15. RECORD OF MARX'S SPEECH ON THE POLICY OF THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT WITH RESPECT TO THE IRISH PRISONERS
15. RECORD OF MARX'S SPEECH ON THE POLICY OF THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT WITH RESPECT TO THE IRISH PRISONERS[470]
FROM IHK MINUTES OK THE GENERAI. COUNCIL MEETING OF NOVEMBER 16, 1869
Cit. Marx then opened the debate on the attitude of the British Government on the Irish question. He said political amnesty proceeds from two sources: 1. When a government is strong enough by force of arms and public opinion, when the enemy accepts the defeat, as was the case in America,[4]'[1] then amnesty is given. 2. When misgovernment is the cause of quarrel and the opposition gains its point, as was the case in Austria and Hungary.[4]'[2] Such ought to have been the case in Ireland.
Both DisratT. and Gladstone have said that the government ought to do for Ireland what in other countries a revolution would do. Bright asserted repeatedly that Ireland would always be rife for revolution unless a radical change was made. During the election Gladstone justified the Fenian insurrection and said that every other nation would have revolted under similar circumstances.'[1] When taunted in the House he equivocated his fiery declarations against the "policy of conquest"'[4]'[3] implied that "Ireland ought to be ruled according to Irish ideas".[1]' To put an end to the "policy of conquest" he ought to have begun like America and Austria by an amnesty as soon as he became minister. He did nothing. Then the amnesty movement in Ireland by the municipalities. When a deputation was about to start with a petition containing 200,000 signatures for the release of the prisoners he anticipated it by releasing some to prevent the appearance of giving way to Irish pressure. The petition came,' it was not got up by Fenians, but he gave no answer. Then it was mooted in the House that the prisoners were infamously treated.'[1] In this at least the English Government is impartial; it treats Irish and English alike; there is no country in Europe where political prisoners are treated like in England and Russia. Bruce was obliged to admit the fact/' Moore wanted an inquiry'[5]; it was refused. Then commenced the popular amnesty movement at Limerick. A meeting was held at which 30,000 people were present and a memorial for the unconditional release was adopted/ Meetings were held in all the towns in the North. Then the great meeting was announced in Dublin where 200,000 people attended. It was announced weeks beforehand for the 10th October. The trade societies wanted to go in procession. On the 8th proclamations were issued prohibiting the procession to go through certain streets. Isaac Butt interpreted it as a prohibition, of the procession/[1] They went to Fortescue to ask but he was not at home, his Secretary Burke did not knowr. A letter was left to be replied to; he equivocated.e The government wanted a collision. The procession was abandoned and it was found afterwards that the soldiers had been supplied with 40 rounds of shot for the occasion.
After that Gladstone answered the Limerick memorial of August in a roundabout way.[474] He says the proceedings varied much. There were loyal people and others who used bad language demanding as a right what could only be an act of clemency.
It is an act of presumption on the part of a paid public servant to teach a public meeting how to speak.
The next objection is that the prisoners have not abandoned their designs which were cut short by their imprisonment.
How does Gladstone know what their designs were and that they still entertain them Has he tortured them into a confession? He wants them to renounce their principles, to degrade them morally. Napoleon did [not] ask people- to renounce their republican principles before he gave an amnesty and Prussia attached no such conditions.
Then he says the conspiracy still exists in England and America. If it did, Scotland Yard would soon be down upon it. It is only "disaffection of 700 years' standing".[4]''' The Irish have declared they would receive unconditional freedom as an act of conciliation.
Gladstone cannot quell the Fenian conspiracy in America, his conduct promotes it, one paper[3] calls him the Head Centre.[476] He finds fault with the press. He has not the courage to prosecute the press; he wants to make the prisoners responsible. Does he want to keep them as hostages for the good behaviour of the people outside? He says "it has been our desire to carry leniency to the utmost point". This then is the utmost point.
