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Un daa aymboias suivants apparaftra sur la darnlAra imaga da chaqua microficha, aaion la caa: la symbols — ► signifia "A SUIVRE", la aymbola ▼ aignifia "FIN". ■Maps, platas, charts, ate, may ba filmad at diffarant raduction ratios. Thosa too iarga to ba antiraiy inciudad in ona axposura ara filmad baginning in tha uppar laft hand cornar, laft to right and top to bottom, as many framaa as raquirad. Tha following diagrama iiluatrata tha mathod: Las cartaa. planchaa, tablaaux, ate, pauvant Atra filmAa A daa taux da rAductlon diff Aranta. Loraqua la documant aat trop grand pour Atra raprodult an un aaul clichA. 11 aat filmA A partir da I'angia aupAriaur gaucha, da gaucha A droita, at da haut an baa, an pranant la nombra d'imagaa nAcaaaaira. Laa diagrammaa auivanta illuatrant la mAthoda. 1 2 3 32X 1 2 3 4 5 6 / i J 1 HENRY GRATTAN 9^0 The Irish Volunteers 1Y^\ > OW 178S. LAST LEOTUBE OF THE LATE jplEY. jfAMES jl. jVLuRPHYj DUIVIBSD IH THB MECHANICS' HALL, MONTREAL, Monday Evening, Nov 22nd, 187S. PRICE 15 Cenis, 1 \ MONTREAL : PRINTED AT THE "TRUE WITNESS" OFFICE. i87S 'K'\ {Hie following lectare— the last Father Muphy dellyered— Is ftoM his •WB awiraecript, rariied and oomcted by himielf for the Tami WmoMi.] FATHER MURPHT'S LECTDRE ^ oa "Orattan and the Irish Tolunteers of 1782" MECHANICS' HALL, MONTREAL, Monday Eve., film 22, 1876. Ladiis and GiNTLBHEM, — ^The poet Pope with wImmo infalli- bility I am glad to say I am not oonoeraed thii eyening has announced that " the proper study <^ mankind is man " ; and the poet Browning, of whom I should like to speak to you at some other time, has reeordecl that on the earth there is nothing worth seeing but a human soul. The announcements are substantially the same, and they are both true. A great man is the greatest of all earthly productions, and to see a great man is the greatest of all merely earthly blesssinfjcs. Our better brother he it is that can make us good. Godhood in human shape — He it is that can lift us to heaven. Now a great man I have this evening to let you see. Not hj merely telling you his history and repeating little anecdotes of his life can my olgect be accomplished. They are interesting and they are useful too ; but unless they have been employed as so many windows through which to catch a vein of his naked soul, for all tha high purposes of instruction they will be found to foil. In this latter office only have I employed, in this latter purpose will I to> night employ them. For this lecture as for all the lectures whieh I address to the inhabitaote of Montreal, I have prepared myself with much labour and sore anxiety as one who knows he is addressing a cultivated and generous people, whose cultivation sbo^d seem to be x^ws agaiDst the imbecility of pitititude and whose generosity should secure them against the iuiprudeoce of deception. As I myself through 8.11 the varied light which speech and stor^, ulsiurji aiud biography, have shed on Henry Grattan, have managed for my own bettering to get to see him, so also shall I to the best of my ability present him to you now. -""" It is, so please you, Ladies und Gentlemen, not the year of grace 1875, but the year of grace 1782); noi an evening towards the close of a rigorous November, but an evening towards the close of a gonial May ; and we are, so please you, not in Montreal on the banks of the Si. Lawrence, but flbr across the seius in Dublin on the baol^ of the Liffey. I am, after many wanderings, a^ain at home, and there, ten miles away, my own mountains, strong und storn, gaunt and grim, gather up their hearta to ponder as they pondered in the days of Art MaoMorrough and Fiack MacIIugh, and out beyond tbeni stretch those Wexford fields where large limbed men are toiling quiet, homely, but with dreadful purpose in their mouths and eyes. But on this evening of more than ninety years ago it is the city itself that I ooiue to see. Its streets are literally packed with noisy masses of excited people, and no matter in whatway wewalk, wefind the masses all converging in one set direction and the centre to which all bear is that magnificent reproduction of Grecian art, tho Parliament House on College Green. But it is not the vast num- bers of hurrying men nor yet this extraordinary enthusiasm that makes Dublin this evening so remarkable. It is this : the land is all at peace, but the city has about it all the insignia of war ; her ordin- ary garrison is not above three thousand, and yet in her streets and within her walls this evening are at least four times twenty thousand troops trained and prepared for battle ; she is the capital of a British province and the 80,000 do not