S4 
 
 B 4 
 
 072 001 
 
THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Lewis F, Lengfeld 
 
1 
 
 TH 
 01 
 
AN 
 
 ORATION 
 
 UN THE DEATH OF 
 
 DANIEL O'CONNELL: 
 
 DELIVERED AT CASTLE GARDEN, NEW-YORK, 
 SEPTEMBER 22, 1847. 
 
 BY WILLIAM H. SEWARD. 
 
 AUBUEN, N. Y. : 
 PUBLISHED BY J. C. DERBY & CO.; 
 
 BUFFALO : DERBY & HEWSON. 
 1847. 
 
II. UONTGOMKRV. rBINTEK. 
 
 IJ. 
 
 u 
 

 H 
 
 ORATION. 
 
 There is sad news from Genoa. An aged and weary 
 pilgrim, who can travel no farther, passes beneath the 
 gate of one of her ancient palaces, saying with pious 
 resignation as he enters its silent chambers, "Well ! it 
 is God's will that I shall never see Rome. I am dis- 
 appointed. But I am ready to die. It is all right." 
 "The superb,"' though fading Queen of the Medi- 
 terranean holds anxious watch, through ten long days, 
 over that majestic stranger's wasting frame. And now 
 death is there — the Liberator of Ireland has sunk to 
 rest in the Cradle of Columbus. 
 
 Coincidence beautiful and most sublime ! It was the 
 very day set apart by the elder daughter of the Church 
 for prayer and sacrifice throughout the world, for the 
 children of the sacred Island, perishing by famine and 
 pestilence in their homes and in their native fields, and 
 on their crowded paths of exile, on the sea and in the 
 havens, and on the lakes, and along the rivers of this 
 far-distant land. The chimes rung out by pity for his 
 countrymen were O'Connell's fitting knell; his soul 
 went forth on clouds of incense that rose from altars of 
 Christian Charity : and the mournful anthems which 
 
 148 
 
recited the faith, and the virtue, and the endurance of 
 Ireland, were his becoming requiem. 
 
 It is a holy sight to see the obsequies of a soldier, 
 not only of Civil Liberty, but of the Liberty of Con- 
 science — of a soldier, not only of Freedom, but of the 
 Cross of Christ — of a benefactor, not merely of a race 
 or people, but of mankind. The vault lighted by sus- 
 pended worlds is the temple within which the great 
 solemnities are celebrated. The nations of the earth 
 are mourners, and the spirits of the just made perfect, 
 descending from their golden thrones on high, break 
 forth into songs like this : 
 
 " Tears are not now thy due. From tlie "world's toil, 
 
 Come to assume in Heaven the brighter birth : 
 A winged angel, from thy mortal coil 
 
 Escap'd ! Thy glory lingers yet round earth. 
 Christ's hallowed warrior, living, thou went'st forth ; 
 
 Christ's champion did'st thou die. And now, blest shade ! 
 The crown and palm of righteousness and worth 
 
 Thou wear'st, with joys unspeakable repaid." 
 
 The Priesthood of Genoa, grateful for the honor of 
 dismissing the lofty spirit from its mortal conflict, cover 
 the departing bier with sad funereal weeds. 
 
 Rome, ever avaricious of relics, though she has 
 gathered into her Urn the ashes of the great and good 
 of near thirty centuries, reverentially claims and em- 
 balms and shrines with her soul -subduing litanies, the 
 heart of yet another — 
 
 " Who through the foes has born her banish'd Gods." 
 
 Behold now a Nation which needeth not to speak its 
 melancholy precedence. The Lament of Ireland 
 
5 
 
 comes forth from palaces deserted, and from shrines 
 restored; from Boyne's dark water, witness of her des- 
 olation, and from Tara's lofty hill, ever echoing her re- 
 nown. But louder and deeper yet that wailing comes 
 from the lonely huts on mountain and on moor, where 
 the people of the greenest Island of all the seas are ex- 
 piring in the midst of insufficient though world-wide 
 charities. Well indeed may they deplore O'Connell, 
 for they were his children : 
 And he bore them , 
 
 " A love so vehement, so strong, so pure, 
 That neither age could change nor art could cure." 
 
 Again and again, as if they feared to disturb him 
 with excess of sorrow, they plead : 
 
 " If yet we keep 
 Vigils of grief, and echo groan for groan, 
 'Tis not for thee ; but for ourselves we weep, 
 Whose noblest pillar lies in thee o'erthrown." 
 
 The pageant pauses. Next to the Chief Mourner, 
 space is opened for America, eldest of the new born 
 Nations. Why shall not America accept that distin- 
 guished privilege? O'Connell was a champion of 
 Universal Constitutional Freedom. That is her own 
 cause — all her own. She arms and instructs and sends 
 forth all its chieftains ; and when one of them falls in 
 the ever-continuing conflict, be his faith, his tongue or 
 his lineage what it may : whether he die on the snowy 
 plains of Poland, among the classic Islands of Greece, 
 under the bright skies of Italy, among the vine-clad 
 hills of France, or in the green valleys of Ireland ; be he 
 Kosciusko, or Bozzaris, or La Fayette, or O'Connell, 
 
America hastens to bear witness that he was her Sol- 
 dier, Citizen and Representative. 
 
 Panegyric commonly begins its picture by calling up 
 revered ancestral shadows from long- forgotten graves, 
 to fill the back-ground ; and then surrounds its hero 
 with contemporaneous forms of kindred greatness. But 
 there are figures so majestic as to exclude from the 
 canvass all living companionship, while they derive 
 no grandeur from being grouped with even the awful 
 forms of the ilhistrious dead. Such is every one, who, 
 by permission of Providence, the devotion of his own 
 soul, and the consent given by his fellow men, or ex- 
 torted from them, losing his own individuality, becomes 
 for a period the representative of a race, a people, a 
 nation, or it may be of many races, peoples or nations. 
 You recognize Napoleon in the brilliant scene of his 
 Coronation, in Notre Dame^ or when taking leave of 
 his veterans at Fontainebleau ; but you are transported 
 with awe or pity, when you contemplate him among 
 the solitudes of the frozen Alps, or looking off on the 
 imprisoning sea from the inaccessible cliffs oiSt. Helena. 
 You perceive the serene dignity of Washington in the 
 picture that commemorates his acceptance of his dan- 
 gerous commission in the halls of the Continental Con- 
 gress ; and you weep when he is seen dismissing his 
 unrewarded though triumphant army on the Heights 
 of the Hudson. But your soul is overpowered Avith 
 his greatness when you come to the uncanopied place 
 where Greenough's accurate taste, banishing even the 
 drapery of the living age, presents to you the Father 
 of his Country in colossal marble, alone. 
 
 From the beginning there have been two conditions 
 
of Man ; and these in perpetual opposition ; Force and 
 Resistance; two agencies working out his destiny. 
 Power and Freedom, and these in unceasing conflict ; 
 two elements of Government, Aristocracy and Democ- 
 racy, and these in everlasting war. Nations inspire 
 us with awe, or hate, or reverence, or sympathy, as 
 they sustain one or the other of these conditions, exert 
 one or the other of these agencies, manifest one or the 
 other of these elements. The Man who for a time be- 
 comes substituted for a Nation, is clothed in our regard 
 with the national attributes. The people of Ireland, 
 during near seven hundred years, have maintained a 
 conflict for our common race, of Resistance against 
 Force, Freedom against Power, Right against Usur- 
 pation. Through more than twenty years of that con- 
 flict, Daniel O'Connell was the impersonation of that 
 people, 
 
 " A Nation in a Man comprls'd." 
 
 In this consists the secret of the interest he excited 
 while living, and of all his fame now that he lives no 
 more. It is his Country, therefore, and only his Coun- 
 try — as she was, as she is, and as she is to be — that 
 must be regarded, if we would fully comprehend and 
 truly know the character of O'Connell. 
 
 Ireland was long ago an independent nation, gov- 
 erned by a King and Council or Parliament, and was 
 divided into inferior Kingdoms and subordinate Sects 
 or Clans. It had population and revenues equal to 
 what were generally possessed by other States in the 
 same age. One of its inhabitants thus described the 
 Kingdom a thousand- years ago : 
 
8 
 
 " Far westward lies an isle of ancient fame. 
 By Nature bless'd — Hibernia is her name 
 Enroll'd in books — exbaustless is ber store 
 Of veiny silver and of golden ore. 
 Her fruitful soil forever teems witb wealth, 
 With gems her waters, and her air with health ; 
 Her verdant fields with milk and honey flow, 
 Her wooly fleeces vie with virgin snow ; 
 Her waving furrows float with bended corn, 
 And arms and arts her envied sons adorn. 
 No poison there infects, nor scaly snake 
 Creeps through the grass or settles in the lake. 
 A nation worthy of its pious race — 
 In war triumphant, and unmatched in peace." 
 
