The Life Story of an Old Rebel

I owe both the title of this book and the existence of the book itself to the suggestion of friends. I suppose a man of 76 may be called "old," although I have by no means given...

I have met, as I have said elsewhere, most of the Irish political leaders of my time in Liverpool, but I will always remember with what pleasure I listened to a distinguished Ir...

I was a boy of about 12 when I first re-visited Ireland; and, as the steamer entered Carlingford Lough, which to my mind almost equals Killarney's beauty--but that, perhaps, is...

O'Connell, when passing through Liverpool on his way to Parliament, always made the Adelphi Hotel his headquarters, and used to hear Mass not far off at the Church of St. Nichol...

The restoration of the Catholic Hierarchy, September 29th, 1850, brought on what appeared to us one of John Bull's periodical fits of lunacy. I witnessed many scenes of mob viol...

The trials in 1859, following the arrests in connection with the Phoenix movement, with which the name of Jeremiah O'Donovan (called also "Rossa," after his native place) was id...

Although the Rising of 1867 had somewhat the character of "a flash in the pan," there were some heroic incidents in connexion with it. With one of the Fenian leaders, James Fran...

If it were for nothing else, it will be sufficient fame for T.D. Sullivan for all time that he is the author of "God Save Ireland." He had no idea himself, as he used to tell me...

I have referred to Michael Breslin in speaking of his brother John. Michael was not suspected of any complicity with the revolutionary movement until after the rising on the 5th...

Though the episode I am about to describe took place some six years after the commencement of the constitutional Home Rule agitation, I think it well, as it was connected with F...

It now becomes my business to record the formation and progress of another organisation--one which appealed to me precisely on the same grounds as Fenianism, namely, first, that...

When the Franco-Prussian War broke out, the sympathy of Ireland was naturally, for historic reasons, on the side of France. It was not surprising, then, that many young Irishmen...

In the previous chapter it will be seen that I have somewhat anticipated the course of events described in this narrative in order to give brief sketches of some of my friends w...

The General Election of 1874 was remarkable as the first since the Union which had clearly and distinctly returned a majority of Irish members of Parliament as Home Rulers. Prev...

It was at the Liverpool Municipal Elections of 1875 that we first introduced the question of Home Rule into local politics. When we were holding our inaugural meeting to establi...

In the year following the Liverpool Home Rule Convention of 1877, I had the pleasure of welcoming back to freedom my old friend, Michael Davitt, after he had been in penal servi...

In point of fact, what had happened was that the detectives, acting under the extraordinary powers given by the special "law" in force in Ireland, had invaded the offices of the...

It will be seen that when "United Ireland" was "on the shaughraun" during the time that William O'Brien was in prison, though he was able to send communications out regularly, t...

The Franchise and Re-Distribution Acts of 1884 and 1885, besides placing, for the first time, the Parliamentary representation in the hands of the great bulk of the people of Ir...

No spot in Great Britain is more sacred to us than Iona, an island off the West coast of Scotland, which our great typical Irish saint, Columba, made his home and centre when br...

When the "Times" on the 18th of April, 1887 published what purported to be the _fac simile_ of a letter from Mr. Parnell, and suggested that it was written to Mr. Patrick Egan i...

The unfortunate disruption in the Irish Parliamentary Party and the fierce quarrel that arose among the Irish people near the end of 1890, would be to me such a painful theme th...

One effect of the disturbance in political work caused by the split seemed to be the impetus given to existing movements which, so far as politics were concerned, were neutral g...

Summing up these pages, how shall I answer the question asked by Napper Tandy in "The Wearin' of the Green" over a hundred years ago--"How is old Ireland, and how does she stand?"