march under the English flag ; her people hate the English soldiery, and yet they fondly fraternize with the new troops; her walls so used to the echoes of English martial music, no longer fling back that tow de row for which tlie British ways was), but making acquaintance with the speeches of the dder Pitt and knowing that in hu own country law was the fit appren- ticeebip for legblation, we discover him studying at London to proi pare himself for the Bar. But the Bar is for him only a traming \ 9 fllaet ibr his seleotcd ealling, and his sdeoted oalliog is to be ao" orator. Did he desire distinetioD at the eipense of patriotism he woald have ^one, as weot tl)« great Sheridan and the greater Buf^e, to gtre his genitti to an alien people and to raise his voioe in alien halte. But Grattan was made of sterner and homelier stuff. And so in 1776 we find him in a position where he can prove his patriot* iiai and test his power, member for the Borough of Charlemont In the Irish House of Commons in College Green. ' But the Irish Parliament of which Grattan became a member had ceased Ions einoe to be anything but a Parliament in name. By an aet passed in the reign of Henry YII. and usually called Poyning's Act, no law could originate in the Irish Lords or the Irish Com- mons ; and by another act passed in the reign of George I. power was given to the British Parliament to legislate for Ireland by Bri* tish Statutes. Then England played her usual game. Every law was so framed as to ruin her Irish colony and to enrich her English self, and the complaints of a Yorkshire village was considered soft- oient excuse for killing restrictions on Irish trade. The result to Ii«land was utter b^gary. Ireland's people became paupers, her ports became the posseesion of seaweed and shell-fish, and in her city streets, iHid on her country highways, men and women were walking with no secret ibr the solution of life's problem, but to lie down and 4ie. Now, ladies and gentlemen, mark well whom all this directly affected. Ever since the twelfth century there had been in Ireland two races, and ever since the sixteenth century there had been in Ireland two religions. We may call them broadly the native Catholics and the colonial Protestants. The policy of England towards these two parties had always been shaped with the same design, and that de- sign was to plunder Ireland as effectually and as permanently as possible. The Catholic natives being the original proprietors of the skhI, were the immediate prey, and as long as the Protestant Colo- nists served to eflect their plunder, the Protestant Colonists were by the Imperial rulers highly favored. But in course of time and by processes that are known and not easily forgotten, two results oo- oorred. In the first place, the native Catholics were socially and politically extinguished, so that, as Dean Swift said, if you wanted to find the native Irish gentry you would have to seek them in the oellars of the Coal Quays and the slumbs of the Liberties. In the ' second place the Protestant Colonists increasing in number, and at* taining by force or fraud to the proprietorship of all the land, they i beonine a power which aa loni; m it remained loyal to England, ooald Iceep the Cat(>olio CeltR in aubjection, bnt which if it desired to retifiqniah the beauty of England'a embraoes might make the Englioli footing in Ireland very insecure. But England then was the England of all hiatory* Then and always was sTarice her pr^^ dominent passion, and for rome miserable gain in the present, she waa rendy to relinquish her best friendships of the future. Tier American Oolnnies which might still be her mo«t splendid provinces, she higgled with and cheated and robbed, till these stern children of hers in New England, finding out at last that her love of them' meant love of their inheritance, flung her angrily from their home and rained up that Great Republic which, though imperfect it be, still lives for all tyrannies, a warning and a doom. The very 8ume policy of selfishncM was followed in Ireland. England robbed and cheated her Irish Colonists, as she robbed and cheated her colonists in New England. And in both oases there wtia this aggravation that it was her own children who had followed her own teachings and worked her own work that she turned to plunder. The Catholic Celts of Ireland had long since had nothing to lose, but the Protestant Ehig- lish who colonized Ireland had much of which they wiyhed to retain possession ; and these latter, regardlecH as ever of affinities of r»> ligion and affinities of race, England ntw turned to destroy. Bat as in America so in Ireland, Eniflund's policy met with opposition. In the Irish