Page:The Catalpa Expedition (1897).djvu/250

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212
APPENDIX

in defiance of all her laws, she dare not demand them from the United States. Why? Because the root of her greatness is split—the germ of her strength is rotten. Beside her heart she has the disease that will sooner or later strike her down. She has maltreated, misgoverned, scorned, derided the island and the people of Ireland, until oppression has generated in their hearts the terrible political mania of national hatred. God forbid that we should exult in such a feeling; but no one who knows Ireland and Irishmen can deny its existence. England, to save herself, to possess the land, has driven the Irish people over the world; but wherever they went they carried with them the bitter memory of their wrongs and hates. She has strengthened the world against herself. She is powerless and contemptible; if she were to-day to demand the return of the Fenian prisoners, the people of all nations would shout in derision, and the United States would answer with a particular sneer. It is well for Mr. Gladstone to say that her honor is waning. But he has only seen the beginning of the end. The haughty and truculent country must eat the leek till its heart is sick.—Pilot, September 16, 1876.


JAMES REYNOLDS, THE TREASURER

James Reynolds, of New Haven, Conn., familiarly known as "Catalpa Jim," was born in County Cavan, Ireland, on October 20, 1831. His ancestry dates back over fourteen hundred years to the noble sept MacRaghnaill, which the Irish historians tell us was a branch of the tribe called Conmaie, whose founder was Conmacrie, third son of Fergus MacRoigh, by Meive, the celebrated queen of Connaught, in the first century of the Christian era.

He was but sixteen years of age when, during the memorable famine that peopled the cemeteries of Ireland, he bade adieu to his native heath and sailed away to the distant shores of America, bearing with him a