.... WM W m \. ®» Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from The Library of Congress http://www.archive.org/details/memorialvolumetoOOwals 0/W. A MEMORIAL VOLUME TO IRELAND'S INCORRUPTIBLE SON, PATRIOT AND STATESMAN, ^ Charles Stewart Parnell. HIS BRILLIANT ACHIEVEMENTS. THE GREAT SACRIFICES AND HEROIC DEEDS OF A LIFE WHICH HE Devoted to His Country. portraits and biographical sketches Of the most notable characters engaged in the struggle for Irish Self Government. A. GEAPHIC ACCOUNT OF THE INCIDENTS BETWEEN 1848 AND ISTO. BY ROBT. F. WALSH, AUTHOR OF "THE LAND AGITATION AND TRADE," "THE INDUSTRIAL POSSIBILITIES OF IRELAND," " THB DEVELOP- MENT OF IRISH FISHERIES," "NORA," "SANTA LUCIA," ETC., ETC. INCLUDING THE LIEE AND PUBLIC SERVICES OF THE GREAT EMANCIPATOR, £ ^S""7 ^ DANIEL O'CONNELL, WITH AN OUTLINE OF IMPORTANT EVENTS T.3ST IRISH H I S T O ~Et "Z\ BY THOMAS CLARKE LUBY. PROFUSELY ILLUSTRATED, NEW YORK: GAY BROTHERS & CO. Copyright, 1892, by GAY BROTHERS & COMPANY. GAY BROTHERS 4. COMPANY, 34 READE STREET NEW YORK. Hftte Volume DZEZDIO-A^TIEID Jrisft ftace# PUBLISHERS' INTRODUCTION. Upon the death of the late great leader, Charles Stewart Parnell, it occurred to the publishers of the present volume that the Irish people of America had never been presented with a faithful mirror reflecting the wonderful achievements of the two great leaders of the 19th century — O'Connell and Parnell — and they considered it fitting to link together these two names as being dear to the hearts of the Irish people as are those of Washington and Lincoln in this Republic. Associated in this manner, this work will be read with double interest and better understood. Daniel O'Connell secured Catholic Emancipation for the people of Ireland ; but, in the words of that distinguished American, Chauncey M. Depew, "The incorruptible Charles Stewart Parnell organized and led his countrymen to within sight of the promised land of self-government." However, this conception would not be com- plete without an account of the early historical events — in the compilation of which the best authorities have been consulted and the most instructive incidents por- trayed from the earliest times to the period of the Union, when O'Connell appeared upon the scene. His life was compiled by Thomas Clarke Luby, A.B., T.C.D. As Mr. Luby occupied a conspicuous position in the literary field, and had the honor of being personally acquainted with O'Connell, he needs no introduction here. How- ever, the task of preparing the life and brilliant achievements of Charles Stewart Parnell and of the connecting historical sketch has fallen to the lot of Mr. Robert F. Walsh, late special Amei'ican correspondent of the Dublin Freeman's Journal and author of several volumes upon the industrial interests of Ireland, which received favorable criticism from the pens of Mr. Gladstone and the late John Bright. The Royal Commission, appointed by the Imperial Parliament of 1884, to inquire into the industrial possibilities of Ireland, did him the honor of embodying in the bill presented by them copious extracts from his work on Irish Fisheries. Mr. Walsh is a graduate of the famous College of Saint Stanislaus, and afterward attended Saint Colman's College for the purpose of taking a higher course — where he was a pupil of Archbishop Croke and the Right Rev. William Fitzgerald. His intimate personal acquaintance with Mr. Parnell and the other leaders, and his practical knowledge of Irish industrial affairs, eminently befit him to give a valuable portrayal of the life and achievements of Mr. Parnell and his contemporaries. CONTENTS. CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. CHAPTER I. 'Why Mr. Parnell was so important a Factor in Irish Politics — His Boyhood, Early Life, and Antecedents — The distinguished Lineage of the Irish Leader — A Comparison between his Life and those of O'Connell, etc., etc.— How his Patriotic Instinct was Aroused— Why Irishmen should honor Him I CHAPTER II. Mr. Parnell's first public Speech — He is Defeated for Dublin County — His Election for Meath — Isaac Butt — Mr. Parnell in America — Joseph G. Biggar and Charles Stewart Parnell con- ceive the Policy of Obstruction — Mr. Lecky's Comparison of Irish Pauperism — Comparison of the Lives of Grattan, O'Connell, and Parnell 10 CHAPTER III. Mr. Parnell's Mission in America — The Famine of 1879 — Deposition of Mr. Shaw — The Election of Mr. Parnell as Leader of the Irish Race — The Consolidation of the Atoms — Gladstone's Treachery 49 CHAPTER IV. The Land Agitation — Mr. Parnell as Leader of the Irish Nation — The sudden change of opinion of the Irish Priesthood and Episcopacy — The Land Act of 1881 — Coercion — Gladstone and Parnell — Mr. Parnell arrested — His Historical Speech at Wexford 71 CHAPTER V. The Consequences of Forster's Coercion Act — The Arrears Bill prepared in Kilmainham Prison by Mr. Parnell — Ladies Arrested — Evictions in 1881 — The Kilmainham Treaty — Deposi- tion of Chief Secretary Forster — The Phcenix Park Tragedy — Captain O'Shea's Speech on the Arrears Bill 97 CHAPTER VI. Mr. Parnell's Sympathy for even the Prison Officials — The Times Forgery — John Stuart's Esti- mate of Mr. Parnell — General Election of 1885 — Bentham on the Theory of Legislation — Parnell and the Irish Fisheries — The Home Rule Struggle — Parnell, Gladstone, and the Tories ' 115 CHAPTER VII. Mr. Parnell and the Unionist Parliament — Renewal of Evictions — The Plan of Campaign— The Ponsonby Estate — Mr. Balfour as Chief Secretary — The Mitchelstown Murders — The Co- ercion Act of July 17, 1887 — Imprisonment of William O'Brien and John Mandeville — John Mandeville's Death, and Debates, etc., relating to it 148 CHAPTER VIII. The O'Shea Divorce Case— The Secession of Mr. Parnell's Followers— His Refusal to Resign the Leadership— His Reasons— Patriotic to the Last — An Englishman's Review of Gladstone's Unreliability — Mr. Parnell's Death — His Last Words — The entire Political World shocked by his sudden Demise — His Funeral, etc., etc 17° CONTENTS. IRELAND FROM 1848 TO 1875. CHAPTER I. The Causes which led to Irish Disaffection — Sir Charles Russell's Opinion — Why Irishmen agi- tated for Repeal of the Union — Antiquity of Irish Writings — The Fiscal Condition of Ire- land at the time of the Union — Gladstone's Treachery — Richard Cobden and the Times . . . 213 CHAPTER II. Sir Charles Russell on the Predisposing Causes of Crime— Lord Dufferin's Statement — The Tithe Agitation 222 CHAPTER III. The Young Ireland Movement — Events between 1848 and 1865 — James Stephens — The Fenian " Conspiracy" — John O'Mahony — An Explanation of why the Irish People were justified in these Uprisings— The Kilclooney Wood Incident— Corydon the Informer 259 LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. CHAPTER I. Birth — Family — Scenery of Ireland in general, and of Kerry in particular 1 CHAPTER II. Childhood of O'Connell — Paul Jones off the coast of Kerry — O'Connell masters the alphabet quickly — His fear of disgrace — Captain Cook's "Voyage round the World " — Nomadic gen- try — Early Anticipations of greatness 7 CHAPTER III. Youth and early manhood of O'Connell — O'Connell at Louvain, St. Omer's and Douay — In dan- ger during the French Revolution — Anecdote of John and Henry Sheares and the execu- tion of Louis XVI 18 CHAPTER IV. Theobald Wolfe Tone and the " United Irishmen " — Peep-o'-Day boys and Defenders — Orange atrocities — Tone in Bantry Bay — Injustice and tyranny of Lord Camden's government — Secession of Grattan and his friends from the House of Commons — O'Connell's comments on this step — The Texel expedition — Arrests at Bond's house — Death of Lord Edward Fitzgerald — Rebellion of '98 horrors — John P. Curran defends the United Irishmen — Death of Wolfe Tone and others — The Union — Clare and Castlereagh— Daniel O'Connell's first appearance on the political stage as an orator 38 CHAPTER V. Pictures, anecdotes, and incidents of O'Connell's career at the Bar — O'Connell travelling on cir- cuit — O'Connell in his study — O'Connell in the courts— O'Connell's life valuable to his clients — Curious instance of O'Connell's professional penetration and quickness ; a tale of a fly — Illustrations of O'Connell's rapidity of conception and promptitude of action 133 CHAPTER VI. Lady Morgan's sketch of O'Connell — More of O'Connell's bar-anecdotes and other reminiscences — Value of an ugly nose — A lesson in cow-stealing — Unpremeditated oratory — O'Connell on the Scotch and English jury-systems and capital punishment, etc. — Queer anecdote of Sir Jonah Barrington ; the pawnbroker outwitted — Escape of a robber — An Orangeman who always liked to have O'Connell as his counsel — Odd story of a physician— Anecdotes of Judges Boyd and Lefroy ; O'Connell saves the life of a client — He defies Baron McClel- and— A judge sternly reproved — Anecdotes about Judge Day and Bully Egan 145 CONTENTS. CHAPTER VII. State of the Catholic cause at the commencement of O'Connell's political career — Pitt's return to office — His power weakened — His falseness to Ireland and the Catholics — The Castle uses its influence with Lord Fingal to keep back the Catholic petition — Coronation of Na- poleon — The Pope's allocution — The Catholics calumniated — Continued suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act — Duplicity of the viceroy, Lord Hardwicke— Pitt's perfidy 182 CHAPTER VIII. The "No-Popery Ministry" show their teeth — Jack Giffard, "the dog in office" — Grattan's In- vective against Giffard — Insurrection and Arms Acts — Noble conduct of Richard Brinsley Sheridan — The bishop of Quimper's pastoral — Furious intolerance — The " Shanavests " and " Caravats " — Liberal Protestants — Divisions of the Catholic Committee ; O'Connell's views prevail 203 CHAPTER IX. Orange murders and massacres — Fight between the Kings county militia and the Orange yeo- manry — The " The No-Popery government connive at the Orange atrocities — Insurrection acts — Assemblage of Orange delegates in 1808 — Disingenuousness of the leading Orange- men — O'Connell on the Orangemen — Government partiality 214 CHAPTER X. Aggregate meeting at Fishamble Street Theatre — Percy Bysshe Shelley declares for Catholic emancipation and repeal of the union — Suppression of the Catholic Committee — It is suc- ceeded by the Catholic Board — Powerful speech of O'Connell ; his onslaught on Sir Charles Saxton and Wellesley Pole — Dissensions between the aristocratic and popular sections of the Catholic movement — Lord French and the Edinburgh Review assail the Catholic law- yers — Edmund Burke on the appointment of Irish Catholic bishops by the Crown — O'Con- nell rouses the Irish Catholics from the torpor of serfdom ; his daring denunciations of , tyranny 240 CHAPTER XI. The famous "Witchery" resolutions— Commotion and fury caused by them— O'Connell de- nounces the regent's violation of his pledges to the Catholics — His regret on account of Lord Moira's weakness — Moira's nobleness in '98 ; he disappoints the expectations of the Catholics in 1812 — O'Connell tells the people to distrust the ministry, to trust themselves alone — Apparent prospect of immediate emancipation in 1812 264 CHAPTER XII. Lord Aberdeen's question in the House of Lords — Meeting of the Catholics of Dublin at Kilmain- ham — O'Connell's oration, etc., etc 278 CHAPTER XIII. Slow progress of the cause of emancipation — Napoleon's approaching downfall — England's pros- perity Ireland's bane — Grattan's bill and Canning's clauses — Failure of the bill — Its repudi- ation by the majority of the Irish Catholics — Vote of thanks to the Irish prelates — The aristocratic section of the Irish Catholics opposed to the vote ; Counsellor Bellew and his brother Sir Edward — Corruption of the former — O'Connell "demolishes " his antagonists — Misunderstanding between O'Connell and Lord Fingal on the subject of the regent's pledge 291 CONTENTS. CHAPTER XIV. Chequered fortunes of O'Connell and the Catholic cause in 1813 — Catholic meetings throughout Ireland — Bitterness and fury of the government press against O'Connell — O'Connell's dauntless and defiant bearing in the teeth of adverse circumstances — Lord Whitworth suppresses the Catholic Board by proclamation — Noble conduct of John Philpot Curran . . 323 CHAPTER XV. The Catholic cause languishes for some years after the suppression of the Catholic Board — Final overthrow of Napoleon — Meanness of England in her hour of triumph — Peel and his Peel- ers — He creates the class of stipendiary magistrates — Fall of the war prices, and agricultural distress in Ireland — Peel's cheap ejectment laws — He resists inquiry into the condition of Ireland, and renews insurrection acts — Ireland scourged by famine and typhus-fever in 1817 347 CHAPTER XVI. The Kilmainham court-house meeting ; outrageous and unconstitutional proceedings of the sheriff — O'Connell's amusing controversy with Richard Lalor Shiel — O'Connell threatens to join the English radical reformers — William Conyngham Plunket's relief bills — O'Connell opposes them — Rude interruption of O'Connell at a Catholic meeting — Advances from the Orange corporation to the Catholics — Orange breach of faith —The visit of King George the Fourth to Ireland ; his enthusiastic reception by the people — The visit turns out a mockery and a delusion ; disappointment of Catholic hopes — The Irish avatar 381 CHAPTER XVII. O'Connell communicates the plan of a new association to Shiel at a friend's house in Wicklow — The real Catholic Association founded— Lord Killeen — Union of all sections of Catholics — The priests become active workers in the cause — Slow progress of the new movement at first — O'Connell a delightful travelling companion — O'Connell establishes the " Catholic rent " — Difficulties he has to overcome ; his project sneered at ; his tremendous energy — His complete triumph ; friends and enemies surprised — The popular element strong in the Catholic movement for the first time — The Association a sort of national government 407 CHAPTER XVIII. O'Connell and Shiel go to England as a deputation from the Catholic Association — Peel's crafty measure — Amusing incident at Wolverhampton, etc., etc 421 CHAPTER XIX. Preparations for the Clare election — O'Connell offers himself to the electors as a candidate for Parliamentary honors — The Irish soldiery in favor of O'Connell — Emancipation brought forward in Parliament by Wellington and Peel — The Association is dissolved — Bigoted opposition to the relief measure — The king struggles against it — It passes both Houses — George the Fourth reluctantly signs the bill — Its provisions — Disfranchisement of the forty-shilling freeholders — O'Connell at the bar of the Commons ; he is meanly refused his seat — His enthusiastic reception in Ireland — Irish gratitude — Odd squabbles — O'Connell is re-elected for Clare — Reflections on the great Catholic victory 45 r PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. Relations of Ireland to England the source of Irish misery — Independence necessary to Ireland's happiness — Aims of O'Connell's life — How far he succeeded — Where he failed, and why — Exaggeration of his theory of moral force — Ireland's capabilities — Rapid survey of Irish history down to the year 1775 491 CONCLUSION. O'Cennell at Derrynane — Varieties — Parliamentary career — Last Repeal agitation — The famine — O'Connell's last illness and death — His character 542 Portrait Gallery OF" THE 4 ITJcist f Prominent f Characters -h IN THE STRUGGM FOR IRELAND'S NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE, WITH- '2Biocjraphical -Sketches of fheir ,-Swes. MR. PARNELL AT THE AGE OF 6. (Born in Avondale June 27, 1846.) MR. PARNELL AT THE AGE OF 16. (From a portrait taken at the time he entered Cambridge University.) CHARLES STEWART PARNELL AS LEADER OF THE IRISH RACE. (TJied October 6, 1891. 1 From photographs furnished through the courtesy of the family. Thomas Parnell was born in Dublin in 1679, and is described in the " Encyclopedia Britannica " as holding a high place in literature among Queen Anne's poets. In 1717 he produced a translation of the Battle of the Frogs and the Mice. He was an intimate friend of Dean Swift and of Pope, and to the last he defended the latter when the critics of the period launched invectives against him. In 1718, while on his way to a living in Ireland, he died ; and Doctor Johnson, writing about him, said : " His praise must be derived from the easy sweetness of his diction ; in his verses there is more hap- piness than pains ; he is sprightly without effort, and always delights, though he never ravishes ; everything is proper, yet everything seems casual." He was a man of considerable private fortune, and the head of the English family from which was descended Mr. Charles Stewart Parnell. thomas parnell. Rear- Admiral of the United States Navy, (Poet ) Charles Stewart was born of Irish parents at Philadelphia on July 28, 1778. In 1791 he entered the merchant service as a cabin-boy, and before he was twenty he rose to the command of an Indiaman. In 1798 he entered the navy as lieutenant, and served on board the frigate United States against the French privateers. In the summer of 1813 he took command of the Constitution, and shortly afterward cap- tured the British war-vessel Picton — of fourteen guns — and several merchant vessels. In December, 1814, he set out on a second cruise, and on February 20, 1815, after an engage- ment of fifty minutes, he captured the two English war-ships Cyane and Levant. For these services he received from Congress a vote of thanks, a sword, and a gold medal ; from the Pennsylvania Legislature, a vote of thanks and a sword ; and from New York the freedom of the city of New York. He died at Borden- town, New Jersey, on November 7, 1869, hav- ing been in the service seventy-one years, and nineteen years senior officer of the United States Navy. His daughter, Delia Tudor, married John Henry Parnell, of Avondale, Ireland, in 1835, and from that marriage sprung Charles Stewart Parnell. COMMODORE STEWART. Mrs. Delia T. Parnell, the mother of the great Irish leader, is the. daughter of Ad- miral Stewart, who commanded the United States ship Constitution in the second war against Great Britain. During her married life, when with her husband she lived at Avon- dale, County Wicklow, her house became historically famous by reason of her extraor- dinary hospitality to the Irish political refugees of the """P^H^.-v period. During the time of the Fenian movement — 1865-67 — her house was always open to those who were hunted by the Government, and there can be no doubt but that her patriotism largely instilled into the young minds of her children those traits of hatred of oppres- sion and consuming national sentiment which have made their names famous in Ireland's history. Fanny, the second sister of Charles Stewart Parnell, was born at Avondale in 1848. Like him, her national sympathies were early aroused, and when far away, in a French convent, where she was placed to complete mrs. d. t. parnell ner education, she expressed her patriotism in many a sweet poem. When the Irish People newspaper was founded in Dublin, the editors were often amazed when this beautiful young girl handed them for publication the outpourings of her patriotic soul in exquisite verse. But they did not then know her; she signed her poems "Alerta," and her recompense was greater than money, for before a half dozen of them were published "Alerta" was universally acknowledged to be a poet of rare excellence — " one whose songs were the very soul-cry of the Irish race." With her sister Anna, she did much to or- ganize the Ladies' Land League ; her spirit enthused other ladies in the good work and when the leaders were in prison, her pen and advice were busy to keep alive the nationality of the movement of which her brother was leader. She died suddenly at the home of her mother at Bordentown, N. J., on July 29, 1882, and is buried in Mt. Auburn Cemetery, near Boston, Mass. FANNY PARNELL. HENRY GRATTAN. LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD. Lord Edward Fitzgerald was one of the most picturesque figures in the history of the '98 movement. He was arrested in the house of Mr. Nicholas Murphy, at 153 Thomas Street, Dublin, on May 20, 1798, and during the resistance which he made to the soldiery, was shot in the shoulder, from which wound he died on the morning of June 3d. There are few greater characters in Irish history than Henry Grattan. The Irish Parliament of 1782 has ever since that time been called " Grattan's Parlia- ment," and justly so, for it was he to whom the people of Ireland were in- debted for the quasi liberty of that Parliament. From the very first, all through the proceedings of the volun- teers and until the final session of that National Irish Parliament, he was the soul and spirit of it ; against every odds he fought for Irish nationality, and his speech at the closing session — when, through the treachery of England's ministers, the Act of the Union was perpetrated — will always live as one of the most patriotic and oratorical efforts of statesmanship. His peroration in this memorable speech is regarded by foes as well as friends as being the most remarkable periods of oratory ever deliv- ered. It is given at length in this work. ROBERT EMMET. Perhaps in the entire list of Irish patriots not one holds the affections of the Irish people as does the memory of Robert Emmet. There is a romance about his life which has been put into exquisite verse by our national poet: "She is far from the Land." But it was his fearlessness and de- termined patriotism which have endeared him to his countrvmen. Theobald Wolfe Tone is one of the most pic- turesquely patriotic characters in Irish history. He was born in Dublin in 1763, and at a very early age became very intimately connected with the Young Irish revolutionaries of the period. As he grew into manhood his patriotism increased in determination and vigor, and in 1795 he wrote the original declaration of the United Irishmen So- ciety. One year afterward he went to Paris, where he was received by the President of the Cabinet, M. Fleury. To him Tone told the story of his mission, and, after a few weeks of secret conferences, the French Republic decided to send an expedition to Ireland under the command of General Hoche, the hero of Dunkirk. Wolfe Tone was attached to this expedition, by the courtesy of the French Government, as chef de brigade. This expedition, which was afterward called the " Expedition of Bantry Bay," proved a dismal failure; the Irish "Directory" was unready, and, while waiting for signals from the shore, the French fleet was dispersed by a terrific storm. THOMAS DAVIS. GERALD GRIFFIN. Thomas Davis was born at Mallow, in the County of Cork, in 1814. He was the em- bodiment of a patriot, and his poems are so filled with truisms of liberty that it is im- possible to read them without being con- vinced that this young Irelander would have done more for his country by his brain and pen, than could hosts of disorganized con- spirators. Gerald Griffin was born in the County of Limerick, on Dec. 10, 1803. As a poet he has few peers in the repertoire of Irish poetry, and his novels, " The Collegians," etc., have a place in every library of note in the world. In 1838 he joined the Christian Brotherhood at the North Monastery, Cork, and he died there on June 12, 1840. A simple slab marks his resting-place. 5 justin McCarthy. Justin McCarthy was born in the city of Cork in 1831. When he was quite young he accepted a posi- tion as reporter on the Cork Examiner ; but McCarthy was not born to remain a reporter upon a provincial journal. In 1848 he was an ardent member of the movement of Smith O'Brien ; and there is no doubt but that this association moulded the national aspira- tions for which he is so conspicuous. But it is as a writer and historian rather than as an Irish leader that Mr. McCarthy's genius is more particularly dis- cernible. His literary efforts are a bright page in the record of Ireland's literati ; his " History of Our Own Times," "A Fair Saxon," and many other works of his have a world - renowned reputation, and class him among those great writers upon whose brows the na- tions have woven the laurel wreath. WILLIAM O BRIEN. William O'Brien was born in Mallow, in the County of Cork, and at an early age became a reporter on the Cork Examiner. But his lot was not destined to be only a reporter. His after-life and patriotic services will be found in detail in this vol- ume. JOHN DILLON John Dillon is the son of the Dr. Dillon of 1848 fame. The patriotism of his father has descended to him with added intensity, and if we except Mr. Parnell, Mr. Davitt, and Mr. O'Brien, no man has so well earned the love and esteem of his fellow-country- men. 6 Charles J. Kickham was born in Mullina- hone, County Tipperary, in 1830. At an early age he wrote for many periodicals. Some of his poems contain peculiarly delight- ful passages and patriotic sentiments ; but he is best known because of his unflinching hatred of English domination in Ireland. His two novels, " Knocknossard " and "The Untenanted Graves," are some of the best additions to Irish fiction. In 1866 he was arrested for his connection with the Fenian organization, and sentenced to fourteen years' penal servitude, but was released four years afterward. His poem " Patrick CHARLES J KICKHAM Sheehan " was written in prison, while his eyes were becoming very weak. It was ad- dressed concerning himself, as the follow- ing defiant passage will indicate : " Oh blessed Virgin Mary, Mine is a mournful tale: A poor blind prisoner here I am In Dublin's dreary jail ; Struck blind within the trenches Where I never feared a foe ; And now I'll never see again My own sweet Aherlow. Michael Davitt was born at Straid, in the County of Mayo, in 1846. When he was four years old his father was evicted, and the young Michael saw his home demolished by the " crowbar brigade." As his life is treated at length in this work, I shall here only quote from a letter of his to the late Archbishop MacHale, a passage of which MICHAEL DAVITT. tells much of his early life : " Some twenty- five years ago my father was ejected from a small holding near the parish of Straid, in Mayo, because unable to pay a rent which the crippled state of his resources, after struggling through the famine years, ren- dered impossible. Trials and sufferings in exile for a quarter of a century, physically disabled me for life." EDMUND DWYER GRAY. E. D. Gray was the son of Sir John Gray. He inherited his father's patriotism, and when he took charge of the Freeman's Jour- nal he made that paper purely national. His work in Parliament and his editorials on " The National Press " — chiefly his own — had much to say to the education of the Irish people concerninp self-government. A M. SULLIVAN Patrick Egan, the present U. S. Min- ister to Chili, was born in Dublin, and was extensively engaged in the milling business in that city until 1882, when he was forced to leave the country because of his connection with the Land League, as treasurer of that organization. When the Forster Act was put into operation, he and Mr. Thomas Brennan fled to Paris, taking with them the funds of the League, and this bold move saved their confiscation by the British Government. Mr. Egan ranks high in the estimation of his fellow-countrymen as a man of un- flinching patriotism and honor. During the progress of the Parnell- Times Commission Mr. Egan's name was frequently used by the Attorney-General for England as being that of a man con- nected with outrages and subsidizing criminals; but, long before the miserable Pigott made his confession, Mr. Egan had vindicated himself. His flight to Paris and his communications with those who afterward bec&me criminals or trai- tors, were all justified out of the mouths of his accusers themselves. ALrxANDER M. Sullivan was born in Bantry in 1833. His family dates back its origin, in this district, to a very an- cient period. His own father, and he himself, were house-painters, and many a man to-day living in Bantry points with pride to the handiwork of this illus- trious family. But Mr. Sullivan was pos- sessed of a genius beyond house-paint- ing. At a very early age some of his writings were published in the Dublin Nation j they attracted considerable at- tention, and a few years afterward he became editor of that journal. From that time forward, as a barrister, mem- ber of Parliament, and editor, he made a distinct feature in Ireland's struggle for self-government ; but his greatest successes were obtained in connection with his popular history of Ireland, enti- tled " The Story of Ireland." At the bar he was unexcelled as an advocate ; his utterances in Parliament are quoted from day to day by Irish public speak- ers ; but, as with all great figures in Irish affairs, death too soon robbed Ire- land of a fearless and bright son.. PATRICK EGAN. T. D. SULLIVAN. Mr. Sullivan is one of that famous family who have done so much for Ireland in recent years. With his brother, A. M. Sullivan, he carried Ireland's banner through many a bitter struggle in the A T ation; but he is best known to the Irish race through his national ballads. One of them, " God save Ireland," has been se- lected as the Irish national anthem. An- other, and of much greater poetic and literary merit, is "Deep in Canadian Woods." This song was written many years ago and set to an old Irish melody, and many a time, during the Civil War of the United States, an Irish regiment was heard singing in unison this patriotic bal- lad as they rushed into the conflict. Mr.. Sullivan's claim to Irishmen as a national and patriotic poet will live long after he has rested with his Chief, in Glasnevin Cemetery. Thomas Brennan was Secretary of the Irish Land League at the time when it was suppressed by the British Government. He it was who, at the time when Patrick Egan fled to Paris with the funds, took with him the records of the League, and thus defeated the designs of England. It was a bold undertaking ; but Mr. Brennan knew no fear when his country was to be served. In Paris he was subjected to the most rigid espionage by the detectives of the Government of England. Their design was to secure the papers of the League at any cost (honor included) ; but in Brennan they found a