Parliament, about the close of the eighteenth uentury, th(»re Was a ftiir minority who did not intend, Eni^lish Colonists as they were, being robbed without resistance. And to this minority which we may call the Anglo-Irish party, Henry Grattan entering upon public life, gave nil his eloquence and all bift' soul. Ladles and gentlemen. I wish to hawv^ilt distinctly understood, that the party with which Grattan became thus connected was not in any true sense of ihr ruin of Corowallis made their independence secure. In Europe, L.. ad had her hands inconveniently full. Such was the drain upon her army for foreign service that she could scarcely spare a man tor the de- fence of her beloved Irish province at home. In a moment of, for Ireland providential blesabg the rumour arose that the French were about to attempt a landing on Irish shores; in a moment of, for England, fatuous imbecility the Irish,that is the Protestant Colonists in Ireland, were informed that they must defend themselves. To the Celtic Catholics, the three million starving serfs, a French invasion could neither then nor at any time be particularly alarming ; but it was not so with the English Protestants on Irish soil. Ireland was their legalized plunder, and their plunder, however they might deny it to the proper owners, they would not (and here they were right) hand over to a newer and perhaps worse plunderer than thev. And so in all parts of Ireland the English Colonists began to '^.rm, began to train themselves for war. Without entering into details 11 whioh do not ooDeern me now, I may lay that the new army of Anglo-Irish was Ailly equipped, officered and trained, that its offioeit were many of them veterans of foreign wars, that Oatholics were at irst utterly, at all times almost utterly excluded from their ranks, that nevertheless a kindly feeling bagan to exist between the pro* •oribed Celts and the armed Anglo-Irish, and that by the year 1779 there was in Ireland an Anglo-Irish army bearing the really errone- ous but still really ominous title of the Irish Volunteers. Now, it was juE.t a few months after Grattan's entry into Par- liament, that the volunteers b^an to enroll. To him, as to many others, it was at once apparent what, in balancing accounts with England, a splendid weight was here to fling into the Irish scale. Eugland's difficulty says O'Gonoell is Ireland's opportunity. The principle in that saying was well known to Grattan and to those whom by courtesy we call the patriots of his time. The Volunteers were encouraged, their enrollments was urged with ail Grattan's unequalled energy, their spirit was quickened and strengthened with all Grattan's unequalled zeal. The English Parliament began to take alarm, began to throw obbtaoles in the way, b^an to play the favorite English game of sowing dissensions in the camp of their foes. But the fire bad taken ; taken in the dry wood and not the green ; and no power on earth could stop the conflagration. The Volunteers were at length ready for action and for use. Grattan used them. The first step was to rid the land of English monopo- lists and to remove the restrictions on Irish trade. That was quickly done. When 80,000 men trained and equipped and resolute for war marched along, with certain metalic orators in front bearing about their necks the text — Free Trade or else — some of our oratory^' that is a kind of speech very easy to understand and very effiective in eliciting a favorable reply. Free Trade was granted. But though the robber with a revolver at his breast may disgorge his plunder, he is not the less a robber still, and when the revolver i» again put by he may be disposed to betake himself to his old pur- suits. The trade of Ireland has been ruined by English law, and though English law, in sore difficulties, had removed the cause of ruin, yet English law. the difltculties over, might replace the cause of the ruin once more. English legislation for Ireland had been Ireland's destruction, and while England .retained the power to legislate for Ireland, that power might commence its destructive work again. That power must next go. And so the stern eloquenoe ii I 12 of the Yolnnteer cannon w»8 again employed, and Engl ind was offered a selection between such eloqnenoe and the free admission of Irish l^islative independence. It was a sore dilemni* for our Imperial sister. Neither horn was a particularly safe situation, and neither horn did she desire to choose ; and so with > ao imperial humility, in her most unusual, she asked delay. Bui she had now a man to deal with, who was blessed with a providen- ■■ tial impatience. To all deprecation on the part of English states* men, to all remonstrance on