 Ireland had then a Court in which Learning was 
 honored next to Royalty; a Church that sent forth 
 Missionaries who converted a large portion of Western 
 Europe; Laws that divided estates of the dead with 
 equal justice ; that gave the trial by Jury — the Anglo- 
 Saxon's boast; that ordained inns for the entertain- 
 ment of travelers at the public expense, and that knew 
 only one capital or unpardonable crime. And it was 
 treason and sacrilege to change those laws. There 
 were trained bands which were sworn to resist even a 
 seven-fold foe; Knights who won renown for valor 
 and courtesy on the Plains of Palestine, and Dames 
 who were honored by admiring Bards and Minstrels in 
 strains like these : 
 
 " The daughter of Moran seized the harp ! 
 And her voice of music praised the strangers. 
 Their soul melted at the song 
 Like a wreath of snow before the eye of the sun." 
 
 I speak no interested, no partial, no imaginative eu- 
 
logy. It is the testimony of General History as ac- 
 credited by modern Learning. 
 
 Alas ! How unlike is this picture to Ireland now, in 
 an age ten fold more enlightened and humane ! What 
 has wrought this change? Has Ireland degenerated, 
 or has she been degraded and debased by foreign power? 
 Did Ireland struggle, or did she resign herself to ruin? 
 Listen, and you shall hear. 
 
 Separated by only an ocean channel, and colonized 
 originally by the same Celtic race, the Islands of Bri- 
 tain and Ireland have been distinguished by fortunes 
 as wide as the Poles. Britain, conquered by the Ro- 
 mans, the Danes, the Saxons and the Normans, de- 
 rived from that severe experience the consolidation, 
 discipline, ambition, and energy which have enabled 
 it to grasp the empire of the world. Ireland, devoted 
 to Piety and Learning, remaining long unconquered 
 and unconquerable, and unmoved by cupidity or am- 
 bition, was early distracted by factions, and finally 
 betrayed by them to a conqueror. 
 
 In the twelfth century Henry II., a Norman, King 
 of England, who held the refinements of life in much 
 contempt, "cast in his mind" to conquer the adjoining 
 Island, "because it was commodious for him, and its 
 people seemed to him savage and rude." Invited by a 
 native Prince who had been dethroned, he appeared in 
 Ireland with a real or forged grant under the seal of 
 Breakspeare, an Englishman, who occupied the Papal 
 See at Rome, under the name of Adrian IV. Early con- 
 verted to Christianity without the blood of Martyrs, 
 the Irish had nevertheless been the last to acknowledge 
 the supremacy of Rome. Having received that article 
 
10 
 
 of faith, they have held it fast at the cost of ages of 
 want; of milUons of lives, and even of national exis- 
 tence. Ireland denied the pretensions of the Pope to 
 temporal power, and resisted the invader. Henry did 
 not reinstate the Irish King, but established on the coast 
 a martial colony, and by virtue of this acquisition, 
 which was henceforth called the Pale, he claimed to be 
 conqueror of the whole Island. A Royal Deputy go- 
 verned the Pale with a Council of Nobles and Clergy, 
 which afterward became a Parliament, and the little 
 domain was parceled out by the King in great estates 
 to Court favorites and military adventurers. The Aris- 
 t-ocracy of England was thus by fraud and force planted 
 in the Island of Saints, as it was then reverently called. 
 Thenceforth its veins of silver and its dust of gold, the 
 rubies of its lakes, the grain in its waving furrows, and 
 the flocks on its thousand hills, were to pass away from 
 its harmless people, to pamper despotic and insatiable 
 Lords. That august Court, those ancient seminaries, 
 those valiant bands, those chivalrous Knights, that 
 Cynosure of Beauty and the Bards who so worthily 
 celebrated it, faded, declined and were lost forever. 
 
 The establishment of the Pale enfeebled Ireland, al- 
 though the Colony was utterly incompetent to subju- 
 gate the Kingdom. The Colonists claimed to be masters 
 of the Island. The Irish, with the British Power in 
 the heart of the country, asserted their sovereignty and 
 independence. Hence resulted a division which, per- 
 petuated until now, has involved both in a common 
 ruin. The distinction between the natives and the 
 invaders was graven broad and deep by these conflict- 
 ing titles, and by perpetual Avars, inveterate policy and 
 
11 
 
 clashing codes. The Government of England acknowl- 
 edged only the English inhabitants of the Pale as lawful 
 subjects, and denounced the natives as "Aliens," "Wild 
 Irish," and '• Enemies." Magna Charta and the Com- 
 mon Law were introduced within the Pale, but their 
 protection was denied to the natives, while they were 
 subjected to the power of the English Courts. The 
 Irish language and costume were inhibited ; intermar- 
 riages forbidden, and naturahzation under English 
 laws denied. It was made lawful to kill an Irishman 
 on suspicion, without trial or process, and unlawful to 
 entertain an Irish minstrel, to keep an Irish servant, or 
 to feed an Irish horse. The native Princes, Nobles and 
 Knights, within the colony, were trodden down, and 
 the wretched people expelled on the one hand as aliens 
 and rebels from their rightful possessions, and on the 
 other by the native Septs into whose hands they were 
 driven, were thus rendered houseless and desperate. 
 Outlaws by statute and by proclamation, they formed 
 themselves from necessity into predatory bands, and 
 descending from the mountains, made reprisals on the 
 Pale and carried the war of fierce retaliation to the very 
 gates of its cities. 
 
 The lust of power soon discovered and opened that 
 fountain whose bitter floods no art can stay nor purify. 
 Ambitious Dublin robbed Armagh, the Arch-Episcopal 
 see, of its treasures and sacred relics. The King of 
 England rewarded the sacrilege with ecclesiastical au- 
 thority over the island ; proscribed from the ministry 
 the natives who denounced the usurpation ; and the 
 English Church Avithin the Pale set the stamp of its 
 approbation on the policy of the Government, by the 
 
12 
 
 atrocious dogma that it was not a sin to kill an Irish- 
 man. 
 
 But it remained for the Tudors, the Commonweahh 
 
 and the Guelphs, to sound the depths of Fanaticism. 
 Ahhough the ParUament of England vacillated long 
 with the policy and caprice of the Court, the conversion 
 of the people of that country to the tenets of the Re- 
 formation resulted from a conviction that the Religion 
 of Luther was true. The Catholic Church there was 
 subverted. But England was in some sort connected 
 with Ireland, and she must be converted in order that 
 a superstitious prophecy might be fulfilled, which 
 taught that the Chair of St. Peter would fall when Ire- 
 land should cease to sustain it, and to the end also that 
 Rome should not regain her ascendency in England 
 through the agency of Catholic Ireland. England sent, 
 to convert Ireland, not missionaries, but the sword. Re- 
 jecting the Catholic Ritual because it was expressed in 
 an unknown tongue, she sent the English Prayer-book 
 to a people ignorant of that language, and employed a 
 ferocious soldiery to illustrate its real simplicity and 
 beauty. The Parliament of the Pale, like the sun- 
 flower, turned its revolving face to catch the Ro^^al 
 smile, and received from Henry YIIL, Edward VI., 
 Mary and Elizabeth, successively, a different religion 
 with the same cheerful loyalty that it greeted " the new 
 superscription and image of each on the coin of the 
 Kingdom." The Irish preferred their own long cher- 
 ished religion to tliat so rudely and inconsistently re- 
 commended to them by their enemies. Thenceforth 
 ensued a war of confiscation and massacre reaching far 
 toward our own time, and in which, although the 
 
13 
 
 parties remained unchanged, the hostility of races was 
 lost in the terrible conflict of religious sects. England, 
 exasperated by the firmness of Ireland, determined to 
 extirpate her heresy by exterminating her People, and 
 to supply their place with more orthodox colonies from 
 Scotland as well as from the regions south of the Tweed. 
 The genius of the versatile Bacon was tasked to make 
 the new plantations grow, and the funds to carry on 
 the exterminating war were obtained by mortgaging 
 the lands to be conquered. No mercy was shown even 
 to women or children in this war of Faith. The Irish 
 People fled before the destructive armies and took re- 
 fuge in caverns. Subsisting there on the fruits of the 
 pasturage and on the spoils taken from their invaders, 
 they multiplied like the blades of grass, while their ob- 
 noxious Faith became as firm as their mountain homes. 
 Then came new armies, driving the natives down upon 
 the plains ; and when it was found that famine and 
 pestilence involved both parties in common destruction, 
 the merciful concession was made that the entire Cath- 
 olic population of Ireland should be allowed a refuge in 
 a single province, there to remain, on pain of death if 
 found beyond its borders. 
 
 At length, in the year of the Gospel of Peace on Earth 
 and Good Will toward Men, one thousand six hundred 
 and ninety-one, just five hundred and twenty years 
 after the invasion by Henry, the wars which he began 
 at first for conquest, and which afterwards became a 
 medley of Rapine and Fanaticism, came to an end by 
 the Treaty of Limerick after the Battle of the Boyne. 
 
 " Wearied with tedious war they cease, 
 And both the kings and kingdoms plight the peace." 
 
