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Many men were drifting back to Redmond's view, and recoiled from the prospect of dividing the Convention once more into its original component parts Nationalists on the one side, Unionists on the other.
However, in April 1885, when the Prince of Wales visited Ireland, and the constabulary from country districts were drafted into the towns through which he had to pass, a number of disguised Nationalists entered Cruickshank's house at night. They gave him a frightful beating, even breaking a gun on his head, which was seriously injured.
The one blow which the Sinn Feiner strikes is at the unreality of the usual political distinctions of Nationalists and Unionists; both have their demonstrations, the writer points out, at which political speakers make speeches consciously insincere, but justified by a sort of traditional instinct; and both crowds go home equally convinced of the intolerance of their opponents, relying for victory "on the strength of their fists and lungs," but all the thinkers despise it all, and this to such an extent that he is led on to remark: "If an impartial spectator were to go to an ordinary Green demonstration in Ireland, he would probably be inclined to be an Orangeman; while if he were to attend an Orange demonstration he would probably come away feeling strangely sympathetic towards Nationalism."
But, he argued, Irish Nationalists were not asked to give up anything which had been conceded to them by any previous Home Rule proposal.
His gallant struggle with his captors, fighting like a lion at bay, against the miscreants who assailed him; his assassination, his imprisonment, and his death, are events to which the minds of the Irish nationalists perpetually recur, and which, celebrated in song and story, are told with sympathising regret wherever a group of Irish blood are gathered around the hearth-stone.
Clearly Mr. Davitt held the winning card. As he frankly put the case to a special correspondent, whom I sent to see him, and whose report I published in New York, he saw that "the only issue upon which Home Rulers, Nationalists, Obstructionists, and each and every shade of opinion existing in Ireland could be united was the Land Question," and of that question he took control.
As Grattan was not merely the most prominent politician of the period, but also the leader of the now triumphant "National" party, we may fairly take the views expressed by him as representative of those of the party that followed him. A study of his speeches and letters will show how utterly different were the ideas and aims of the National party of 1782 from those of the Nationalists of to-day.
But the Nationalists of to-day have so completely identified themselves with the rebels of 1798 that within the last few years splendid monuments have been erected in all the towns of Wexford and the adjoining counties; some of these are bronze figures of patriots brandishing pikes, others are representations of the priestly leaders of the rebel forces.
Redmond probably believed that the opinion of Nationalists in the North could not be brought to consent to abandonment of the time-limit. If so, he probably underrated, then as always, the influence he possessed. It is always easy to persuade Irishmen that if you are going to do a thing you should do it "decently."
All these tunes, more or less distasteful to Nationalists, were interspersed with others less debatable, such as "Rule Britannia," "The Old Folks at Home," "The Last Rose of Summer," "God Save the Queen," and "See the Conquering Hero comes," which last generally accompanied the portrait of Orange William, the "Glorious, Pious, and Immortal," mounted on his famous white charger, which noble animal is depicted in the attitude erroneously believed to be peculiar to that of Bonaparte when crossing the Alps.
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