the part of his own weaker friends, Orattan's sole reply was no time^ no time. And so, on this evening ni 1782 when we first see him, just two ypars after the great con> vention at Dungannon, it has been admitted by our Imperial sister, that only the Irish Commons, Lords and King have power to make laws for Ireland; and the Irish, meaning thereby the Protestant Colonists of Ireland, have in two years, and by the stern action of 80,000 armed men, achieved for Ireland complete and perfect Legislative Independence. Now, ladies and gentlemen, we are arrived ou ground where, both for you and me, cautious walking is extremely neoesoary. The fiict is this, the change of Parliament and of the existing constitu* tion was effected in Ireland by a body of armed men menacing physical revolution, and the reel, though not the nominal, leader of that armed body was Henry Grattan. Out of that fact two ques- tions arise. And these qvestions, if >ve wish to understand Grattan's position, we mnst examine cautiously and in some detail. The first question is one which, in our times, is rarely considered, but which in Grattan's time was warmly debated. It is this : the Volunteers had permission to enrol only for the defence of Ireland against the enemies of the English Crown ; it was with that express stipulation that their enrolment was allovred to proceed ; it. was with the express understanding that only against foreign invasion would the Volunteers be employed that their organization by Grattnn was at all sanctioned. But no sooner were they ready than they were used against England herself; were used to force from England what England did not wish to give, and the man who so used them was Henry Grattan. A question then is, was not Grattan then guilty of political trickery and national deception ? At first bush the sole answer possible would seem to be an answer in the affirm- ative. And yet — mark this, for it is very important — every Irish- man who has ever written or spoken about it has given a negative 13 admiasion dilemni* ilarly safe id 60 with ay. Bat providen- : iab states* friends, is evening ;reat con* iai sistt^r, r to make 'rotestant action of 1 perfect d where, ry. The constitn* menacing leader of >wo qucs- iderstand le detail, nsiderod, his: the ' Ireland !i express ivas with n would :tnn was ey were England id them in then St bush affirm- f Irish- egative reply. Grattan was not guilty of political trickery, and that has been the answer of men of all classes and of all creeds, of priests and of (oliticiuns, of barristers and of bishops, of judges who knew the law, uiid ot religious ministers who ought to know the Prophets. But still against such an anst?er all appearances are strong. Whait, therel'ore, is said to clear these appearances away ? By one and all Grattuii is defended on the dear ground that what he enrolled the Volunteers to take was only what was the clear right of Ireland; that insisting upon her legislative independence, Ireland was simj^y insisting upon her own. That answer I must accept as being the answer of better men and better Catholics than I. It i^ the answer of no less a man than Father Burke. But observe that answer. It is that for the accomplishment of her Legislative Independence in '82 Ireland had a right to usefome of arms. But that what was right in 1782, is wrong in 1875, is not self-evident. There is of course a point of difference between the periods. The Union has since been passed and passed by an Iru^ Parliament. But the Act of Union has been by the ablest English legists pronounced not binding, and the reasoning of Lord Plunkett, that tho Irish Parliament had no power to vote away a Constitution over which the people gavv^ that Parliament no absolute control, will to most men appear conclusive. Therefore, following the highest and most respected authority, we find that the Volunteer movement of '82 was not a criminal movement. The inference is apparently na- tural, and is often made, that a .similar movement would not be criminal in 1875. Now, ladies and gentlemen, that last conclusion, namely, thelaw- tulnei: know their own afikira much better ban Irisbmen in New York, are willing to bnlanoe aoeounta by the plain proeessoa of peaeefal legislation. Oireamstaneea have changed. With them haTO ehanged the obliga- tions of Ireland. Revolution by pbysieal means would bean Ireland at the present day, not only what we all know to be, a folly, bat it would be a folly which on no prineiple of morality eould be defended. It is the doctrine only of very young men, or of men whose gray hairs hide perennial youth. It is a doctrine which is in itself attrac- tive and which every Irishman has a tendency to hold, and