perfect enemy — he outwitted them at every step, and the secrets of his organization were secure. He is now a wealthy real estate agent in Lincoln, Ne- braska. Perhaps in the whole phalanx of Irishmen who repre- sented Ireland in the British Parliament, not one de- serves so much honor as Mr. T. P. O'Connor. A journalist of enviable reputation, a man who could have made a large fortune from his pen, he, in the very beginning of his journalistic successes, gave his time and energies to the cause of his country. Because of the field in which his literary efforts were strewn he understood and was in touch with the masses in England, and among them his work has been more effective in educating the English people as to the needs and position of the people of Ireland, than has been accomplished by any other man. His " Life of Dis- raeli " and his " Parnell Movement " are works which will live long after Mr. O'Connor is "gathered to his fathers." T. P. O'CONNOR. Mr. Timothy Harrington was born at Castletown- Berehaven, in the County of Cork, shortly after the famine of 1845-48. In his early days he had ample opportunity to observe the results of the iniquitous laws under which his countrymen groaned. After a time he moved to Tralee, County Kerry, and shortly afterward became the editor of the Kerry Sentinel. His intensely patriotic articles attracted the attention of the lead- ers of the Land Movement, and Mr. Harrington was in- vited to become Secretary of the League. He is per- haps the best organizer of a people on either hemi- sphere. Not only has he done the work, both inside and outside Parliament, but he did much of the thinking which led the people of Ireland to the position where Mr. Parnell's statesmanship brought them. TIMOTHY HARRINGTON Timothy Michael Healy was born in Bantry, County Cork, in 1855. He was educated at the Christian Brothers' school in Fermoy, but at thirteen he was obliged to set about the task of earning a livelihood. A few years afterward he became a parliamentary writer for the Dublin Nation. Recognizing his genius, Mr. Parnell soon brought him to the front ; he caused him to be elected a member of Parliament, appointed him his own secretary, and in many other ways paved the way for Mr. Healy's road to political distinction. As a result of his own genius and this training, no. more brilliant or satirical man ever represented an Irish con- stituency. TIMOTHY M HEALY. It is impossible, in a short notice, to say much of Mr. Gladstone or to criticise his acts. No greater Englishman ever lived. As I have alluded to him and to his acts concerning Ireland, at length, in my life of Parnell, I only desire that the readers of this short sketch shall study his character as I have portrayed it. It is undoubtedly the grandest character of this century. ARTHUR BALFOUR. (Ex-Chief Secretary for Ire'and.) Mr. Balfour is a nephew of Lord Salis- bury, the present Premier of England. But it is as Chief Secretary for Ireland that he is best known. The Coercion Acts which he introduced into the House of Commons, and which became law, will live forever as the most drastic measures ever forced on by a government. But he had the manliness to admit his error. Joseph Chamberlain was born near Birmingham in 1836. He was educated at University College, Lon- don, and after leaving college he went into the screw- making business of his father. After a time he retired from this business with a very large fortune and en- tered politics. In 1876 he was elected member of Parliament for Birmingham, and in 1880 he was selected by Mr. Gladstone for the Cabinet position of President of the Board of Trade, and possesses a great deal of that quality which impresses the masses ; his oratory, though of a somewhat inferior order, is, never- theless, effective ; but his overweening ambition and self-esteem have landed him in an inextricable polit- ical quagmire. With all his capabilities, he could never be a leader, and this ambition was the rook upon which he became shipwrecked. WILLIAM FORSTER. {Ex-Chief Secretary for Ireland ) Joseth Gillies Biggar was born in the County Louth, and succeeded his father as owner of one of the largest provision stores in Ireland. At a very- early age he became an ardent Irishman. His ideas were all given to the oppressed of his race. To him are we indebted for Mr. Parnell's grasp of parliamentary proceedings. He had only one love — Ire- land; and no patriot evergave so much of his life to his country as did Biggar. He was a simple man; he had no am- bition save to benefit oppressed Ireland, and his colleagues speak of this trait in his character as the one which made him so beloved of them. His was a strange and a curious character, filled only with a desire to benefit his country. Mr. Wm. Forster was Chief Secretary for Ireland during the Gladstone administration of 1 880-1 884. He became fa- mous at first because of his Co- ercion Act, under which over 2,000 Irishmen were imprisoned without trial. It was while Mr. Forster was Chief Secre- tary that the famous Kilmain- ham Treaty was made between Mr. Parnell and the British Government — one of the stipu- lations of which was that Mr. Forster should resign his posi- tion as Chief Secretary. After- ward — before his death — he was one of Ireland's best cham- pions. He was like Thomas — he needed to see and to feel to believe or understand. JOSEPH G. BIGGAR. SIR CHARLES RUSSELL. Sir Charles Russell was born at Newry in 1833. His parents having moved to Eng- land when he was quite young, he became an adopted son of England ; but, even in his early days, his sympathies were with the land of his birth ; and when he was called to the bar he indicated this sympathy un- erringly. He has been Attorney-General of England, and was knighted for his great legal acumen and integrity. No Englishman ever showed such feeling for oppressed Ireland as did Henry Labou- chere. His writings in his own paper, Truth, had much to say to the gains of the Irish national party in the Imperial Parlia- ment ; and his action concerning the forger- ies of Pigott in the famous Parnell-7>'w« case should never be forgotten by Irishmen. Thomas Sexton was born in Waterford in 1848. When he was only thirteen years old he entered into competition for a clerkship in the Waterford and Wexford Railway Com- pany, and, against thirty competitors, secured the position. In 1869 he moved to Dublin, and at once secured a position as leader-writer on the Dublin Nation. Finally, he was elected a member of Parliament, and he was undeniably one of the greatest acquisitions which the Irish party ever received. As an orator he has few peers ; none excel him in the British House of Commons. When Sexton rises in his place the benches are at once crowded, and the pro- verbial pin can be heard to fall as he delivers his speech. He has been Lord Mayor of Dub- lin, and few men have so well earned the re- gard and homage of the people of Ireland. THOMAS SEXTON. 13 RICHARD PIGOTT. Le Caron (Beach), the prime spy and informer of the past decade, is a figure too mean to dwell upon. He wormed himself into the confidences of the Irish in America, found out every criminality, and the Eng- lish Government greedily paid for the in- formation. His evidence on the Parnell- Times Commission is one of the most daring perjuries of the century. Richard Pigott was born in the city of Dublin. Of this man it is not my purpose to say much. He deserves more of pity than obloquy. An Irishman himself, when he was only sixteen years old he became a contributor to some of Ireland's most patriotic periodicals. Afterward he became an editor and owner of one of these sheets. But there was that in him which even patriotism could not quench. The fire that burned in his soul was fed by treachery ; and in those dark days of his life, before the climax of the Parnell- Times forgery case, he suffered as did few men. He was false to every- thing he was ever engaged in, and he was even false to himself, when in the Hotel des Ambassadores, in Madrid, he ended his miserable life with a bullet. CAPTAIN O'SHEA. It is unnecessary to say more of Captain O'Shea than that he figured so notoriously in connection with the later life of Mr. Par- nell. He figures as one of the most notori- ously odious characters in Irish history. It is impossible in such a work as this to say more of him — save where his name is necessarily mentioned in Mr. Parnell's life. 14 LORD DUFFERIN. Lord Dufferin was born in Florence in 1826, while his parents were sojourning there. He succeeded his father as fifth Baron Duf- ferin and Clandeboye. No peer of England — of the Irish peerage — ever showed such love for Ireland as did he. In 1872 he was ap- pointed Governor-General of Canada, and LADY DUFFERIN. In 1862 Lord Dufferin married the beau- tiful and accomplished Harriet Georgina Hamilton. Lady Dufferin had even in her girlhood become celebrated as a writer ; and though she is English of the English, her sympathies have ever been with oppressed Ireland. The marquis is truly fortunate in when he was leaving it he made a memora- having so gifted a wife. And I have no doubt ble speech, in which he said : " It is a very but that the writings of his mother, which peculiar thing that England has never been appeal to everybody, had much influence in able to govern her colonies without Ireland's assist- ance ; nine-tenths of her governor -generals are Irish ; it seems to me that this should be a proof that Ireland is able to govern herself, and it is even more strange that to this great colony the Queen has ap- pointed to succeed me an- other Celt — the Marquis of Lome — -who, though not Irish, is of the same race from which we have all sprung. This fact lessens my sorrow at parting from you." Probably this pride of race was induced by his mother, the famous Lady Dufferin, whose poems con- tain such exquisite pathos and true Irish sentiment. Her " Lament of the Irish Emigrant " is one of the most beautiful poems of our race. shaping her love for Ire- land. LORD FREDERICK CAVENDISH. (Assassinated May 6, 1882.) Lord Frederick Caven- dish was appointed Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, in May, 1882. He was friend- ly to the cause of Ireland, and a wave of gladness swept over the country when his appointment was announced. But unlucki- ly, when he landed in Ire- land, he was met by Mr. Burke (the Under-Secre- tary), and as the Invinci- bles had decided to kill Mr. Burke, they — without knowing who he was — also assassinated him. All Ire- land mourned him — all the Irish race mourned the error. IS KILMAINHAM JAIL Kilmainham Jail is the most historic prison in Ireland. Here some of Ireland's greatest patriots have been incarcerated, and here the suspects of Mr. Forster's Act were first imprisoned. It has more political bearing on Ireland's destinies than has any other prison. ffp i , i PARNELL, DILLON, AND O'KEL KILMAINHAM PRISON This picture should be historical. It shows Mr. Parnell, Mr. Dillon, and Mr. O'Kelly leaving Kilmainham prison after the Kilmainham Treaty. This Treaty is explained at length in this volume ; it needs to be read to understand the importance of its historical meaning. 16 Liberty crowning Parnell. r^fyarles ^teWart ]pari}ell. HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. S y / ' Is there no call, no consecrating cause, Approv'd by heav'n, ordained by nature's laws, Where justice flies the herald of our way, And truth's pure beams upon the banners play ? Yes ! there's a call sweet as an angel's breath, To slumb'ring babes, or innocence in death ; And urgent as the tongue of heav'n within, When the mind's balance trembles upon sin. Oh ! 'tis our country's voice, whose claim should meet An echo in the soul's most deep retreat ; Along the heart's responding chords should run, JSTor let a tone there vibrate — but the one ! " — Thomas Moore. X Z o H x x co GO < Z g < z H Z o Q Z O CO 5- H co w •-> < OS w CO Q Z 5 cu < CO o£ Z O CO co 5 o U w rc > )oux- ?lA t ) Iwi? fcgtvMV idol mlftfit lct)vftv <:} >tt£fc< [Fngg iwctlficC w fcin a'ujivAtVsi? 0» l(w mo»l aJjtvnSi^ and cj?JpciUmt >ctvitts to ifU pitsen V utanl't o f out jUatvH »K| )»Job&, u> fii£c EB ttwy at' Utcx»n4- Um< frucinoml toUJl- 6n*ou**$i.nf } $io\tt fetsl&e fidMx&wiXlfawcrfoM fafil g EUi.n3. T igfiifc jllPMr?fl.ft? 3 o f"fe>ntiu:>, )3ar>|jfvnvtf Ikv'ft J»CW?fe| HeuvivendwH} and indefizll aa&& cxc tl ion^funn ln& fal i um'uA jnfttout. f am ine.- gCem oflilcud fcw3ttf3 in J^{ <*n3 9v\m.\i&i&* Ut \sm^jc, cw2 t&toi&S u> Un tx^edowk joy xa Ifvcy (?&3 g<2 t)o» ihc mou\C otfofcotl of tltt ictki ^E35%S&> frw Kt>twntAU«>« of-lfu- $>u>fc •\3*e\3.Ct. cm? 3t&gAJ^ of lh£ '•TktUonfll fc»n3 £ea A*w,uenani *Ce u\ntn lf t4 OVagt of OkfrtiagnfatvotfJ fe^tVnlx? ufam ^zuhCmc of eC e\joecJUn a\Xv<' kh^ (m^ ?fr&3 flWJJ Uu- wwtlccj tttml-3coltmUon an? CUiS tftneZ*' of n&Honi ftorn- Ifu. \ tftafc fUt 3tf&*>f uttwtf. (Wt 'mntw3Utl e tW rvy t »tfa cu i oific Ay'olatvcc o f >•; . * ■ « * ■ "^ X)i$tv*5- ■•• .; -•• ;_ - ; -'• • '■ :, -'•. . *'• . " . *' ; " ; '■ ; ■; I * .-. * 1 • ...CI. JDCcuCc, * ], " . '.* f rM }'. &ctuu.td) .,.-'"' IKU&aJb i5Da*-av. . -• ■ * ^ ' Fac-simile of Address presented to Mr. Parnell by the People of Ireland, on his Return from America in March, 1880. HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 61 Ireland. He started for New York the moment his lecture was finished, and upon the morning of March ioth — just before he sailed — he laid the foundation of the Land League in America. He arrived at Queenstown on March 21st ; the dissolution took place on the 24th, and the first election in Ireland on April 1 st. Mr. O'Connor says of him that "the moment he landed in Ireland he pro- ceeded to fight the election with an energy that seemed diabolical. He rushed from one part of the country to another, made innumerable speeches, had inter- views with most of the parliamentary candidates, himself stood for three con- stituencies." The result of his indefatigable work was that out of a total Irish representation of 103, sixty-eight men were elected as Home Rulers. And it is interesting to note here that Mr. Parnell fought the entire election with ,£1,250 — ^1,000 of which he obtained as a personal loan. On April 29, 1880, the following programme of Parliamentary Land Reform was prepared and signed by Messrs. Charles S. Parnell, J, J. Louden, A. J. Ket- tle, William Kelly, and Patrick Egan (now United States Minister to Chili) : "THE LAND ACT OF 1870. " In 1870, Parliament considering it 'expedient to amend the law relating to the occupation and ownership of land in Ireland,' passed what is known as the Land Act. This act had for object — (i) To provide for the tenant security of tenure ; (2) to vest in him the property which he created in his holding by the expenditure of his labor and capital ; and (3) to enable tenants to become the owners of their holdings. " To give effect to these objects provision was made to compensate for dis- turbance tenants evicted by the act of the landlord ; to compensate for the loss of their improvements, tenants voluntarily quitting their holdings or evicted for non-payment of rent, and to empower the Board of Works to advance money to tenants for the purchase of their holdings, where landlord and tenant had agreed for the sale of same. Has the act succeeded in giving effect to the intentions of its authors ? Has it established security of tenure for the tenant farmers of Ireland ? Has it secured to them the property which their industry and capital may have created in the soil ? Has it prevented the arbitrary increase of rent? Or has it, even to a limited extent, established a peasant proprietary ? To these questions, we regret, there is but one answer — 02 CHARLES STEWART PARXELL. the Land Act has failed. The experience of the last ten years justifies this asser- tion. Within that period tenants have been capriciously evicted, rents have been arbitrarily increased, and improvements have been confiscated as if the act never existed. To check, if not to render impossible, eviction under notices to quit, pro- vision was made (sec. 3) that where a tenant is ' disturbed by the act of the land- lord,' the court having jurisdiction in the matter may award him compensation for the loss of his holding. The sum to be so awarded is subject to certain limits prescribed by the act left to the discretion of the chairman (now the county court judge). For example — where a holding is valued at ^10 annually or under, the sum awarded ' shall in no case exceed seven years' rent.' It was soon judicially decided that, according to the wording of the section, the judge might award the whole scale of compensation, or any part of it. This discretionary power vested in the court has left the position of the tenant farmer more pre- carious than ever. In most cases he could not even hazard a guess as to what his rights were, as to what his compensation (if any) might be. In the adjudica- tion of claims everything depends upon the skill and moral constitution of wit- nesses — upon the ability and uprightness of the judge. Where one chairman — a man of broad views, uninfluenced by class prejudices — might grant ample and fair compensation — a sum sufficiently large to deter a landlord from evicting his tenants — another, perhaps of narrow mind, and one who owed his appointment to landlord patronage, would allow no actual compensation whatever. To this inequality of justice, and to the risks and expenses which a tenant should under- go in order to assert his rights, may be attributed the failure of the Land Act to secure to the ' industrious occupier the benefits of his industry,' and to protect him in quiet and peaceable possession of his home. " MR. BUTT'S BILL. " The Land Act having failed to settle the Irish Land Question, a bill was introduced into Parliament by the late Mr. Butt, which, it was alleged, would ' enable occupiers to hold their lands upon tenures sufficiently secure to induce them to make improvements.' The advocates of this measure contend that the bill, if passed, would ' root the tenant farmers in the soil,' by establishing fixity of tenure at fair rents. " ' Fixity of tenure at fair rents' is, no doubt, an attractive phrase, but its only merit is, that it is attractive. Let us examine it as a proposed solution of HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 63 the Land Question, and first as to 'fair rents.' How is the fairness or unfair- ness of rents to be determined ? For an answer we must appeal to part 3 of Mr. Butt's bill, wherein provisions are set forth purporting to enable ' the occu- piers of land to obtain certain and secure tenures.' Clause 33 of the bill provides that the chairman shall give to a tenant a ' declaration of tenancy,' and shall therein specify the rent to be paid by him in respect of such premises. Clause 45 provides that when the landlord and tenant shall not agree upon the rent to be so specified, ' the same shall be left to the decision of three arbitrators.' " Now, how is a tenant to obtain a 'declaration of tenancy,' specifying the rent which he is to pay for his holding ? How is he to obtain the benefit of Mr. Butt's measure ? By bringing an action against his landlord ! In the first place, he should serve notice of claim upon the landlord, then file this claim, as claims are now filed under the Land Act, and when the claim was so filed the case as between landlord and tenant would be ripe for hearing. The judge is empow- ered to specify in the declaration of tenancy the rent as fixed by the arbitrators. But suppose the landlord is dissatisfied with the rent so fixed, he may appeal to the assizes, and should the decision of that tribunal be adverse, he may bring the suit to the Court of Land Cases Reserved. Nor is that all, for even when a declaration of tenancy is obtained the landlord would have the right to apply to a court of equity to set aside the said declaration of tenancy on the ground of fraud (clause 42). " From the foregoing it appears plain that no tenant could derive any bene- fit from Mr. Butt's bill unless he had plenty of money to spend in litigation. To obtain a declaration of tenancy, even if no appeal existed, a solicitor should be employed to prepare notices, a civil engineer to survey the holding, experts to value the improvements claimed by the tenant, and witnesses as to the time of occupancy should be procured. Then there would be the expenses of the hear- ing, solicitors' costs and counsels' fees. Where could the tenant farmer be found (unless, perhaps, a rich grazier) who would venture to obtain security of tenure at the risk and expense of legal proceedings as above set forth ? Where is the small tenant (and there are in Ireland 320,000 holdings valued under £8 a year, of which 175,003 are valued under £4.) to whom such proceedings would not bring certain ruin ? We feel convinced that of the 600,000 tenant farmers in Ireland not more than 100,000 would be able to pay the costs necessary to obtain a declaration of tenancy, and even this minority, having secured such declaration 64 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. of tenancy from the court after tedious and expensive litigation, would reap therefrom a very duhious benefit. " Suppose a declaration of tenancy obtained, the rent fixed for 2 1 years, would the tenant thereby be secured against eviction ? If the rents had been fixed in all Ireland three years ago, what would be the position of the tenant farmers to-day in face of the fall which has taken place in the value of farm pro- duce ? If rents were fixed to-morrow, what guarantee is there that increased foreign competition would not cause a still greater fall in the value of land ? And yet the advocates of fixity of tenure would tie the tenants of Ireland to conditions in regard to rent which would in all probability bring about their ruin. We cannot, then, undertake the responsibility of recommending Mr. Butt's bill as a settlement of the Land Question, nor can we conceive any permanent measure having for its object the adjustment of rents as between landlord and tenant which to the tyranny of the rent office would not add the uncertainty and peril of the court of law. " PROGRAMME FOR CONSIDERATION OF CONFERENCE. " Feeling convinced, then, that it is inexpedient to maintain and impossi- ble to amend the present relations between landlord and tenant, the question presents itself, What measure of land reform do the exigencies of the situation demand ? The Land Question in Ireland is the tangled heritage of centuries of one-sided class legislation, the successful solution of which will necessitate the greatest care and investigation, together with an anxious desire to do right on the part of all who approach its consideration. Time will be needed by the present House of Commons to inform itself as to the merits of a question which is only just commencing to be understood in Ireland and is scarcely understood at all in England. " PROVISIONAL MEASURE FOR SUSPENSION OF POWER OF EJECTMENT, ETC., FOR TWO YEARS. " We, therefore, recommend as an ad interim measure, in view of the desperate condition of the country, until comprehensive reforms can be per- fected, that a bill should be pushed forward with all speed suspending for two years ejectments for non-payment of rent, and for overholding, in the case of all holdings valued at ^10 a year and under, and suspending for a similar period of HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. QQ two years in the case of any holding whatsoever the right of recovering a higher rent than the poor-law valuation. " PROPOSALS FOR PERMANENT REFORM. " Next, as to the permanent reform of land tenure in Ireland, we are of opinion that the establishment of a peasant proprietary is the only solution of the question which will be accepted as final by the country. The Land Act created, as between landlord and tenant, an irregular partnership in the owner- ship of the land, giving to the former a right to rent for his interest in the soil, and to the latter a right to compensation for the loss of his property therein. Now, we venture to assert that this system, whereby two opposing classes have valuable interests in the same property, must cease to exist. The well-being of the State, the preservation of the people, the peace and prosperity of the coun- try, demand the dissolution of a partnership which has made financial ruin and social chaos the normal condition of Ireland ; and the time has arrived when Parliament must decide whether a few non-working men or the great body of industrious and wealth-producing tillers of the soil are to own the land. " CREATION OF A DEPARTMENT OF LAND ADMINISTRATION FOR IRELAND. " To carry out the permanent reform of land tenure referred to, we propose the creation of a department or commission of land administration for Ireland. This department would be invested with ample powers to deal with all questions relating to land in Ireland : " i. Where the landlord and tenant of any holding had agreed for the sale to the tenant of the said holding, the department would execute the necessary conveyance to the tenant, and advance him the whole or part of the purchase- money, and upon such advance being made by the department, such holding would be deemed to be charged with an annuity of £$ for every ^100 of such advance, and so in proportion for any less sums, such annuity to be limited in favor of the department, and to be declared to be repayable in the term of 35 years. " 2. Where a tenant tendered to the landlord for the purchase of his hold- ing a sum equal to 20 years of the poor-law valuation thereof, the department would execute the conveyance of the said holding to the tenant, and would be empowered to advance to the tenant the whole or any part of the purchase- gg CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. money, the repayment of which would be secured as set forth in the case of voluntary sales. " 3. The department would be empowered to acquire the ownership of any estate upon tendering to the owner thereof a sum equal to 20 years of the poor- law valuation of such estate, and to let said estate to the tenants at a rent equal to 3! per cent, of the purchase-money thereof. " 4. The department or the court having jurisdiction in this matter, would be empowered to determine the rights and priorities of the several persons en- titled to or having charges upon or otherwise interested in any holding conveyed as above mentioned, and would distribute the purchase-money in accordance with such rights and priorities, and when any moneys arising from a sale were not immediately distributable, the department would have a right to invest the said moneys for the benefit of the parties entitled thereto. " Provision would be made whereby the Treasury would from time to time advance to the department such sums of money as would be required for the purchases above mentioned. " EASY TRANSFER OF LAND, COMPULSORY REGISTRATION, ETC. " To render the proposed change in the tenure of land effectual, it would be necessary to make provision for the cheap and simple transfer of immovable property. To effect this an organic reform of the law of real property would be requisite. The Statute of Uses should be repealed, distinctions between 'legal' and ' equitable ' interests abolished, and the law of entail swept away. In short, the laws relating to land should be assimilated as closely as possible to the laws relating to personal property. The Landed Estates Court would be transferred to the Department of Land Administration, its system of procedure cheapened and improved. In each county in Ireland there would be established a registry office, wherein all owners of land would be compelled to register their titles, wherein also would be registered mortgages and all charges and interests whatso- ever. Titles so registered (in accordance with rules provided for the purpose) would be made indefeasible. "With such a system of registration established and legal phraseology in conveyancing abolished, a holding of land might be transferred from one owner to another as cheaply as a share in a ship or money in the funds, and thus no apparent obstacle would stand in the way of the Department of Land Adminis- Patrick Egan. HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 67 tration from carrying out the reforms which we have suggested, reforms which, it may be hoped, will bring prosperity and contentment to an impoverished and distracted country. " (Signed), Charles S. Parnell. J. J. Louden. A. J. Kettle. Wm. Kelly. Patrick Egan." It will be observed that one important name is wanting from the sig- natures to this document. It is the name of Michael Davitt. Mr. Davitt be- longed to a more advanced section of the Land League, and he thought (and subsequent events have justified his judgment) that the terms offered to the Irish landlords, in that programme, were too favorable. At the public conference, which was called for April 29, 1880, to discuss the Land Reform platform, drafted by Mr. Parnell and his friends, Mr. Parnell explained a portion of the platform, as follows : "Under Mr. Gladstone's Land Act" (that is, the Act of 1870) "tenants valued at £10 and under, if disturbed by the act of the landlord, were entitled to seven years' rent as compensation." That is not strictly so; that was the maximum for which compensation could be given, not that they were entitled to it. Then there was an interrup- tion by The O'Donoghue, M.P. for Tralee, who asked whether there may be an opportunity of moving an amendment to the resolution. Mr. Parnell proceeded : " Perhaps I might explain to my honorable friend it is perfectly competent for any one to move an amendment to this resolution or substitute a resolution for it. The Land League invites and desires full discussion. This conference has been brought together for the purpose of consultation, and the Land League does not desire in assembling the gentlemen composing this conference to tie them down to the programme it puts before the conference. It was our duty to prepare a programme ; a committee was appointed for that purpose, and published the programme so prepared on Monday last. It has now been before the country for several days, and we trust and hope that one of the results will be that a very full discussion will take place as to the propositions made by the committee of the Land League. Now, I was