When Mountjoy was crowded with untried prisoners, Dr. M'Donnell wrote letter after letter to Joseph Murray about their treatment. Lord Mayo said afterwards that Murray had suppressed them. M'Donnell then wrote to the inspector of prisons, to a higher official.b He was afterwards dismissed and Murray was promoted.0
He then says: we have advised the minor offenders to be released; the principal leaders and organisers we could not set free.
This is a positive lie. There were two Americans amongst them who had 15 years each. It was fear for America that made him set them free. Carey was sentenced in 1865 to 5 years, he is in the lunatic asylum, his family wanted him home,d he could not upset the government.
He further says: to rise in revolt against the public order has ever been a crime in this country. Only in this country. Jefferson Davis's revolt was right because it was not against the English, the government.[47]' He continues, the administration can have no interest except the punishment of crimes.
The administration are the servants of the oppressors of Ireland. He wants the Irish to fall on their knees because an enlightened sovereign and Parliament have done a great act of justice.c They were the criminals before the Irish people. But the Irish was the only question upon which Gladstone and Bright could become ministers and catch the dissenters[478] and give the Irish place-hunters an excuse of selling themselves. The church was only the badge of conquest. The badge is removed, but the servitude remains. He states that the government is resolved to continue to remove any grievance, but that they are determined to give security to life and property and maintain the integrity of the empire.
Life and property are endangered by the English aristocracy. Canada makes her own laws[479] without impairing the integrity of the empire, but the Irish know nothing of their own affairs, they must leave them to Parliament, the same power that has landed them where they are. It is the greatest stupidity to think that the prisoners out of prison could be more dangerous than insulting a whole nation. The old English leaven of the conqueror comes out in the statement: we will grant but you must ask.
In his letter to Isaac Butt he says:
"You remind me that I once pleaded for foreigners.'[1] Can the two cases correspond? The Fenians were tried according to lawful custom and found guilty by a jury of their countrymen. The prisoners of Naples were arrested and not tried and when they were tried they were tried by exceptional tribunals and sentenced by judges who depended upon the government for bread."h
If a poacher is tried by a jury of country squires he is tried by his countrymen. It is notorious that the Irish juries are made up of purveyors to the castle whose bread depends upon their verdict. Oppression is always a lawful custom. In England the judges can be independent, in Ireland they cannot. Their promotion depends upon how they serve the government. Sullivan the prosecutor has been made master of the rolls.
To the Ancient Order of Foresters in Dublin he answered that he was not aware that he had given a pledge that Ireland was to be governed according to Irish ideas.[480] And after all this he comes to Guild-Hail and complains that he is inadequate for the task/
The upshot is that all the tenant right meetings are broken up; they want the prisoners [released]. They have broken with the clerical party. They now demand that Ireland is to govern herself. Moore and Butt have declared for it.d Thev have resolved to liberate O'Donovan Rossa by electing him a member of Parliament.[0481]
Endnotes
[470] At the General Council meeting on November 9, 1869 Marx proposed the discussion of the following questions: the attitude of the British Government towards the Irish prisoners and the position of the English working class in the Irish question. On November 16 Marx opened the discussion and moved a resolution on this question (see this volume, p. 83). Stormy debates followed, particularly on November 23, when Mottershead, an Englishman, opposed Marx's resolution and tried to justify Gladstone's colonial policy in Ireland; Mottershead was supported by Odger, another English member of the General Council. Two other speeches (on November 23 and 30) were made by Marx in reply to them (see the next article in this volume). Marx described in detail the discussion on November 23 in his letter to Engels on November 26 (see present edition, Vol. 43). In the Minute Book of the General Council Marx's speeches on November 16, 23 and 30 are recorded by Eccarius. The report of the General Council meeting of November 16 was published in Reynolds's Newspaper, No. 1006, November 21 and The National Reformer, November 28, 1869; the report of the November 23 meeting — in Reynolds's Newspaper, No. 1007, November 28 and The National Reformer, December 5, 1869. However, these reports were brief and inaccurate. The full text of Marx's three speeches was first published in English in The General Council of the First International. 1868-1870, Moscow, 1966. In German a brief account of Marx's first speech (November 16) was published in Der Volksstaat, No. 21, December 11, and in French in L'Égalité, No. 48, December 18, 1869. When preparing his speeches Marx made wide use of material from the Irish press, in particular in The Irishman. Their contents have much in common with Marx's later articles on the subject written for L'Internationale (see this volume, pp. 101-07), and with the articles of Jenny Marx, his daughter, for La Marseillaise (see this volume, pp. 414-41).