which every Irishman must be only gently chided for holding. As a priesfc who knows the doctrines of his Church, I ean say no less; as an Irishman who understands his country's history and his country's character I will say no more. And I say so much only to bring out some rational defence of Henry Orattan. Grattan's defence is that in his day Ireland had to select between death and armed revolution. Englishmen will find it hard to discover a defence as good for the revolution of 1642 or the revolution of 1689. But there is yet another principle upon which Grattan may be defended, it b a principle extremely plain. The movement of '83 was by the Parliament itself declared, though tacitly, perfectly legal and perfectly fair. The Yolvnteers were not treated as rebels; they were treated as men who did what they had a perfect right to do. Their demands were answered by clear concessions, and their manner of making these demands wap so far from being blamed, that the Yolunteers themselves were not even asked to disenroU. To say that thereby England herself gave a legal precedent to physical revolution would be saying what is dangerous, but what can scarcely be proved to be untrue. With that I have no concern. But the fact is certain, and with this fact only am I cpgaged, that the British Parliament formally sanctioned, nay, formally endorsed the action of Orattan and the Irish Volunteers. And so on Grattan's character there i*e8ts no stain. Ladies and Gentlemen, I have taken Henry Grattan at his beat, er at least, at his most successful period. In his entire after life he never got beyond the grandeur of our selected evening of 1782. He never again came near it. After that first success indeed he never again succeeded at all. Well nigh forty years more were al- lotted to him, and in all these forty years he had sickness, sorrow, struggle enough to break a hundred souls, but success and tiM 16 rapturous pleasures of success he had no more. In his case the uaual course of Providence was reversed. The nieu whom God* deJBtioes for high positiou have usually to accept a contruct wKwh to humanity must appear hard. The hest ond brightci^t of their years they umst give up to painful and plodding labour, mid nnily when .their hair is grey and their eyes are dini, und all the fresh enthnsiam of youth ia over, do the rewards which at thirty might exalt, but which at sixty only sadden, begin to coute. The crown of oak. or the crown of laurel, rorves most frequently only to hide their baldness. But Henry Oruttan I his triumph was decreed him ^ when he had youth and fulnete of vigor to enjoy it, and failure was postponed to these wiser and wearier years when even success is only failure, and when no disappointment is seriously heavy, because no hope is seriously strong. Grattan's history from 1782 to 182U, isj of all histories, to nic, the saddest. But it must be, though, briefly told. And it must be told because it much more than the history of bis triumph is instructive to every man who in whatever way has to work for Ireland. Ladies and gentlemen, the Act of Independence was, it must al- iiways be remembered, an Act won from England's fears. Of this the English statesmen of the time did not even attempt conceal- ment. It was, therefore, an Act, in the framing of which English statesmen would be naturally insidious, and every clause of which the Irish patriots should have fenced round with all the clearness and all the finality requisite to shut out subsequent cavilling. This, . it must be said, Grattan did not do. He was deficient in two qual- ities which O'Oonnell possessed in the highest perfection — practical shrewdness in the details of business, and perpetual distrust of men whose interest it was to outwit him. I, for one, cannot think the •toss of Grattan that he had both the large cnrelessness of genius and Hs lofty generosity ; but genius is often dangerous, and with more eommon-place qualities Grattan would have been a safer statesman. The Act of Independence was no sooner passed than it was , dis- oovered to be defaced by a serious flaw. I cannot say that they who proclaimed the discovery did so on purely patriotic grounds— Dor does the conduct of Flood, who most strongly insisted upon it— show in a light altogether lovable. But the fact is that Flood did • raise an objection against the wording of the Act, and that technic- ally the objection rests upon the best of grounds. In this way : the Afit of Independence was strictly but the repeal of the two special If lUtates b one wftj or wother dMreeing ligulatiTt anion betwMB BogUnd «nd Ireluid. To repeal these etatnteB wu fdmply to lenve things as things were before the statates were