14 
 
 What were the results of these long and furious wars? 
 Ireland was conquered at last, and was despoiled. The 
 Aristocracy of England were owners and masters in 
 Ireland, and its native possessors were tenants, servants 
 and slaves. The country contained eleven millions of 
 acres of tillable land. One million were possessed by 
 Englishmen who, having come to convert Ireland to 
 Luther, had relapsed to Rome. Ten millions of acres 
 were the property of English Protestant Lords, and not 
 one acre was left to the native Celtic Irishman. But 
 the People of Ireland had not been exterminated. They 
 constituted three-fourths of the population, and were 
 more numerous than ever. What then ? Had Ireland 
 saved nothing? Had England gained everything? 
 No ! The Aristocracy of England had gained a coun- 
 try they could not fill — Ireland had saved her Faith, 
 and England had gained nothing, not even the security 
 she had deemed essential. The Catholic Religion re- 
 mained unshaken in Ireland. Liberty of Conscience 
 was a condition of the capitulation at Limerick, and 
 was solemnly guaranteed by William of Orange and 
 Mary, the daughter of James. 
 
 Policy as well as public faith now required that the 
 conquered kingdom should be left in peace, that its 
 wasted strength should be repaired, that the rankling 
 wounds opened during centuries of persecution should 
 be healed, and that Ireland should be admitted to free 
 enjoyment of the civil rights guaranteed by the British 
 Constitution. But Fear and Fanaticism know no pol- 
 icy suggested by Humanity, and keep no covenants, 
 though they be Avritten in blood. England still feared 
 the return of her Catholic Princes, and therefore willed 
 
15 
 
 that the People of Ireland, although inflexible in their 
 faith and always loyal when not driven to rebellion, 
 and although they were reposing on the Treaty of Lim- 
 erick, should nevertheless be converted to the Reforma- 
 tion. The object of England remained the same, only 
 the means were now changed, and Perfidy was added 
 to Persecution. The Army gave place to the sterner 
 Despotism of the Law, and the Sword to the Scaflbld ; 
 a more certain engine of destruction. 
 
 Ireland was already subjected under a constitution 
 admirably adapted to the introduction of the Penal Re- 
 ligious Code. Her only Legislature was the Parliament 
 of the Pale — and this semblance of a Legislature had 
 been deprived of Life by the Poynings law, which for- 
 bade it to assemble without the previous consent of the 
 King, or to pass any law not first approved by him. 
 Petitions from Ireland were inhibited unless first sanc- 
 tioned by the Royal Deputy residing there, and Irish- 
 men were forbidden to leave their country, lest by their 
 complaints they might annoy the majesty of the King 
 or disturb the equanimity of the Commons of England. 
 The Penal Code banished the Bishop, the Priest, and 
 the Schoolmaster from Ireland — forbade attendance on 
 Catholic worship on pain of death for perseverance — 
 made the converting of a Protestant to the Catholic 
 Faith a felony — annulled existing marriages between 
 Catholics and Protestants, and interdicted them in fu- 
 ture — transferred Catholic children of living parents to 
 guardians in Chancery — closed against Catholics every 
 ofiice of trust or profit in the State, in the Army, and 
 in the Navy, and in every Corporation, mercantile or 
 municipal — deprived them of the right to be freehold- 
 
16 
 
 ers, the right to vote, to maintain actions at law, to be 
 Jurors, to keep arms for self-defence, to travel even 
 within the kingdom, to be executors or guardians, 
 and even of the right to keep a horse Avorth more than 
 five pounds — robbed the Catholic child of its estate if 
 even unwillingly or unconsciously instructed by a cath- 
 olic at home or abroad — transferred a Catholic parent's 
 estate to his abjuring son — gave a separate maintenance 
 to a renouncing wife, and emancipated from parental 
 control all Catholic children who would forsake the 
 family altar — subjected Catholic property to seizure for 
 public purposes without compensation, and finally pro- 
 vided for the execution of these dreadful laws by a 
 Judiciary responsible to the King, by Bishops with 
 prisons in some cases, by Magistrates in others with 
 the rack instead of the Jury, and in others with Juries 
 authorized to render verdicts at the solicitation of cor- 
 rupt informers and on the testimony of convicted felons. 
 Thus did the Religion whose test is the mutual love of 
 its disciples, become under Human Policy, 
 
 " A plea for sating the unnatural thirst 
 For Murder, Eapine, Violence and Crime." 
 
 No language less copious, elaborate and accurate than 
 that of Edmund Burke can express the character of this 
 extraordinary code. "It is (said he) a system full of 
 coherence and consistency ; well digested and well dis- 
 posed in all its parts ; a machine of wise and elaborate 
 contrivance, well fitted for the impoverishment and 
 degradation of a people, and the debasement in them 
 of Human Nature itself" 
 
 This system continued in its utmost possible efiiciency 
 
17 
 
 until the year 1778, and, although then somewhat 
 modified, it remained in oppressive operation until the 
 year 1829, a period of one hundred and thirty-nine 
 years. 
 
 And what were the effects of the Penal Code and of 
 the system which preceded it ? Ireland groaned under 
 the burdens of a foreign Government and of foreign 
 landlords. Commerce had grown to be a mighty power 
 in England, and commerce struck hands with fanati- 
 cism. Ireland was forbidden all foreign trade, while 
 its manufactories were undermined to favor English 
 monopoly. Notwithstanding the resources and fertility 
 of the country, its wealth was exhausted in paying 
 rents to English landlords, tithes to English Priests, 
 profits to English artisans, and taxes to the English 
 Government. 
 
 " For foreign Lords lier People sow their native land." 
 
 Poverty stalked through the Isle. Half the increase 
 of population was given up to America to fell the for- 
 ests and plant cities there, and the remainder was 
 reduced to subsist on an esculent root, the cheapest 
 yielded by Nature to the cultivating hand of Man. 
 Were not the natives then extirpated ? Did they not 
 NOW renounce that odious Faith \ No ! Ireland had 
 increased its numbers by three-fold. We do not know 
 that one parent had relinquished his creed, — one wife 
 had forsaken her husband, — or one child had abjured 
 the altar of its forefathers. Protestantism, though nour- 
 ished on plunder, had declined, and the Religion of 
 Rome, watered by tears and fanned by the blasts of 
 Persecution, flourished in unwonted and vigorous lux- 
 uriance. 
 
 2 
 
18 
 
 This was the condition of Ireland in 1775; and now 
 our inquiries are answered. The People of Ireland 
 have not degenerated. They have been degraded from 
 their high estate, not by their own act, but by the 
 Aristocracy of England. They have resisted this de- 
 gradation with heroic energy, and have resisted to the 
 last. The Aristocracy of England has usurped the 
 Government of Ireland, and set upon it 
 
 " The mark of selfishness, 
 The signet of its all-enslaving power." 
 
 This was the condition of that unhappy country in 
 the 3^ear 1775, six hundred and five years after the 
 descent of Henry, the Anglo-Norman King, on its coast, 
 when two events happened, widely different and dis- 
 tant — the one in an obscure corner of the Island — the 
 other in a remote part of the British Empire ; events 
 destined to affect forever the condition not only of Ire- 
 land but of all mankind. British troops fired on the 
 militia of Massachusetts in Lexington on the 19th of 
 April, 1775, and Daniel O'Connell was born at Carhen 
 in Ireland on the 6th of August, in the same ^''ear. 
 
 The American Revolution exhibited a triumphant 
 resistance to the unconstitutional legislation of the Im- 
 perial Parliament by a portion of the Empire far less 
 oppressed than Ireland, and infinitely more prosperous 
 and happy. But that Revolution was more than this : 
 It vindicated the inalienable and universal right of 
 mankind to resist oppression and overthrow tyranny, 
 however established and however long endured. It 
 was more even than this : It vindicated the inaliena- 
 ble and universal right and capacity of mankind to 
 
19 
 
 iestablish and conduct Governments for themselves and 
 to change them at pleasure. It struck the Governments 
 of the Earth with consternation, and bewildered the 
 enslaved masses of men with hopes which were not 
 altogether illusions of Freedom and of Universal Equal- 
 ity. In the language of La Fafayette, America was not 
 a solitary rebel. She was a Patrol in the cause of Hu- 
 manity. 
 
 Ireland not only sympathized profoundly with the 
 Trans-xltlantic Colonies in their complaints of usurpa- 
 tion under which she suffered more sorely than they, 
 but with inherent benevolence and ardor she yielded 
 at once to the sway of the great American Idea of Uni- 
 versal Emancipation. The bitter memory of a stream 
 of ages lifted up her thoughts, and she was ready to 
 follow to the war for the Rights of Human Nature 
 
 " The propitious god that seemed to lead the Avay." 
 
 This war, thus opened by America, is the same strug- 
 gle in which Ireland has been engaged ever since, in 
 which O'CoNNELL labored with so much zeal, and force, 
 and success, and which he has left unfinished. 
 