just saying that in the case of 68 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. tenants valued at ,£io a year and under, the Land Act provided that, if disturbed by the act of the landlord, the Chairman may award to such tenant seven years' rent in lieu of compensation, in addition to sums for permanent improvements ; but if such a tenant be evicted for non-payment of rent, he loses all claim to this seven years' compensation for disturbance, and he is entitled to only what- ever the Chairman may award him for permanent improvements. Now, Mr. Chairman, it is just this class of tenants who are most stricken to the ground by the present calamity. Many of them are in a state of starvation and unable to pay any rent at all ; and if the landlord is left in full possession of the rights which the Land Act of 1870 gives him, and if he proceeds to exact those rights, the result will be, in the west of Ireland, during this coming autumn and winter, scenes which we all must shudder to look forward to ; and therefore I think that one of the first duties of the land reformers should be to place the Legislature in possession of the circumstances affecting these 320,000 small tenants, to point out their situation, and to place before the Legislature a method whereby time may be obtained for a solution of this question, and the frightful evils which we anticipate will follow. We don't desire more than an act suspending the ample powers which the law at present gives in the case of these small tenants. I, myself, think that no Land Act can reach the case, no permanent Land Act can reach the case, of the majority. Many of them, per- haps the majority, are crowded upon small holdings of poor lands in the west of Ireland, holdings on which, in the best of times, they can scarcely earn a livelihood and pay the rent. As a matter of fact, they have not been paying the rent out of their land ; they have been paying it by working as day-labcrers in England and Scotland for other farmers, or by working for larger farmers in their own neighborhood. And the question as to how these 320,000 tenant farmers are to be dealt with in a permanent enactment is one that requires the greatest consideration and care. I say, then, protect these people for a year or two, until the Legislature has had time to give that consideration which we may assume it is willing to give to their case. Then the second part of the resolu- tion deals more particularly with tenants valued at a higher rate than ^"io; it suspends for a period of two years the right of recovering a higher rent than the poor-law valuation. Now, I think everybody will agree with me that the poor-law valuation is at the outset the highest rent any tenant can afford to pay. Save under very exceptional circumstances, there are perhaps some of the rich HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. g() grazing lands which reach a higher value than the poor-law valuation, but speaking as a general rule of holdings valued over £10 throughout Ireland, I think everybody will admit, landlords and tenants, that a higher rent than the poor-law valuation cannot be paid, under the present circumstances, for such holdings. In fact, I believe that many landlords have already throughout Ire- land reduced their rents to this valuation, and I am sure we shall not be accused of asking anything very exorbitant when we ask that, until Parliament has had time to investigate this difficult land question, this class of tenants, who have a large property, many of them invested in their holdings, valuable stock and so forth, should be protected from those landlords who desire to run counter to all dictates of common sense, by desiring to exact a higher rent than the poor- law valuation." On May 17th, in the same year, perhaps the most important meeting of Irish Representatives that was ever convened, if we except the unsavory last session of the Irish Parliament, was held in the City Hall, Dublin. The differ- ence existed in the fact that the men who took part in the last session of the Irish Parliament in 1800 were actors in the iniquitous bill which robbed Ireland of her national independence; whereas those who formed the meeting of May 17, 1880, selected as their leader — the leader of the Irish race — a man whose life was to be devoted to the regaining of that Parliament. Mr. Parnell was that man, and he was elected by a majority of five over the Whig-Home Ruler, Mr. William Shaw. As the occasion is of such historical importance, I give the exact vote : For Mr. Parnell — John Barry, Wexford ; Joseph G. Biggar, Cavan ; Garret M. Byrne, Wexford ; Dr. Andrew Cummins, Roscommon ; W. J. Corbett, Wicklow ; John Daly, Cork; Charles Dawson, Carlow ; James L. Finigan, Ennis ; H. J. Gill, Westmeath ; Richard Lalor, Queens County ; Edmund Leamy, Waterford ; James Leahy, Kildare ; M. M. Marum, Kilkenny ; J. C. McCoan, Wicklow ; Justin McCarthy, Longford; T. P. O'Connor, Gal way ; Arthur O'Connor, Queens County ; The O'Gorman Mahon, Clare ; James O'Kelly, Roscommon ; W. H. O'Shea, Clare ; W. H. O'Sullivan, Limerick ; Thomas Sexton, Sligo ; T. D. Sullivan, Westmeath — 23. For Shaw — John A. Blake, Waterford ; Maurice Brooks, Dublin ; Philip Callan, Louth ; Colonel David Colthurst, Cork ; George Errington, Longford ; J. W. Foley, New Ross ; Charles J. Fay, Cavan ; Daniel F. Gabbett, Limerick ; 70 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. E. D. Gray, Carlow ; D. H. McFarlane, Carlovv ; Sir J. N. McKenna, Youghal ; Patrick Martin, Kilkenny; Charles H. Meldon, Kildare ; Sir P. O'Brien, Kings County ; Richard Power, Waterford ; P. J. Smyth, Tipperary ; John Smithvvick, Kilkenny ; E. J. Synan, Limerick — 18. And of the eighteen " Moderate " Home Rulers who voted against Mr. Parnell's election on this occasion, only four were re-elected to Parliament by the Irish constituencies. As elected Chairman of the Irish parliamentary party and leader of the Irish people, we shall now have to treat directly with the extraordinary life of self-sacrifice and sterling patriotism of Mr. Parnell in his battle for Irish autonomy. CHAPTER IV. The Land Agitation— Mr. Parnell as Leader of the Irish Nation— The sudden change of opinion of the Irish Priesthood and Episcopacy— The Land Act of 1881— Coer- cion— Gladstone and Parnell — Mr. Parnell arrested— His Historical Speech at Wexford. JHE first appearance of the political doctrines of the Land League and the followers of Mr. Parnell occurred in the House of Commons in its opening session after the general election. In the opinion of Mr. Shaw and his friends, the existing Ministry was so friendly to Ireland that they decided to signify their general adherence to the Government by sitting on the same side of the House. But, in the words of Mr. O'Connor : The supporters of Mr. Parnell maintained that even between a friendly Liberal Ministry and an Irish National party there was an irreconcilable difference on the Irish National question and on several others. They held that the only hope of a satisfactory solution of the Irish question was that Irish members should maintain a position of absolute independence of the English parties; that, therefore, the attitude of the Irish Nationalists was one of permanent op- position to all English administrations, and that this political attitude should be signified by their continuing to keep their seats on the opposition side of the House. Subsequent events brought out more clearly the grave issues which underlay this apparently trivial action. It meant simply that the party, led by Mr. Parnell, would not support any English Ministry ; that they held them- selves aloof from every English party, and that they were present in the English House of Commons for no purpose of Imperial legislation, but only to watch the opportunity when they could benefit Ireland. It was an entirely new de- parture, and it discomfited the Government immensely. Thirty-six men were pledged to follow this course — now there are eighty-six — and, by their con- sistent and unrelenting attitude it was calculated, and justly, that in short party majorities the life-lease of the Governments of England rested in the voting power of this band of patriotic Irishmen. They were not with or of any Eng- (71) CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. lish political party : the calculations of majority which Liberal and Tory " whips " were accustomed to make with such peculiar accuracy were now im- possible, and it soon became the custom that instead of patronizing the Irish members, Mr. Parnell and his followers were fawned upon and courted, inasmuch as that they practically held in their hands the balance of power. Upon the reading of the Queen's Speech at this initial session of the Parnellite party, it was found that although she dwelt at some length upon the condition of Turkey, Afghanistan, India, and South Africa, not one word was there in it about the Irish Land question. Mr. Parnell immediately summoned his associates to meet him at the rooms in King Street, Westminster ; and here the first amendment to a " Queen's Speech," of its kind, was prepared by a united Irish party. Probably not one of the thirty-six men who attended this meeting, excepting Parnell and Biggar, had the faintest idea of what an im- portant event in the history of the two countries was being then enacted. For that matter, no man of any politics could tell the grave significance of this first act of the new Irish leader. As we proceed it will be made plain. This was the amendment : "And to humbly assure Her Majesty that the important and pressing ques- tion of the occupiers and cultivators of the land in Ireland deserves the most serious and immediate attention of Her Majesty's Government, with a view to the introduction of such legislation as will secure to these classes the legitimate fruits of their industry." The effect of the announcement of this amendment upon the House was not discernible. At this time the forces behind Ireland's New Party were not a measurable quantity, and the friends of the Government positively chuckled with delight over the " refreshing impudence of Parnell." They did not know the man. Mr. Parnell declared in his first speech of the session that he "trem- bled to think of what the consequences might be if the Government gave the aid of their soldiers and their police to the landlords, who were determined to take advantage of the widespread distress in Ireland, and push on evictions at a disastrous rate." This statement did not then have much effect ; but it is posi- tively amusing to note how soon was his power as the leader of a fearless Irish party recognized. The Liberal ministers and the followers of Mr. Parnell were at that stage in which it was yet undecided whether doubting affection would end in closer HIS BRILLIANT CAREER 73 bonds or in permanent estrangement ; but, meantime, Mr. Parnell and his friends contemplated a second move. The great object at that time was to stay the hand of the landlord, made omnipotent over the tenantry by the failure of the crops : and to meet this emergency the Irish party brought in the Suspension of Evictions Bill. This measure, like Mr. Parnell's speech, received comparatively little attention, and was allowed to proceed on its course without any " blocking " motion. The truth was, that the members of the new Parliament had not yet settled down to their work, had not learned the arts and machinery of parliament- ary warfare, and Mr. Warton had not shown his portentous shape on the par- liamentary horizon. The result was, that the second reading of the Suspension of Evictions Bill came on at two o'clock one fine morning, to the horror and surprise of the Treasury bench. For the first time the Irish party was in strength ; nearly forty of them were present, and they completely filled two of the benches below the gangway, and anybody who looked at their faces could see that they; had braced themselves for a struggle, and really meant business. This certainly was the impression made upon Mr. Gladstone. He looked up from the paper on which he was writing his nightly report of parliamentary proceedings to the Queen, with a gaze first of pained amazement, and then of pathetic appeal to the serried and resolute ranks opposite him. But the Irishmen, who had to think of hundreds of thousands of other faces that looked to their inner minds with hungry hope from cabin and field, had their advantage, were determined to hold to it, and declared that the discussion of the bill must go on. The Premier yielded to the inevitable ; made the important announcement that the Govern-, ment themselves would consider the subject raised by Mr. Parnell's measure, and so the Irish Land question, which but a few days before had been scouted out of court, which had never been mentioned at the first Cabinet Council, of whose existence the Queen's Speech knew absolutely nothing, had already, with- in a couple of weeks after the meeting of Parliament, been taken up by the Gov- ernment as one of the chief and primary questions of the session. And the starv- ing tenants, just emerging from famine, might hope that the landlords would not be allowed to work unchecked their wicked will. This, in fact, was the first parliamentary victory that the Land League gained. And that initial victory of the Parnellite party was destined as the precursor of more political — constitutionally political — victories in the British House of Commons than were ever before obtained by even majorities. It is indeed 74 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. strange how great a power can be wielded by a small united party, unpledged to any of the great opposing elements of a legislature. And here I shall take the liberty of, once again, giving Mr. O'Connor's estimate of Mr. Parnell as the leader of this small but united party. He says : " The nature of Mr. Parnell impels him to drive, in political matters, the hardest of hard bargains within his power ; his grip of a political advantage for his countrymen is as relentless as the grip of death." It was this trait in Mr. Parnell's character that made the Irish party such a remarkable power in the government of England, and we shall soon see how the determination of that one Irishman, backed by as determined fol- lowers, affected the destinies of the British Empire. His policy was, in the main, a policy of expedience, and, as a matter of fact, it was the only policy that an Irish leader could adopt with hope of any success in the English Parliament. Truths and grievances — no matter how dramatically portrayed — did not affect the parties of England ; but when a solid thirty-six members of Parliament blocked the business of the British Empire it became expedient to listen to them. Mr. Parnell again and again reiterated to his followers that the amount of ministerial concession could only be measured by the strength and determination of the Irish people — organized. For instance, he said, at New Ross: "I be- lieve I have always expressed the opinion that the question will be settled when it is perfectly ripe for settlement throughout the length and breadth of the coun- try, and it is far more important for us to make the question ripe than to knock our heads against each other, discussing plans as to how it may be best settled before it is ripe." At Longford he spoke in the same vein, and this was always in connection with Mr. Gladstone's proposed Land Bill, in which he did not believe. He said at Longford : " The extreme limit of our demands, when the time comes, must be meas- ured, as I have said repeatedly in other places already, by the results of your exertions this winter (1880), and you may rely upon it that, whatever your ex- ertions entitle you to claim, we will press for with vigor, determination, and success. The nature of the settlement of the Land question depends entirely upon yourselves. The Government have no notion yet how they are going to settle it, and they won't make up their minds until they see what you are going to do." This was, all through his career as leader, Mr. Parnell's advice to the people HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 75 of Ireland. He did not say / will do this, that, or the other thing for you ; he preached the doctrine of self-reliance, of organization, of unity and determina- tion, and he said, " Whatever your exertions entitle you to claim, we (the Irish parliamentary party) will press for with vigor, determination, and success." And then, in explanation of what it was that he as leader was ready to accept as the outcome of this unity and determination among the people, he said, at New Ross, on September 25, 1880 : " We seek as Irish Nationalists for a settlement of the Land question which shall be permanent — which shall forever put an end to the war of classes which unhappily has existed in this country, .... a war which supplies, in the words of the resolution, the strongest inducement to the Irish landlords to uphold the system of English misrule which has placed these landlords in Ireland. And looking forward to the future of our country, we wish to avoid all elements of antagonism between classes. I am willing to have a struggle between classes in Ireland — a struggle that should be short, sharp, and decisive — once for all ; but I am not willing that this struggle should be perpetuated at intervals, when these periodic revaluations of the holdings of the tenants would come under the system of what is called ' fixity of tenure at valued rents.' " And he continued : " Now, then, is the time for the Irish tenantry to show their determination — to show the Government of England that they will be satisfied with nothing less than the ownership of the land of Ireland. " Talk of fixity of tenure at fair rents, I think that the Irish tenants should be able to look forward to a time when all rents would cease — when they would have homes of their own, without the necessity of making annual payments for them. And I see no difficulty in arriving at such a solution, and in arriving at it in this way : by the payment of a fair rent, and a fair and fixed rent not liable to recurrent and perhaps near periods of revision, but by the payment of a fair rent for the space of, say, thirty-five years, after which time there would be nothing further to pay, and in the meantime the tenant would have fixity of tenure. " Let the arbitration be made now, and you would find that the magic of property, which turns sand into gold, would enable the then safe, and the now miserable tenant of the most barren and unproductive holdings in Ireland to bring it into such a state of culture as to put him beyond the reach of famine after two or even three bad seasons." 76 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. From these quotations from his speeches at that time, it will readily be seen that he persistently advocated a peasant proprietary — or in other words, the ex- termination of landlordism — as a final settlement of the land question. In the meantime the Castle authorities were becoming alarmed at the tri- umphal progress of Mr. Parnell and ol the Land movement. Toward the beginning of October the cry for Coercion had " swollen to a tempest," but it decreased for a little time because of two remarkable speeches of Mr. John Bright and Mr. Chamberlain. " I saw (said Mr. Bright) the statement the other day that about ioo Irish landlords, equal nearly to the number of the Irish members, had assembled in Dublin and discussed the state of things, and they had nothing but their old' remedy — force; the English Government, armed police, increased military assist- ance and protection, and it might be measures of restriction and coercion which they were anxious to urge upon the Government. The question for us to ask ourselves is, Is there any remedy for this state of things ? Force is no remedy. There are times when it may be necessary, and when its employment may be absolutely unavoidable, but for my part I should rather regard, and rather dis- cuss, measures of relief as measures of remedy, than measures of force, whose influence is only temporary, and in the long run I believe is disastrous." But finally the Ministry acceded to the suggestions of Mr. Forster, the Chief Secretary, and on November 2, 1880, an information was filed at the suit of the Right Hon. Hugh Law, Attorney-General, against Mr. Parnell and four of his parliamentary colleagues, Mr. T. D. Sullivan, Mr. Sexton, Mr. John Dillon, and Mr. Biggar; and also against Mr. Patrick Egan and Mr. Thomas Brennan. There were nineteen counts in the indictment against the traversers. The main charges being — conspiring to incite tenants not to pay their rents; de- terring tenants from buying land from which other tenants had been evicted ; conspiring for the purpose of injuring landlords, and forming combinations for the purpose of carrying out these unlawful ends. As says Mr. O'Connor, " This was the proceeding of the Liberal Govern- ment ! There is scarcely one of the charges which was not the glory instead of the shame of Mr. Parnell and his fellow-traversers. Mr. Parnell had found the people face to face with famine and groaning under the oppression of centuries. He had brought them to such assertion of their rights, to such a potent com- bination, that instead of being swept away, as in all previous occurrences, by HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 77 wholesale hunger and plague and eviction, and thereafter reduced to deeper wretchedness and more hopeless slavery, not one man among them died from hunger or from disaster, and that, rising up from their misery and impotence, they gradually reached the position of practical omnipotence over their oppres- sors. The events and calamities which seemed to drive the tenantry back into the doom of hunger and of servitude had brought to them a new birth of political hope and power ; and an hour of apparently darkest misery had been changed into the dawn of a new and a better day. A man of any other nation- ality who had accomplished such things — if he had been an Italian or a Pole; still more, at this epoch, if he had been a Bulgarian or a Montenegrin — would have taken an imperishable place in the adoration of Englishmen ; and his re- ward, being an Irishman, was that a Liberal administration dragged him through the mire of a criminal court. The trial was opened by a startling episode. With their usual mistake in regarding things in Ireland as necessarily the same as in England, because called by the same names, the English public were and are accustomed to look upon an Irish judge as raised above the passions of political partisanship. They were strangely shocked in the course of the preliminary pro- ceedings of the trial to read a judgment of the Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench in which the trial was to take place — a judgment in which the traversers were denounced with vehement passion. The times had been so changed since the elevation of a man like Judge Keogh to the Bench, that the Lord Chief Justice found that even the English people could not stomach such conduct, and he retired at the opening of the trial. " The trial was one of the solemn mockeries of the time. It was known by the Crown that no impartial jury would convict the saviour of the nation of treason for the nation ; and after a trial extending over twenty days, the jury were discharged without agreeing to a verdict, ten, according to universal rumor, being in favor of acquittal and two for conviction." Parliament reassembled on January 6, 1881, and there was considerable speculation as to what would be the fate of the Coercion proposals of the Gov- ernment. In the Queen's Speech the allusions to Coercion were unusually strong, while the references to the coming Land Bill were very weak. " Attempts upon life," she said, " have not grown in the same proportions as other offenses, but .... an extended system of terror had been established which had para- lyzed almost alike the exercise of private rights and the performance of civil 78 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. duties." As a matter of fact the main offense was that the organization of the Irish farmers had been made so perfect that the landlords found it impossible any longer to get tenants to pay for the privilege of paying rack-rents. In endeavoring to shield or defend the Government from the charge of im- petuosity in forcing a coercion bill through Parliament, Mr. Gladstone said : " Perhaps it may be said I am proving too much, and I am showing that we are coming too soon to make this demand. When that charge is made, we shallbe quite prepared to meet it, and to argue the contrary." But this promise was never fulfilled. In the meantime, Mr. Parnell was formulating a scheme to thwart the designs of the Government. His instructions to the Irish members were that they should speak as long as they could in order to postpone, as long as possible, the coercive intentions of the Ministry. He himself began the ob- struction by proposing : " That the peace and tranquillity of Ireland cannot be promoted by suspending any of the constitutional rights of the Irish people." Justin McCarthy followed this amendment to the Queen's Speech by proposing the following: " Humbly to pray Her Majesty to refrain from using the naval, military, and constabulary forces of the Crown in enforcing ejectments for non- payment of rent in Ireland until the measures proposed to be submitted to Her Majesty with regard to the ownership of land in Ireland have been decided upon by Parliament." Mr. Parnell's plan was to so clog the machinery of Parliament that it would listen to him and to his party. It was a most unique as well as original mode of procedure in the English House of Commons ; but the con- ception of the scheme was most excellent, as we shall see. The instructions to the Irish members were that they should all speak, and speak as long as they could, and this instruction was strictly obeyed. Excep- tion was made, of course, in the cases of those who had to propose subse- quent amendments. They had to remain silent, for if they spoke, their right of proposing an amendment would be forfeited. The Government and the Opposition meantime had passed their words of command also ; it was an order to maintain absolute silence, and the order was observed with unbroken obedience. The result was that, throughout the long hours of every evening and every night, the Irish members had to go on addressing empty benches, or benches that, if filled, were noisy, insolent, and provocative ; that each member had to talk when he had something and when he had nothing to say ; that each had to go through a certain length of time, weary or HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 79 fresh, in good spirits or in bad. These long days and nights seemed for the time to make little impress upon those who took part in them, for the conjoint effect of excitement and anger kept them up. Then nearly all were young in parliamentary, and the most prominent figures in actual, years ; but Nature's Nemesis, though slow, is sure, and many of these members have since learned that the parliamentary pace, if it is not the pace which kills, is that which rapidly ages even robust physiques and shatters even stout nerves. This brought the debate on the Queen's Speech up to Thursday, January 20th. By this time the aspect of affairs had undergone a considerable change. The exasperation caused by this prolonged resistance created a similar exaspera- tion outside the House of Commons. There was gradually rising one of those tempests of popular passion in England which sweep down party ties. The Radicals grew fewer and fainter in their opposition, the two English parties practically coalesced, and the House was united against the little Irish phalanx. The latter, on their part, exhausted, but still angry and determined, resolved to fight on; and they, too, were backed by the rising temper of their own countrymen. The Land League grew daily in power and in resources ; the subscriptions from America rose to an amount that a short time before would have been considered fabulous ; and on January 13th the treasurer was able to announce that during the week then past there had been received from various sources no less a sum than ,£4,050. Eviction became daily more impossible, and, though all the forces of the Crown were placed at the disposal of the landlords, the decree frequently had to remain unfulfilled in the presence of crowds of peasants armed with pitchforks, scythes, and pike-heads, and ready to perish in defense of their home- steads. These various circumstances were also aggravated by the daily contests at question-time between Mr. Forster and the Irish representatives. Every act of repression to which he resorted lent fuel to the flame, and from this period forward he took up an ultra-Tory attitude. He admitted no case of exceptional hardship, defended the police through thick and thin, and, in fact, adopted the policy of repression pure and simple. On Monday, January 24th, Mr. Forster introduced the first notorious Coer- cion Bill. The facts (?) which he used upon this occasion were chiefly furnished to him by that un-Irish Irishman, the late Under-Secretary, Mr. Thomas Burke — who was murdered in Phoenix Park a few years later. As said Mr. O'Con- nor, who was an actor in the defense against this illegal proposal : " The speech 30 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. of Mr. Forster himself is the best testimony of the madness of the time. Its equivocations and its admissions alike prove that men must have been tempo- rarily insane to have accepted such an indictment against a nation as satisfac- tory." Here are some of the statements made by Mr. Forster in that memorable speech of his : " I have given a return of the total number of agrarian outrages in Ire- land in 1880, which shows that the total number was 2,590. We have a sepa- ration of the returns of agrarian from other crimes in Ireland since the year 1844, but not before, and the highest year during that period was the first year of the great famine — namely, 1845. In that year the outrages numbered 1,920. Consequently, last year they were 35 per cent, more than they have ever before been recorded to be" (Hansard, vol. cclvii., p. 1209). This statement Mr. Forster had to swallow bodily ; he had to admit that the number, 2,590, was a falsehood ; the number of agrarian outrages was after- ward admitted by him to be only 1,253 — the balance of 1,337 being threaten- ing letters. And he then went on to make the following extraordinary state- ment, or, as Mr. O'Connor says, "a grossly — it may be said, a gigantically — false representation of the state of affairs." It is entirely untrue to declare that the year 1880 was more criminal than any year from 1844. It would be far more correct to say that the year 1880 was a year startlingly free from crime in comparison with several of the years from 1844. The criminal character of a year should assuredly be tested, not so much by the number of its crimes, as by their character. A year that had a hundred cases of petty larceny and no murder, would certainly be less criminal than a year that had fifty-two crimes, of which fifty were petty larceny and two were wilful murder, though there was a difference of forty-eight between the criminal totals of the one year and the other. A test of the criminality of these different years would be a comparison of such serious crimes as homicides, whether murder or manslaughter. Let us apply this test to 1880 and other years, and this is what we find : Homicides Described as Agrarian. Year. Homicides. Year. Homicides. Year. Homicides 1844 . 