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19th Century Ireland - Alexander Martin Sullivan (1830-1884)
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Email: info@searcs-web.com 19th Century Ireland - Alexander Martin Sullivan (1830-1884) |
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Alexander Martin Sullivan, brother of
T.D. Sullivan, was born in Bantry, County Cork.
In 1855 he became assistant editor of The Nation and in 1865 a Fenian court sentenced him to death for publishing articles which resulted
in the imprisonment of
Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa and the Phoenix 'conspirators'. Three years later Sullivan was imprisoned for publishing an article in the Weekly News concerning the Manchester Martyrs. In 1870 he published Story of Ireland and helped form the Home Government Association with Issac Butt. In 1874 Sullivan was elected to Parliament for Louth and in 1880 he was elected to Parliament for Meath. This extract is from Sullivan's visionary history New Ireland (1878).© In that well-known and once seditious ballad 'The wearing of the Green', an anxious query is pressed as to how it fares with Ireland 'And how does she stand?' So may we ask how Ireland stands in 1877. In what is she most changed? What is the loss or gain between the old time and the new? It becomes of the first importance to appreciate the temper and tendency, the bent and purpose, of those millions whom the school, the Newspaper, the Franchise and the Ballot have made masters of the situation in Ireland. Equally necessary is it to take into view the one hundred and seventy thousand Irish voters in the cities and towns of Britain, daily preparing themselves for most complete and resolute co-operation with the efforts of their countrymen at home. As long as the working classes of England were un-enfranchised, these vast bodies of Celtic material accumulated between the Tay and the Thames were of little account. But as every day the influence of those classes increases - as the franchise is extended and school-board, poor-law, municipal and parliamentary elections admit the masses of the people to the exercise of public power - the men whom Irish landlordism swept in thousands from their native valleys in the western island will as a consequence be heard from. They are placed in all the great centres of public opinion and political activity; and some of the most momentous issues of the near future will be largely determined, one way or another by their aid. Not in a year, nor in two years, will they be able to constitute or organise themselves and exhibit perfect discipline and trained intelligence; but all this is plainly ahead - is merely a matter of time. No graver anxiety can weigh upon the mind of a patriotic Irishman contemplating these things than that which surrounds the question as to how, and in what temper, the Irish people at home and in England may use the powers within their reach. Here and there, we may be sure, some errors of impulse, unreason, or passion will occasionally be seen; and that impatience of result so characteristic of our race - greatly but not wholly reformed of late - will at times break forth. Above all it must be borne in mind that, there are men in Ireland, in America and in England - few but not less determined, some of them more desperate than ever - who hope in the breakdown of public effort to have another chance at the resorts of violence... What the veil of the future might hide is not given to man to know. Enough for us that in skies long darkened and torn by cloud and storm thrice-blessed signs of peace and hope appear. The future is with God. © Searc's Web Guide 1997-2007 |
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