 England was soon at war not only with her Ameri- 
 can Colonies, but also with France and Spain and Hol- 
 land. France threatened to invade Ireland, and Ame- 
 rica had already led Ireland into a Revolution. Left by 
 the British Government to defend themselves, the Peo- 
 ple of Ireland gathered at once an army of brave and 
 well-appointed volunteers, ready to resist the threat- 
 ened invasion if England would ^^ield Independence, 
 and even more ready to achieve Independence if it 
 should be refused. The influence of such great events 
 
20 
 
 exalted for a time the virtues of the Irish People. The 
 Cathohc forgot his pecuhar wrongs amid the new-born 
 hopes of his Comitry ; the Protestant forgot his long- 
 cherished fears. Now firmly miited and lifting with 
 them for a brief period the wretched Legislature of the 
 Pale, they demanded the independence of that Parlia- 
 ment. They preserved the forms of loyalty, indeed, but 
 their resolution of rights was couched in the language 
 of Freemen, and their petitions were written on the 
 drum-head and presented on the point of the bayonet. 
 The British Parliament were confounded. They heard 
 at the same moment the same principles, sentiments 
 and resolutions from Jefferson and Adams, and Jay 
 and Franklin in the Congress of America, from Grattan 
 and Flood in the Parliament of Ireland, and from Chat- 
 ham, the Tribune of the whole Empire, within their 
 own Halls. They evaded, then conciliated, and at 
 last conceded. In 1778 the provisions of the Penal 
 Code concerning the rights of Property and Educa- 
 tion were relaxed. Other concessions of the same sort 
 followed in 1782 ; and in the same year, when the ex- 
 igency became more alarming, Ireland was restored to 
 Independence by a Declaration of the British Parlia- 
 ment that " The Rights claimed by the People of that 
 Island, to be bound only by laws enacted by his Ma- 
 jesty and the Parliament of that kingdom, should be and 
 then were established, and should at no time thereafter 
 be questioned or questionable." Ireland, always mode- 
 rate, always confiding, was content with this conces- 
 sion, which left her a distinct Kingdom, independent 
 of Britain, but united to that country through a com- 
 mon Protestant Throne. Then as her heart SAvelled 
 
21 
 
 with the memories of the glories of other days, and 
 opened to visions of brighter glories in the future, she 
 clasped her sister England with gratitude, pride and 
 affection, forgetting the injuries of six hundred years. 
 Did ever the earth exhibit a scene of truer National 
 Magnanimity ! 
 
 But Ireland in 1782 was only Independent, as Ame- 
 rica was in the same period. It yet remained in each 
 country to establish and secure the liberties of the Peo- 
 ple. This was done here by the erection of the Fede- 
 ral Republican Constitution of 1787, which, although 
 reared amid doubts and fears, has gained stability with 
 time, and has, as we ardently hope, become eternal. 
 
 But the Parliament of Dublin remained in Ireland. 
 It was no less now, than before, the engine of the 
 usurping aristocracy of England. Its virtues had ex- 
 pired in the throes of its new birth. No Constitution 
 could be obtained without the consent of the Parlia- 
 ment of the Pale — a Parliament in which three-fourths 
 of the People had not a shadow of representation, and 
 the other portion had only a shadow. In the face of 
 an armed convention of the People, and in the midst 
 of universal commotion, the Parliament of Dublin re- 
 fused a Constitution to Ireland ! Already all that had 
 been gained was lost, but the shadow of Independence, 
 and that was sure to follow soon. The patriots of Ire- 
 land hastened from the hated halls of the Parliament 
 of the Pale with deep disgust, and rushing to the altars 
 of Liberty, applied themselves to wake again its sleep- 
 ing fires. The Revolution was once more set in mo- 
 tion, but the ball had nearly spent its force. The men 
 of '98j brave and true, attempted under circumstances 
 
/ 
 
 22 
 
 of extreme difficulty to prepare a doubtful war. The 
 Irish People were again dissevered by the same ever- 
 lasting cause of faction — the foreign aristocracy in their 
 bosom. Although the gallant leaders were Protes- 
 tants, yet the mass of Protestants supported the Par- 
 liament. The Catholic clergy saw the hopelessness of 
 conflict and shuddered at the calamities it portended to 
 a faithful and already deeply wretched people. Eng- 
 land had recovered her giant energies. The thunders 
 of the American Revolution slept ; an ambitious, licen- 
 tious, and ferocious Faction reigned in Paris, and 
 blasphemy, claiming the name of liberty, was threat- 
 ening to involve the world in anarchy. Nevertheless, 
 there was no hope for Ireland but in aid from France, 
 and in the arms of her own people. The insarrection 
 was planned with skill and secrecy, but Treason 
 gained access to its councils and fomented it to a pre- 
 cocious maturity. Then it broke forth only to betray 
 its heroic leaders to the scaflbld, and their patriotic as- 
 sociates throughout the island, to massacre indiscrim- 
 inate and merciless. 
 
 Yet the Rebellion of '98 was not altogether unavail- 
 ing. Every drop that streams from the veins of a mar- 
 tyr in the cause of Liberty, is gathered again by Him 
 who wills that all his children shall be free, and is 
 poured into the heart of some new-born champion, 
 imparting more than human vigor to the arm of the 
 avenger. 
 
 The British Government now asserted that Ireland 
 had tried the responsibilities of Government, and had 
 proved herself incompetent. They disarmed the peo- 
 ple, established martial law, falsely promised specious 
 
23 
 
 favors to the Catholics^ and showered gold and power 
 on the Protestants, and thus, in 1800, the eighteenth 
 year of Irish Independence, obtained from the Parha- 
 ment of the Pale the surrender of its infamous exist- 
 ence. Ireland, fettered and manacled more than ever 
 before, was annexed to Great Britain by the Act of 
 Union. 
 
 A gloomy period of twenty years succeeded. Ty- 
 ranny scarcely feared resistance. Penury had taken up 
 her home in the land. Turbulence was abroad, but only 
 to reconcile the people to any Government that would 
 suppress disorder. Wealth and learning, warmed at 
 the root with the unnatural heat of Royal favor, lost 
 their independent attitude, and putting forth parasitic 
 tendrils, twined in sickly growth around the pillars of 
 the State. The Peasantry took on the habit and gait 
 of slaves. The voice of orators was heard only in 
 subdued complaints ; the clang of arms had ceased. 
 Even the National Harp, that still retained its ancient 
 sweetness, though trodden under foot by tyrants, forgot 
 the wild inspiration of Freedom, and only gave forth 
 plaintive notes when struck by the hand of Despair. 
 
 " Alas for our Country ! Her pride has gone by, 
 And the spirit is broken that never would bend ; 
 O'er the ruin her children in secret must sigh, 
 For 'tis treason to love her, and death to defend." 
 
 If a hope could have arisen in the patriot's heart, it 
 would have been dispelled by a glance at the condi- 
 tion of England. She had made ample reprisals in 
 the West Indies, in North America, in Asia, in Africa, 
 and in the South Seas, for the loss of the thirteen re- 
 
24 
 
 bellious colonies ; Waterloo had prostrated at her feet 
 her great natural enemy; Spain had entered on her 
 dotage: Holland had relinquished her ambition. The 
 British Navy held almost undisputed sway over the 
 seaSj and British garrisons encircled the globe. 
 
 How mysterious and inscrutable are the ways of 
 Providence in conducting the affairs of nations ! That 
 season of gloom so intense, was the hour that preceded 
 the dawn of Irish Liberty. It was no matter how 
 Avide the Empire, or how vast the Armies or Navies 
 of Britain, Ireland was to be delivered by Opinion, not 
 by the Sword — by the Statesman, not by the Soldier. 
 
 That Statesman was the first fruit of the cautious 
 concessions concerning Property and Education, made 
 by England in 1778 and 1782. Daniel O'Connell, a 
 Roman Catholic, heir-appparent of Darrynane, had 
 been instructed in the faith of his forefathers and 
 trained for the Forum. The force which he was to 
 employ for the redemption of his country was the fruit 
 of concession made in 1792 in order to secure the act 
 of Union. The Right of Suffrage was then conferred 
 on Catholics in Ireland having freeholds of the annual 
 value of forty shillings. Then, and long afterward, 
 the right was indeed useless, and Suffrage was yielded 
 with the rents due to the superior Lords. But the 
 Right was there. 
 
 The political education of the Liberator was that 
 History of Ireland whose spirit we have endeavored, 
 perhaps vainly, to recall. He had witnessed with hor- 
 ror the desecration of Liberty and Religion in France, 
 and thus, while he was imbued with the purest senti- 
 ments of Patriotism, he was not less firmly estabhshed 
 
25 
 
 Iq religious principles. He was never for a moment 
 tempted to divide what he thought God had indissolu- 
 bly combined, Religion and Freedom. He first ap- 
 peared before his countrymen at the age of twenty-five, 
 at a meeting of Catholics in 1800 in the midst of an in- 
 timidating police, to consider the Act of Union, then 
 before the Parliament in College Green. His speech, 
 which was " a great beginning in so green an age," 
 revealed the principles on which, near thirty years 
 afterward, he worked out Catholic Emancipation, and 
 brought the Independence of Ireland to the verge of 
 triumph. These principles were the combination of 
 those two measures and the Union of the People of 
 Ireland by conciliation. 
 
