Captain Shannon

On the day of the outrage upon the Metropolitan railway a manifesto from Captain Shannon, of which the following is a copy, was received by the Prime Minister at his official residence in Downing Street. It was written as usual in roughly printed capitals, and, as it bore the Dublin postmark of the preceding day, must have been posted before the explosion had taken place.

“To the People of Great Britain and Ireland:

“Fellow countrymen and countrywomen,—The Anarchistic, Nihilistic, Fenian, and similar movements of the past have all been failures. That fact there is no denying. I do not mean to say that there have been no results to the glorious war which has been waged upon a society which is content to stand by heedless and unconcerned while Russia’s many millions of starving and suffering fellow-creatures are the slaves of a system by which the honour, liberty, and life of every man, woman, and child are at the mercy of a tyrant’s whim and the whims of his myrmidons,—a society which looks on smiling while Ireland is groaning under the heel of English oppression, and while capitalists, who yawn as they seek to devise some new vice on which to squander the wealth which has become a burden to them, grind down and sweat the poor, setting one starving man to compete against another for a wage which can scarce find him and his in dry bread.

“A society which, calling itself Christian, and having it in its power to mend matters, can, unconcerned, endure such iniquities, is blood guilty, and so long as these things last, upon society shall its crimes be visited,—with society must all just men and true wage deadly war.

“What has been done hitherto has not been without results.

“But for the justice which was executed upon the arch-tyrant, Alexander of Russia; the blow which was struck at English tyranny by the destruction of Clerkenwell prison; the righteous punishment which befell those servants of tyrants and enemies of freedom, Burke and Cavendish,—but for these and other glorious deeds, the bitter cry of the oppressed all over the world had passed unheard and unheeded; Ireland had not wrung from reluctant England the few paltry concessions that have been made, and the dawning of the great day of freedom had been indefinitely postponed.

“But notwithstanding all that has been done, the fact remains and cannot be denied that Nihilists, Anarchists, Fenians, and those who, under different names and different leaders, are fighting for freedom throughout the world have, up to the present, failed to accomplish the results at which they aim.

“And why?

“Because they have been scattered and separate organisations, each working independently of the other, and having no resources outside itself. So long as this sort of thing continues nothing can be hoped for but the throwing away of precious lives and sorely needed money to no purpose.

“But let these scattered forces combine into one organised and all-powerful Federation, and mankind will be at its mercy.

“This is what has been done.

“The World Federation of Freedom is now an accomplished fact, for all the secret societies of the world have combined into one common and supreme organisation, with one common enemy and one common purpose.

“That purpose is to rid mankind of the monsters of Monarchy and Imperialism, and with them of the whole vampire brood of Peers, Nobles, and Capitalists who, in order that they may live in idleness and sensuality, grind the face of the poor, and drain, drop by drop, the hearts’-blood of toiling millions.

“Its object is to declare that all things are the property of the people. To wrench from the greedy maw of landowners and capitalists their ill-gotten gains, and to restore them to the rightful possessors. To sweep from the face of the earth the fat priests, ministers, and clergy who batten and fatten on the carrion of dead and decaying religions. To preach the gospel of the happiness of man in place of the worship of God, and to declare the day of the great republic, when the many millions who have hitherto been ruled shall become the rulers.

“That this glorious consummation can be attained all at once the Federation is not so sanguine as to expect. Its members know that though they have a lever strong enough to move the world they must be content to work slowly. Mankind is a chained giant. Their aim is to set him free; but to do this they must be content to knock off his fetters one by one; and at the last meeting of the World Federation of Freedom it was unanimously agreed to inaugurate the great struggle for personal liberty, firstly, by emancipating Ireland from the English rule, and, secondly, by the overthrowing of Imperialism in Russia.

“The council of the Federation has two reasons for deciding to commence the plan of campaign by freeing Ireland.

“The first is that the members know well that the greatest enemy with which they have to contend—the last country to be convinced of the righteousness of their cause—will be England, that prince-ridden, priest-ridden, peer-ridden nation of flunkeys and enemies of freedom which shed the blood of her own children in America rather than grant them their rightful independence, and now seeks in a similar way to keep Ireland, India, Canada, and Australia under her cruel heel. At England, then, it is right and fitting the first blow should be struck.

