the unquestioned recognition of the nationality of Ireland. We are working not simply for the removal of grievances or the amelioration of the material condition of our people. Nothing, I think, is plainer than if Ireland had in the past abandoned principle, she could easily have bartered her national rights to England, and in return have obtained a certain amount of material prosperity. If only our forefathers had meekly accepted the yoke of an alien rule, Ireland's fetters would have been gilded, and the hand which for centuries has scourged her would have given her, as a slave, indulgences and favors which would have perhaps saved her from sufferings which are without a parallel in the history of oppression. If, at the bidding of England, Ireland had ages since abandoned her religion, and consented to merge her nationality, we might to-day be the sleekest of slaves, fattened by the bounty of our conquerors. Scotland, by even a smaller compromise of her national existence, has secured for herself comparative prosperity. But Ireland has preferred rags and an unconquered spirit of liberty to favors won by national dishonor.

The principle embodied in the Irish movement of to-day is just the same principle which was the soul of every Irish movement for the last seven centuries-the principle of rebellion against the rule of strangers; the principle which Owen Roe O'Neil vindicated at Benburb; which animated Tone and Fitzgerald, and to which Emmet sacrificed a stainless life. Let no man desecrate that principle by giving it the ignoble name of hatred of England. Race hatred is at best an unreasoning passion. I, for one, believe in the brotherhood of nations, and bitter as the memory is of past wrongs and present injustice inflicted upon our people by our alien rulers, I assert the principle underlying our movement is not the principle of revenge for the past, but of justice for the future. When a question of that principle arises there can be no such thing as compromise. The Irish leader who would propose to compromise the national claims of Ireland, who would even incline for one second to accept as a settlement of our demand any concession short of the unquestioned recognition of that nationality which has come down to us sanctified by the blood and tears of centuries, would be false

to Ireland's history and would forfeit all claims upon your confidence or support. Such a contingency can never arise, for the man who would be traitor enough to propose such a course would find himself no longer a leader. No man can barter away the honor of a nation. The one great principle of any settlement of the Irish question must be the recognition of the divine right of Irishmen and Irishmen alone, to rule Ireland. This is the principle in support of which you are assembled to-day; this is the principle which guides our movement in Ireland. But consistently with that principle we believe it is possible to bring about a settlement honorable to England and Ireland alike, whereby the wrongs and miseries of the past may be forgotten; whereby the chapter of English wrongs and of Irish resistance may be closed; and whereby a future of freedom and of amity between the two nations may be inaugurated.

Such a settlement, we believe, was offered to us by Mr. Gladstone, and quite apart from the increased strength which Mr. Gladstone's proposals, even though temporarily defeated, have given to our cause, we have, I think, reason to rejoice at the opportunity which they afforded to our suffering and exasperated people to show the magnanimity of their natures and the unalloyed purity of their love of liberty. What a spectacle Ireland afforded to the world, when at last one great Englishman arose bold enough and wise enough to do justice to her character! Ages of heartless oppression and bitter wrong, hundreds of thousands of martyrs to Irish freedom, ages of stupid religious persecution, ages of depopulation and statecreated famine, never-ending insult, and ruthless calumny -all in that one moment were forgotten, and the feelings uppermost in the hearts of the Irish race at home and abroad were gratitude to the aged statesman who simply proposed to do justice, and anxiety for a "blessed oblivion of the past." Who, in the face of the reception given to the Bill of Mr. Gladstone, cramped and deformed as it was by humiliating safeguards and unnecessary limitations, will dare to say that the principle of our movement is merely race hatred of England?

No! Last April Ireland was ready to forget and forgive. She was ready to sacrifice many things for peace, as long

as the one essential principle for which she struggled was conceded. She was willing, on the day when the portals of her ancient senate-house were reopened, to shake hands with her hereditary foe, and to proclaim peace between the democracies of two nations whom the Almighty placed side by side to be friends, but who had been kept apart by the avarice, the passions, and the injustice of a few. What centuries of oppression had failed to do seemed about to be accomplished by one word of conciliation, by one act of justice.