enaoted. Bnt, as Flood argued, before the enaotments, though Englishmen did not legislate for IreUnd, they yet olaimed the right to do so. There- fore, as Flood argued, Grattan should have insisted) not only that these statutes should have been repealed, but that England should formally and forever disolaim all right to make laws for Ireland ; and the Act of Independenoe, not securing that latter obligation, gave England this loophole of escape, that when her existent diffi- culties were over she might at any time reclaim the right which she had never renounced, and might renew the union. This flaw was subsequently remedied by the stern energy of Flood, but its exist, ence was the occasion of evils that for Ireland were disastrous. It was the occasion of putting Flood and Grattan against one another as mortal foes, and it was the occasion of turning attention away firom circumstances upon attrition to which the fate of Ireland rested. It caused the bitterest disunion among the Irish leaders, and the most stupid blunderioor in the Irish policy. For, first of all, the quarrel between Flood and Grattan — though out of it we have derived some magnificent efforts of eloquence — was one of the most deplorable events in all the deplorable history of Ireland. And it was deplorable, not only as weakening, by disunion, the whole Irish party, but more especially as souring and embittering, and thereby rendering less and less efficient the sensitive soul of Grattan. Good cause he had to be embittered. During the few months immediately succeeding the passing of the Act of Independ- ence he was undoubtedly the most popular man in Ireland. He was probably the object of a larger love and a larger enthusiasm than bad ever been exhibited by any nation to any of her sons. If ever human admiration was an unconscious idolatry it was so in his case. The populace, Protestant and Catholic, looked up to him as to a demigod ; the Parliament worshipped him in the only way known to Parliaments, by a vote of money worthy of an emperor, and even from the holy of holies, beyond the channel, the royal oracle pro- claimed that there was no God but Grod, and that Grattan was His prophet. But the patriot's story is, as P'owning puts it, an old story. 1. ^ It was roees, roses, all the way, And myrtle flung in my path like mad ; The house-roofs seemed to swell and sway, The ohnroh-spiies biased such flags they had, A year ago on this very day. 18 I I; I go in the rain, ud (aum thMiiMad^ The tight rope oats mj wrleti behind ; ' I think, beddee, my forehead bleedti For they fling at me, whoever hai a mind^ Staves and stones for mj year's misdeeds. With Grattau it was even worne. His triumph was scaroely thna months old when the populaoe, so' very loving bat ad very mutable, hooted hiui through the streets. The saroasms of Flood were trans- lated by the savagery of the slums, and '< Grattan the Inoorruptible," was accused by the reeking rabble, of selling both England and Ireland for so many promises, or so many pounds. The mob, thank God, was not altogether an Irish mob, it was only a mob of English* men living in Ireland ; even it, too, considering the vast power of Flood's eloquence, was not much to blame ; but the evil was accom- plished, Grattan 's soul became salt and bitter as the sea, his mind became warped and sullen ; he wrapped himself round in a proud passionate reserve, and though he still loved Ireland as no other man had ever loved her, he lost all of that surpassing patience, all that glorious forbearance, with which O'Connell worked his wonders, without which no man can permanently serve the Irish people, which is the main quality' we look for in the great Irish Leader who has yet to rise. The point that severed Flood and Grattan was indeed soon settled, and except technically, of no importance. The Renunciation Act on which Flood so strongly insisted was passed with ease;. Eng- land formally admitted that she did not possess and never had pos- sessed the right to legislate for Ireland ; but the great Irish Leaders were made enemies forever, and whereas the powers of both should have been united to make the Act of Independonee certain and secure, the dbsensions of both served to make the Act only a means of riveting more effectually the chains of Ireland. For, that Ireland should have an Independent Parliament would be a blessing or a curse precisely in so far as the Parliament, at that time, was worthy or un- worthy. Now the Parliament, at that time was almost as unworthy as it could well be. It was so elected that a few people, and these of English proclivities, could pack it as they pleased. A parliamentary reform, laige and searching, was just the one thing