[2] Marx means an extensive amnesty granted by President Lincoln in A 863 and President Johnson in 1865 to persons who had fought in the US Civil War on the side of the South.
[5] This refers to the Aliens Law adopted in Belgium on September 22, 1835 and prolonged every three years. Despite the widespread protest campaign in the press and at meetings, it was renewed at the end of June 1865. In May 1868, the Belgian Government, for fear of fresh mass action, prolonged it without discussion in the Chamber of Deputies.
[474] A reference to Gladstone's negative reply to the petitions for an amnesty for Irish prisoners adopted at mass meetings in Ireland, including the one in Limerick on August 1, 1869. Gladstone endeavoured to justify his refusal in his letters to O'Shea and Butt (see Note 115), which were published in The Times on October 23 and 27, 1869. Marx criticised the motives given by Gladstone in these letters (see this volume, p. 83).
[476] An article in the New-York Irish People, a newspaper of Irish emigrants published in the USA, said that Gladstone's refusal to grant an amnesty to the participants in the Fenian movement, was only furthering the movement (this remark was quoted by The Irishman in its issue of November 13, 1869). The likening of Gladstone to the Head Centre of the plot is tinged with irony, since this was the title of the leader of the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood, the secret Fenian organisation.
[47] The agreement on another 5-per cent Anglo-Dutch loan to Russia was concluded on November 4, 1866, to cover her foreign payments, particularly her debts.
[478] On dissenters see Note 295. Before the elections, Gladstone, the leader of the Liberal Party, made many promises to settle the Irish question in the hope of winning votes among the new categories of voters (see Note 117). Even before the election campaign got under way, he proposed the separation of the Anglican Church from the state in Ireland, thereby depriving it of state support and subsidies. He expected that this would win him popularity with the Irish Catholic voters. After winning the elections and assuming office at the end of 1868, Gladstone passed a bill through Parliament in March 1869 which placed the Anglican Church in Ireland on an equal footing with the Catholic Church. Gladstone and the Liberals hoped that their policy of moderate reform would weaken the revolutionary movement in Ireland.
[479] In 1840, a single Parliament was set up in England's Canadian possessions. The 1867 Act transformed them into the self-governing Canadian Confederation and granted it Dominion status.
[480] On October 30, 1869, The Irishman carried a report which said that in his letter to the Dublin branch of the Ancient Order of Foresters (a Friendly Society founded in England as early as 1745 as a society of royal foresters which adopted its name in 1834 and which campaigned for an amnesty on behalf of the Irish prisoners), Gladstone had neglected his pre-election promises to improve Ireland's position.
[481] See Note 141.