18 1847 . 16 1869 . lO 1845 • 18 1849 • 15 1879 . IO 1846 . 16 1850 . 1851 . 18 12 1880 . 8 HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 81 It will be seen from this table that, in serious agrarian crime, the year 1880 bore a most favorable contrast, not merely with many years since 1844, but also with the very year which preceded it. Let us try another form of comparison between the criminality of 1880 and that of preceding years. The distinction made between agrarian and other out- rages would seem to have been very lax in the early years of the statistical rec- ords. For instance, in the year 1847 the total outrages in Ireland are set down as 2,986, and of these but 620 are placed to the credit of agrarian outrages. This must, of course, be inaccurate ; for 1847, as has been seen, was a year of agrarian upheaval, and, instead of the proportion of crime between agrarian and non-agrarian being fairly represented by 620 on the one side, and the balance of the total of 2,986 on the other, it would seem far more likely that the greater number of the 2,986 crimes were agrarian crimes — the crimes of starving and desperate peasants fighting for their patch of land and their meals of potatoes. In any case, let us now compare the total crime of 1880 with that of other years : Total of Outrages. 14,908 10,639 9.H4 5,609 This table will show a startling difference between the crime of 1880 and that of several of the years by which it was preceded. Finally, let us compare the total of murders of all kinds in 1880 with those of preceding years : Year. Total of Outrages. Year. 1844 • 6,327 1849 1845 8,088 1850 1846 12,374 1851 1847 20,986 1880 1848 14,080 Year. 1844 1845 1846 1847 1848 1849 1850 Homicides. 146 139 170 212 171 203 139 Year. 851 852 853 870 871 Homicides. 157 I40 II 9 77 7i 69 82 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. But the strongest evidence of the comparative freedom from serious crime of 1880 in comparison with other years is found in the speech of Mr. Forster himself. It has already been seen that this immunity from serious crime was acknowledged in the Queen's Speech. In the same way Mr. Forster not only admitted it, but seemed to boast of it, and, by some strange form of reason- ing, to regard it as the strongest argument in favor of his position, that the year 1880 was horribly and exceptionally criminal. " Some honorable members," he said, " have said that after all there have been but few cases of murder, or attempt at murder" — and when this statement was received, as was natural, with cheers from the Irish members, the Chief Secretary made the reply — " but they were not necessary "; and it was here that, for the first time, John Bright showed signs of weakness or vacillation in his advocacy of the cause of Ireland. He said : "A coercion act becomes a tyr- anny in the hands of tyrants ; but in the hands of men who are liberal and just it may be a law of protection and of great mercy to Ireland." But an idea of the temper of the ministry can be learned from the fact that Mr. Forster put into Mr. Gladstone's hand the copy of a speech — delivered by a man named Power — which the Prime Minister quoted as having been delivered by Mr. Parnell. Mr. Parnell several times endeavored to correct Mr. Gladstone as he proceeded ; but it was useless, for the speaker, in every instance, called the Irish leader to order. This sitting of the House occupied forty-one hours. At the close of it, Mr. Justin McCarthy, the vice-chairman of the Irish party, rose to protest against the indecent haste of the Government in pressing upon Parlia- ment this coercion bill. The Speaker took no notice of him, and both of them remained standing, each of them addressing the House, but the remarks of both were absolutely unintelligible to the members because of the storm of inter- ruption which greeted Mr. Parrfell's first lieutenant. It was one of the most contemptible incidents in the annals of the English Parliament ; but it was to be followed by many much more disgraceful, for the Irish party had now a leader who knew not fear, and under whose guidance the government of England would have been rendered impossible if they did not listen to the demands of Mr. Parnell's followers. On this particular occasion Mr. Parnell was not present in the House. But after the peculiar incident of the entire Parnellite party leaving the House as a protest against the conspic- uously autocratic action of the Speaker, in reply to a telegram from Mr. Healy, HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. §3 who was then his secretary, Mr. Parnell entered the conference-room — to which the party had retired — amidst the ringing cheers of his followers. One of those who composed that meeting told me that " upon that night he looked like a man inspired." One of the members proposed that the entire party retire from the House, "pending the result of a consultation with their constituents"; but Mr. Parnell and Mr. Biggar did not believe in the policy of withdrawal from the battlefield, and during the following few days occurred one of the stormiest and most curious of scenes that ever took place within the walls of Westminster. And in order that the incident shall be authentically described, I shall give it in the words of one of the actors in that memorable parliamentary battle — Mr. T. P. O'Connor. He thus describes it : "The Wednesday immediately following the close of the forty-one hours' sitting was again wasted in motions for adjournment. Just before the sitting on Thursday there came the stunning report that Mr. Davitt had been arrested. Mr. Davitt had now been more than three years out of prison. He had already, as the reader knows, passed through the hideous tortures of seven years' confinement. The Coercion Bill was passed soon after this, and though the expectation was general that he might be placed under restraint under the new legislation, no- body suspected that the Government would have proceeded to lengths so great and so shameful as to send back to penal servitude one of the leaders of the agitation. The news deeply affected Mr. Parnell and the other Irish members. When the House met, however, there was no indication of the coming storm. Mr. Gladstone was asked for a day to discuss a motion condemnatory of the action of the Speaker, but his refusal to do so did not appear to excite any very strong emotion. Nor was there any resentment even at the announcement that he was still determined not to make known the character of the Land Bill. Mr. Parnell rose from his seat in his usual tranquil fashion, and asked, in a tone of apparently no great concern, whether it was true that Mr. Davitt had been ar- rested. 'Yes, sir!' was the curt reply of Sir William Harcourt, delivered with much emphasis and pomp. Before he could utter another word there burst from the Liberal benches, and from the benches occupied by the Radicals more vehemently than from any other, a tempest of cheers that would have formed a fitting welcome to a mighty victor in the field or the accomplishment of a mo- mentous popular reform. The Conservatives joined in the cheer to some ex- tent, but their tone was comparatively mild. The Home Secretary then said 84 CHARLES STEWART PARKELL. that the conduct of Mr. Davitt was not such as to justify his retention of his ticket-of-leave. Again the House rang with vociferous cheering. Mr. Parnell, with an appearance of great calmness, asked what conditions of his ticket-of-leave Mr. Davitt had contravened. Sir William Harcourt sat still, and made no attempt to answer the question. The Irish party burst into exclamations of intense anger, but the Home Secretary, folding his arms across his breast after his usual fashion, remained silent. The Speaker, apparently with a desire to put an end to the incident, called upon Mr. Gladstone to rise and propose the urgency resolutions. " But the scene was not thus to terminate. The Prime Minister had hardly uttered a word when Mr. Dillon rose. The Speaker called upon Mr. Dillon to sit down, and that gentleman shouted above the tumult of ' Order! order!' and ' Name ! name !' the words, ' I rise to a point of order.' It is an invariable rule of every deliberative assembly in the world that a member has a right to rise at any moment to a point of order ; but the House of Commons had long passed the time when such distinctions would be observed, and the Speaker res- olutely refused to allow Mr. Dillon to proceed. Mr. Dillon thereupon folded his arms, and he and the Speaker remained standing for some minutes at the same time. At last the Speaker was understood to name Mr. Dillon, though the decree could not be heard above the wild din. Mr. Gladstone immediately proposed the suspension of Mr. Dillon. The late Mr. A. M. Sullivan endeav- ored to raise a point of order, but was not listened to, and the House divided : Ayes, 395 ; Noes, 33. Mr. Dillon was then called upon to withdraw, but he refused to do so, and a noisy scene took place. Then the Sergeant-at-Arms invited Mr. Dillon to withdraw, and when the latter still refused, the Sergeant again advanced with the principal doorkeeper and a number of messengers, placed his hand on Mr. Dillon's shoulder, and requested him to obey the order of the Speaker. ' If you employ force I must yield,' said Mr. Dillon, and then withdrew. " Mr. Sullivan then attempted to raise the question whether the Speaker had acted legally or not. He pointed out the right of every member to rise to a point of order, and then suggested the contrast between the treatment given to Mr. Bradlaugh when he refused to withdraw, and that meted out to Mr. Dil- lon. Mr. Sullivan found the greatest difficulty in proceeding with his speech, for he was interrupted at every point. Finally, however, he succeeded in put- HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. g5 ting his case. The Speaker then surprised the Irish members by giving a wholly different reason to that which was generally accepted for the suspension of Mr. Dillon. He adroitly slurred over Mr. Dillon's right to rise to a point of order, and based the suspension on the fact that Mr. Dillon had remained standing at the same time as himself. This, of course, added fuel to the flame ; and the Irish members, now convinced that there was no chance of any justice being given them, determined to mark the occasion by an incident that could not be forgotten. The Prime Minister had scarcely again risen when Mr. Par- nell stood up at the same time, and made the motion which the Prime Min- ister himself had made not many months before in regard to Mr. O'Donnell — namely, that the right honorable gentleman be no longer heard. The Speaker, however, refused to accept the motion, and threatened Mr. Parnell with sus- pension in case he continued. Again Mr. Gladstone got up, and resumed the sentence which had so frequently been interrupted. Mr. Parnell again rose. The Speaker declared that the conduct of the member for Cork was wilful and deliberate obstruction, and named him. When the division took place in the case of Mr. Dillon, the Irish members had not yet made up their minds as to what was the proper course to adopt ; but by the time that Mr. Parnell was named, their tactics had been resolved upon. When the division upon Mr. Parnell's suspension was called, they refused to quit their seats. The division went on without them, and the House presented a curious spectacle with the Speaker left alone with the Irish party. The deserted and tranquil appearance of the House might have encouraged the illusion that the storm of passion had subsided and given place to perfect quiet. The Speaker warned the Irish mem- bers of the consequences that might result upon what they were doing; Mr. Sullivan declared that they contested the legality of the proceeding. This exchange of language between the Speaker and the Parnellites was mild and courteous. The division over, Mr. Parnell was ordered to withdraw ; but he refused to go unless compelled by force, and again the Sergeant-at-Arms and the messengers came forward and touched his shoulder. The Irish leader slowly descended the gangway, bowed to the Speaker, and walked out of the House with head erect and amid the ringing cheers of his supporters. Once more Mr. Gladstone resumed the unfortunate sentence, that, as he himself said, had been bisected and trisected already; but again he was not allowed to proceed, for Mr. Finigan arose and proposed the same motion that Mr. Parnell had pro- 86 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. posed, that the Prime Minister be no longer heard. Once more a division was taken, and once more the Irish members refused to leave their places. The tellers and clerks took down the names of the contumacious members, and after the withdrawal of Mr. Finigan the Speaker read out their names and suspended them all. The names were — Messrs. Barry, Biggar, Byrne, Corbet, Daly, Daw- son, Gill, Gray, Healy, Lalor, Leamy, Leahy, Justin McCarthy, McCoan, Marum, Merge, Nelson, Arthur O'Connor, T. P. O'Connor, The O'Donoghue, The O'Gorman Mahon, W. H. O'Sullivan, O'Connor Power, Redmond, Sex- ton, Smithwick, A. M. Sullivan, and T. D. Sullivan. " By this time the passion of the House was to some extent exhausted, and there was even some return of good humor, but Mr. Gladstone remained grave, and proposed the suspension of the twenty-eight members with an air of painful preoccupation. Then the division was taken, and once more the Irish members refused to leave their places. The Speaker then called upon the different mem- bers in their turns to withdraw, and each in turn, and in practically identical lan- guage, refused to do so unless compelled by force, and protested against the legality of the whole proceedings. But even in this somewhat monotonous pro- ceeding there was room left for a variety of incident. Some of the members were content with being touched on the shoulder by the Sergeant-at-Arms ; while others, more obstinate, insisted on a show of considerable force. The most prominent among the latter was Mr. Metge, a young Protestant landlord like Mr. Parnell, who evidently shared his leader's intensity of political feeling. He stubbornly remained in his seat until Captain Gosset had called four of the attendants of the House to his aid. There was, naturally enough, a laugh when the Rev. Mr. Nelson, a gentleman with white hair and of seventy winters, con- fronted the Sergeant, who looked about the same age, and the spectacle of the one old gentleman attempting to resist the other was certainly somewhat ludi- crous. Force, in the shape of the Sergeant, was a much more benign-looking individual, than meek submission as personified by the belligerent pastor. The appearance of the attendants who came into the House in Indian file to assist in the work of expulsion was not impressive, being irresistibly suggestive of the depressed and perfunctory air of the theatrical ' super.' The protests of the ex- pelled members varied slightly, and there was also a difference in the manner of their exit. Some hurried away, while others, following the example of Mr. Parnell, bowed with gravity and solemnity to the Chair. The demeanor of the HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. §7 House varied from moment to moment — sometimes it laughed, sometimes it cheered ; finally, it settled down into allowing the incident to pass off in grave silence. Another amusing incident that momentarily lit up the dolorous scene occurred when the Sergeant-at-Arms approached The O'Gorman Mahon. It was notorious that the two veterans had spent many a day of their hot youth together, and it was indeed a curious sight, the one aged man having to super- intend the expulsion of the other. "The absence of the Irish members allowed the Prime Minister to pass his new urgency rules without any difficulty, and thus, whatever indignities they had received, were avenged by the sight of the oldest and formerly the freest assem- bly in the world absolutely surrendering the whole course of its proceedings in- to the hands of the Speaker." This Coercion Act passed its third reading on February 25, 1881. Imme- diately a second one was proposed ; but so stern was the opposition to it from Mr. Parnell and his followers, that it did not pass its third reading until March nth. And now Ireland was under the full swing of two as drastic coercion laws as were ever passed for a civilized people. The people of Ireland chafed at this re-enactment of the laws of the Penal times ; and probably, through shame for the assistance which he had given in passing Forster's Coercion bills through Parliament, Mr. Gladstone on April 7, 1881, brought forward his much-talked- of " Land Act." Or perhaps it was as a kind of bribe to the Irish Party, that this bill was now introduced; for, as Mr. O'Connor says: " Parliament had de- stroyed the liberties of Ireland, and Ireland had killed the vigor of Parliament." It was therefore possible, nay quite probable, that the " Grand Old Man " bethought him then to pacify those whom he sneered at before, by offering this bill for their acceptance. And, although I shall afterward have to notice this matter more fully, I shall anticipate the connections between Mr. Parnell and Mr. Gladstone, in their later developments, here. Mr. Parnell never gave nor even signified allegiance to, or co-operation with, the ex- Premier. He simply used him as a means toward the ends he had in view. He was playing with a lion, and in order that that lion should be ren- dered affable, he appeared, from time to time — as the occasion best suited the plans of the Irish National Party — to act in concert with him (Mr. Gladstone). And in this role Mr. Parnell was peculiarly strategic. Here is an example of Mr. Parnell's action concerning Mr. Gladstone's self- gy CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. adulation — in which he is such an expert master. It occurred concerning the action of the Land League upon the passing of Mr. Gladstone's Land Bill of 1 88 1. On October 7th, the Prime Minister delivered an address at Leeds, Eng- land, in which he said : " The very thing that is most necessary for the Land Leaguers to do is to intercept the progress of the Land Act. And how do they set about it ? Mr. Parnell with his myrmidons around him, in his Land League meetings in Ire- land, has instructed the people of Ireland that they are not to go into a court which the Government of this country has established, in order to do justice. If Mr. Parnell, under the name of test cases, carries before the court moderate and fair rents, of which there are many in Ireland, the court will reject the applica- tion ; and, when the court has rejected the application, Mr. Parnell and his train will tell the Irish Nation that they have been betrayed, that the court is worth- less, and that the Land Act ought to meet with their unequivocal repudiation. And so he will play his game and gain his object, if the people of Ireland should listen to his fatal doctrines. Because, gentlemen, you know, as well as I do, that the Parliament of this country is not going to overturn the principles of public right and public order ; and I think you also know, what I fully believe, that the people of this country, in any such question relating to the government of a portion of the Queen's territory, weak as they may be, if their case is unjust, in a just case are invincible These opinions are called forth by the grave state of facts. I do not give them to you as anything more than opinions ; but they are opinions sustained by references to words and to actions. They all have regard to this great impending crisis, in which we depend on the good sense of people, and in which we are determined that no force, and no fear of force, and no fear of ruin through force shall, so far as we are concerned — and it is in our power to decide the question — prevent the Irish people from having the full and free benefit of the Land Act." Two days later, Mr. Parnell replied to this extraordinary speech. It was at Wexford ; where he addressed a meeting of nearly 10,000 people. Upon this occasion he made some most remarkable and prophetic statements. So import- ant was this speech, in outlining his policy, that I think it quite admissible to quote it in its entirety, as it appeared in the Dublin Freeman's Journal, on the following day: " People of the City and County of Wexford: — I am proud to see Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone. HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. that your county has not forgotten her traditions, but that you are prepared to- day, as you always were, to return a fitting answer to threats and intimidation, even if it should become necessary to use those means which were used in 1798 by an unscrupulous government, — means which failed then and which, please God, will fail again if they are tried again. You, in this county, have arrived at the commencement of the second year of existence of this great Land League movement. You have gained something by your exertions during the last twelve months, but I am here to-day to tell you that you have gained but a fraction of that to which you are justly entitled. And the Irishman who thinks that he can now throw away his arms, just as Grattan disbanded the Volunteers in 1782, will find to his sorrow and destruction, when too late, that he has placed himself in the power of a perfidious, cruel, unrelenting English enemy. You have had an opportunity recently, many of you, no doubt, of studying the utter- ances of a very great man, a very great orator, a person who recently desired to impress the world with a great opinion of his philanthropy and hatred of oppres- sion, but who stands to-day the greatest coercionist, the greatest and most un- rivalled slanderer of the Irish nation that ever undertook that task. I refer to William Ewart Gladstone and his unscrupulous and dishonest speech the day before yesterday. Not content with maligning you, he maligns John Dillon. He endeavors to misrepresent the Young Ireland party of 1848. No misrepre- sentation is too patent, too low, or too mean for him to stoop to, and it is a good sign that this masquerading knight-errant, this pretended champion of the liberties of every other nation except those of the Irish nation, should be obliged to throw off the mask to-day and to stand revealed as the man who, by his own utterances, is prepared to carry fire and sword into your homesteads unless you humble and abase yourselves before him and before the landlords of this country. But I have forgotten I had said that he had maligned everybody. Oh, no ; he has a good word for one or two people. He says that the late Mr. Isaac Butt was a most amiable man and a true patriot. When we in Ireland were following Isaac Butt into the lobbies, endeavoring to pass the very act which William Ewart Gladstone passed, by having stolen the idea from Isaac Butt, William Ewart Gladstone and his ex-government officials were following Sir Stafford Northcote and Benjamin Disraeli into the other lobby. No man was good in Ireland un- til he was dead and unable to do anything more for his country. In the opin- ion of an English statesman, no man is srood in Ireland until he is buried and 90 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. unable to strike a blow for Ireland, and perhaps the day may come when I may get a good word from English statesmen as a moderate man when I am dead and buried. " When Mr. Gladstone a little lower down accuses us of preaching the doc- trine of public plunder, and of proclaiming a new gospel of plunder, and, further down, of the promulgation of a gospel of sheer plunder — (A voice, ' That is his own doctrine.') I would be obliged to my friend in the crowd if he would leave me to make the speech, and not be anticipating me. When the peo- ple talk of public plunder they should first ask themselves and recall to mind who were the first public plunderers in Ireland. The land of Ireland has been confiscated three times over by the men whose descendants Mr. Gladstone is supporting in the fruits of their plunder by his bayonets and his buckshot. When we speak about plunder we are entitled to ask who were the first of the plun- derers. Oh, yes ; but we can say a little more than that too ; we can say, or at all events if we don't say it others will say it, that the doctrine of public plun- der is only a question of degree. Who was it that first sanctioned this doc- trine of public plunder will be asked by some persons. I am proceeding in the demand that the improvements of the tenants — and their predecessors in title — shall be theirs, no matter how long ago they may have been made. I am proceeding upon the lines of an amendment in the Land Act of 1881, which was introduced by Mr. Healy, framed by Mr. Gladstone's attorney-general for Ire- land, and sanctioned by Mr. Gladstone, his whole cabinet, the House of Com- mons, and the House of Lords. If your rents are reduced at all under this Land Act, it will be because this Land Act requires that for twenty years back the im- provements of the tenant or his predecessors in title shall not be valued by the landlord for rent, and I say that it is a question of degree if you extend that limit of twenty years, within which period the improvements of the tenants have been protected by the legislature, to that period, no matter how long, within which those improvements have been made. " Why should the landlord be entitled to compensation for improvements that may have been made one hundred years ago, any more than he should be entitled to improvements made twenty years ago ? And I say that it is this doctrine of public plunder. It is a question of degree, and William Ewart Gladstone, who has shown himself more capable of eating his own words, and better able to recede from principles and declarations which he has laid down HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 91 with just as much fervOr as he made the speech the other evening, will, before long, if he lives long enough, introduce a bill into the House 'of Commons to extend this very principle of public plunder which he has sanctioned by his act of 1881, and to thoroughly protect the interests of tenants and their predeces- sors in title for improvements they have made ; so that if we are to go into this question, the utmost that Mr. Gladstone and the Liberal party will be able to make out of it will be to find that there are some persons very much better en- titled to call him a little robber than he is to call me a big one. But I was for- getting a point ; he has a good word for Mr. Shaw. He has discovered that there are only four or five honest Irishmen in the country, and one of these is Mr. Shaw. He blames me for not having disapproved of what he calls the dyna- mite policy. Well, I am not aware that Mr. Shaw has repudiated the dynamite policy either ; but I'll tell you what Mr. Shaw said, and you must bear in mind that, in addition to speaking well of him as an honest Irishman, Mr. Gladstone also offered him a situation as one of the land commissioners. Mr. Shaw did not repudiate the dynamite policy any more than I did ; but I'll tell you what he did eighteen months ago in the county of Cork. He said that his blood boiled whenever he saw a process-server, and that he never met one without feel- ing inclined to take the linch-pin out of his car. Now, gentlemen, if I said that to you to-day Mr. Gladstone would have me in Kilmainham before three weeks were out. Nay, more, if I had ever spoken anything like that Mr. Gladstone would have had me in Kilmainham long ago." Referring to Mr. Gladstone's charge that "he (Mr. Parnell) was afraid, now that the Land Act was passed, lest the people of England by their long-sus- tained efforts should win the hearts of the whole Irish nation," Mr. Parnell said : " Long-sustained efforts in what ? Was it in evicting the 2,000 tenants who have been evicted since the 1st of January last ? Was it in putting the two hundred honorable and brave men in Kilmainham and the other jails of the country ? Was it in issuing a police circular of a more infamous character than any which has ever been devised by any foreign despot ? Was it in the sending hundreds of thousands of rounds of ball cartridge to his Bashi-Bazouks through- out the country ? Was it in sharpening the bayonets of the latest issue to the Royal Irish Constabulary ? And if it was not all these sustained efforts which Mr. Gladstone has taken up nobly and well from his predecessors in the title of misgoverning Ireland, I should like to know what were the efforts of which ,:,; .' ' ' III!! 1 .! i I'iS ■ ill!.' ?=■< .