[Speech of Charles Emory Smith at the banquet given by the Hibernian Society of Philadelphia, St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, 1887.  Mr. Smith was introduced by the Society’s President, John Field, and called upon to speak to the toast, “The Press.”]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:—­These annual dinners of the Hibernian Society, several of which I have had the honor of attending, are distinguished by a peculiar association and spirit.  The sons of other nationalities, Englishmen, Welshmen, Scotchmen, Germans, and those among whom I count myself—­the sons of New England—­are accustomed to meet annually on the anniversary of a patron saint or on some great historic occasion as you do.  And those of us who have the opportunity of going from one to the other will, I am sure, agree with me that nowhere else do we find the patriotic fire and the deep moving spirit which we find here.  Something of this, Mr. President, is due to the buoyant quality of blood which flows in every Irishman’s veins—­a quality which makes the Irishman, wherever he may be and under all circumstances, absolutely irrepressible.  Something, I say, is due to this buoyant quality of the Irish blood.  Still, some of it is due to the fact that he is moved by a deep sense of the woes and the wrongs, of the sadness and the sorrows of his native land.  Oppression and injustice only inflame the spirit of nationality.  The heel of the oppressor may crush and tear the form or reduce the strength, but nothing crushes the inward resolve of the heart.  The Americans were never so American as when they revolted against England and threw the tea overboard into Boston harbor, and punished the Red-Coats at Bunker Hill.  The heavy yoke of Austria rested grievously upon Hungary, but they raised themselves in revolt and fought fearlessly for their home rule, for their freedom and their rights.  And they were defeated by treason in their camps and by the combined forces of Austria and Russia.  Yet, sir, they persevered until they achieved home rule—­as will Ireland at no distant day.

The long history of oppression and injustice in Ireland has not only not extinguished the flame of Irish patriotism and feeling, but has served to kindle it, to make it more glowing to-day than ever before.  For seven centuries Ireland has wrestled with and been subjected to misrule—­to England’s misrule:  a rule great and noble in many things, as her priceless statesman says, but with this one dark, terrible stain upon an otherwise noble history.  Only a day or two ago there reached our shores the last number of an English periodical, containing an article from the pen of that great statesman, to whom not only all Ireland, but all the civilized world is looking to-day to battle for freedom in England.  The article presents, in the most striking form that I have ever seen, statements of what is properly called Ireland’s demands.  And I was struck there with the most extraordinary statement coming from this great statesman of England,