that could make die work of Grattan and his Volunteers permanently useful. Had Irish patriots only insbted upon such reform ; had they been as 19 steadfast in proinoting as were Knglish statesmen in preventii^ k there need have heen no " Ninety-eight " nor " Forty-eight," nor any other unhappy blood shedding to sow more thiokly the awfnl seeds of hatred and revenge. Bnt the Volunteers were disbanded and died away ; the Irish leaders sc^uabbled and swore and fought duels in Bully's Aore while English statesmen were quietly and oooly weaving a net round Ireland ; Irish members of Parliament were bought and bargained for day by day ; Grattan sulked and went into solitude ; Cur ran, whose great heart always hated the society of littleness, shunned an assembly whose members had already in their pockets the price of their country'^ blood ; and Castlereagh might work his work in safety and the union was secure. At the last moment, indeed, Grattan made a gigantic effort ; appeared suddenly in that old house on OoU^ Green ; thundered forth '* these iron words that thrilled like the clash of spears ;" but the good momeot had been allowed to pass; even Grattan's eloquence, even that uniform of the Volunteers whioh he wore that evening was useless now, and in 1800 Henry Gratton stood, himself from pain and sorrow but a ghost of the man of '82 ; he stood over his country's corpse, to wail out above her the long pent agonies now culminating in the death oaoine of despair with only this thing to say but this a thing that rings in our hearts for- ever, that he at least had been faithful to his country's freedom and would be faithful even in his country's fall. And from that 1800 till his death in 1820, the life of Grattan became what his country's life had become already, almost a blank. The Irish Parliament, where he had been so potent, was no more, and, in the English Parliament, though his voice was often heard, his power was next to nothing. Still he was true to the old colors and the old cause. Of one thing especially Catholics cannot, with- out the gravest ingratitude, ever become unmindful. From the beginning to the end of his political career he was not only the fast friend but the unwearing advocate of Catholic Emancipation, and never did his wondrous words strike more powerfully, or out more keenly, than when he assailed these ignorant bigots who with a re- ligion of yesterday and a faith about which no two of them could come to an agreement, called idolatry and blasphemy the faith and the religion whioh had been hved for and died for by all the best and brightest, the noblest hearts and the most luminous souls of IWQ trying years. This zeal of Gratten for Catholio Emancipation id 'i ti I' h if 1 1 Wm tko mere incidenttl impulM dictated by paaiiag whim or pueikig interest i it wu a oontinaed quality of his life from its ooromenoe- ttent to its end. He had it too and gave it fearlem expression when to be rid of it, or to ooooeal it, would have been far more expedient. In 1780, at a meeting of the Volunteers, the same meeting which struck tlie first effective blow for Irish Independence, one of the two reeolutions which Grattan proposed, and which his magnificent elo- quence made pass successfully, was a resolution of sympathy with the oppressed professors of the Catholic religion. Later on, when Ireland ■had her Parliament, a corrupt one, but still her own, Orattao brought before it the just claims of Catholics; and though these claims were, by the stupid bigotry of a majority of his colleagues, success* fblly resisted, still a cry was raised not easy to quell, and fated when echoed by O'Conoell, to command at last Catholic Emancipation. Still later, when merely a member of the English Legislature, and no longer a power in his own land, the great man did not forget his suffering countrymen ; and his last journey from Dublin to London, the journey tbirt was to bo ended by his death, was against all advice of friends and attendants, undertaken to cast liis vote and to raise his voice once more for those whose creed he could not embrace, but whose religious liberty he held dearer than his own existence. And all this he did in the face of prejudices which he could not help but feel, and against an education which it required a gigantic power to struggle; taught to believe that Catholics were idolaters, and Celts were predestined slaves, the man's instincts were stronger than the man's beliefs ; his first nature was stronger than his second ; and rising high above the thick ignorance and the thoughtless teaching of his time he proclaimed the principle that religious persecution is political crime, and that to shackle. conscience is to shame