[,^lIII|j|HI ; I TP SI «&l Irish House or Lords as it now is. HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 145 " The judges, and certain permanent officials, can only be retired, or al- lowed to retire, by ' the Crown,' and they will then receive their pension as though they had served their full time. "The existing rights of the constabulary and police to pay, pension, etc., are preserved. " All these pensions become a charge on the Irish Treasury, but are further guaranteed by the English Treasury. " It is not intended that the Irish representative Peers should any longer sit in the House of Lords, nor the Irish members in the House of Commons, but that Ireland (with the assent of her present representatives) should be prac- tically unrepresented at Westminster. " The Act constituting the Irish Parliament cannot be altered in any way, except by an Act passed by the Imperial Parliament, and assented to by the Irish Parliament ; or by an Act of the Imperial Parliament, passed after there have been summoned back to it, for that especial purpose, 28 Irish represent- ative Peers, and 103 'second order' members." The Financial arrangements are as follows : " The imposition and collection of Customs duties and of Excise duties, so far as these are immediately connected with Customs duties, will remain in the hands of the British Treasury. All other taxes will be imposed and collected under the authority of the Irish Parliament. The proceeds of these latter taxes will be paid into the Irish Treasury ; the proceeds of the Customs and Excise to a special account of the British Treasury. "From these receipts, certain deductions are first to be made for the Irish contribution to Imperial Expenditure, etc., and the balance is then to be paid over to the Irish Treasury. " Ireland is to pay one-fifteenth as her portion of the whole existing Impe- rial charge for debt (^22,000,000 a year), representing a capital sum of ^48,- 000,000, and in addition a small sinking fund ; and one-fifteenth of the normal charge for Army and Navy (,£25,000,000), and for Imperial Civil charges (,£1,650,000). In addition, until she supersedes the present police force, she is to pay £ 1,000,000 a year (or less if the cost be less) toward the cost of the Royal Irish Constabulary and the Dublin police. 146 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. " Thus the Irish proportion of Imperial expenditure will be as follows : Debt . . . . . . ;£ 1,466,000 Sinking fund .... 360,000 ,£1,826,000 Army and Navy . . . 1,666,000 Civil expenditure . . . 110,000 ,£3,602,000 Constabulary and police . . 1,000,000 £4,602,000 "This is the maximum amount payable, and it cannot be increased for thirty years, when the question of contribution can be again considered. " On the other hand, the amount can be reduced. (1) If in any year the charge for the army and navy, or for the Imperial Civil Service, is less than fifteen times the amount of the Irish contribution, then the Irish charge will be reduced proportionately. (2) If the cost of the constabulary or police fall below ;£i, 000,000 a year, then the difference will be saved by the Irish Exchequer. "The estimated revenue from Irish customs and excise customs, duties, amounts to ,£6,180,000 annually. From this is to be deducted, by the English Treasury, a sum not exceeding four per cent, for cost of collection, leaving a net amount of ,£5,933,000. " The debtor and creditor account, as between England and Ireland, will then stand thus : Expenditure. For Imperial purposes £3,602,000 Constabulary, etc. . 1,000,000 Collection of Customs and Excise, maximum 4 per cent. . . . 247,000 £4, 849,000 Receipts. Customs and Excise . ^6,180,000 ;£6, 180,000 Leaving a balance of £1, 33 1,000 to be handed over by England to the Irish Exchequer. " The Irish Government will take over all loans due to the British Treas- ury and advanced for Irish purposes, and shall pay the British Treasury an an- nual sum equivalent to three per cent, interest on the amount, with repayment HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. H? in thirty years. The total amount outstanding is some six millions, and the receipts and disbursements of the Irish Government under this head will about balance. The balance of the Irish Church surplus fund — about £20,000 a year — is to be handed over to the Irish Government. " The following will show the further receipts and expenditure of the Irish Government, as estimated by Mr. Gladstone on the basis of existing expend- iture and taxation, and may be put in the form of a balance-sheet : Expenditure. Irish civil charges . £2,510,000 Collection of revenue, etc. 587,000 Balance, surplus . 404,000 £3,501,000 Revenue. Repaid by England . £1,331,000 Stamps . . . 600,000 Income-tax, at Zd. . 550,000 Other sources of revenue —Post-office, etc. . 1,020,000 £3,501,000 " This gives a surplus of £404,000 to start with. But in addition, great savings of expenditure can be, and ought to be, made in the Irish civil charges and collection of revenue. Per head of the population they are now double what they are in England, and at least £300,000 or £400,000 should be saved. In addition, after a time, the cost of the police ought to fall at least £200,000 or £300,000 below the million allotted to that purpose. " Thus, with reasonable economy, the surplus at the disposal of the Irish Government ought to amount to some £1,000,000 a year — a sum which will enable it readily to borrow money for public wants and for public im- provements." This bill was defeated on June 7th by a majority of 30, and a few days afterward Mr. Gladstone announced that the Ministry had decided to appeal from Parliament to the country ; and thus came another general election. The result of this election was that out of a total of 2,554,669 votes the Gladston- ians received 1,238,342, and the Unionists (the combination of Tories and dis- senting Liberals) 1,316,327, and the most curious government that ever held power in England took up the reins, pledged to oppose Home Rule for Ire- land, or, what they described it, "the disintegration of the Empire." This Parliament has been aptly called "the Parliament of broken pledges"; it is in power to-day, and it is this same Ministry who backed up the Times in the no- torious Parnell- Times case, to which I have already devoted many pages. CHAPTER VII. Mr. Parnell and the Unionist Parliament — Renewal of Evictions — The Plan of Cam- paign — The Ponsonby Estate — Mr. Balfour as Chief Secretary— The Mitchelstown Murders— The Coercion Act of July 17, 1887— Imprisonment of William O'Brien and John Mandeville— John Mandeville's Death, and Debates, etc., relating to it. iS it was feared that the action of the Land Judges, appointed in 1881, might jeopardize the position of the Irish tenantry and perhaps bring about another agrarian crisis, Mr. Parnell asked the Coalition or Unionist-Tory government to name a day to discuss the state of affairs in Ire- land. There was the usual amount of dissent and obstruction to anything that the Irish leader might propose to vindicate and ameliorate the condition of his countrymen ; but finally he was granted permission, and he brought in a bill, of which the following is the most important clause : " In the case of any holding subject to statutory conditions within the mean- ing of the Land Law (Ireland) Act, 1881, where the statutory term was fixed prior to the thirty-first December, one thousand eight hundred and eighty-four, if, on the application of the tenant of such holding, it is proved to the satisfac- tion of the Irish Land Commission, hereinafter called the Court, — " (a). That half the rent ordinarily payable in the year one thousand eight hundred and eighty-six in respect of such holding, and half of any antecedent arrears have been paid ; and " (V). That the tenant is unable to discharge the remainder of such rent or arrears without loss of his holding or deprivation of the means necessary for the cultivation and stocking thereof ; the Court may make an order for such an abatement of the rent of such holding as may seem to them just and expedient. Such abatement shall apply to the rent ordinarily payable in the year one thousand eight hundred and eighty-six, to the antecedent arrears thereto, if any, and to the rent which would have been payable in the following year." Mr. Gladstone, who was in Bavaria at the time, hurried home to support Mr. Parnell's measure. He had now gone back on all his previous acts and (148) HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 149 utterances, and he was in duty bound to defend his new policy — and no matter what I shall have to say of him afterward, I feel that, as an Irishman, I am bound in duty to acknowledge the great efforts and services which Mr. Gladstone gave for Ireland during the last few years. But it was unavailing. Mr. Parnell's bill was defeated by a vote of 297 to 202. The anti-Home Rule or Unionist Ministry, in reply to all questions, simply said : " You must obey the law " — whether you are able to or not, and if you do not obey it, we* shall enforce it at the bayonet point. It became plain that, to save the farmers from wholesale eviction during the coming winter, some course of action was necessary ; and to meet the emergency the leaders then in Ireland started the scheme known as the " Plan of Campaign." It is well to state here that Mr. Parnell was never strictly " in touch " with this movement ; but it was expedient in the emergency of the moment, therefore he did not directly dis- countenance it. The text of the Plan of Campaign was published in United Ireland on October 23, 1886. It said: "Present rents, speaking roundly, are impossible. That the landlords will press for them, let the rejection of Mr. Parnell's bill testify. A fight during the coming winter is therefore inevitable, and it be- hooves the Irish tenantry to fight with a skill begotten of experience." Then the writer laid down the course of action which should be adopted. The tenants were to meet by estates. The priest was to be asked to take the chair, or some tenant remarkable for firmness of character. A committee was to be appointed, consisting of the chairman and six other members, to be called the managing com- mittee. This committee was to gather a half-year's rent from the tenants. Every one of the tenants was to pledge himself : (1). To abide by the decision of the majority ; (2). To hold no communication with the landlord or his agents, ex- cept in the presence of the body of the tenantry ; and (3). To accept no settlement which was not given to every tenant on the estate. " On the gale day," went on the Plan, "the tenantry should proceed to the rent-office in a body. If the agent refuses to see them in a body, they should on no account confer with him individually, but depute the chairman to act as their spokesman, and acquaint him of the reduction which they require." If the agent refused the half-year's rent with the reduction which the tenants thought fair and proper, then the half- year's rent was to be handed to the managing committee, and placed at the dis- posal of this committee absolutely for the purpose of conducting the fight. No 150 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. money was to be spent in law costs. When the landlord agreed to settle, the law costs were to be deducted from the rent. This proposition would be accepted as just in any other country; but the Government denounced it as illegal — at the instigation of the Irish landlords. And even granting that it was illegal ; as Mr. O'Connor says : " In the peculiar circumstances of Ireland it was morally justifiable." One of the most notorious estates which was placed under the Plan of Cam- paign was that of Mr. Ponsonby — an absentee landlord. In most instances the rents were nearly double the Government valuation. The tenants who held under lease were compelled to accept these leases under the Land Act of 1870, under threat of eviction. For instance, Peter McDonagh, who was a most in- dustrious man, and whose family held the farm for over 200 years, was one of those victims. (This fact, and the others which I shall quote, I obtained from Canon Keller's "The Struggle for Life on the Ponsonby Estate"). He (McDonagh) improved the farm immensely, and built a sea-wall or embank- ment at the side seven feet high, eighteen feet thick, and four hundred yards long. To this expenditure the landlord did not contribute one penny. McDonagh was asked to sign the lease as described, but he refused point-blank. As a result, returning one day from the funeral of his child, he found a " notice to quit" nailed upon his door. The poor man was heart-broken; he gave up the struggle and signed the lease. Another of the Ponsonby tenants, Michael Mahony, was also forced to take a lease — his rent being raised from ^65 to £74., although the Government valuation was only ^43 i5^. These outrageous increases in rent were made in the face of the fact that, even from the average of the preceding year, the values of agricultural produce fell enormously. But- ter fell 50 per cent, and " the greater part of it was lost because of the wetness of the season." Wheat was sold for seven shillings and sixpence per bushel, or about one-third of what it brought in 1885, and some of it was unsalable at any price because of the inclemency of the season. Barley, which was one of the chief products of the estate, was sold at almost any price to meet the rents. Here is an account of this taken from the Cork Examiner : " Thursday being the first day during the season for purchasing malting barley in this district by the Middleton Distillery Company, early on that morn- ing cars laden with barley came from different parts of the county. As far as the chapel, loads of barley were closely arranged on either side of the road, and HIS BRILLIANT CAREER 151 the poor men, who came a long distance in inclement weather, could be seen asleep on the bags of barley. There were upwards of 1,000 loads of barley, on an average 8,000 barrels ; a barrel is two hundredweight. Of course the Dis- tillery Company could not buy all this grain, as it would take a week to weigh such a number of loads. The excitement which prevailed during the early part of Friday and during the day, caused a party of constabulary to be called out to keep order and protect the lives of those who had to be out on business. After all, the top price was only iay. per barrel for malting barley ; a great quantity was purchased at js. per barrel, and lots of it was rejected as being unfit for any use but food for cattle and pigs. On Friday the Distillery Com- pany refused to buy any more barley. There is no other market convenient, and up to 7,000 barrels of barley will have to be taken back from Middleton." But, notwithstanding their inability to pay the rents from the produce of their farms, the evictions went steadily on, and increasingly, until the Plan of Campaign was put into practical working shape. Its action did much to stay the hand of the "Crowbar Brigade"; its doctrines were fought tooth and nail by the Government ; but finally the justice of the movement was fully admitted by the London Times: " Unfortunately," it wrote, "it is too clear, from the evidence of Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, Sir Redvers Buller, and Captain Plunket, in the Dublin Police Court, as well as from the charge of Chief Baron Palles at Sligo, that the vig- orous enforcement of the law against tenants combining to refuse the payment of rent, is discouraged by the Irish Executive. We have excellent reasons," it went on, " for believing that high officials, undoubtedly acting under direct orders from the Chief Secretary, have taken upon them to advise landlords not to pro- ceed in the only effectual manner against tenants who have adopted the Plan of Campaign. Combination must be met by decisive action against the whole combined body ; but this is precisely the course discountenanced by the Govern- ment, which nevertheless is supposed to be contending against Mr. Dillon's policy." And in another article it summed up the policy of the Government by the declaration that it had "capitulated to crime and treason." And in this quotation there is an ample justification of the plans of Messrs. O'Brien and Dillon, to thwart the greed of Irish landlordism. In February, 1887, Mr. Arthur Balfour was appointed Chief Secretary to Ireland, to succeed Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, who had resigned. As this gen- 152 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. tleman has played such a part in the closing scenes of Mr. Parnell's political life and in the recent history of Ireland, it is not inappropriate to describe the manner of man he is : "Mr. Balfour is a tall and very slight man. The neck is long, narrow, and as thin as that of a delicate girl. On the whole, the impression he would give to a stranger who saw him for the first time and did not know him, would be that he was a «more than usually mild member of the mild race of curates. A tendency to seek frequent inspiration in his pocket-handkerchief would confirm the impression. In politics he assumes an air of extreme languor. He does not sit upright in his seat, nor is he content with the loll which is characteristic of most of the members of a body so overworked and so sedentary as the House of Commons. One of the many sayings current about him is that some- body declared he could never come to anything, as he was so fond of sitting on the small of his back. Sitting thus with his rather long legs stretched out before him, he gives an impression of physical and mental lassitude that could never be associated with a vigorous policy or a firm character. Indeed, Mr. Balfour might be described as almost ladylike in his manner and appearance. As to his morale, he is in the habit — I have been told — of talking in private of political affairs with a cynicism that to some brings amusement and to others disgust ; and that is interpreted by some as the reflection of his real sentiments, and by others as the affectation which is now habitual with those who see in languid airs the truest symbol of inward distinction. It may be that he is a mixture of what he appears and what he is supposed to be — he is half in earnest and half in con- temptuous doubt as to political struggles, and especially as to his own share in them. I have heard — though I don't know whether the statement is correct — that when he was at college, his leanings were toward Radicalism, and that he raged at the idea of ever being compelled to become a Tory because his uncle happened to be one of the Tory leaders. If this were so, circumstances proved too strong for him ; and he had to begin life with an act of flagrant apostasy to his own inner convictions and tendencies. A man that has thus to stifle the promptings of his nature, is certain to take his revenge for his own disillusioned and falsified life, by laughing at the sincerities of other men. " Such is Mr. Balfour ; physically weak, morally false, effeminate, ill and ill- tempered — in short, just the man for a wiseacre. Louis Napoleon sat shivering over a fire at the Tuileries, and even the heat was unable to keep his knees 11 K ',Vi'!' ■ V '.', I ID .Mil s I HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 153 from knocking and his teeth from chattering ; but all the time, the people in the streets of Paris — with the exception of a child or woman here and there — were being shot down." The most dangerous and cruel of men are not the robust, bold, and brutal tyrants. Effeminacy seems to breed ill-temper. The vanity of such men makes them to do that which appears strong ; and, as Mr. O'Connor aptly says : " Their effeminacy induces a certain tendency to political hysteria that has cruel and very callous elements." As I proceed I think I shall prove that the conduct of Mr. Balfour, with regard to his actions as Chief Secretary to Ireland, fully justifies this estimate of his character. A few days after his accession to the portfolio of Chief Secretary, Mr. Bal- four proposed the most atrocious Coercion Act that ever disgraced England's statute-books, and it was forced through Parliament. And then began a reign of terror in Ireland, unequalled in history. A peculiarity of the introduction of this bill was the statement made by Mr. Balfour, in which he said: "I stated before, and I state again, that we do not rest our case upon the statistics of crime in Ireland." Nor could he. Undoubtedly there was an increase from 1884 to 1887, but this was no justification for the introduction of so tyrannous a measure, and the Government were obliged, at the very start, to abandon the argument of comparative crime. Here are the figures (official) of crime from 1880 to 1886, inclusive : Total of agrarian crimes. 880 . 2,585 • 4439 ■ 3-433 762 916 • 1,056 It should be here remembered that a petty larceny, a threatening letter — the most trivial offense — which in other countries would be overlooked, was re- garded as a " crime." In the absence of statistics, Mr. Balfour used other arguments. First he advanced a series of "stories" or "anecdotes" — as he called them. Mr. Parnell X54 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. immediately arose and said : " On what authority does the right hon. gentleman rely for these statements?" "I am giving the House," replied Balfour, "the facts which I have obtained on my responsibility from what I consider an au- thentic source." " Name them ! Name the source ! " was shouted from the Irish benches ; but Mr. Balfour was deaf, and proceeded to give a rehash of the gos- sip of resident magistrates and others in his service, absolutely without founda- tion, but upon which testimony he asked the British House of Commons to pass an act, taking away the liberties of a nation. Mr. Parnell and Mr. Timo- thy Harrington succeeded in disproving every case given by the Chief Secretary ; and then he proceeded upon another line, and he based his second plea for co- ercion upon the " illegal and violent action of the National League." " Every one knows," said Mr. Balfour, " that boycotting prevails over certain districts of Ireland and makes life perfectly intolerable. Every one knows that every branch of the National League uses boycotting as the means of carrying out its decrees I have a good many cases of such occurrences here, which prove that it is done audaciously all over Ireland. One instance is from Mayo, and it is reported in United Ireland. In this case a branch of the League passed a resolution ' that no tradesman shall work for any person who cannot produce his card of membership of the League.' The hon. member for Cork stated that any branch of the League that put such pressure on would be immediately dis- solved." Mr. Parnell : "So it was; that branch was immediately dissolved." Not shamed by this exposure, Mr. Balfour went on to another case, and, it will be seen, with the like result. Mr. A. J. Balfour: "Then there was another case in Sligo." Mr. T. Harrington : " Yes, and I called for the resignation of the com- mittee." But notwithstanding that even the Government were forced to admit that there was no necessity for coercion because of crime ; the new scheme of the Prime Minister's nephew (Mr. Balfour) became law, and then began a rdgime of brutality which would make a Czar blush. The first and one of the most notorious acts of this new and most unique Autocrat happened at Mitchels- town on September 9, 1887. A meeting was held to discuss the condition of the tenantry of the estate. The police authorities, as was usual upon such occa- sions, did not consult the organizers of the meeting beforehand ; but, just as the HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 155 meeting was about to begin, they forced their way through the crowd, " baton- ing as they went." They were, however, unsuccessful in reaching the platform, and were driven back by the people. They returned a second time in increased numbers and again attempted to force their way; but once again they were driven back, and finally took refuge in their barracks. It has been amply proven, since that memorable day, that the police were acting most illegally in endeavoring to break up a meeting which had not been proclaimed. But the moment they got into the barracks, they fired upon the people and three persons were shot — this, notwithstanding that where the crowd was, was a distance away, and that therefore there was no possible danger to the police. There were present at this meeting Mr. Henry Labouchere, M.P., Mr. J. T. Brunner, M.P., and several English ladies ; and the account they gave of the affair created intense excitement in England as well as in Ireland. The matter was immediately brought before the House of Commons, and Mr. Bal- four proceeded to justify the action of the police by giving an "official account" of the transaction, not one important detail of which was correct. The Irish Times — a Tory organ in Dublin — gives the following account of it : " The mounted farmers were scarcely in a position to move, so close was the press The police drew their batons and struck the flanks of the horses severely. In this way they advanced some distance into the crowd, and here the passage was blocked again, and they proceeded to force their way, using the muzzles of their rifles. " And here I shall give some of the testimony in regard to the murders. " Showers of stones," said Mr. Balfour, " were thrown at the police, and they were struck with blackthorns before they drew their batons." " Sticks were raised," is the account of Head-constable O'Doherty, " and the people were shouting and pushing us back. The horsemen were spurring their horses. Some of the men were struck, and one stone passed my face." " I saw one stone," says Mr. Dillon, " come from the outskirts of the crowd, go high in the air, and drop among the police. I saw no other stones thrown. In a second the police were batoning every one around them, and men fell beneath the blows as if a hailstorm of shot had been sent in among them." " Before the onslaught," says Mr. Conbrough, " I did not observe the people do anything toward them," meaning the police. 