of death and years, there remains to us his adoration, courage, and devotion...
...He left Ireland in his childhood, but the patriotic fire burned as strongly in exile as if he had grown to manhood on his native soil...
...they have not led out a colony nor invented a loom...
...Some of the most progressive countries have done this with uniformly good results...
...Unless they are based on the moral perceptions and convictions of the people, they are based on quicksands, and are only new and more hopeless kinds of savagery, for they are the savagery of shrewdness inst ad of boldness...
...Not by the blood of tyrants, but by the blood of good men is the tree of liberty kept alive and flourishing...
...No matter now about the wisdom or the calculations of chances for success...
...The effective method of doing this is to remove the burden of governmental expense more and more from the products of enterprise and industry, and to place this burden on privilege and monopoly...
...The carcasses of all the tyrants on earth might be emptied on the roots of the tree of liberty and would die of drought...
...The man who sleeps under this monument gave an example of the virtues of courage, fidelity, and sacrifice...
...The heartless, the ignorant, and the ignoble of other races sometimes weigh the result against the cost, and shake their hands...
...This monument is consecrated by association with their memory...
...Before God, on that bench, clad in ermine and surrounded with power, sits the criminal...
...Superior races are spiritual forces, followers of eternal principles, seers of equity, prophets of fairer relations between men, valuing justice more than success, loving freedom so dearly for themselves that they could not oppress another people, venerating all sacred and holy things...
...They are intellectual machines, potent as a wedge or an engine, or the explosion of a bomb—and as limited, unsympathetic, and uninfluential...
...but he was as true to Ireland as his fellow-Protestants Robert Emmet, Wolfe Tone, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, John Mitchel, Smith O'Brien, John Martin, Charles Stewart Parnell, and the tens of thousands of living Irish Protestants who are Irish Patriots...
...Her altar-stones are red with the bloody offerings of twenty generations of men...
...John Boyle O'Reilly on Monday, Nov...
...When the people are truly worthy of freedom, when they have substantiated their own right and dignity as possessors of the earth, they will not kill tyrants with steel or lead, but with aversion, indignation, and contempt...
...Justice Must Be Done THE blood of tyrants is infertile, lethal, poisonous to the tree of liberty or any other tree of life...
...It will burst into flower suddenly and soon, when Ireland's Parliament is opened on Irish soil...
...Illustrates Irish Question IN HIS short life this man illustrated many phases of the Irish question...
...Think of it...
...The tree of liberty will never enfoliate and bear fruit unless it be watered from the well of justice, independence, and fair play in the hearts of the people...
...Eighteen years ago, the moldering form under tomb went out and faced the bayonets of the oppressor of his country in a fight of overwhelming odds...
...But our state legislature is nearer to us, and can be reached more readily...
...Whoever presents a great example is great," gays the poet...
...This is strictly a tax on production, and paid by the consumer...
...The first step should be to eliminate the taxes on personal property...
...and I may now and here warn the farmers that they are the first who will be appealed to by the big monopolists to save their great toll-taking monopolies, for the reason that many a farmer can be made to believe that he is a little monopolist himself, and therefore, he must stand with the toll-takers...
...Our state tax commission has advised its removal for several years...
...A Billion for the Railroads By CONGRESSMAN HUDDLESTON...
...Peter O'Neill Crowley, who was shot dead by an English bullet, John Edward Kelly, a youth of nineteen, was overpowered, rifle in hand, and flung into prison...
...This plan of exempting thrift and enterprise from taxation should be gradually extended until no one is taxed for having made improvements or rendered useful service...
...The farmers of this state should see that their congressmen vote right on this question...
...No country on earth has ever called forth deeper devotion...
...To these we have raised this stone, to honor their memory in a dead man, and to remind living men that love and gratitude are the sure harvest of fidelity and trustworthiness...
...Here the answer to the problem is the same, to reduce the profits of monopoly...
...The grave of a martyr is a dangerous place for oppressors...
...Both civilization and liberty have been misrepresented, even by well-meaning reformers...
...O'Reilly are particularly appropriate today...
...They have taken with them to the grave," says Ruskin of the old cathedral builders, "their powers, their honors, and their errors, but they have left us their adoration...
...Neither civilization nor liberty can be suddenly donned like a new garment, or immediately constructed like a new garment, or immediately constructed like a necessary piece of manufacfederal revenue...
...The sacrificial seed has been fruitful a thousand-fold...
...In this connection I want to warn the farmers of Wisconsin against the so-called Federal Sales Tax which is being urged by eastern bankers and monopolists...
...May they rest in peace in their graves under the prison wall...
...For the day of his rebellion, for the day of his trial, for the hour of hit sentence, and for the long years of his imprisonment this monument is raised over the grave of Edward Kelly It is not unfitting that it should stand among the graves of Boston...
...Eighteen years ago, on this day, three young Irishmen were murdered on an English gallows in the city of Manchester...
Vol. 13 • March 1921 • No. 3