Almost one hundred years before a similar opportunity arose. Wolfe Tone and the Society of United Irishmen demanded Catholic emancipation and Parliamentary reform, and in 1795 Lord Fitzwilliam came to Ireland to carry out a policy of justice. Then, just as last April, the Irish question was on the very brink of settlement. The passion of revenge died out, ancient wrongs were forgotten, faction faded at the approach of liberty, and for one brief moment the clouds lifted over Ireland. But the moment was brief.

Lord Fitzwilliam was recalled, and Lord Camden went to Ireland and deliberately commenced the policy which culminated in the rebellion of 1798. Fatally alike in almost all its details was the crisis of that day to the crisis of to-day. Once again the policy of conciliation has been cast aside by England. The English Viceroy who represented the policy of liberty, and who was the first English Viceroy since 1795 who was greeted with the acclamations of the populace in Dublin, has left our shores, and in his place has come one bearing the hated name of Castlereagh. Once again all thought of amity with England has been banished from the minds of Irishmen, and to-day we are once more face to face with our hereditary foes. The storm cloud has descended once more upon our land, but we have a right to call on the world to remember, when by and by it perhaps shudders at the darkness and gloom and horror of the scene, how brightly and peacefully the Irish landscape smiled during the brief sunshine of the last few months.

The duty of the moment is clear. We have given England the most convincing proof that on the concession of liberty we can be trusty friends; it now remains for us

to prove for the thousandth time that as slaves we can be formidable foes. I assert here to-day that the government of Ireland by England is an impossibility, and I believe it to be our duty to keep it so. Were our people tamely to submit to the yoke which has been once again placed on their necks they would be unworthy of the blood which they have inherited from fathers who preferred poverty to dishonor and death to national slavery.

MAYNE REID.

(1819-1883.)

CAPTAIN MAYNE REID, the prince of story-tellers for boys, was born in Kloskilt, County Down, in 1819. His father, a Presbyterian clergyman, intended him for the Church, but he ran away from home and came to this country in 1838, more with the idea of seeing the world and finding adventures than with any definite plan. He landed at New Orleans and went on several excursions on the Red River and the Missouri. During this period he traded and hunted with the Indians, and for more than five years he enjoyed the wild adventures, the strange and eccentric scenes, and the bracing freedom of the prairie. It was at this stage of his life that he obtained that intimate acquaintance with the Indian character and wild scenery which he has so well reproduced in several of his works. Afterward he went on a systematic tour, visiting almost every part of the country.

He had already begun to use his pen, but the outbreak of the war between the United States and Mexico in 1845 supplied a new and, at the moment, more attractive field of activity. He obtained a commission and passed through some of the most exciting and dangerous scenes of the war. He was present at the capture of Vera Cruz; he led the last charge of the infantry at Cherubusco, and as one of the forlorn hope at Chapultepec he was severely wounded and reported killed. At the close of the war he resigned his commission, and his next idea was the organization of the American legion to help the Hungarians in their insurrection against the then oppressive rule of Austria. When he arrived at Paris he found that the rebellion had been suppressed. He now devoted himself to literature, and works came from his pen with extraordinary rapidity. The popularity of his writings has been remarkable. Of The Scalp Hunters' alone a million copies are said to have been sold. In Russia he was more popular than even Scott or Dickens. France, Spain, and Italy several authors have produced different translations of his works. The most remarkable of his books are 'The Rifle Rangers,' 'The Scalp Hunters,' 'The War Trail,' 'The Quadroon,''The White Chief,' and 'The Headless Horseman.'

In

He died in London, Oct. 22, 1883. Though he did not write especially for boys, his books have been eagerly appropriated by them. The simplicity of his plots, the variety of incident, and the rapid movement in his stories are precisely the elements which attract and hold the attention of youth.

CAPTURE OF AN INDIAN CHIEF.

From 'The Scalp Hunters.'

Our eyes rolled over the prairie together, eastward, as the speaker pointed. An object was just visible low down