humanity. And thus did he make himself the immortel model of all those who have to live with people with whose religious belief they can have no sympathy. The Protestant was often tempted, as Grattan was often tempted, to treat a religion of 200 millions and of 1800 years as though it was a large stupidity, and as though the Daily Witness were a loftier authority than Thomas of Aquin or the Eagle of Meaux or John Henry Newman ; and because he thinks it stupid to assume God's office of visiting its stupidity with persecution ; but the Protestant, especially the Irish Protestant, remembers Henry Grattan, and he recognizes it is a worthier thing to be on the side of that mighty man than to be on the side of the mad and murderous raise rabble o^ Toronto. Nor ii the Oatholio without his lesion. Among the mnny ohanges which time and Providence have brought us, they have brought us this, that we who were onoe oppressed are often times in power, and many a time do we feel the impulse coming surely from below, to fulfil the precept of retaliation, and to visit the sorrows of our fathers upon the boos of the men who shed their blood and mocked their tears. But were it only for the sake of Ghrattan, to such impulses we Irish Catholics never will give way, in gratitude to that one just we will pardon all the guilty. And if to-morrow our own government were in our own hands; if to-morrow we Catholics had universal sway in Ireland, not one spirit of revenge would we allow among us ; not one rack or pitch-cap ot picket stake would we employ; but remembering that the Protestant Grattan onoe fought to free us, we should to all our separated brethren give, as only Irish can give, the right hand of fellowship, and the Protes- tant Race and the Protestant Religion would be as free among us as though Bliiabeth had never plundered, and Cromwell had never butchered, and Prot estantism had never plotted to cut out from the world's records the Catholic worship and the Irish name. And by this passionate seal for religious freedom, Grattan has not only leit a model to us all, but unto himself he has won an immortal renown. It alone it is that will perpetuate his memory. Eloquent indeed he was, and with an eloquence of the first order ; but even eloquence of the first order is an unsafe passport to immortality ; and when it is employed, as Grattan's was employed, on subjects whose interest is not perennial but only passing, its music gradually dies away till only echoes of it remain among the far off mountains, and these echoes only find some solitary student's ears. Brave he was, and with thH rare bravery which conquered defeat ; but such a quality of bravery is no novelty with Irishmen, and it, too, like most other good things in a man, is often interred with the bones of its possessor, and always slips silently away from the memories and the mouths of humanity. Wise he was, and good and pure ; but wisdom and goodness and purity, though rare, in reality, are in estimation plentiful, and as Anistites is forgotten, Grattan's moral greatness would be most unlikely to immortalise Grattan's name. Nor would hb great ardent patriotism ensure him perpetual renown ; for patriots have now oome to be very common, and amid the vast armies of muscular patriotic men that rise up every year to stock the space between the present and the past, it is not rery m^ to ofttoh % glimpie of the little man of '82. Bat Us ohampioDBhip of religioas flreedom, in the oiroaniKtftnoes by whioh he wai rarrounded, will not let him die. For suoh • ohampionehip in sooh oiroumatanooe hae rarely been seen among the ohildfen of men. It reveahi at once a lofty nobleness that belong* not to a nation or h time, but to the sons of Heaven and the Immortals. And therefore is it that in Grattau's grave I see a kind of pro- vidential destiny. His dust lies not in Ireland among the people of his love ; but in England among the people whom his gieat generous heart oonld never hate, but whom his fiery eloquence described aa rioh with the robberies of all the universe. Bven so; it is better so. Only an imperial city, mightiest of all the world, like mighty London, is worthy of the dust of Henry Grattan ; and only when the fleets of the Thames become the fleets of the Lifiey should the dust of Grattan be laid in Irish soil. And so standing in Westminster above the ashes of the man of '82, I could shed no tears ; not for Grattan, for even to his dust has God given a glory ; none for Ireland, for out among that roar of London, and in through these dim aisles of Westminster, I heard a voice proclaiming that Ireland would yet be worthy to give to Henry Grattan his last and flttaat grave. -fc. ..iaiiiii. Xh^i..