Wolfe Tone Quotes

The Revolution of ’82 (1782) was a revolution which enabled Irishmen to sell at a much higher price their honour, their integrity, and the interests of their country; it was a revolution which while at one stroke it doubled the value of every borough monger in the Kingdom, left three-fourths of our countrymen [Catholics] slaves as it found them, and the Government of Ireland in the base, wicked and contemptible hands who had spent their lives plundering and degrading her … Who of the veteran enemies of the country lost his place, or his pension? Not one. The power remained in the hands of our enemies, again to be exerted for our ruin, with this difference, that, formerly, we had our distresses gratis at the hands of England, but now we pay very dearly to receive the same with aggravations at the hands of Irishmen—yet this we boast of and call a Revolution.

On him who is not convinced by the arguments of Payne, the absurdity of hereditary monarchs and hereditary legislatures where no man would admit of hereditary cob[b]lers who wished to have his shoes well mended, I despair of making any impression.

Impressed as we are with a deep sense of the excellence of our Constitution, as it exists in theory, we rejoice that we are not, like our brothers in France, reduced to the hard necessity of tearing up inveterate abuse by the roots, even where utility was so intermixed as to admit of separation. Ours is an easier and a less unpleasing task; to remove with a steady and a temperate resolution the abuses which the lapse of many years, inattention and supineness in the great body of the people, and unremitting vigilance in their rulers to invade and plunder them of their rights, have suffered to overgrow and to deform that beautiful system of government so admirably suited to our situation, our habits and our wishes. We have not to innovate but to restore. The just prerogatives of our monarch we respect and will maintain. The constitutional powers of the peers of the realms we wish not to invade. We know that in the exercise of both, abuses have grown up; but we also know that those abuses will be at once corrected, so as never again to recur, by restoring to us the people what we for ourselves demand as our right, our due weight and influence in that estate which is our property, the representation of the people in parliament.

I have laboured to abolish the infernal spirit of religious persecution by uniting the Catholics and Dissenters. To the former, I owe more than ever can be repaid. The service I was so fortunate as to render them they rewarded munificently but they did more: when the public cry was raised against me, when the friends of my youth swarmed off and left me alone, the Catholics did not desert me. They had the virtue even to sacrifice their own interests to a rigid principle of honour. They refused, though strongly urged, to disgrace a man who, whatever his conduct towards the Government might have been, had faithfully and conscientiously discharged his duty towards them and in so doing, though it was in my own case, I will say they showed an instance of public virtue of which I know not whether there exists another example."

England has not had such an escape since the Spanish Armada, and that expedition, like ours, was defeated by the weather; the elements fight against us, and courage is here of no avail. Well, let me think no more about it; it is lost, and let it go. I am now a Frenchman and must regulate my future plans accordingly.

[I]t is our principle that if a nation wills a bad government it ought to have that government. We have no power, and we have no right, to force men to be free.

I for one will never be accessory to subjecting my country to the control of France merely to get rid of England.

The aristocracy of Ireland, which exists only by our slavery and is maintained in its pomp and splendor by the sale of our lives, liberties and properties, will tumble in the dust; the people will be no longer mocked with a vain appearance of a parliament over which they have neither influence nor control. Instead of a king representing himself, a house of lords representing themselves, we shall have a wise and honest legislature chosen by the people, whom they will indeed represent and whose interest even for their own sakes they will most strenuously support.

I much fear the French government will have reason sorely to repent their extravagant caution with regard to infringing the liberty of the press; it is less dangerous for a government to be feared, or even hated, than despised, and I do not see how a government which suffers itself day after day without remission to be insulted in the most outrageous manner with the most perfect impunity can avoid in the long run falling into disrepute and contempt.

The fortune of war has thrown me into the hands of Government, and I am utterly ignorant of what fate may attend me, but in the worst event I hope I shall bear it like a man, and that my death will not disgrace my life.

I have now done, my countrymen, and I do most earnestly beseech you, as Irishmen, as citizens, as husbands, as fathers, by everything most dear to you, to consider the sacred obligation that you are called upon to discharge, to emancipate your country from a foreign yoke, and to restore to liberty yourselves and your children;...remember that you have no alternative between liberty and independence, or slavery and submission; remember the wrongs you have sustained from England for six hundred years and the implacable hatred or still more insufferable contempt which even at this moment she feels for you; look to the nations of the earth emancipating themselves around you. If all this does not rouse you, then are you, indeed, what your enemies have long called you—<small>A BESOTTED PEOPLE!</small> You have now arms in your hands, turn them instantly on your tyrants; remember, if this great crisis escapes you, you are lost forever, and Ireland will go down to posterity branded with...infamy. ... Irishmen...you will embrace your liberty with transport, and for your chains, you will ‘break them on the heads of your oppressors’; you will shew for the honor of Ireland that you have both sensibility to feel and courage to resent and means to revenge your wrongs; one short, one glorious effort and your liberty is established, <small>NOW, OR NEVER; NOW AND FOR EVER!</small>

An event has taken place of a magnitude scarce, if it all, inferior in importance to that of the French revolution. The Pope is dethroned and in exile. The circumstances attending this great event are such as to satisfy my mind that there is a special providence guiding the affairs of Europe at this moment, and turning everything to the great end of the emancipation of mankind from the yoke of religious and political superstition.

America...has neither king, nobility nor clergy established by law and it is notwithstanding, I am satisfied, at this hour, the most flourishing and the best governed spot on the face of this earth.

The insurrection has commenced formally in several counties of Leinster, more especially Kildare and Wexford... At Carlow, 400 Irish, it is said, were killed; at Castledermot 50. In return in the Co. Wexford, where appears to be their principal force, they have defeated a party of 600 English, killed 300 men and the commandant, Colonel Walpole, and taken 5 pieces of cannon; this victory, small as it is, will give the people courage and shew them that a red coat is no more invincible then a grey one... From the blood of every one of the martyrs of the liberty of Ireland will spring, I hope, thousands to revenge their fall.

I see in the papers this day the address of General Buonaparte to the army embarked at Toulon, and from one or two expressions contained in it, it seems possible his destination may be for India... [I]f there be no likelihood of an immediate attack on England, I take liberty, thro' you, to make an offer to the Government of my services in India... My first object, undoubtedly, is to assist in the emancipation of my own country; if that cannot be attained my next is to assist in the humiliation of her tyrant, and in whatever quarter of the globe the English government exists, there is our enemy.