Thomas Devin Reilly

Thomas Devin Reilly (1823 - March 5, 1854) was an Irish revolutionary, Young Irelander and journalist.

Early years

He was born in Monaghan Town, the son of a solicitor, and completed his education at Trinity College, Dublin. From early on he espoused the republican beliefs of Wolfe Tone and Robert Emmet ^[1] and wrote for The Nation and John Martin's The Irish Felon in support of economic and political improvements for the working class. He was more interested in the realities of the common man than high idealism.

As a member of the Irish Confederation during the Potato Famine, Reilly together with John Mitchel and James Fintan Lalor advocated the refusal to pay rents, retention of crops by small tenant farmers and labourers to feed their own families, and the breaking-up of bridges and tearing-up of railway lines to prevent the removal of food from the country.^[2]

He was involved in the failed Young Irelander Rebellion of 1848 and was forced to flee to the United States.

In America

He became active in US political affairs in support of Irish independence.^[1]

He is reported as having founded The People newspaper in New York City which folded after six months in 1849.^[3]

James Connolly claims that as the editor of the Protective Union labour rights newspaper for the printers of Boston, Devin Reilly was a pioneer of American labour journalism and that Horace Greeley believed of his series of articles in the American Review on the European situation "that if collected and published as a book, they would create a revolution in Europe".^[2]

It is possible that Connolly has confused the United States Magazine And Democratic Review, which was known for its political activism, with the American Review, which for a time had Edgar Allan Poe as an editorial assistant - other sources refer to Devin Reilly being editor of the New York Democratic Review and later the Washington Union.^[4]

He died in 1854 at the age of 30 and is buried at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Washington, D.C., together with his infant child Mollie and wife Jennie Miller from Enniskillen.^[1]

Quotes

Writing in The Irish Felon on the June 1848 uprising in France :-^[2]

"We are not Communists - we abhor communism for the same reason we abhor poor-law systems, and systems founded on the absolute sovereignty of wealth. Communism destroys the independence and dignity of labour, makes the workingman a State pauper and takes his manhood from him. But, communism or no communism, these 70,000 workmen had a clear right to existence - they had the best right to existence of any men in France, and if they could have asserted their right by force of arms they would have been fully justified. The social system in which a man willing to work is compelled to starve, is a blasphemy, an anarchy, and no system. For the present these victims of monarchic rule, disowned by the republic, are conquered; 10,000 are slain, 20,000 perhaps doomed to the Marquesas. But for all that the rights of labour are not conquered, and will not and cannot be conquered. Again and again the labourer will rise up against the idler - the workingmen will meet this bourgeoisie, and grapple and war with them till their equality is established, not in word, but in fact".

Notes