Show IRISH COERCION I Father Ryan the Catholic priest the eloquent and heroic advocate of the rights of the Irish people is the inmate of an English jail This is the first step in the new coercion of Ireland which has been decreed by the English Government Once more the cruel cross of England is overshadowing Ireland Once more the bayonet the bullet and the scaffold are to pacify the Green Island Once more the English dungeons open to receive Irish patriots But the clang of the ironbound door of Father Ryans cell is already echoing throughout the world It has reached the ears of freemen in every clime but it no longer falls like a knell upon freemens hearts Instead of in 0 ducing the numbness of despair the clang of that ironbound door has aroused the heart of freedom and braced it for action The English government will find a far different condition of thing than has heretofore assisted her to rivet the chains of Ireland In all former oppressions the English Crown has had only to encounter Ireland herself already al-ready bound for the sacrifice Now It will have to face an outraged world The cause of Irish freedom has become a universal cause No longer will the nations gaze in apathy as the cord the bullet and the axe do their work on Irish patriots The day has gone by for the successful ministrations of such men as Bloody Balfour The brotherhood of man has made sufficient progress to rescue Ireland Ire-land from Endlands clutches England is entering upon a contest that is liable to shatter her blood stained and cemented empire from the rising to the setting of the sun An entering wedge once driven and the fabric of Englands power falls to pieces Her dominion in America now hangs by a thread Australia has dreams of independence which have all the color of reality India is a fruit ripe for the plucking of Russia and Egypt is I already lost Ireland once wrested from the grasp of England and England ceases to be one of the nations of the earth In the United States the Irish form one of the foremost elements of our national strength They are thoroughly organized well supplied with money and have long been straining like staghounds stag-hounds in the leash So it is with Irishmen Irish-men all over the world There is not a clime under the heavens sun where Irishmen have not found refuge and a home From this refuge and these homes the eyes of the exiles have ever been turned toward their native land and their ears have always listened for the signal of Irish freedom It looks as though that signal has at last been given and the Irish exiles will wreak at once on England the accumulated vengeance of long years of expatriation and wrong England but invites her fate |