The Noble Rebel.

The quality in Jessie Mackay's poetry and her prose writings in the newspapers, that first greatly attracted me long ago was her divine spirit of rebellion. All that has ever been done in this world for the betterment of mankind has been done or begun by rebels against established tyrannies and long-persisting wrongs. Jessie Mackay's chivalrous soul was fired by the Celtic race's long struggle for self-government in Ireland. I imagine that if she had lived in New Zealand a generation earlier she would have championed that great patriot Wiremu Tamehana and his lost cause which a more just appraisal of Maori national rights by the pakeha has now given its proper place in history. Jessie Mackay could never conceivably have been found on the side of a land-acquisition war upon a weaker people. I do not at the moment recall her published views on the Boer War, that most debateable of subjects, but I can imagine that her opinion of the root-causes of that campaign agreed with mine. The mainspring of her life, in fact, has been her immensely strong sympathy for the peoples whose homes and liberties are threatened or demolished by the hand of wrongly-based authority and power. The Highland clearances in the name of the Law by the usurpers of the people's ancient rights were the first burning wrongs that gave a note of passion to her pen.