156 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. The next misstatements of Mr. Balfour are so gross and so significant that I have to put the true and the false statements in parallel columns : MR. BALFOUR in the House of Commons. " It was not until they were thrown into disorder, and routed by a charge of the men on horseback — it was not until they were knocked down, wound- ed, and forced to fly for their lives, until the majority of them took refuge in the barrack, which was attacked and the door broken, that resort was had to firearms — firstly, for the purpose of protecting the barracks ; and secondly, for the purpose of protecting the un- happy police stragglers who were still left outside." Sworn Testimony of HEAD-CONSTABLE o'DOHERTY. " The barrack door was open when the first shot was fired from outside the barrack door. Sergeant Kirwan could have entered the barrack. Con- stable Leahy was coming up to the barrack at the time. The barrack was not broken into before the police fired. Stones were thrown, but the barrack door was not broken. / did not get my rifle before Constable Leahy {the only straggler) came in. A crowd of four or five hundred persons followed down to the barrack. They were throwing stones at the barrack. The stones were coming from the square. Stones were striking the barrack win- dows. There were six out of one hun- dred and sixty panes of glass broken / No person was injured by the stories which came toward the barrack." Mr. Dillon gives testimony which corroborates that of the Head-constable. He had succeeded in getting inside the barrack before the firing began. Think- ing that there was a crowd outside whose attack on the barrack was inducing the fire of the police, he asked to be allowed to address the people, and then he asked to be allowed to go outside. " They unbolted the door," says Mr. Dillon, " and when the door was unbolted there was nobody outside. I walked out, expecting to see a crowd that would have to be dispersed, and 1 found nobody ; and there were not ten men within sixty yards of the barrack." Similarly as to the alleged attack on the barrack, Mr. Dillon corroborates the Head-constable. The Head-constable states that out of the one hundred and sixty panes, six were HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 157 broken. Mr. Dillon says he only saw three. The correspondent of the Standard puts the number of broken panes, like the Head-constable, at six ; but he adds : " Some of the broken glass lies outside " — that is to say, some of these panes were probably broken by the policemen pushing their rifles through. And now, as to the manner and temper in which the firing took place, I shall again put the true and the false statements in opposite columns : HEAD-CONSTABLE o'dOHERTY. MR. BALFOUR. " The fire from the barrack was not a random fire — it was not the fire of men who had lost all self-control owing to the treatment they had received, natural, in my opinion, as such absence of self-control would have been. // was the deliberate fire of men acting under the orders of their officer, who instructed them to fire only at those portions of the mob attacking the bar- rack, and who did their best to direct their fire at those who were guilty of this assault" " I got no orders to get my rifle. I went myself. I saw other men taking their arms. I could not say if they went of their own accord. I went of my own accord to where my rifle was, and brought it down." mr. morphy (counsel for the police). " We admit that Sergeant Kirwan got 710 order to fire ; but he fired." CONSTABLE RYDER CROSS-EXAMINED. " Who was the Inspector who gave the order to advance ? — On my oath I can't tell. "Who gave you the order to retire ? — I cannot tell you. "Was it your superior officer? — I believe it was. " Which of them ? — I cannot say. " Was it the same officer who gave you the order to advance that told you to retire? — Things were so confused that I could not tell if it was. " On your oath, when you fired, did you single out any one whom you saw stone-throwing ? — I did. " Did you single out any person to fire at ? — Yes. 153 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. "On your oath, did you swear a moment ago that you did not fire at any single person ? — No ; but in this way, when one man is in front of the others. "Though the man might be inno- cent ? — I could not tell an innocent man in a crowd. " Did you aim to kill? — I did." A verdict of wilful murder was returned against the police, by the coroner's jury ; but Mr. Balfour had that verdict quashed ; and to use Mr. Gladstone's words : " The deaths of three men in Mitchelstown remain as unavenged as if they had been three dogs." On the 8th of August, preceding this horror, Mr. William O'Brien and Mr. John Mandeville held a meeting at Mitchelstown to protest against the ac- tion of the landlords ; but, immediately after the meeting they were arrested, promptly brought before the resident or stipendiary magistrates and sentenced : Mr. O'Brien to three months' imprisonment and Mr. Mandeville to two. Both appealed, and the case came up for trial on October 31st, before the Recorder of Cork — or, as he was then called, the County Court Judge. And of course the verdict, or rather the decision, was approved. They were first locked up in Cork County jail ; but the second morning after their incarceration a curious incident occurred — one telling more of Balfour's brutality than many a more important event in his administration. Mr. O'Brien himself graphically tells of it in his evidence at the inquest on Mr. Mandeville : " I met Mr. Mandeville about four o'clock on the second morning after our arrival in Cork jail." "That is not the usual hour for rising in the prison?" — " No, it is an extraordinary hour, and a very extraordinary occurrence. In win- ter the usual time for rising is a quarter to seven. I was called some time after three o'clock, and the deputy governor, Mr. Oxford, and the head warder un- locked my cell and entered with a lantern. The deputy governor said, ' Get up, Mr. O'Brien; going!' I said, 'In God's name! where at this hour of the morning ? ' He said, ' We know no more than yourself ; we were routed out of our beds ourselves.' I got up, and was brought on the corridor, and I there met Mr. Mandeville. It was bitterly cold and dark." HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 159 " Did you ever read of anything more like a midnight murder ? " remarked Mr. O'Brien to Mr. Mandeville — words that have a strange significance at this hour. " I suppose that's just what they are up to," replied Mr. Mandeville. A short time afterward Mr. Mandeville made a remark which also has a pathetic and retrospective interest. He was suffering from diarrhoea from the cocoa he had received in the prison on the previous night : " but," says Mr. O'Brien, " he only laughed at it, and said, ' It will take a good deal to kill me ! ' He was," said Mr. O'Brien, " one of the most uncomplaining men I have ever met — a man of few words, and those always cheerful." The prisoners found ultimately that their destination was Tullamore. The reason of their removal to this distant prison was that if they had remained in Cork the tortures which Mr. Balfour contemplated might have been prevented by visits from the mayor and magis- trates of the city, who were in sympathy with the political views of his prisoners. In Tullamore it was thought that, with the magistracy almost entirely in the hands of Tories, they would be left unvisited and unprotected ; that the brutali- ties and cruelties might be inflicted upon them in the tomblike silence of the jail, and that there would be no communication whatever between them and the outer world. Unfortunately for this pretty plan of Mr. Balfour, there were one or two magistrates who were Nationalists, and it was to the publicity which Dr. Moorhead, one of their number, gave to his treatment by the jail authorities that Mr. O'Brien attributes the preservation of his life. But in spite of Dr. Moor- head, Mr. Balfour had now his opportunity. Perhaps the most formidable of all his political opponents was tight in his grasp, and another Irishman, brave, stalwart, and resolute, was at his mercy. He took advantage of the situation with a disgusting cruelty which must ever remain a blot on his name, and an infamy in English statesmanship. He insisted on Mr. O'Brien and Mr. Mande- ville being treated as common criminals ; seized their clothes for the purpose of forcing them to put on the prison garb, and, when they refused to yield, pun- ished them repeatedly. The delicacy of Mr. O'Brien's constitution, and the prominent place he held in the eye and the affections of the Irish people, were to him a certain safeguard ; but with Mr. John Mandeville, Mr. Balfour thought he was safe, and Mr. Mandeville accordingly felt the full force of his cowardly vengeance. Mr. Mandeville had resolved to do nothing which would recognize the con- tention of Mr. Balfour that his offense was of the same disgraceful character as 16Q CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. that of an ordinary offender. On two points the contest between Mr. Mande- ville and the prison authorities, acting under the instructions of Mr. Balfour, turned — they turned on whether Mr. Mandeville would wear the prison dress and whether he would clean out his cell. For refusing to comply with the regula- tions on these points, Mr. Mandeville was sentenced by the governor of the jail- or by a magistrate. The governor gave the following list of these punishments at the inquest : November 5, twenty-four hours' bread and Water. November 14, three days' bread and water. November 19, twenty-four hours' bread and water. December 8, forty-eight hours' bread and water. December 20, two days' solitary confinement in punishment cell. All these days of punishment have a tragic history of their own, which is told in the evidence given at the inquest, or in letters written by Mr. Mandeville long before his death, and, therefore, long before he could have contemplated their being used against his political opponents. When Mandeville entered prison — as has been said already, and as was sworn to by his widow at the inquest on his remains — he never had had a single day's illness. " I had known him since a child," swore Mrs. Mandeville. " I always looked on him as an amazingly strong man and very healthy. Between our marriage and the time he was sent to prison, on the 31st October last, he was always a strong and healthy man. I don't remember his being in bed for even one day through illness." But Man- deville was not long in prison when he began to show symptoms of physical decay. On the 10th of November Dr. Moorhead reported in the visitors' book: " He complained of sore throat, and his breathing seemed embarrassed." It has been suggested that all the statements with regard to Mr. Mandeville were in- vented after his death for political purposes, and to excite a storm of indignation against Mr. Balfour. The entry which proves the existence of sore throat was made many months before Mandeville's death, and nearly all the other evidence I shall quote will be evidence which was placed on record before his death, and therefore cannot have been manufactured afterward for the purpose of damaging a political adversary. Let us come to his second term of punishment. Of that terrible time we have a description in the words of Mandeville himself. He wrote a letter, dated HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. j^ the 2d of January, to Mr. Sydney Halifax — he did not die for six months af- terward — and here is his description in this letter of what he went through : " The punishment diet always makes me ill. I was obliged to give up tak- ing water with my bread, and had to swallow the latter dry, or an attack of diar- rhoea was the result. This attack generally lasted for three days, and on one occasion for more than six. I complained to the governor in presence of Dr. Moorhead (a J. P. for King's County) of the unfairness of putting me on pun- ishment dietary, as a double penalty of illness after starvation was inflicted upon me, and stated that if the law allowed starvation, yet he had no right to injure my health. His reply was that the medical officer of the prison made no such representation to him, having certified me fit for punishment, and that as I had refused to comply with regulations of the Prison Board, he was compelled to punish me in the proper discharge of his duty. " At this very time I was suffering from a cold and bad sore-throat, and being medically treated for the latter, besides being generally out of condition, the doctor must have known, as he saw me daily. Yet I was sentenced to seventy-two hours' punishment. After being fourteen hours on punishment dietary I got a violent attack of diarrhoea. I complained to the doctor that day. Yet as some prison test, unnecessary to mention, did not satisfy him, I was kept on punishment for thirty hours longer. On this occasion I remained twenty-four hours without taking any food, as the dry bread hurt my throat, and I feared to use water to moisten the food, knowing from former experience its effects. I certainly felt very ill and miserable, but hunger was not my punish- ment. I have all my life been able to endure want of food without suffering much pain, such as numbers of people complain of ; but I consider I was being savagely ill-treated, because the prison physician said I was not ill, and Dr. Moorhead had expressed a contrary opinion. However, I got so very ill and weak, and the prison physician's test having been satisfied, I was allowed off all punishment on the evening of the third day and put upon medical treatment. The only change made in my ordinary prison food was white bread substituted for brown. Next day I was very weak and tired after a couple of rounds of the exercise ring. I did not recover my general health for fully a week." There is one scene finally which deserves record. On the evening of the 22d of November the governor of the jail entered Mandeville's cell; roused him out of bed ; tore off his own clothes — which he was wearing: at the time — Ig2 CHARLES STEWART PARKELL. even took away his shirt, and left him thus the choice of putting on the prison clothes, or of finding temporary cover in the bed-clothes. Mandeville adopted the latter alternative. He wrapped himself in a quilt and sheet. The re- mainder of the story will be told in the words of Dr. Moorhead: " On the 23d, the day after the forcible removal of his own clothes, I found Mr. Mandeville," says Dr. Moorhead, " walking about wrapped in a quilt and a sheet. He had no other clothing on him, not even a shirt. He was barefooted. He com- plained that his clothes had been forcibly taken from him the previous evening by several warders, after a struggle. He protested against the treatment and demanded his clothes. His legs and feet were perfectly bare, and his chest and one of his arms. The floor of the cell was flagged, and the weather at the time was the usual winter weather. I visited him next day, and he was then attired in prison garb. That day he told me the quilt and sheet were taken from him. He was left the choice of going perfectly naked or putting on the prison clothes, and he adopted the latter alternative under protest. I think he remained twenty- four hours naked before putting on the prison clothes." Finally, as to what John Mandeville suffered in prison, there is the testimony of his widow. It is asserted by Mr. Balfour and by one of Mr. Balfour's agents — of whom more presently — that Mr. Mandeville left the prison in perfect health. Here is the description which Mrs. Mandeville gave of his appearance when he returned home after his release : " He returned," she told the coroner's jury, " from Tulla- more on Christmas Eve." " Was his appearance then much altered? — Yes, his lips were quite blue, and he had become pale and very thin. His eyes were very sore ; he could not read at all by lamplight, and in the daytime he could only read with difficulty. He always wrote a fair, firm hand before he went to prison ; for a month after he left prison he could hardly write at all, or only with great difficulty. He complained of the weight of his overcoat, and com- plained that he could not walk the mile from his house to Mitchelstown. "Can you tell any incident to indicate his strength, Mrs. Mandeville? " Mrs. Mandeville : He used to carry me up-stairs and he never did it after he left prison. " Did he try to do it ? — He did once, and I remember him saying that I had got very heavy. He told me after he left prison that he never recovered his strength, and there seemed, to be always some little thing the matter with him. At one time it was his throat, and he complained of having a bad tooth. HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. K33 I noticed for a month before he died that he had great difficulty with his throat, and he complained of his throat being sore and of weakness." Next, as to his prison treatment, here is what Mrs. Mandeville had to say : " Did he tell you the whole of his prison life ? — Yes ; he told me the whole of his prison life. He told me more than he told any person in the whole world." " What did he tell you of his prison life ? — .... He complained very much of his throat after he came home. He complained to me that the doctor did not believe him about his throat, and that he frequently certified that he was fit for punishment when he was not fit He told me that while his throat was sore he was three days on punishment diet. He told me that his throat was so sore during that time that he could not eat the punishment diet, brown bread, and could not drink the cold water ; that he took nothing to eat for more than twenty hours, because he could not eat the bread or drink the water. He told me that one, I think, of the Tang prisoners in the jail had given him a rope, and that he tied it round his waist, and as he suffered more and more from hunger he tightened the rope (great sensation in court). He said to me that Dr. Moorhead said to him that he was seriously ill, yet that Dr. Ridley seemed to think that he could stand the punishment. " Did he say anything as to the state of his mind ? — He told me that from hunger his mind wandered, and he told me — of course it was in confidence between husband and wife — he told me he prayed to God that he might die rather than go mad (sensation). " Did he say anything about a scrap of food he got in prison ? — He told me one incident. He told me that there was a warder one day outside his cell door — one of the ordinary warders, not a friendly warder — and that the warder evidently was eating his dinner outside the door, and he said he opened the door and ' he threw me in a scrap of meat as I would throw it to Rover' — that is our dog — and he said he never in his life enjoyed anything so much — it was a mere tiny scrap." Such is the story — the shocking and terrible story — told by Mrs. Mande- ville with regard to her husband. One of the many delicate suggestions which Mr. Balfour has made in the course of this controversy is that Mrs. Mandeville invented this entire story. But if she invented the story to damage Mr. Balfour, she must have begun the process of invention before she could ever have con- 1(34 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. templated that her husband's treatment would become one of the weapons against Mr. Balfour. The evidence I have quoted was given after the death of Mr. Mandeville, and so might have been invented for the purpose, Mr. Balfour has suggested ; but unfortunately for that theory, Mrs. Mandeville said exactly the same things before, as after the death of her husband. First, as to his appearance after he came out of prison. " He was very thin and weak," wrote Mrs. Mandeville, on January 7th, to Mr. Halifax. " I was horrified when I saw him," she wrote to Mrs. Tillyard, of Cambridge, at the same period. Then, as to the terrible story in which he is represented as tying a rope around his waist and his fearing madness, here is an extract from the same letter to Mrs. Tillyard : " His cell was flagged and bitterly cold. I wonder my husband did not go mad. He tied a rope round his waist, which he tightened as hunger grew worse." As to Mrs. Mandeville's statement about the scenes when he was sentenced to three days' punishment, nearly all are exactly the same as those which have already been quoted from a letter which Mr. Mande- ville wrote himself shortly after his release from imprisonment. There is one other witness as to the circumstances of John Mandeville's death who must be mentioned. For the purpose of investigating the treatment of the political prisoners, Mr. Balfour obtained the services of a Dr. Barr. Mr. Balfour denies all responsibility for the selection of this particular gentleman ; but it seems a singular coincidence that a man should be selected for this work who was an active Tory, an official of the Tory organization, and a man of strong Tory connections in Liverpool. Whether it were these facts or not that led to the selection of Dr. Barr, it is certain that he proceeded to his work in a spirit of the bitterest partisanship. At the time that Mr. Mandeville was in Tullamore jail Dr. Ridley was the physician. Everybody knows now the character of this unhappy man. He was apparently a weak man with strong instincts of humanity, afraid to give his instincts any rein lest he should lose his appointment. The first thing that Dr. Barr did was to warn Dr. Ridley that if he showed any indulgence to the prisoners under his charge the forfeiture of his place would immediately follow. The result of it was that Dr. Ridley at once agreed to the punishment of the pris- oners immediately after every visit of Dr. Barr. Alderman Hooper, who was in jail at the time, narrates how Dr. Ridley came in terror to announce an ap- proaching visit of Dr. Barr, and removed him, in consequence, from the hospital HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. K;5 back to his cell. In one of his letters written by Mr. Mandeville after his release, from which quotations have already been made, there is an allusion to Dr. Barr. It confirms the suggestion of Mr. Hooper, that the purpose Dr. Barr fulfilled was that of hounding on Dr. Ridley to the more brutal treatment of his prisoners. "In justice to the doctor," writes John Mandeville in a letter of January 2d, " I must say that I complained of being kept on punishment, and stated all these facts to a medical inspector from the Irish Prisons Board, who said the prison doctor should act as he did, according to the instructions he received, if he discharged his duty properly, and that if he did not do so, he could be dismissed at twenty-four hours' notice from the Prisons Board. I com- plained also about being punished by being put on bread and water, knowing, as the doctor did, that it had an injurious effect upon me, and the only observation he made was that I did not get enough punishment." But we need not go further than the evidence of Dr. Barr himself as to the spirit in which he performed the work assigned to him by Mr. Balfour. In his evidence at the inquest he declared that Mr. Mandeville's death lay at the hands of the doctors who attended him, and that Mrs. Mandeville's statement as to the appearance of her husband after his release could not possibly be true. With the following extract we may finally dismiss Dr. Barr : "The MacDermot: Now I ask you another question, and take time to recollect, if you wish. Did you say to any gentleman in Liverpool that Mande- ville was a great scoundrel and did not get half enough, or deserved what he got? — I may have used words to that effect (sensation and murmurs in court)." John Mandeville died on July 8th. The conduct of Mr. Balfour after his death was even worse than the cruelty by which he had brought Mr. Mandeville to a premature grave. He kept silence on the subject until he spoke at a Tory meeting in Glasgow. Mr. Balfour has since attempted to explain away as best he could the tone of that speech ; and if it did no other good, it had the effect of making him a little ashamed of himself, for the first time since he undertook the Chief Secretaryship of Ireland. The speech certainly did require an apology ; and if the apology of Mr. Balfour had been frank, it might have been something of a reparation. But the apology was an audacious denial of what was true. Mr. Balfour denied that he had joked over the grave of Mr. Mandeville ; but the record of the speech and of how it was received remain, and across every line is written the cynical delight of the speaker in the story he was telling, and IQQ CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. uproarious delight of the audience that heard it. What is even worse, Mr. Bal- four sought — slyly and by insinuation rather than by open statement — to blacken the character of a man he had done to death by a calumny as unfounded as ever assailed the fame of the living or the dead. In the report which was published in the Glasgow Herald, a Unionist journal, on the day after the speech was de- livered, the reader is constantly met with " laughter," " shouts of laughter," etc. In this speech there is a description of what Mr. Balfour calls "the engage- ments " of Mr. Mandeville. He gives the following account of Mr. Mandeville's doings, the minuteness of which gave to the shocked conscience of the country an insight into the system of political espionage which Unionist government and coercion demand in Ireland : " On the 2 1 st of May he drove home late at night, having taken part in a drunken row ; on the 30th of May he attended an open-air demonstration ; and then, on the 3d of June, attended another open-air meeting, and made afterward a speech on the 4th of June ; he attended on the 5th of June another meeting, and the day was pouring wet, and he was out in it all day (laughter) ; on the 6th of June, which was also a wet day, he took part in a demonstration ; on the 14th of June he was in Fermoy in the evening, and remained in a public-house till after 10 o'clock (laughter), and then he drove home (renewed laughter) ; on the 17th he spoke at Killiclig, and on the 18th headed a mob at Fermoy; on the 22d of June he was in court, and on the 25th of June he was in another pub- lic-house at Fermoy at 11:30." " And so on," properly commented William O'Brien, " with the astounding record of where he was on such a day, what house he visited, whom he saw, what he said, what hour he left home, and what hour he returned — a picture worthy of the most loathsome traditions of Russian despotism or of the dark cabinets of Fouche" and Vidocq." In Mr. J. J. Carney's pamphlet, entitled " A Year of Unionist Coercion," he gives the following summary of the brutalities of Mr. Balfour, which were inflicted on the different Irish Members of Parliament : " Mr. David Sheehy, M.P., for a public speech : " 1. Arrested and denied bail pending trial, although his wife was danger- ously ill. " 2. Taken to an empty cell for refusing to take off his clothes, knocked down by five warders, and stripped of his clothes by force. HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. iqj "3. Left naked in the cell for two hours, with an open window, which faced the north and was out of reach. " 4. Put by force in prison clothes, and conveyed to another cell, where he flung off the prison clothes except the shirt and drawers, which for fourteen days were his only clothing in the daytime, the month being December. " 5. Put on bread-and-water (or punishment) diet for refusing to clean his cell. " 6. Roused up at an early hour on the 3d of January, forcibly dressed in prison clothes and his own overcoat, and (he having cast away the prison cap) brought a long journey bareheaded before his own constituents, and into the court-house at Portumna, as a witness in the case of Mr. Blunt. " 7. Put to sleep on a plank bed. " 8. Fed on prison food. "9. Imprisoned for one month as a common felon; imprisoned afterward for another speech for three months as a first-class misdemeanant— the change in the treatment being due to the humanity of the County Court Judge who heard the second case on appeal. "Alderman Hooper, M.P., for publishing in his newspaper, the Cork Herald, reports of public meetings : " 1. Stripped of his clothes by force and clad in prison garb. " 2. Put on bread-and-water diet, and kept in constant confinement for five days, for refusing to clean out cell utensils. "3. Suffered from diarrhoea as result of bread-and-water diet, and com- pelled to go to hospital for ten days. "4. Prevented from taking exercise, and confined in a cell 14 feet by 6 feet for twenty-four days, because he would not take it in company with two criminals who were in prison for stabbing. " 5. Put on plank bed. " 6. Kept in prison for two months. " Mr. W. J. Lane, M.P., for a public speech : " 1. Stripped of his clothes by force and clad in prison garb. " 2. Put on bread-and-water diet for eight days. " 3. Confined to cell twenty-two days. " 4. Rendered unable to sleep eight nights. " 5. Put on plank bed. 1£8 CHAELES STEWART PARNELL. " 6. Kept in prison one month. " Mr. J. R. Cox, M.P., for public speech : " i. Clad in prison clothes (his own clothes having been taken out of his cell the first night). " 2. Put on plank bed. " 3. Put on bread-and-water diet, which caused diarrhoea, whereupon removed to hospital for ten days by doctor's orders. "4. Kept on prison fare remainder of the term. " 5. Put to picking oakum like ordinary criminal. " 6. Kept in prison for one month, and afterward another month as a first- class misdemeanant. " Mr. Douglas J. Pyne, M.P., for a public speech : " 1. Stripped of his clothes by force and clad in prison clothes. " 2. Kept in cell without a fire, which brought on chilblains on ears, where- upon removed to room in hospital ; also suffered from diarrhoea. " 3. Set to picking oakum. "4. Locked up in cell from 5 p.m. to 11 a.m. every day, and out only half an hour every Sunday morning when at church. " 5. In prison six weeks. " Mr. James Gilhooly, M.P., for a public speech : " 1. Made to sleep on a plank bed. " 2. Stripped of his own clothes and put in prison clothes by force. " 3. Fed on prison fare and put on bread-and-water (or punishment) diet for several days. " 4. Kept in close confinement for several days for refusing to take exercise with ordinary criminals. " 5. Kept in prison for fourteen days, and for a further period of fourteen days for an alleged assault on a policeman, which was sworn by several respect- able persons to have been committed only after Mr. Gilhooly had himself been assaulted. " Mr. Edward Harrington, M.P., for publishing in his newspaper, the Kerry Sentinel, reports of public meetings : " 1. Imprisoned for one month as a common felon. " 2. Clad in prison clothes. " 3. Brought in prison clothes from the jail into the court-house in Tralee HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. J (59 — the county town in the division of Kerry which he represents in Parliament — to give evidence in the case of his brother, Mr. T. Harrington, M.P. " 4. Fed on prison fare. 5. Put on plank bed. "Mr. William O'Brien, M.P., for a public speech, the object and result of which was to save a large body of tenants in his own constituency from extermination, and to enable them to take advantage of the Land Act of 1887: " 1. Imprisoned for three months as a common criminal. " 2. Having refused to take off his own clothes and put on prison clothes, was for six days after committal subjected to constant threats of force. " 3. Put on bread-and-water (or punishment) diet for several days in suc- cession for refusing to wear prison clothes. "4. Had his clothes stolen while he lay asleep, and thus rendered unable to get out of bed at all for several days. " 5. Subjected in his cell to the torture of night alarms and constant spying. " 6. Denied the use of pen and ink or pencil, and compelled to send a letter out of prison written with a pin in his own blood. " 7. Kept in a cold and airless cell, and made to sleep on a plank bed for a considerable time. " 8. Threatened with tubercular disease in consequence of his treatment, and so wasted on his release that his medical attendant forbade his taking part in any public work for a time, and ordered him to go abroad for the benefit of his health. Mr. O'Brien, it should be explained, suffered some years ago from lung disease." But it is useless to pursue this matter further. The tyranny of Balfour was admittedly the most heinous that ever existed in any country ; but despite it, Mr. Parnell and his lieutenants defied the powers which had been intrusted to this man, and, against every odds, persevered in their struggle for Irish autonomy and the vindication of the Irish race. CHAPTER VIII. IN MEMORIAM. The O'Shea Divorce Case— The Secession of Mr. Parnell's Followers— His Refusal to Resign the Leadership — His Reasons— Patriotic to the Last— An Englishman's Re- view of Gladstone's Unreliability — Mr. Parnell's Death— His Last Words— The entire Political World shocked by his sudden Demise— His Funeral. T is not for me now, nor for any man to enter into the private life of Mr. Parnell, or to discuss it. I am dealing with him only as the leader of the Irish race. On December 28, 1889, Captain O'Shea filed a petition for divorce from his wife, and named Mr. Parnell as co-respond- ent. Mr. Parnell was at this time discussing with Mr. Gladstone, the latter gen- tleman's Home Rule proposals. He had forced the great English leader to ask his assistance. At no time during his career was his power so potent ; but a black cloud had come between him and the laurel wreath — treachery. The moment the divorce case was finished, at the bidding of Mr. Gladstone, two-thirds of his followers deserted him, and swayed by a fantastic morality they demanded his retirement. He refused to do this unless certain conditions were agreed, and here, from my humble standpoint, I shall endeavor to defend his action. The crucial question upon which Mr. Parnell's final step will be judged and by which his action in persisting to refuse to give up the reins of power in the Irish party will be ultimately condoned or condemned, resolves itself into one of remarkable simplicity. It is this : Was he justified in declining to accept the be- lief that Mr. Gladstone would remain true to the scheme of Home Rule, which he had succeeded in convincing the majority of the party he was an earnest ad- vocate of ? Could Mr. Gladstone really be depended upon, under every circum- stance of political prosperity or of political adversity, to remain true to the cause of Home Rule as defined by those who were in negotiation with him, — without peradventure, and without yielding one jot or iota to the needs of party, the press- ure of English opinion or the exigencies of statecraft ? (170) HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. \^\ It was this whole-souled devotion, this steadfastness to principle — political principle, — as to eternal truth which, in Mr. Parnell's eyes, was needed : Could he trust him ? That was the problem facing Mr. Parnell. And he had to meet it alone ; as between his conscience, his country, and his God. The grave has closed over the only hand which could indite the story of these days, and we shall never know the chain of wrestling by which Ireland's great patriot, in that awful hour, determined that he could not trust Gladstone. We may never know the specific acts upon which, in reviewing the past history of the one man who held the power to do his soul's desire, Parnell decided that Gladstone might keep the word of promise to the ear, and break it to the heart. The musings of that mighty mind are buried with him in the grave, and the sealed book is closed until the Judgment-day. But we have the same material which we can marshal that he had ; we have the same grand cause. We may not have the keen perception, the clear eye, the personal acquaintance, so valuable beyond price in estimating character, that Mr. Parnell possessed ; but we have the public life's record of Mr. Gladstone for our less feeble guidance, and let us look to that through its half century's career for light and comparison. On the very threshold of the subject, without, for the moment, attempting to find any reasons for it, there arises the most significant fact — a fact unparalleled in the history of any English statesman — that this very question, from the earliest days of Mr. Gladstone's career until his latest, has been periodically passed judgment upon by the vox populi, which practice and proverb alike rely on as indicating an intuitive judgment of truth and just as regularly as the constituencies elected him, so, just as regularly, they found him out, and with no uncertain sound pronounced against him the verdict of dismissal. In a word, the Hosannas of his Palm Sun- days have ever been swiftly followed by the Good Friday's "give us Barabbas." The most phlegmatic and aristocratic as well as the most easily swayed demo- cratic of English constituencies have, alike, found him out. Rejected by the pocket borough of Newark in 1848, he turned to his Alma Mater, and in the classic and ultra-conservative bosom of the University of Oxford he found a welcome. Oxford, deceived and at last betrayed, turned her back upon him in 1865, and the brawny democratic electors of Southwest Lancashire elected him. Lancashire, in turn, dismissed him in 1868. Then a Metropolitan Borough caught this rolling magnate in her arms, but only to fling him aside as did the 172 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. others, until at last he found a faithful constituency, and since then he has repre- sented Mid-Lothian — a Scotch constituency. So that the question widens out into the still further one : were the judgments of the vox populi of England as well as the individual judgment of Mr. Parnell justifiable? To elucidate this it would be well, nay, it is necessary, to trace back to its advent Mr. Gladstone's career ; and fortunately, for the clearer and more judicial judgment on this point, I have had placed in my hands the investigation of an English author (Mr. Charles Turner), whose mind, as if by prophetic instinct, was directed to this question some three years ago, and the manuscript which he then wrote has lain dormant in his study-desk until I mentioned the subject to him a few days ago. And I have no hesitation in availing myself of his reluctantly-given permission to use it in this work. It is a perfect revelation of Mr. Gladstone's character, and a perfect defense of the issue with which I have begun this chapter. " The circumstances under which Mr. Gladstone entered public life were the most favorable. Born, not in the purple, but on the borders of it, of a com- mercial family in easy circumstances, bred ' under the shadow of Canning,' pre- ceded by his own father in Parliament, he left Eton and Oxford with a con- siderable reputation, and entered the House of Commons, through the pocket borough of Newark, under the patronage of the Duke of Newcastle, to be presently and rapidly installed into office under the patronage of Sir Robert Peel. By 1846 it was already written of him that he had 'invested himself with a certain mysterious interest, his warning voice and his solemn exhort- ation' had even then 'rendered him the object of a vague admiration.' Has admiration, in its natural sense, ever been deserved? This is a question which diverges at once into two distinct, yet ever crossing, branches. What has been his conduct and what have been the results arising from it ? Has his course of action as 'the man' and 'the statesman ' given valid and substantial grounds for admiration ? Does his conduct as a ' colleague ' and his success as ' a statesman ' entitle him to that exalted niche amongst the Gods in the Temple of Fame, wherein his most recently acquired friends would place him ? " No answer can be resolved out of this inquiry which does not rest upon agreed 'premises'; therefore it must be premised, as indeed it will be pretty generally admitted, that, at least, amongst the attributes which are essential to a 'statesman ' are 'a patriotism which sees only the interests of its own country'; HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 173 ' principles ' right for their own sake and not merely expedient ; ' penetrating perspicacity' and 'perseverance,' unremitting in a defined course. And then, again, as a member of many governments, with many colleagues in a common venture, it will be equally generally granted that ' loyalty ' is of primal im- portance. Whilst in the united position of ' man ' and ' statesman,' which is occupied by a ' party leader,' we should look for ' success ' to have crowned his leadership. " The answer to these questions will decide his title. " And first, what has history to say of him in that capacity in which the ' colleague ' bears the major relation ? — it will be best to dispose of the personal question of his conduct as a colleague first. In that relation was he 'loyal'? Shades of departed statesmen ! Ghosts of the great slain ! Memoirs which show ' the touch of a vanished hand' ! Answer ye ! The very threshold of his official career is marked with a warning, noted at the time, ' as affording a bad guarantee for his political wisdom who could risk the stability of the Govern- ment in order to secure a brief personal dclat.' He gave his assent to Sir Robert Peel's proposal to increase the endowment of Maynooth, but, instead of following it up, he resigned his office in the Government. Since then he has never joined a Government but to desert or ruin it. He never deserted one but to attack it ; he never attacked it but he slayed it. " He deserted the Government of Lord Aberdeen in 1855 — the policy of which he had largely shaped — denounced it as carrying on a policy * immoral, inhuman, and unchristian,' and smashed it. He deserted the Government of Lord Palmerston in 1857, denounced it in relation to the Chinese war as de- parted from the principles of ' eternal justice,' and smashed it ; and he followed, with relentless rigor, until he smashed the reconstructed Government of Lord Palmerston in 1858, on the question of the amendment of the Conspiracy Laws. To resign, to attack, to watch the apparently rising tide, and to mount it, have been tactics quite as sedulously followed with his aforetime colleagues as with his political opponents. He wrecked the Government of Lord John Russell in 1866, in which he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, by personally dragging into prominence the dormant question of Electoral Reform. He wrecked his own Government in 1873 by throwing over the policy of 'concurrent endow- ment ' which he had adopted at the knee of Sir Robert Peel, and apparently, from that time, believed in as the policy for Ireland. He wrecked his own Gov- 174 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. ernment in 1885 by throwing over nearly all his colleagues and the convictions of a lifetime, and by adopting, behind their backs, the forsworn principle of Home Rule for Ireland. The track of his whole career can be traced by the skeletons of his victims and the wrecks of his failures. "To the 'stern and unbending Tories' of fifty years ago Mr. Gladstone was ' the rising hope.' Amongst his first votes were those given for putting the cost of maintaining the fabric of the Churches on the Land Tax — that is, prac- tically on the public purse ; against the admission of Dissenters into the offices or emoluments of the universities ; against the admission of Jews into Parlia- ment ; and against the repeal of those badges of a past clerical tyranny, ' the Conventicle acts.' He resisted the Government proposal to reduce the duty on foreign sugar to the amount paid on sugar grown in the British colonies (on the fanciful ground, which probably occurred to no other human being, that foreign sugar was produced by ' slave labor,' whereas England had freed her colonial negroes). On the Corn Laws he supported the sliding scale of Sir Robert Peel, only to take the final plunge of total abolition, which led to the ultimate extinction of the party. "From that time until the final incorporation of the 'Peelites' into the Liberal party, he led a political life, which he has himself described, with figura- tive accuracy, as 'a disembodied existence, like roving icebergs on which man could not land with safety, but with which ships might come into perilous colli- sion.' Now coquetting with Lord Derby and the Tories, now joining the ' Coalition Ministry ' of Lord Aberdeen, only to desert it in its hour of need ; now alternately harrying the Ministry of Lord Palmerston, joining it and leav- ing it — truly typifying the figurative accuracy of his description, ' a political ice- berg on which man could not land with safety, but against which ships might get wrecked,' and so he continued until he became, what from the first had been the object of his ambition — ' Prime Minister ' himself. "To those who studied him closely Mr. Gladstone has always been an open book ; though to the general public, ' the veiled prophet.' Lord Macaulay, fifty years ago, recognized that ' whatever Mr. Gladstone sees, he sees refracted through a false medium,' and his latest critic and colleague, Mr. Forster, who knew him well, declared in the House of Commons, ' He can persuade most people of most things, but, above all, he can persuade himself of anything.' And therein Mr. Forster touched the spring which unlocks much that would HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. J 75 otherwise be inexplicable in Mr. Gladstone ; for, whatever Mr. Gladstone may appear to others, however glaringly tortuous, conflicting, and opposing his views of the same problem at different times may appear to himself, his views, his aims, and his modes appear a perfectly harmonious and logically consistent evo- lution. He has recognized, and admitted, that there may be men whose 'great and glaring changes in their course are systematically timed and turned to their own advantage ; whose changes are hooded, slurred over, or denied,' but he has been none of them. He is ready, indeed, to heap coals of fire on his own head, if he could be convinced that his conduct had been ' manoeuvres which destroy confidence and entail merited dishonor,' 'changes accepted with a light and con- temptuous repudiation of former self.' But what is the use of trying to convince such a mind ? You might just as well try to convince a lunatic that he is not the Emperor of China. You may, indeed, point out to such an one that he lacks the insignia of that office ; that he has not even a pigtail ; or you may point out so startling an inconsistency as that he is making his claim in good English, of which language the Emperor of China is ignorant ; it is no matter, he has persuaded himself that he is the Emperor of China, and that is enough for him. You cannot convince him, simply because you do not see through the same mental vista he does, or even because you see evidences inconsistent with his claims. That is your misfortune, not his ; and although, of course, there is too much method in Mr. Gladstone's mind for so exaggerated a fiction as the Emperor of China, yet it is nevertheless scarcely less incomprehensible, to ordi- nary mortals, that he can so successfully 'persuade himself of anything' as to be unable to see what is so apparent to the natural man. He is, indeed, a psycholog- ical puzzle. Not only, as Lord Macaulay said, is there raised between him and his objects ' a false medium which distorts and distracts,' but this false medium over the loop-holes of his conscience is like the skin of the chameleon : it changes its hue with the ever-changing pervading color of the images he surrounds him- self with, and makes that object, which to-day was red, to-morrow green, impos- ing upon his understanding corresponding conclusions. Nor is there absent an- other striking symptom, evidenced in the self-satisfying assurance that the views he holds, however inconsistent, antagonistic, and conflicting they may appear to mortal and erring man, are always the views which the Almighty favors. He cannot, as Dr. Wordsworth wrote in 1852, 'veer from one extreme of specula- tion to its opposite, and, with something of childish recklessness and impatience, 176 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. cast down and destroy the splendid edifice of philosophical reasoning which he once and so ably raised,' without doing so ' from the best and holiest motives.' His speeches teem with this view, verging, at times, on the profane. He has seen the Pisgah view : to him has been drawn aside the curtain ; on him has fallen the pentecostal fire ; and between the Almighty and him there has been established an identity of purpose almost amounting to a partnership. His speech at Liverpool, on being rejected by the constituency of Oxford, is a fa- miliar instance of this. He trembles with apprehension at its fate ! Rejected him ! turned its back on the defender of ' Eternal justice ' ! the smiter of the wicked Lord Palmerston : ' the least trustworthy of modern ministers,' as he called him, — what could be the fate of such a place ? Long, he says, ' in spite of active opposition, Oxford resisted every effort to displace me. At last she has changed her mind. God grant it may be well with her ! " The parallel of the sorrow over Jerusalem is too patent to be missed. " To this is added, for the further bewilderment of ordinary comprehensions brought up on the simple rules of Cobbett and Lindley Murray, and guided only in their interpretation by the light of Dr. Johnson's dictionary, a rhetoric which, even in its callow infancy, appeared to Lord Macaulay to ' darken and perplex his logic,' and ' a vast command of a kind of language grave and majes- tic, but of a vague and uncertain import." The whole range of his writings re- veals, on every page, the accuracy of Lord Macaulay's diagnosis — pro- visos, negatives, personal reservations, qualifications of time and circumstance, doubts and conjectures, bristle in almost every sentence, like the survival of the works of one of those wonderful metaphysically subtle Graeco-Eastern minds of the school of Alexandria, which, as Kingsley points out, ' saw,' or as Mr. Gladstone, in his more cautious language, would have said, 'seemed to perceive,' 'in phrases and definitions, unmeaning to the grosser in- tellect, symbols of most important realities, and felt that on the distinction be- tween " homoousios " and " homoiousus," might hang the whole problem of hu- manity.' Well may Mr. Gladstone have written, in one of those sudden im- pulses of almost confidential frankness, ' many are the tricks of speech,' for you can never be sure you have grasped his whole, palpable, or natural meaning. Years afterward a preposition, a conjunction, a parenthesis, or a proviso, on which the fate of nations may depend, will be called attention to by him ; as if for that proviso, for that hidden equivoque, the whole composition was written ; and not HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. ] 77 that it might bear the interpretation which men, with only plain understanding looking for a plain answer to a plain question, had foolishly, negligently, and with want of due diligence and nice understanding, put upon it. In dialect- ical controversy Mr. Gladstone never ' burns his boats.' "There is, indeed, one distinguishing uniformity in Mr. Gladstone's course which redeems it from the slighest eccentricity of orbit, and determines all his movements to have been revolutions with a fixed centre : and that is the ever recurring fact that his changes of view have ever been exactly coincident with the necessity for a new cry, or for a new effort, either to retain or to secure political office. He himself has said, ' If this can be justly charged upon me I can no longer desire that any portion, however small, of the concerns or inter- ests of my country shall be lodged in my hands '; but of course he had already 'persuaded himself of his innocence ; yet the coincidence of views and necessi- ties is apparent, proven conclusively from the pages of all contemporary records, and might have been prognosticated. "To be 'left alone' or to be left in a minority has ever been his terror. Take the first serious instance in his career. In 1839 he published his first seri- ous work, ' The State in Relation to the Church.' It was a defense of the Irish Church as an establishment, to use his own words, 'based on the highest and most imperious grounds.' Of it, he said himself, thirty years after, ' my doctrine was that the Church, as established by law, was to be maintained for its truth ; that this was the only principle on which it could be properly and permanently upheld ; that the principle, if good in England, was good in Ireland ; that truth is, of all things, the most precious possession of the soul of man,' — noble words ! spoken with all the virgin innocence of conscientious conviction. Belief in them upheld the early Christian in the bloody arena of the Roman circus ; sus- tained the early disciples, nerved Latimer and Ridley at the stake, inspired the fiery hosts of Mahomet ; and still sustains, under the broiling sun of pestiferous Africa, and in the frigid homes of the Arctic regions, the lonely missionary. But mark the sequel in Mr. Gladstone ! Again quoting his own words : ' Scarcely had my work issued from the press when I became aware that there was no party, no section of a party, no individual person probably in the House of Commons who was prepared to act upon it. / found myself the last man in a sinking ship! " Lord Macaulay, in his criticism of the work, had, in fact, opened Mr. 178 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. Gladstone's eyes, for he had declared the work to be ' the measure of what a man can do to be left behind in the world ; it is the strenuous effort of a very- vigorous mind to keep as far in the rear of general progress as possible.' " Mr. Gladstone recognized at once that for a practical worldly man he was living in a fool's paradise. What, then, was his course ? Within five years, i. e., in 1844, he was President of the Board of Trade, and Sir Robert Peel, the then Prime Minister, made known to him his intention of laying his hand on the sacred ark of the covenant of ' truth ' by increasing the Government grant to the Roman Catholic College of Maynooth : to further what, to Mr. Gladstone, was contradistinguished as heresy from that 'truth' of the Irish Church so 'precious to the soul of man.' He, Mr. Gladstone, resigned his office to salve his conscience, but he spoke and voted for the measure in the House of Com- mons ; and, with a gravity perfectly incomprehensible, he proceeded, thirty years after, to base upon that fact the proposition : ' I respectfully submit by this act my freedom was established.' He in fact deserted the sinking ship. He sacri- ficed 'truth,' ' so precious to the soul of man '; but he was no longer left alone ; he avoided that, and kept open his career by joining those who destroyed the only principle on which the ' truth' could be ' properly and permanently upheld.' ' I found myself alone.' Is that a reason, in great minds, for abandoning ' truth ' ? All really great minds, at times, find themselves 'alone'; but has 'truth' ever been advanced by abandoning it ? Did Paul before the Roman Governor abandon truth ? Did Galileo, when he found himself alone, abandon truth ? Did Colum- bus, because he was a lone believer, abandon truth ? Did Luther abandon truth because he could find 'no party' to act with him? Did Darwin abandon his theories because they first developed to him ' alone ' ? No ! the world had been a different world indeed if the reallv great minds had ever acted thus. Great minds are nerved and not startled at finding themselves ' alone ' — the practical man, already an aspiring professional politician, with unaccomplished hopes, can so act : in him it is to be expected, and it may be worldly expedient in more than a personal sense ; but he who so acts must abandon his empty claim to be con- sidered as guided by an exalted devotion to soul-inspiring and soul-devouring ' truth ' and be prepared to come down to the lower plane of the calculating man of the world. He must be content to be reckoned with the mortals, or even amongst the tadpoles and tapirs of politics. " Upon this lower plane this disclosure of Mr. Gladstone by himself, throws HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 179 a significant side-light, and exhibits, at its root, a lacking faculty which has dog- ged his whole career. From want of ' perspicacity ' he was in that sinking ship, and from the want of that faculty he has been continuously wrong in his antici- pations. Hence his violent tergiversations so soon as it did become apparent to him that he was being left in a sinking ship. He was a member of the Ministry which entered into the war with Russia in 1853, only to live long enough to leave on record that ' the persons who are really entitled to vaunt their foresight as superior alike of sovereigns and of statesmen,' are those ' who objected to the war from the beginning to the end.' He declared, in the great American strug- gle, that 'the South had made an army, a navy, and what is more, they have made a nation. We may anticipate with certainty the success of the Southern States so far as regards their separation from the North,' only to have the results swiftly belie his prophecy, and to live to record that ' its trial had proved the sagacity of the construction and the strength of the fabric' { " He denounced the bringing over of native troops from India to Malta, in preparation for possible troubles with Russia in 1878, as 'a defiance of the law ' and ' an assault on the Constitution,' only to find himself constrained not only to send for them, but to use them in his own campaign in Egypt, if such a word as campaign may be used in relation to what he indignantly insisted were so very different, being merely 'military operations,' beginning with the bombardment of Alexandria and the battle of Tel-el-Keber, and ending with the Nile expedition and the ineffaceable disgrace of Gordon's abandonment. 'Too late' dogged the steps of Mr. Gladstone then, as 'too late' had, on the con- temporary authority of Lord Derby, adhered to his whole policy on the Crimean war thirty years before — the same fatal want of ' perspicacity.' " Nor is want of ' perseverance ' in a defined course less notorious. Always excepting his perseverance in hunting down an opponent, then bis perseverance has scope enough ; then in a position, as he once described it, ' of greater free- dom and less responsibility,' he can let loose his fervid imagination in ' the hair- brained chatter of irresponsible frivolity,' and exhibit an ubiquitous energy which is truly astonishing. But no sooner does he lose the target of his opponent's policy, at which he has been wont to steady his aim, point the shafts of his ridicule, or hurl the thunderbolts of his wrath, than his lack of perseverance in a defined course, his lack of backbone, becomes not only strikingly apparent, but strikingly painful. Then, like the thistledown, his resolution is blown 130 CHARLES STEWART PAKXELL. hither and thither at a breath. First he will, and then he won't ; and then he does, and then he don't. Is he dealing with the rebellious Boers of South, Africa? Then on the Monday of his policy he will enter into no terms with them ' until the authority of the Queen has been re-established,' only on the Tuesday of his policy to lay down his arms ; and whilst yet that policy is flouted by the armed rebels, he concludes a treaty which staggers even his best friends. Indeed, his best friends are the most frequently puzzled how to keep touch with or to follow him ; whilst as for the newspapers : well, to them the strain has in many cases become unbearable, and must at times be maddening. Take the case of Punch, the most valuable ally Mr. Gladstone ever had, and see what traps Mr. Gladstone has led that into. Take one instance only out of many. He had been making a speech, which had raised to the highest flight Tenniel's devoted genius, and he represented Mr. Gladstone in one of the most remark- able drawings of the century — armed cap-a-pie, with sword bared and flashing eye, ready to lay down his life and lead his country to enforce against Russia ' the sacred covenant ' she had made ; only — so rapidly does his mood change — to compel the artist to rack his brains the next week to belittle the fall of the humble, crestfallen, and repentant ' Knight-errant Bob Acres.' " These characteristics, however, are, after all, but the evidences of under- lying traits, which were, by their opposing influences, certain to doom Mr. Gladstone to failure as a statesman ; one conspicuous by its absence, the other by its presence. The absent one is 'patriotism'; the one present is 'oppor- tunism.' " He never had even the instinct of ' patriotism '; the enfeebling doctrine of humanity entered too largely into his composition for that to find a lodgment. An affectionate regard for the whole human race is more commendable in a ' pope ' than in a ' patriot' What patriot, what devoted son of his fatherland, could, as he did, in his ' kin beyond the sea,' view the commercial supremacy of England 'wrested from her,' and exclaim, 'I have no inclination to murmur at the prospect ' ? There is no ring of the patriot in such metal as that. " As for ' opportunism,' it is his guiding star, his one determining influence. ' No one,' he says, in answer to the charge of having cloaked his real views with respect to Ireland, ' no one was bound, in my opinion, to assist by speech or vote any decision upon so great and formidable a question, until he should think, upon a careful survey of the ground of the assisting and opposing forces, that HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 1§1 the season for action had come.' To keep his eye on the political weathercock and note the set of the wind has ever been his rule of guidance. He is the high- priest of the doctrine of ' opportunism.' It was this that determined him finally to lay his axe at the root of what he had once so ardently defended as the depository of the 'truth,' 'so precious to the soul of man,' but which he after- ward described as 'the deadly upas tree,' the Irish Church. He has left on record that he had perceived that ' the wind was gradually veering round to that quarter,' and that was enough. The wind which would waft him into power and blow his adversaries to ' Davy Jones ' has ever been the wind to be watched ; for, as he naively remarks, ' all men do not perceive, all men do not appreciate, ripeness with the same degree of readiness or aptitude, and the slow must ever suffer inconvenience in the race of life.' A useful faculty for what he recently described himself, 'an old Parliamentary hand,' but a treacherous one. The politician who keeps his eye too closely on the weathercock is apt to forget that a ship in dangerous waters is often acted upon by the invisible under-current as much as by the wind, and to find himself, as Mr. Gladstone has done time and again, wrecked on unexpected rocks. As the leader of a party, that has been the never-varying result of his pilotage. It was the temptation of the 'oppor- tunity ' to secure a Parliamentary majority, by propitiating the votes of the solid phalanx of Irish Nationalists, which led him into his last and fatal pitfall. He digged a pit, and, lo ! he has fallen into it himself. " Distrusted and deserted by his lifetime political colleagues and rejected by the nation, what will be his political future? He has candidly admitted he cannot himself prognosticate. Twenty-three years ago he forewarned the world that there might be ' a third political death or transmigration of my spirit.' What might then, or may yet, be made to turn on that ambiguous phrase, who can say? As 'the music of the moon sleeps in the plain eggs of the nightin- gale,' who can tell ? No man else than he, even if he can." Such was the life's career of the man whom Mr. Parnell mistrusted. Who shall say : he was not justified ? Unfortunately for the credit of the Irish race, in Ireland, it was not to those who had devoted their lives for Ireland's regeneration that they gave allegiance. It was to the priesthood ; and, no matter what can be said in justification of the action of that priesthood, in connection with Mr. Parnell's closing days, it will ever remain a dark stain upon the fair name of Ireland and Ireland's priesthood. 