 '' Let us show (said he) to every friend of Ireland, 
 that Catholics are incapable of selling their country ; 
 that if their Emancipation was offered for their con- 
 sent to the Act of Union, (even if Emancipation were 
 a benefit after the Union,) they would reject it with 
 prompt indignation. Let us show to Ireland that we 
 have nothing in view but her good, nothing in our 
 hearts but the desire of mutual forgiveness and mutual 
 reconciliation. Let every man who agrees with me 
 proclaim that if the alternative were offered him of the 
 Union, or the re-enactment of the Penal Code in all its 
 pristine horrors, he would prefer the latter as the lesser 
 or more sufferable evil ; that he would confide in the 
 justice of his brethren, the Protestants of Ireland, rather 
 than lay his country at the feet of foreigners." 
 
 We know not when the great scheme of delivering 
 his country first occured to O'Connell, but his life was 
 a continual preparation for the enterprise. 
 
26 
 
 *' He wandered through the wrecks of days departed, 
 And dwellings of a race of mightier men, 
 And monuments of less ungentle creeds, 
 Tell their own tale to Him who rightly heeds 
 The language which they speak." 
 
 On such occasions the patriot would exclaim, with 
 a heart beating loud and fast, 
 
 " It shall be thus no more. Too lonix, too lono-, 
 Sons of the glorious Dead ! have ye lain bound. 
 In Darkness and in Kuin. Hope is strong ; 
 Justice and Truth their winged child have found. 
 Awake ! Arise ! until the misrhtv sound 
 Of your career shall scatter in its gust 
 The throne of the oppressor." 
 
 The new revolution began in no popular excitement, 
 for the People were roused, not without long, vehe- 
 ment and incessant agitation. It had no foreign im- 
 pulse. America was at rest, and France, and even all 
 Europe, were slumbering in the arms of Legitimate 
 Monarchy. It was not a Military Insurrection; for 
 Sedition had been tried for the last time. It depended 
 not on the Irish People alone, for they were nearly 
 powerless. It must be effected by the British King and 
 Parliament, and they could be moved only by Moral 
 force, or Opinion. The objects of the Revolution must 
 be divided. Liberty of Conscience, or Catholic Eman- 
 cipation, must be demanded first. The Independence 
 of Ireland, or Civil Liberty, must be attained after- 
 ward. If both were demanded at once, neither would 
 be granted. 
 
 Daniel O'Connell knew that sucli a Revolution was 
 possible, and in this knowledge excelled his country 
 
27 
 
 and his age. When that knowledge was acquired, he 
 stood confessed to himself, the Statesman of the Revo- 
 lution. From that hour he expanded, and 
 
 " Bore aloft the Fame and Fortunes of his Race." 
 
 But how should Opinion be directed with effect ? 
 Burke and Fox, Canning and Brougham and Byron, 
 had pleaded for Catholic Emancipation in the British 
 Senate; had shown the absurdity, the unrighteousness 
 and the inhumanity of the Penal Religious Code, and 
 had demonstrated that it was only less ruinous to Pro- 
 testants and to England than to Catholics and to Ire- 
 land. The British Parliament were already convinced. 
 Reason, argument and conviction would not be enough. 
 The British Government must be made to fear and 
 tremble. But how should Opinion be made so poten- 
 tial? 
 
 It must begin with Ireland, a country divided by 
 faction and sunk in despair. And if Ireland should be- 
 come unanimous, what then? She had only twenty- 
 seven Barons in the House of Lords, while Great Bri- 
 tain had nearly four hundred. Ireland had only one 
 hundred Delegates in the House of Commons, and not 
 one true representative. Great Britain had five hun- 
 dred representatives there. The Church of England, 
 standing on the ruins that were to be restored, was one 
 of the great estates of the Empire. Even if all these 
 obstacles should be surmounted, there stood the King, 
 pledged and bound as he thought by his Coronation 
 Oath to reject the Bill for the Liberty of Conscience. 
 But even the Catholic Church and Clergy were not 
 yet reliable. Britain was continually temporising, and 
 
28 
 
 Rome seemed not unwilling to compromise, and so di- 
 vide the Irish People. 
 
 The Agitator needed therefore character and position 
 which would enable him to speak with some show of 
 authority to the People of Ireland. Catholics and Pro- 
 testants, Clergy and Laity, — to the King, Lords, Com- 
 mons and People of England, — to Rome herself, and to 
 an impartial World. 
 
 What then were O'Connell's character and position 1 
 He was a British subject, a member of the Catholic 
 Church, and a lawyer in the Four Courts of Dublin — 
 merely a lawyer, a Catholic and a subject ; and while 
 Catholics remained disqualified he could be no more 
 than this. 
 
 He determined to invest that humble and obscure 
 character and that position with power and strength ; 
 and this power and strength Avere to be obtained from 
 the consent of the Clergy and of his countrymen. 
 
 So bold a Reformer needed rare powers and qualities, 
 and needed them in extraordinary combination. He 
 must have transcendent genius to conceive so great an 
 action — courage to dare the attempt — energy to pursue 
 it — moderation to conciliate — pacific temper to avoid 
 irritations to force — prudence and sagacity to circum- 
 vent the strategy of the adversary — sympathy with 
 Catholic Ireland to be its organ — reverence for the 
 Clergy to gain their influence — loyalty to the British 
 Constitution to disarm those who converted it into an 
 engine of oppression — ardent and impulsive eloquence 
 to rouse illiterate and unreflecting masses — logical acu- 
 men and rhetorical power to confute sophistry and con- 
 vince the learned — tact and address to gain coadjutors 
 
29 
 
 and hold them in their proper spheres — patience in 
 bearing the insolence of offended power, and the timid- 
 ity, waywardness and caprice of popular masses; — 
 and with all these he must combine a devotion which 
 would make the great enterprise the sole business of a 
 whole life. Providence guards against the collisions of 
 mighty minds by allowing to exist only one at any one 
 time, capable of conducting a nation in a great emer- 
 gency. 
 
 There was only one WashingtoxN in America, and 
 there could be only one O'Connell in Ireland. 
 
 Time and experience ripened the Liberator. The 
 Bar of Dublin opposed the young Reformer. He ex- 
 posed their mercenary spirit and cast the lierd behind 
 him. The Corporation of Dublin sent a champion who 
 called him to the field of combat. He slew the super- 
 cilious adversary and pensioned his widow ; and, 
 mourning over his almost involuntary crime, trampled 
 thenceforth under his feet the false code of Honor. He 
 claimed nothing for himself, and even less than an equal 
 share of political power for his Catholic countrymen. 
 
 " Xon ego, nee Teucris Italos parere jubebo ; 
 Nee mihi regna peto ; paribus se legibus ambaa 
 Junctae gentes etema in foedera mittant." 
 
 Opposition, oppression, even imprisonment, tcould 
 not extort from him a breath of disloyalty to the throne, 
 nor even to the Protestant succession. He maintained 
 inflexibly that the Deliverance of Ireland would be 
 hazarded by a single crime, and lost by the sacrifice of 
 a single life. He detected with piercing sight the de- 
 fects of laws designed to counteract the Revolution, 
 
30 
 
 and organized all Ireland on a basis as narrow as the 
 technicality of a special plea. Fervid and vehement, 
 he carried with him the passions of the People, as a 
 cloud that covered his person, whenever he discoursed 
 to them of his great theme; perspicacious and delibe- 
 rate, he won the admiration of mankind by the pro- 
 foundness of his testimony before a British Parliament 
 concerning the evils of Oppression. He waited imper- 
 turbably to mature his preparations, and watched 
 unceasingly for the hour when his opponents should 
 be enfeebled by faction. A lineal descendant of op- 
 pressed generations, and a living and majestic mark of 
 perpetual persecution for conscience sake, every physi- 
 cal and moral element of his constitution confessed the 
 Celtic stock. ''Strong from the cradle and of sturdy 
 brood," his stature, complexion, gait, gestures, voice 
 and attitude betrayed him for an Irishman of unmingled 
 blood. Cheerful even to constant hilarity, and gener- 
 ous to self-destitution, he was the depository of all the 
 public and the private griefs of his countrymen. He 
 relieved their wants if possible, and, if impossible, taught 
 them how to endure privation. When they fell inad- 
 vertently under the power of the law, and even when 
 they wilfully rushed into its grasp against his advice, 
 he flung himself between them and the prosecution and 
 bore them off in triumph. His industry and assiduity 
 never relaxed, although the cares not only of a Revo- 
 lutionary state, but of every suffering member of it, fell 
 upon his shoulders. He scorned allurements to wealth 
 which might divide him from the People ; subsisted on 
 such rewards of his own labors as could be obtained 
 without neglecting Ireland ; and when the country re- 
 
31 
 
 quired his exclusive devotion, he rejected pension and 
 place offered by the Government, and with distinguished 
 magnanimity relied for his daily support on the unso- 
 licited and voluntary contributions of his countrymen. 
 
