prepare to assert their rights by the only means now left them--the
bullet and the pike. And the eyes of men whose hearts were "weary
waiting for the fray," began to glisten as they read the burning words
of poetry and prose in which the _Nation_ preached the gospel of
liberty. It was to take its side by that journal, and to rival it in the
boldness of its language and the spirit of its arguments, that the
_Irish Felon_ was established; and it executed its mission well. "I do
not love political agitation for its own sake," exclaimed Martin, in
his opening address in the first number. "At best I regard it as a
necessary evil; and if I were not convinced that my countrymen are
determined on vindicating their rights, and that they really intend to
free themselves, I would at once withdraw from the struggle and leave my
native land for ever. I could not live in Ireland and derive my means of
life as a member of the Irish community, without feeling a citizen's
responsibilities in Irish public affairs. Those responsibilities involve
the guilt of national robbery and murder--of a system which arrays the
classes of our people against each other's prosperity and very lives,
like beasts of prey, or rather like famishing sailors on a wreck--of the
debasement and moral ruin of a people endowed by God with surpassing
resources for the attainment of human happiness and human dignity. I
cannot be loyal to a system of meanness, terror, and corruption,
although it usurp the title and assume the form of a 'government.' So
long as such a 'government' presumes to injure and insult me, and those
in whose prosperity I am involved, I must offer to it all the resistance
in my power. But if I despaired of successful resistance, I would
certainly remove myself from under such a 'government's' actual
authority; that I do not exile myself is a proof that I hope to witness
the overthrow, and assist in the overthrow, of the most abominable
tyranny the world now groans under--the British Imperial system. To gain
permission for the Irish people to care for their own lives, their own