[4] The Lausanne Congress of the International in 1867 designated Brussels as the venue of the next general congress. On February 24, 1868, the General Council called on all sections to begin preparing the Congress agenda. However, the Belgian Minister of Justice, Jules Bara, declared in the Chamber of Deputies on May 16 that he would not permit the convocation of the Congress in Brussels and urged the deputies to renew the Aliens Law of 1835, under which any foreigner could be expelled from the country as politically unreliable. In view of this, at the General Council meeting of May 26, 1868, Marx raised the question of not meeting in Brussels (see The Bee-Hive Newspaper, No. 346, May 30, 1868). The resolution drawn up by Marx to this effect was read by Jung at the General Council meeting of June 2, since Marx had left for Manchester. Bara's statement and the prolongation of the Aliens Law caused great discontent in Belgium. The Brussels Section of the International sent the Minister a protest letter which was published in La Tribune du Peuple, No. 5, May 24, 1868. In their letters to the General Council, De Paepe and Vandenhouten, the leaders of the Brussels Section, urged the Council not to yield to the government because this threatened the further existence of the International in Belgium. Consequently, on Marx's proposal, the General Council meeting of June 16 cancelled the resolution of June 2 and Brussels remained the venue for the next annual congress (see this volume, pp. 320-21 and also Marx's letter to Engels of June 20, 1868, present edition, Vol. 43). The text of the June 2 resolution was included in the Minutes of the General Council meeting of June 2, 1868, and was also published in The Bee-Hive Newspaper, No. 347, June 6, 1868.
[1] In the autumn of 1867 the General Council of the International Working Men's Association launched a widespread campaign among the English workers in support of the Irish national liberation movement led by the Fenians. The memorial written by Marx was an integral part of this campaign. The Fenians were Irish revolutionaries who named themselves after the "Féne"— a name of the ancient population of Ireland. Their first organisations appeared in the 1850s in the USA among the Irish immigrants and later in Ireland itself. The secret Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood, as the organisation was known in the early 1860s, aimed at establishing an independent Irish republic by means of an armed uprising. The Fenians, who expressed the interests of the Irish peasantry, came chiefly from the urban petty bourgeoisie and intelligentsia and believed in conspiracy tactics. The British Government attempted to suppress the Fenian movement by severe police reprisals. On September 18, 1867, the Fenians made an armed attack on a prison van in an attempt to liberate Kelly and Deasy, two of their leaders. The latter managed to escape but a policeman was killed during the clash. Five Irishmen (Maguire, Condon, Larkin, Allen and O'Brien) were charged with murder and brought to trial. Although there was no direct evidence, they were sentenced to death. Maguire was subsequently pardoned, and Condon, as an American citizen, had his sentence commuted to life imprisonment. The others were executed. The Fenian trial in Manchester aroused a storm of protest in Ireland and England. On the insistence of Marx, the General Council of the International began, on November 19, a discussion on the Irish question during which the leaders of the international proletarian organisation expressed their solidarity with the struggle of the Irish people for independence and condemned the position of the reformist trade union leaders who, in the wake of the English bourgeois radicals, denied the right of the Fenians to resort to revolutionary methods in the struggle. The discussion was scheduled to continue on November 26 (see this volume, pp. 189-93), but when the news of the conviction was received, the General Council convened a special meeting on November 20 and addressed a memorial to the Home Secretary asking for the commutation of the death sentence. The British Government ignored the memorial. Because of opposition from the trade union leaders, the English labour press did not publish the memorial in its original wording. A report on the special meeting of the General Council, published in The Bee-Hive, No. 319, November 23, 1867, only summarised it, and named the General Council members who had signed it. The French translation was published by Le Courrier français, No. 163, November 24. In English the memorial was first published in full in The General Council of the First International. 1866-1868, Moscow, 1964. This document is also preserved in the form of the manuscript copy made by Mrs. Marx which fully coincides with the text entered into the Minute Book. Written as an article, this copy was apparently to be sent to the press. In this volume the memorial is reproduced from this copy.
[3] Marx wrote this item on the basis of a letter from Johann Baptist Schweitzer dated April 29, 1868. The item was included in the report of the General Council meeting of May 12, 1868 published in The Bee-Hive Newspaper, No. 344, May 16, 1868, but is not to be found in the Minute Book. Informing Engels of Schweitzer's letter, Marx wrote to him on May 4, 1868 that he intended "to use this question in the interests of the Party", and insisted on an inquiry into the condition of the workers employed in the iron trade of the Rhine Province (see this letter and Marx's letter to Engels of May 7 and the latter's reply of May 6-7, 1868, present edition, Vol. 43).