 Thus endowed, trained and disciplined, O'Connell 
 found the Irish heart an instrument which answered to 
 his slightest touch, for ''he knew the strings in which 
 its music dwelt." He tuned it anew to its ancient 
 themes of patriotism and piety. 
 
 At length the old King of England, after a long, liv- 
 ing death, was gathered to the garner-house of the 
 grave. An odious Ministry was found in England 
 under an odious Prince. Mendicity had driven the ar- 
 tisans and laborers of England to mutiny. The pro- 
 pitious hour for agitation had come, and Daniel O'Con- 
 nell broke forth before the world "Monarch of Ireland." 
 He was a King none the less though the " stone of des- 
 tiny" had been removed from Tara's Hall to West- 
 minster Abbey — a King without sacerdotal unction, 
 royal descent, election or usurpation — a King without 
 a crown, a court or guards — a King by consent of cler- 
 gy and laity — a very King of seven millions, standing 
 erect before the Imperial Throne, with power to levy 
 armies to maintain Avar and to conclude peace — a King 
 who could arrest the laws of England or let them go to 
 execution — a King who could keep his subject people 
 in perpetual endurance, or let them forth at pleasure to 
 a carnival of revenge. 
 
 O'Connell was no longer the mere lawyer, subject 
 and Catholic, but, retaining all those characters and 
 the same position, his individuality was gone : He 
 was Ireland. The same Ireland that had shone forth 
 
32 
 
 I* 
 
 a beacon of Piety, Arts and Learning in the dark ages ; 
 the same Ireland that, though torn by faction and be- 
 trayed every hour by treason, had resisted the usurpa- 
 tion of England for five hundred years — the same Ire- 
 land that had been circumvented into capitulation to a 
 perfidious King at Limerick, that had endured the Cross, 
 despised the shame and kept the faith through the ter- 
 rors of the Penal Code, that had slept in the tomb with 
 Sarsfield, had revived to newness of life under Grattan, 
 and had been buried again by Pitt in the grave of the 
 Union — the same Ireland revived and regenerated, 
 wearing indeed the cerecloth of sepulture, but more ma- 
 jestic, more vigorous and more terrible to her oppressors 
 than ever. 
 
 The agency employed by O'Connell was as simple 
 and sublime as were his own position and character. 
 Combination is inherent in Democratic action. Civil 
 and military associations were employed in 1782 and in 
 the rebellion of 1798. Civil association was again tried, 
 but without effect, in 1810. The Government had now 
 put forth all its skill to frame laws which should pre- 
 vent combination. There should be no inilitary asso- 
 ciation, no secret association, no Representative or dele- 
 gated Assembly^ none that was 2^olitical, and none to 
 continue more than fourteen days. Nevertheless, 
 O'Connell organized and maintained during seven 
 years a combination extending over the Island, em- 
 bracing seven hundred thousand members, and receiv- 
 ing £50,000 annually, which violated none of the inhi- 
 bitions of the law, and yet had all the efficiency which 
 they were designed to prevent. The centre of Agitation 
 was ultimately Conciliation Hall in Dublin, fitted up 
 
>o 
 
 as a Capitol. Business was transacted and debates 
 conducted with legislative forms. The doors were 
 open to every subject and publicity was more effective 
 than executive secrecy. 
 
 The assembly was crowded with impassioned and 
 sympathising auditors, who manifested approval or dis- 
 satisfaction without restraint, while the speakers were 
 animated by the smiles of Beauty from the galleries. 
 The themes discussed with all the genius and fervor of 
 Irish eloquence by O'Connell, Shiel and their asso- 
 ciates, were the British Constitution, the Penal Code, 
 the Resources and Destiny of Ireland — its condition — 
 the value of Liberty — the evils of Faction ; and not 
 only these, but the daily conduct of Government, the 
 oppression of every landlord, the grievance of every 
 tenant, the insults of every patrician, the meekness of 
 every plebeian ; in short, whatever tended to excite, to 
 rouse and to combine the Irish People. A Journal es- 
 tablished by the Association transmitted the debates 
 to kindred associations in every part of the Island, by 
 whom the same animating topics were discussed with 
 even greater zeal. 
 
 Ireland looked with pride on a voluntary and self- 
 constituted Legislature which for a time eclipsed from 
 their sight the Britisb Parliament. The enthusiasm of 
 Ireland re-assured the advocates of Religious Tole- 
 rance in England and in Europe. And then every 
 Irish Exile in America, in its cities and fields and for- 
 ests, on its canals and rivers, returned a willing and 
 effective blow against England. America, yielding to 
 
 their enthusiasm and to natural impulses, saluted the 
 
 3 
 
34 
 
 new Republic of Ireland with gratiilations and contri- 
 butions. 
 
 It seemed as if one discontented Irish subject had 
 roused the world against the Monarchy of Britain. 
 England had nothing to oppose to the universal opin- 
 ion of Mankind, but fears which were groundless, ha- 
 bits which were absurd and prejudices which were un- 
 christian. 
 
 Oppression, however, had not altogether failed of its 
 legitimate effects on the Irish people. Ignorance 
 abounded. Intemperance had laid its maddening hand 
 on starving multitudes. There were inveterate feuds 
 between the Catholic and Orange peasantry. The lat- 
 ter had long maintained secret associations, and the 
 former were often banded in opposing societies. These 
 associations involved Ireland in continual turbulence 
 and riot, and often in scenes of blood. 
 
 " The Orange beggar spumed 
 The Papist beggar's hand, 
 Wliile Freedom, shrinking, turned 
 And fled the hapless land." 
 
 It was necessary to tranquilize Ireland and thus to 
 prove that the People were capable of self-government. 
 O'Connell invoked order. All Ireland was immediately 
 organized in vast assemblies under the name of O'Con- 
 nell's Police. Temperance and tranquility reigned 
 throughout the Island. In time these assemblies be- 
 came a subject of complaint. O'Connell had but to say, 
 "You wait the word of comWud : I give it: Halt, 
 disband,*' and instantly O'Connell's Police was re- 
 solved into the peaceful constituency of the Liberator. 
 
35 
 
 The cause of Emancipation advanced in England, 
 and a majority in its favor was already secured in the 
 House of Commons. But still the Representatives 
 from Ireland gave it no effective aid. A signal blow 
 was wanting, and that fell from O'Connell's hand, with 
 boldness, precision and effect. 
 
 " Electors of Clare," said he, on the eve of a special 
 election, ''you want a Representative in Parliament; 
 I solicit your suffrages. True, I am a Catholic. I 
 cannot, and of course I never will, take the oaths pre- 
 scribed. But the power which created those oaths can 
 abrogate them. If you elect me, I will try the ques- 
 tion." O'Connell could only expect to be elected by 
 the forty-shilling freeholders, as they were called, ten- 
 ants of the landlords in Clare. Their votes, by tacit 
 understanding and unbroken usage, belonged to their 
 lords. Ruin awaited him who diverted his suffrage. 
 But there was now a power higher than the landlord. 
 
 You see a mass of the peasantry of Clare issuing 
 from the little parish church on the hill-side. They 
 have reverently received the Mass; but their steps 
 indicate perturbation. They gather around the priest 
 and ask his paternal counsel concerning the hazardous 
 requirement of O'Connell. The priest lays down his 
 missal, raises his hand toward Heaven, breaks forth 
 in their own wild native language, recites to them the 
 story of their ancient fame and of the persecution and 
 perfidy of their conquerors, expatiates on their inherent 
 right of liberty of conscience, and the right and dut}^ 
 of passive resistance, on the sublimity of suffrage and 
 the glory and renown that are now breaking in upon 
 Ireland, and concludes his impassioned harangue with 
 
36 
 
 the injunction; "Vote, vote for O'Connell and Free- 
 dom." 
 
 It is now the election day. There is O'Connell, 
 depicting the atrocities of British persecution with a 
 noble ardor of religious zeal. A band of tenants are 
 marching by under the conduct of their landlord, to 
 vote for the ministerial candidate. They pause ; they 
 mingle in the crowd ; they listen, and now, at every 
 cadence of the Liberator's voice, redoubled shouts 
 arise, "O'Connell and Freedom." 
 
 An elector is released from jail by his creditor on 
 condition that he vote against O'Connell. He is al- 
 ready at the polls — a shrill cry is heard — it is the 
 debtor's wife who speaks — "Remember your soul and 
 Liberty." The debtor rises to the majesty of a Free- 
 man, and declares his vote for O'Connell. Instantly 
 all rents in arrear are paid by the Catholic Association. 
 The Elector's debt is discharged by the same onmi- 
 present power, and that noble Celtic woman's exclama- 
 tion becomes the watchword of all Ireland : 
 
 " Remember your Soul and Liberty !" 
 
