To THE SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF IRELAND SCATTERED OVER THE EARTH IN QUEST OF A HOME DENIED THEM IN THEIR NATIVE LAND THIS WORK IS DEDICATED 66 That if this lande were put once in order as aforesayd, it would be none other but a very paradise, delicious of all pleasuance to respect and regard of any other lande in this worlde; in as much as there never was straunger nor alien person, greate or small, that would avoide there from by his will, notwithstanding the said misorder, if he might the meanes to dwell therein, his honesty saved; much more would be his desire if the lande were once put in order." Letter from State Papers of Henry VIII. "God made the land; and all His works are good: Man made the laws; and all they breath'd was blood. Unhallow'd annals of six hundred years, A code of blood, a history of tears." PREFACE THE writer, as President of the Irish National Federation of America, was called upon to deliver a public address at the Cooper Union, in the city of New York, on the evening of February 1, 1897. This was intended to form one of a series of educational lectures to be given to the members of the different branches of the Federation in the city of New York. The subject assigned to the writer was: “England's Destruction of Ireland's Manufactures, Commerce and Population." Much of the material used in this lecture, together with that presented in the paper on Ireland's Past and Present and recently published in Donahue's Magazine, Boston, Mass., was utilized by the author, together with a greater mass of new material, and all was embodied in the Indictment of 1898, to show "Why Ireland has never Prospered under English Rule." When the work had been prepared for the press, early in 1898, the writer declined to entertain the proposal that it should be printed by a publisher with Irish sympathies, because the work would then have passed only into the hands of those already familiar with the subject. His earnest desire was to have it reach the American public and possibly, by the same means, the English people. Thus would the truth be disseminated for educational purposes and would to some extent reach those who are indifferent owing to profound ignorance of Irish affairs. The manuscript was submitted to several prominent American publishers and, while the writer was courteously |