“The other reason is that Ireland, when she is once set free, and in the hands of the Federation, is to be made the basis of future operations. It is very necessary that the Federation should have some such headquarters, and in regard to size (too large a centre is not desirable), shape, situation, and compactness, Ireland possesses peculiar natural advantages for the purpose. An island, surrounded on all sides as by sentries, by the sea, no hostile force can steal upon her under cover and unawares. She is practically the key to Europe, and as a vantage-ground from which to commence operations upon England her position cannot be bettered.

“Is there a single thinking man or woman who cannot see that monarchy and imperialism, peers, clergy, and class distinctions are doomed, and that their utter downfall is only a matter of time? Germany, Russia, Austria, Italy, France, and England are undermined to the very cores by Socialism and Anarchy. The mines which are to destroy society, as society now exists, are laid though they are out of sight, and at any moment the opportunity may come to fire the train. Such an opportunity once occurred in France; but what happened then, though it served to show what hatred of its rulers was seething unsuspected in the lowest stratum of society, was a mere accident. But if an accidental outbreak like the French Revolution could set rivers of blood running in France, what may we not expect from the Great Revolution which, when it comes—as come it must—will be the result, not of chance, but of long years of systematic propagation of socialistic principles among the masses, which will be the outcome of the most subtly-planned and gigantic scheme for the liberation of mankind which the world has ever known!

“There are people who will say that what happened on the other side of the Channel can never happen on this. But those who know what is going on in London, Manchester, Birmingham, and all the largest towns, know that we are living on the edge of a volcano; that England is riper for revolution to-day than France was in 1789, though the danger is as little suspected now as it was then, and that what happened then, and worse, may happen at any time in England unless her councillors have the foresight and the wisdom to give to the people what the people will assuredly otherwise take.

“It must be remembered that in England we have had for more than half a century a Queen who does not forget that during that time a complete revolution has taken place in many previously existing beliefs and systems, a Queen who knows that England will never tolerate another George IV., who recognises that what was patiently borne sixty, forty, and twenty years ago, will not be endured for a moment to-day, and has wisely avoided everything which can put royalty on its trial or the temper of the people to the test. Hence, though Englishmen know that a day of reckoning between royalty and the people is nigh, they have tacitly consented to put off that day so long as she lives, and to call upon some other and less fortunate sovereign to settle the account. But the account, too long overdue, will soon have to be settled. As well might one man hope to stand against an incoming sea, as well might the courtiers of old King Canute think by their chiding to stay the rude waves from wetting the feet of their royal master, as the rich few think that they can withstand the million of the poor when the poor shall arise in their might and their right to claim as their own the riches which their labours have accumulated. In whose hands are those riches now?

“For answer let them look to the words which are written in the very heart of their seething, starving London, over the portico of the Royal Exchange, ‘The earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof.’ Yes, the lords’,—this duke’s, that earl’s,—but not God’s—if a God there be—or the people’s.

“But it is to restore the earth and the fulness thereof to the people that the World Federation of Freedom is fighting. Its cause is the cause of the poor, and it is sacred. Long years of toiling for the bare necessities of life have so broken the spirit of the poor that they have become almost like beasts of burden that wince before a whip in the hands of a child, and bow themselves to the yoke at the bidding of a master whose puny life they could crush out at a blow. It is time that the poor should be made to see the terrible power which, if only by virtue of their swarming millions, lies at their command.

“It is for the people of Great Britain to make choice whether they will throw in their lot with the winning side while yet there is time to make terms, or whether they will sacrifice their lives and the lives of their wives and children to support a system by the destruction of which they will be the first to profit. And in making such choice, it must be remembered that they have no longer against them for the purpose of freeing Ireland and of emancipating Russia a handful of patriots, struggling hopelessly against overwhelming odds, but the whole of the secret societies of the world. They have against them the most gigantic and far-reaching organisation which has been formed within the history of man,—an organisation, the wealth and power of which are practically unlimited,—which counts among its members statesmen in every Court in Europe; statesmen who, although they hold the highest offices of trust in their country’s councils, are secretly working in connection with the Federation,—an organisation which has spies and eyes in every place, and will spare neither man, woman, nor child in the terrible vengeance which will be visited upon its enemies.

“The people of England, and especially of London, will know before the morrow how far-reaching is the arm of the Federation and how pitiless its vengeance. Let them be warned by what will occur this day on the Underground railway, and let them beware lest, by hindering either actively or passively the work of the Federation, they incur that vengeance.—By order.

“Captain Shannon.”