 O'Connell is elected. Let his illustrious coadjutor, 
 Shiel, explain the event. Turning to the defeated and 
 confounded adversary, he exclaims — 
 
 " We have indeed put a great engine in motion, and 
 applied the entire force of that powerful machinery 
 which the law has placed in our hands. We are mas- 
 ters of the passions of the People, and we have em- 
 ployed our dominion with a terrible effect. Do you 
 imagine that we could have acquired this dreadful 
 ability to sunder the strongest ties by which the differ- 
 
37 
 
 ent classes of society are fastened, unless we found the 
 materials of excitement in the state of society itself? 
 Do you think Daniel O'Connell has himself, and by 
 the single power of his mind, unaided by any external 
 co-operation, brought the country to this great crisis of 
 agitation? O'Connell, with all his talents, would 
 have been utterly powerless and incapable, unless he 
 had been allied with a great conspirator against the 
 public peace. It is the law of the land itself that has 
 been O'Connell's main associate, and that ought to be 
 denounced as the mighty Agitator of Ireland. The 
 rod of oppression is the wand of this potent Enchanter 
 of the Passions, and the book of his spells is the Penal 
 Code. Break the wand of this political Prospero, and 
 take from him the volume of his magic, and he will 
 evoke the Spirits which are now under his control no 
 longer." 
 
 What language could do justice to the Clergy of 
 Ireland, who, through imprisonment, banishment and 
 fire, still adhered to their charge; who preferred to 
 share the poverty of the People rather than obtain an 
 establishment at the expense of their liberty. Yenera- 
 ble Ministry ! It was the British State that taught 
 you to mingle Politics with Religion. Wisely, faith- 
 fully and in the fear of God did you give back the 
 fruits of those instructions. It was your task to prove 
 against the prejudices of a skeptical age that Piety still 
 dwelt in the Church of Christ, and that Civil Liberty 
 was cherished in its sanctuaries. 
 
 Nor can we repress our admiration for the heroic 
 People. A division among them would have arrested, 
 while a panic or an excusable gust of passion might 
 have defeated Catholic Emancipation. They proved 
 
38 
 
 themselves worthy of then* great leader by the confi- 
 dence they gave him — worthy of Religious Liberty by 
 practicing the virtues they enjoined. 
 
 Generous People ! May that leader's place be speed- 
 ily and worthily filled. May the way of your Ex- 
 iles among us be smooth and pleasant, and your long 
 suffering patience be early crowned by the restoration 
 of your country to enduring Independence. 
 
 Clare was a part of that Connaught which had been 
 the City of Refuge for Catholic Ireland. Clare was 
 the Yorktown of the Irish Revolution. O'Connell 
 was the Representative of Clare, and not only of Clare, 
 but of Catholic Ireland. He was an elected Represen- 
 tative, obliged by English laws to stand outside the bar 
 of the British Commons. Ireland felt the importance of 
 his position. Ireland, by the act of union a member of 
 the British Empire, is going up to London in the per- 
 son of O'Connell, to demand her constitutional place 
 in the Councils of the British King — to demand from 
 that King Religious Liberty. How potent is the atti- 
 tude of peaceful, passive resistance ! How vast the 
 power that virtue derives from persecution! O'Con- 
 nell is now the most majestic figure in the world. 
 
 The British Ministry advise the King that Catholic 
 Emancipation can no longer be resisted. All that re- 
 mains is to grant it by law, not to concede it by seem- 
 ing treaty — to Emancipate Catholic Ireland before her 
 representative can reach the Capitol, and to save 
 wounded pride by denying O'Connell the seat to 
 which he has been elected and by disfranchising the 
 refractory peasantry of Ireland. 
 
 And this is done. But the wound given to British 
 pride must rankle nevertheless; for faithful Clare, 
 
39 
 
 though its peasantry are disfranchised, returns the Libe- 
 rator by acclamation. 
 
 O'CoNNELL as a Senator followed up the act of 
 Emancipation by successful measures to modify the 
 Tithes of the Established Chiu'ch in Ireland, to open 
 the close corporations of the realm, and to establish a 
 system of equal and universal Education in his native 
 country, while he lent to the English Reformers effi- 
 cient and indispensable aid in the Repeal of the Corn 
 Laws, which established a more beneficent system of 
 Revenue, and in that Reform of Parliament which is 
 gradually bringing forward a new and better Consti- 
 tution for the United Kingdom. 
 
 These beneficent labors did not for a moment divert 
 him from the great object which remained — the Resto- 
 ration of the Independence of Ireland by a Repeal of 
 the Act of Union. 
 
 His wand had still all its virtue, and he seized on 
 the Statute of Usurpation in the place of his former 
 volume of magic, the Penal Code. Yet he waited the 
 slow but sure return of popular impressibility at home, 
 and of despotic weakness at St. James. The Catholic 
 Association became a ••precursor" of Repeal. Ten 
 years were spent in diffusing knowledge among the 
 people, and then commenced the ever-memorable agi- 
 tation for the abrosration of the Act of Union. Under 
 the auspices of the Loyal National Repeal Association 
 in Conciliation Hall, all Ireland petitioned the British 
 Parliament for Repeal — of course without effect. Re- 
 presentatives were returned from many districts de- 
 manding Repeal, but all parties in England v/ere 
 immoved. The British Government maintained that 
 the sufferings of Ireland were exaggerated, that the 
 
40 
 
 clamor for Repeal was factitious, and that the people 
 were contented and prosperous. Then the Agitator 
 determined to exhibit Ireland as she was at home to 
 her proud Rulers in England. He called the people 
 forth, and they came in vast assemblies, such masses 
 of men destitute of the blessings of Providence as were 
 never before congregated ; as could not be convened in 
 any well-governed land; such masses therefore as 
 could not be looked upon by their oppressors without 
 shame and fear. His voice went forth among his 
 humble, heart-broken countrymen, like a harbinger of 
 happier homes and days of Freedom. They came up 
 to meet him, ten thousand at Slievrue, twenty thousand 
 at Trim, at Bellewestown, at Rathkeale, and at Dun- 
 lea — thirty thousand at Cahircornlish — fifty thousand 
 at Clones, at Caltra, at Ballanakill and at Inishowen ; 
 sixty thousand at Croon — seventy thousand at the 
 Curragh of Kildare — one hundred thousand at Limer- 
 ick, the scene of English perfidy — at Kells, at Carrick- 
 macross, at Mullingar. at Sligo, at Drogheda, at Murroe, 
 at Athlone, at Tullamore, at Clifden, at Baltinglass, and 
 at Donnybrook — two hundred thousand at Longford, 
 at Gal way, at Mount Mellick, and at Roscommon — 
 three hundred thousand at Charleville, at Kilkenny, 
 at Dundalk, at Tuam, at Mayo, at Clontebret, and at 
 Loughrea — four hundred thousand at Cashel, at Ne- 
 nagh, at Mallow, at Skibbereen, at Lismore. and at 
 Mullaghmast — half a million at Enniscorthy — seven 
 hundred thousand in brave old Clare, and seven hun- 
 dred and fifty thousand on Tara's revered hill. 
 
 These multitudes came unarmed, without the in- 
 spiring notes of martial music, on foot and without 
 provision for a day's journey, temperate and tranquil. 
 
41 
 
 nay, cheerful, for their hearts were full of love even to 
 England's youthful Queen, and they were animated 
 with hopes new-born in the promises of their chief 
 They exposed their penury ; they petitioned England : 
 they resolved never to cease petitioning, until their 
 freedom should be granted, and then dispersed, leaving 
 the scenes of their assemblage as quiet and undisturbed 
 as the bosoms of their Lakes. The British Govern- 
 ment could not look, the people of England could not 
 bear to look, at Ireland in this piteous attitude. They 
 affected fear, — fear for what ? Not of invasion — not 
 even of insurrection — not even of sedition, but fear 
 that the laws of the Realm might be changed by means 
 of demonstrations of physical, unarmed force ! A 
 great meeting was yet to be assembled at Clontarf, 
 memorable for the defeat even of the Conquerors of 
 England by Brian Borhoime, on the Irish coast where 
 it looks off on Britain. The Viceroy forbids the 
 meeting at Clontarf, and denounces the severest pun- 
 ishment. Armed and naval forces beset the place in 
 hopes of resistance, that the war against a ruined peo- 
 ple may begin. 
 
 O'CoNNELL countermands the assemblaf]:e. Endand 
 has in vain provoked a people prone to war. The 
 country is saved from dire calamity. Ireland may 
 not even petition under the British Constitution too 
 rudely or too earnestly. Baffled in the design of 
 plunging the country into civil war, the Government 
 now prosecute for sedition O'Connell and six associ- 
 ates 
 
 " ^Vho dare 
 
 Their leader's glory and his danger share." 
 
 A Jury is packed by excluding from the panel 
 
42 
 
 every Catholic and every Patriot. Ireland comes out 
 from her hills and her valleys, to look upon a cause in 
 which she is herself on trial before an Anglo Irish Jury 
 in a Court of the Pale. The venal Court extort the 
 desired verdict, and now Ireland may no longer peti- 
 tion. Her own Jury has condemed her in her own 
 Capital. 
 
 On the 30th of May, 1844, Daniel O'Connell, — 
 who had preserved the peace of Ireland for thirty 
 years, — who had renewed her fidelity to the British 
 Constitution and to the British Throne, — who had 
 given liberty of conscience to the British Empire — 
 who had peacefully brought his native country again 
 to the verge of Independence — of that very Indepen- 
 dence which sixty-two years before had been conce- 
 ded to her as unquestioned and unquestionable, — Dan- 
 iel O'Connell, the truest Briton, and the noblest 
 Statesman of the age, on the very border of three- 
 score and ten years, was consigned to Prison by a 
 Jury of his own countrymen, constituted of traitors, by 
 a subversion of the common law, for the offence of ex- 
 ercising his constitutional right as a subject to petition 
 the Rulers of the Empire for a Repeal of an act of 
 Parliament. 
 
 When will the crimes of the Aristocracy of the 
 Enghsh Pale have an end ! When shall the world 
 cease to hear with horror the mention of a Jury of 
 Dublin ! It was a Jury of Dublin that sent E.mmett 
 and Fitzgerald to the scaffold. 
 
 Had such a conviction happened in Paris, the Prison 
 would have been razed to the ground, and the Jurors 
 torn limb from limb. But this new act of Tyranny 
 wrought no other change on O'Connell, or on the 
 
43 
 
 People of Ireland, than to increase their mutual devo- 
 tion. They obeyed all his peaceful mandates, issued 
 from his Prison, and when the illegal judgment was 
 reversed, received him with increased affection at its 
 doors and conducted him abroad as a Conqueror. No- 
 thing had been lost by Ireland, and the Government 
 had only suppressed one of the thousand agencies of 
 Freedom. England had added to her causes for hating 
 Ireland the remembrance of another crime against 
 her, perpetrated in vain. 
 
 The Revolution was just recovering from this brief 
 recoil when a blight fell on the only food that the aris- 
 tocracy of England had left for the subsistence of the 
 Irish People. Agitation ceased and the jar of political 
 elements was hushed before the fearful presence of 
 Famine. Perhaps this last desolation was necessary 
 to convince the Government and the People of Great 
 Britain of the solemn and mighty import of O'Con- 
 nell's words : 
 
 " The cause of all the afflictions of Ireland is that we 
 have not been allowed to govern our own Country." 
 
 Perhaps his Death was necessary to conciliate her 
 oppressors. Certainly such a visitation, and such a 
 death, were a fitting end for the woes of the Irish Peo- 
 ple. 
 
 The Independence of the Irish Nation, although fu- 
 ture, is not distant. Its righteousness and its necessity 
 have been demonstrated. The Spirit of the People is 
 changed. They cannot again relapse. England, too, 
 with a Reformed Parliament, and a falling Aristocracy, 
 is no longer the England of the Twelfth, the Sixteenth, 
 and of the Eighteenth Centuries. Political Economy 
 will unite with Political Philosophy in enabling Ireland 
 
44 
 
 to retrieve her prosperity, and that can be effected 
 only by allowing her a Distinct Legislature. 
 
 We may not doubt that the appalling distress of the 
 Irish people, bowed down the otherwise unbending 
 mind of O'Connell. Sorrow for afflictions that he 
 had hoped in vain to avert, and that he could not alle- 
 viate or soothe, brought on quick-coming because long 
 procrastinated age. O'Connell died like Anchises in 
 a foreign land, winning the favor of men, and propi- 
 tiating Heaven wdth prayers and sacrifices for the re- 
 storation of his people. 
 
 What shall be his rank among the benefactors of 
 mankind ? We pause not a moment to disperse the 
 calumnies that followed him to the grave. They were 
 but tributes to his greatness, yielded by ungenerous 
 minds, — for it is thus that Providence compels the un- 
 just to honor Virtue. 
 
 O'Connell left his mighty enterprise unfinished. So 
 did the Founder of the Hebrew State ; so did Cato; 
 so did Hamden; so did Emmett and Fitzgerald. Will 
 their epitaphs be less sublime by reason of the long 
 delay which intervenes before they can be written ? 
 The heroic man conceives great enterprises and labors 
 to complete them. " Success he hopes, and fate he 
 cannot fear." It is God that sets the limits to human 
 life and the bounds to human achievement. 
 
 But has not O'Connell done more than enouirh for 
 fame? On the lofty brow of Monticello, under a green 
 old oak, is a block of granite, and underneath are the 
 ashes of Jefferson. Read the epitaph — it is the Sage's 
 claim to Immortality : 
 
 "Author of the Declaration of Independence and of 
 the Statute for Religious Liberty." 
 
45 
 
 Stop now and write an epitaph for Daniel O'Con- 
 nell: 
 
 " He gave Liberty of Conscience to Europe, and re- 
 newed the Revolutions of the Kingdoms toward Uni- 
 versal Freedom, which had begun in America and had 
 been arrested by the anarchy of France." 
 
 Let the Statesmen of the age read that epitaph and 
 be humble. Let the Kings and Aristocracies of the 
 Earth read it and tremble. 
 
 Who has ever accomplished so much for Human 
 Freedom, with means so feeble ? Who but he has 
 ever given Liberty to a People, by the mere utter- 
 ance of his voice, without an army, navy or revenues 
 — without a sword, a spear, or even a shield ? 
 
 Who but he ever subverted Tyranny, saved the 
 lives of the oppressed, and yet spared the oppressor ? 
 
 Who but he ever detached from a venerable con- 
 stitution a column of Aristocracy, dashed it to the 
 earth, and yet left the ancient fabric stronger and 
 more beautiful than before ? 
 
 Who but he has ever lifted up seven millions of 
 People from the debasement of ages to the dignity of 
 Freedom, without exacting an ounce of gold or wast- 
 ing the blood of one human heart ? 
 
 Whose voice yet lingers like O'Connell's in the ear 
 of tyrants, making them sink with fear of change, and 
 in the ear of the most degraded slaves on earth, awa- 
 king hopes of Freedom ! 
 
 Who before him has brou2:ht the schismatics of two 
 centuries together, conciliating them at the altar of 
 Universal Liberty. Who but he ever brought Papal 
 Rome and Protestant America to burn incense to- 
 gether ? 
 
46 
 
 It was O'Connell's mission to teach mankind that 
 Liberty was not estranged from Christianity, as was 
 proclaimed by Revolutionary France — that she was 
 not divorced from Law and Public Order — that she 
 was not a demon like Moloch, requiring to be propi- 
 tiated with the blood of human sacrifice — that De- 
 mocracy is the daughter of Peace, and like true Re- 
 ligion worketh by Love. 
 
 I see in Catholic Emancipation, and in the Repeal 
 of the Act of Union between Great Britain and Ireland 
 only incidents of an all pervading phenomenon — a 
 phenomenon of mighty interest, but not portentous of 
 evil. It is the universal dissolution of Monarchical and 
 Aristocratical Governments, and the establishment of 
 pure Democracies in their place. 
 
 I know this change must come, for even the me- 
 naced Governments feel and confess it. I know that it 
 will be resisted, for it is not in the nature of Power to 
 relax. It is a fearful inquiry, How shall that change 
 be passed ? Shall there never be an end to Devasta- 
 tion and Carnage ? Is every step of Human Progress 
 in the future, as in the past, to be marked by blood ? 
 Must the nations of the earth, after groaning for ages 
 under vicious Institutions established without their 
 consent, wade through deeper seas to reach that con- 
 dition of more perfect Liberty to which they are so 
 rapidly, so irresistibly impelled ? Or shall they be 
 able notwithstanding involuntary ignorance and de- 
 basement contracted without their fault, and notwith- 
 standing the blind resistance of Despotism, to change 
 their forms of Government by slow and measured de- 
 grees, without entirely or all at once subverting them, 
 and from time to time to repair their ancient coustitu- 
 
47 
 
 tions so as to adapt them peacefully to the progress of 
 the age, the diffusion of knowledge, the cultivation of 
 virtue, and the promotion of happiness. 
 
 When that crisis shall come, the colossal fabric of 
 the British Empire will have given way under its al- 
 ways accumulating weight. I see England then, in 
 solitude and in declining greatness, as Rome was when 
 her provinces were torn away, as Spain now is since 
 the loss of the Indies. I see Ireland, invigorated by 
 the severe experience of a long, though peaceful. 
 Revolution, extending her arms East and West in fra- 
 ternal embrace toward new rising States ; her re- 
 sources restored and improved ; her people prosper- 
 ous and happy, and her institutions again shedding the 
 lights of Piety, Art and Freedom over the world. 
 Then I see among the perplexed and disturbed nations 
 the now proud and all-conquering Anglo-Saxons look- 
 ing up to the regenerated Celtic People for guidance 
 and protection. 
 
 Come forward, then, ye Nations who are trembling 
 between the dangers of Anarchy and the pressure of 
 Despotism, and hear a voice that addresses the Libe- 
 rator of Ireland from the caverns of Silence where 
 Prophecy is born : 
 
 " To Tliee, now sainted Spirit, 
 Patriarch of a ■wide-spreading family, 
 Remotest lands and unborn times shall turn 
 Whether they would restore or build. To Thee ! 
 As one who rightly taught how Zeal should burn ; 
 As one who drew from out Faith's holiest urn, 
 The purest streams of Patient Energy. "" 
 
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