182 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. From " time immemorial" England has endeavored, by its emissaries, to prej- udice Rome against the Irish people. She used her influence and power, as did she always, to coerce the weak ; but this time it was a most infamous com- pact which she endeavored to make with the Pope : — It was a compact with a tyrant against the leader of a race — oppressed, but nevertheless the only nation which, against every persecution, defended Rome and added to the papal ex- chequer. And Rome aquiesced in the petition of her hereditary enemy to force the people of Ireland — through their religious zeal — to do its bidding. There is no doubt about this. And it is, to say the least, regrettable that because of this private life of Mr. Parnell the clergy of Ireland hounded him from the leadership and used means for this end which we had hoped were buried in the past. And here I shall, in the words of one of his colleagues — who deserted him at the last — give what I consider to be a pretty truthful estimate of Mr. Parnell : " The strength of Parnell was character rather than intellect. But the more you say in depreciation of the intellectual side, the more you at the same time raise the estimate of his strength of character. What that strength was, the whole world has learned to know. This terrible strength of will and tenacity of purpose were devoted to noble and wise ends ; but the qualities re- mained the same amid their diverse employment. Parnell defying and conquer- ing the whole British Parliament was not a more picturesque, or daring, or potent figure than Parnell fighting week after week his desperate and forlorn struggle against the Irish nation. " No words can adequately describe his influence over his followers. A struggle like that of the Irish is bound to bring to its foremost ranks men of unusual strength of character, and amid the followers of Mr. Parnell there were many with a will as stubborn, a resolution as inflexible as his own, and yet all these were as clay in the potter's hands when he chose to exercise his power , and his subjugation of his race, restless, fissiparous, so widely separated, and torn with faction, into one great composite, united, and absolutely obedient whole, is one of the most remarkable achievements of political leadership in the history of mankind." It was this psychic power of his which led the people of Ireland so close to victory ; and it was this mighty mind which, by Mr. Gladstone's dictation, a minority of the people of Ireland desired to crush. As says Tacitus : " Out of HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 183 their own lips " can we " flagellate them." Their own apologetic sayings do not need recapitulation here. We are nearingthe end of the grand career of Charles Stewart Parnell, and it will be far more pleasurable to me to devote the last pages of this work to telling yet more of his brilliant efforts for Irish autonomy and of his personally great character. Here are some of the noble characteristics of this great Irishman, which I omitted in the earlier part of the work. As a matter of fact, the estimate of a man can be pretty safely gauged by the instinctive estimate of him by children and dumb animals. And, in this connection, it is not inappropriate to quote the words of Charles Dickens, who said — speaking of children : " Is it not a beautiful thing that those who so lately came from God should love us ? " Chil- dren do not love those whose natures are unkind ; and I do not believe that a man to whom children " take " could be ill-natured. Goethe, Goldsmith, By- ron, and particularly Shelley, tell of this peculiar natural force, and, during every age, the great writers have told of it. Hence I use the idea to the more per- fectly describe the nobility of the character of Mr. Parnell. He was extremely fond of children and of dumb animals. At one time, when he was a magistrate of Wicklow County, he fined a man heavily for cruelty to a donkey. When little children were near, his reserve at once disap- peared and he enjoyed their innocent companionship as would one of themselves. "It used to be a curious sight," said a very intimate friend of his, "to see this great leader, a man whose very name affected the destinies of the greatest Em- pire in the world, take a little child on his knee and fondle it as if it were his own." In this fact is contained the broader fact — widening into a greater truth : He too was loved by them, and he seemed to take keen delight in the affection- ate caresses of " those who so lately came from God "; the instinct of those little innocents taught them that a great and good man was there, and, through them, Providence indicated the man. And in the peace of the contact with those little ones what a contrast there was between the Parnell among the inno- cents and Parnell fighting Ireland's battle in the House of Commons. As said a colleague of his : "The House of Commons is as sensitive as a barometer to personal char- acter, and it always felt the full force of this extraordinary man's strength when he rose to address it, and yet to a stranger there would be no indication what- ever of the strength. He spoke in a somewhat low tone of voice, and often 184 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. with an inattention to his audience that made the speech sound more like a soliloquy than words addressed to other men. But on rare occasions there were outbursts of that raging fire of fierce and devastating passion that burned within. Then the whole tone of the voice changed. It had a hoarse, sullen sound ; the mouth became almost cruel, and the right arm was held forth in denunciation. I have seen the House of Commons literally quail before one of those outbursts of savage, though apparently cold, rage, and the remark was once made by a colleague that he looked almost like an Invincible in one of those accesses of passion. He himself hated speaking, and always went through agonies of nerv- ousness when he had to prepare, and even after he had begun. The hands twitch- ing behind, the nails dug into the palms, showed the price he had to pay." But it was among his colleagues that he exercised the most profound feel- ings of love and homage. One of them told me that although his manner seemed to be cold toward him when he was first elected as a colleague of Mr. Parnell, "he so impressed me with his extraordinary oneness of character and unflinching patriotism, that I soon began to love him." A most striking ex- ample of this occurred when one day Mr. Parnell, who was at the time very ill, came to a meeting of the Irish party, at which some unpleasant matters were to be presented for his consideration. In consequence of his association with Capt. O'Shea, Mr. Biggar, who was Mr. Parnell's earliest parliamentary friend and colleague, had often hit him hard concerning it ; but when the chief, who had dragged himself to the meeting, even against his doctor's orders, suddenly said that he must leave, as he was so unwell, Mr. Biggar forgot his hatred of the O'Shea association ; his old love for Mr. Parnell rushed in upon him like a tor- rent, and, in the passion of his renewed affection, he ran from the room and burst into tears. No political leader ever begat such whole-souled devotion as this among his followers, and the misery of those later days, when, because of his one fault, they were induced to secede from his leadership, caused as many heartaches as though they were lovers who had been separated. But, nevertheless, there was also a black treachery in that secession and in the manner of its conception. The tumult of feigned and overrated moral hor- ror which they bred among them and thrust upon the people of Ireland at this time is unparalleled in the history of ingratitude. Not a man among them who was particularly less venal than Mr. Parnell — but it was found out in his case ; /fa'&4**J £)a^£& HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 1^5 the world knew of it ; and, in that dark hour, when his heart was wrung, they forgot his extraordinary services for Ireland and stabbed him deeper than his sin. The awful miseryof this treachery upon the part of a section of his colleagues must have crushed his soul — the soul of a man whose sensitiveness and love for the weak or oppressed were so strong ; and, no matter what can be said in de- fense of it, there can be no doubt but that those who prompted this secession and split in the Irish party are measurably responsible for his so early death. "Not a man among them all was imbued with such sterling patriotism, and, al- though in the earlier pages of this volume I have amply proven this, it is strictly appropriate to quote, even in these closing words, from his famous speech at Galway in 1880. He then used this remarkable passage : " I wish to see the tenant farmers prosperous ; but, large and important as is the class of tenant farmers, constituting as they do, with their wives and families, the majority of the people of this country, I would not have taken off my coat and gone to this work if I had not known that we were laying the foundation in this movement for the regeneration of our legislative independence." And, writing of him at that time, Mr. O'Connor says: "I think the figure he makes at that epoch fs worthy of all that has ever been said of his unselfish devotion, his untiring labors, his reckless daring, for the cause of Ireland." And, believing all this of him, and more, Mr. O'Connor seceded from him. It is, to my mind, incomprehen- sible how Mr. Parnell's colleagues, or any portion of them — themselves patriots — could have, at the dictation of a man whom past experiences should have led them to mistrust, seceded from and reviled the great leader whose existence was pledged "for the regeneration of Ireland's legislative independence." And, curiously enough, here is what one of the seceders said about the attacks which were made against Mr. Parnell at that time: "To see this mighty leader the target for every drab and scullion who wished to rise into notoriety on the corpse of his reputation and his great place, as a potent, successful, and loved leader of a people from servitude to liberty, it was more than flesh and blood could bear ; and to-day, with time to cool my blood, I say deliberately that, next to Mr. Parnell, the greatest factor in producing the destructive war in which, for a time, all Ireland's hopes of liberty seemed destined to perish, were some of his early assailants." It is a most extraordinary anomaly how this secession could have occurred. In August, 1885, Mr. Parnell, in a speech delivered by him at a banquet which 28(3 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. was given to him in Dublin, said concerning those same colleagues who deserted him — and it will be well for the reader to notice that in this speech he does not take to himself the credit of what he had done for Irish autonomy ; he always desired, and expressed the desire, that his colleagues should be in the front — his great mind directing, but they receiving the credit : " I feel convinced that I interpret your sentiments best and most fully, as I certainly express my own, when I say that each and all of us have only looked upon the acts — the legisla- tive enactments which we have been able to wring from an unwilling Parliament — as means toward an end, that we would have at any time in the hours of our deepest depression and greatest discouragement, spurned and rejected any meas- ure, however tempting, and however apparent for the benefit of our people — if we had been able to detect that behind it lurked any danger to the legislative independence of our land. And although during this Parliament, which has just expired, we may have said very little about Home Rule — very little was said about legislative independence — very little about repeal of the Union — yet I know well that through each of your hearts the thought of how those great things might be best forwarded was never for a moment absent, and that no body of Irishmen ever met together who have more consistently worked, and worked with a greater effect, for that which always must be the hope of our na- tion until its realization arrives. We might, I say, refer to those legislative achievements. We might refer to the Land Act, an admirable measure in its way, even an unthought-of measure since many of us have come into political life. We might refer to the Arrears Act. We might dwell on the Franchise Act, under which almost manhood suffrage has been conceded to Ireland. We might recall to our recollection the Redistribution Act, under which, despite the open hostility of one party and the hardly-concealed envy of the other, we suc- ceeded in getting in the new Parliament the full representation of Ireland with- out the loss of a single man. But these things, although important in them- selves, are not, as I have said, the end and aim of our existence as a party ; and although we cannot refuse, and never have refused — although we have always, and wisely, I think, made it part of our programme to gain for Ireland such concessions as might be got at the while, provided we did not sacrifice greater and more enduring national interests; yet we have always got before us that we were sent from this country, not to remain long in Westminster, but to remem- ber that it was for us to look upon our presence there as a voluntary one, and HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 1^7 to regard our future — our legislative future — as belonging to our own native country of Ireland." And then he paid this tribute to his colleagues and their allegiance to his policy : " I can only say as regards myself that those services have been my con- stant admiration ; that I have marvelled that it was possible for any nation, for any country, to get together such a body of men under any circumstances ; but that it should have been possible for Ireland in her position, with all her talent, her supposed best talent, divorced from her, with the terrible engines and means which have been used to terrify, to cajole, and to persuade her sons to enlist under another flag than her own — it is a marvel to me, it seems to me that it must have been a dispensation of Providence that it could have been possible for our country to have found such sons and to have been served as she has been served during the five years of the Parliament of 1881 to 1885. And what is our present position ? It is admitted by all parties that you have brought the question of Irish Legislative Independence to the point of solution. It is not now a question of self-government for Ireland, it is only a question as to how much of the self-government they will be able to cheat us out of. It is not now a question of whether the Irish people shall decide their own destinies and their own future, but it is a question with, I was going to say our English masters', but I am afraid we cannot call them masters in Ireland — it is a question with them as to how far the day — that they consider the evil day — shall be deferred." Up to the last he had the same affection for his colleagues — the same mastery of self-consciousness concerning his own greatness. In almost every public utterance of his that same " not-me-but-jy^-have-done-it generosity of his was apparent; and his last words, when, deserted by many of those whom he had brought into political prominence, he was lying on his death-bed, his affection for them and his extraordinary patriotism asserted themselves, and he said: "Give my love to my colleagues and the Irish people." I do not believe it possible that those who seceded from him could have remembered these things, and, in the main, I blame those clerical influences which were forced on by England and used to induce the people of Ireland to desert their Chief for the disastrous happenings of the past ten months. There is yet another remarkable instance of Mr. Parnell's strategic insight into the best methods by which Irish legislative independence could be gained. ]_88 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. As said Mr. Gladstone of him : " He was able to say what he had to say with greater point, more clearly, and in fewer words than any other man." The oc- casion to which I refer, and which should be of great interest to Irish-Ameri- cans, was when speaking at the banquet which was given to Mr. P. A. Collins, of Boston, Mass., in London on July 23, 1885. He said: "It is for those at home, for the man who is riding the horse to judge as to whether the fence shall be rushed or taken slowly ; and being to some extent myself in the position of a jockey, I won't say a suitable one, but as the rider at the present moment I desire to give my own opinion to-night, that the situation in Ireland, just at present, at all events, demands cautious riding, and that we may, perhaps, find that we shall have got over the fence without a fall if we put our steed slowly at it upon the present occasion ; and I am sure that those of my colleagues who know my own disposition will agree with me that none of us would for a single moment shrink from rushing the fence if we thought that the safety or success of our steed or of our country could be best secured in that way. We have had some projects mooted during the last few days for the revival of a movement upon the lines of the Land League. Speaking for myself, and without consult- ing with my colleagues, as one who has never shrunk from any risk, from any sacrifice in the times of the Land League, as one who may be willing to go much further than any of us went in the times of the Land League if the occa- sion required, and who does not feel himself less eager than he felt himself five years ago when he shook General Collins by the hand at Boston, Mass., I will say that I consider that our movement of this winter should be one distinguished by its judgment, its prudence, and its moderation." In this short extract can be found almost every attribute of Mr. Parnell. Caution was a predominant quality of his ; he never acted rashly — the stake, the liberty of his country, demanded caution. But there was, nevertheless, the same earnestness and fire, the same fierce determination, which I have already described, the same deference to the good work of his colleagues in every line of it. And this great leader who said : " Speaking for myself, and without con- sulting with my colleagues, as one who has never shrunk from any risk, from any sacrifice in the times of the Land League," etc., has been denounced from the Irish pulpit and platform — since his death — as a traitor. The situation is truly incomprehensible ; but it is pleasing to be able to record that Michael HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. I&9 Davitt — as great a patriot as was even Parnell — denounced in turn those who had the mendacious effrontery to revile the dead leader. A very remarkable tribute to the steadfastness of principle of Mr. Parnell occurs in the 1879 supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica ; and, as it was written in November of that year, when the Times-PameW case was in the balance, and it was not known at the time that the letters were forgeries, it is more important testimony to the value of the greatness of his character. Here is the extract : " He is not an orator ; he shrinks from public display. He is handsome in feature, quiet in manner, pleasant in his intercourse with others ; perhaps slightly ideal in his aims, but thoroughly practical in the means he adopts for accomplishing them. His remarkable power over his followers is due to his absolute sincerity of purpose, the excellence of his judgment on all important questions, and the tenacity with which he maintains his conclusions. In the presence of the world he has brought an impulsive, discordant people into harmonious and almost unanimous effort for the highest privilege of a nation — the right of self-government." It is difficult to reconcile the utterances and actions of English statesmen toward Mr. Parnell at the different periods of his leadership. He was an enigma to them. Sometimes, when he thought it would advance his plans and ben- efit Ireland, he would listen to their proposals and, apparently, agree to vote this way or that ; but the moment he discovered the slightest sign of vacillation, he was again the unbending, uncompromising Irish patriot as was he during the last days of his career, concerning Gladstone and his proposals. Englishmen of every party — recognizing that at Mr. Parnell's bidding the "solid 86" Irish members could make or break a government — used the most flattering and fulsome compliments toward him and his colleagues, and even went so far as to use statements concerning their demands for Irish self-govern- ment that would, under the present Government, have lodged any Irish member in Kilmainham. For instance, here is what Mr. Joseph Chamberlain says, or rather said, in 1885, when the Ministry, of which he then formed one, was tot- tering : " I do not believe that the great majority of Englishmen have the slightest conception of the system under which this free nation attempts to rule a sister country. It is a system which is founded on the bayonets of 30,000 soldiers, encamped permanently as in a hostile country. It is a system as completely 190 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. centralized and bureaucratic as that with which Russia governs Poland, or as that which was common in Venice under Austrian rule. An Irishman at this moment cannot move a step; he cannot lift a finger in any parochial, municipal, or educational work, without being confronted, interfered with, controlled by an English official appointed by a foreign Government, and without a shadow or share of representative authority. The time has come to reform altogether the absurd and irritating anachronism which is known as Dublin Castle — to sweep away altogether these alien boards of foreign officials, and to substitute for them a genuine Irish administration for purely Irish business." And again, a little later, this British Privy Councillor says : " It is difficult for Englishmen to realize how little influence the people of Ireland have in the management of even the smallest of their local affairs, and how constantly the alien race looms before their eyes, as the omnipresent con- trolling power. The Castle, as it is called, is in Ireland synonymous with the Government. Its influence is felt, and constantly felt, in every department of ad- ministration, local and central, and it is little wonder that the Irish people should regard the Castle as the embodiment of foreign supremacy. The rulers of the Castle are to them foreign in race or in sympathy, or in both If the object of Government were to paralyze local effort, to annihilate local responsibility, and daily to give emphasis to the fact that the whole country is under the dom- ination of an alien race, no system could be devised more likely to secure its object than that now in force in Ireland." And this man — the moment he knew definitely that Mr. Gladstone was about to bring in a Home Rule bill— seceded from the Liberal party ; and seceded from it, and from his old leader, only because that party had been forced, by Mr. Parnell, to pledge itself to bringing in a bill for such legislative relief for Ireland as he himself advocated in the speech referred to. It is anomalous how these men, these English statesmen, could have dared, in the face of public opinion, to admit the disabilities of the Irish people, and the moment they got into power to turn their backs upon their utterances. As said Sir Charles Russell, concerning the condition of the Irish farmers at the beginning of the Parnell movement : " They (the farmers) stood trembling, with bated .breath and whispering humbleness, in the presence of landlord, agent, or bailiff, for that man's fate was verily in the hollow of their hands. He had no spur to industry, and no security HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 191 that he should reap where he had sown." To-day, because of the efforts of Mr. Parnell, and despite the vacillatory action and utterances of England's ministers — the Irish farmer can stand erect as becomes a free citizen in a free com- munity ; and although the charter of his liberty may not yet be complete, he has derived solid protection from the legislation which the policy of Parnell and Biggar forced on in 1881, and the subsequent remedial legislation, which the action of the National League helped to accomplish. By such an unparalleled example, Mr. Parnell welded the people of Ireland together. He said: "The only aim of my life is to settle the Land question." And when he had ad- vanced that question within a measurable distance of success, he said : " I would not have taken off my coat if, at the end, I did not see the possibility of regain- ing our national legislative independence." " Thank God for it," the great mass of the people have been won, by his example, to bending their energies and fixing their hopes upon the constitutional means of redress which he advocated. By his statesmanship the people of Ireland were educated into a condition of thought that eliminated the feeling of despair which past efforts and unrequited services engendered. It is truly a pitiable story — that story of his latter days, when these things were forgotten in the heat of a religious controversy. But among the liberty-loving men of the world ; the foreseeing men — those whose names are household words in the cause of liberty — Mr. Parnell was revered as the greatest champion of liberty of this epoch. Here is what a celebrated American, Chauncey M. Depew, said of him on the occasion of a memorial service in the New York Academy of Music : " Ladies and Gentlemen : — We are here to pay tribute to the memory of a man who made an indelible impression upon his times, and performed in- calculable services for his country. In this audience are Irishmen of all creeds and widely divergent views on questions affecting Ireland, who, for the evening and the occasion, lay aside their antagonism to plant a flower upon the grave of one of the most eminent of their race. " The weaknesses and the errors of great leaders are an inseparable part of the elements which affect their fortunes while living, but when they are dead, the sum of their services to their people is their monument. A career crowded with battles, persecutions, imprisonments, defeats, and triumphs, concentrating in our individuality the hopes and fears, the passions and resentments of a nation for centuries, could not end without leaving behind controversies which time I 192 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. and opportunity alone can heal. But we have not met to discuss or settle the party differences of the hour. It is our purpose to recognize and gracefully re- member the wisdom, the patriotism, the courage, and the superb generalship with which Charles Stewart Parnell organized and led his countrymen to within sight of the promised land of self-government. " In representative government, composed of different States, existing under diverse conditions, the pride of empire, the sense of security, the feeling of nationality, will always combine the united forces of the whole against the effort of any part to violently disrupt the State. While the fight lasts and the fever of nationality is on, they will be blind and deaf to the just demand of the dis- satisfied member. The necessity of the disaffected and injured Commonwealth is a competent and incorruptible leader and a united and loyal representation in the Federal Congress. Such a commander, with devoted followers, will know no party except that which recognizes his demands, will permit no measures to pass until the petition of his people has been heard and its prayer answered. This ideal leader was Charles Stewart Parnell. The time was not yet ripe for this new force. It was a needed preparation, both for the Irish people and the Imperial Parliament, that the old methods should be fairly tried under a leader of ability and integrity. He was found in that picturesque and most interesting personality, Isaac Butt. He tried to consolidate Irish representation for home rule. He was compelled to accept candidates who cared more for their Liberal or Tory affiliations than for Irish measures. He vvas surrounded by members who feared the social ostracism of London society, and longed for the rich places in the British civil service. " Yet this brilliant, courageous, undaunted patriot, struggling with poverty, besieged by bailiffs, sacrificing his professional income to his public duties, rose from every defeat, to begin anew, with unabated ardor and hope, his battle for justice and liberty. His fight was within the lines of his party, and he never succeeded in convincing its managers that Ireland had wrongs to redress, or of teaching them that coercion was not the way to settle Irish questions and give peace to the Emerald Isle. At the hour when the prospect was darkest, and the Irish were despairing of their cause, there appeared upon the field a cham- pion who presented none of the externals of heroism or leadership. No herald trumpeted his coming, no applause greeted his arrival. His comrades had not noticed his presence ; the enemy was not aware of his existence. He hated HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. I93 publicity, but was destined to be the most conspicuous figure in the empire. He disliked to speak, and, whenever possible, avoided the forum or the plat- form, but he was to effectively voice the demands and principles which had taxed the resources of the greatest orators of a nation justly famed for elo- quence. He was cold in manner, undemonstrative, self-poised, imperturbable, neither elated nor depressed, and yet he became the idol of the most impulsive of peoples. " Parnell welcomed ability, and gave its possessor every opportunity for dis- tinction. His superiors in eloquence, like Sexton and Redmond ; in literature, like McCarthy and O'Connor ; in journalism or popular appeal, like Sullivan or O'Brien or Dillon or Harrington, were given positions where they could best serve. If he had ambitions other than for his country, they were never apparent. If he had likes or animosities, they never stood in the way of a useful man occupy- ing his proper place. The inspiration which started him in his career, and guided him in his work, was the motto of the Manchester martyr, ' God Save Ireland.' He proclaimed that any man who committed a crime was a foe to Ireland. He found that Home Rule was a subject for debate, which the House of Commons would wearily listen to and both parties unite to kill. And yet he resolved to win by moral force and constitutional methods. He became master of the rules of the House, and then used them to stop its business. With only three who dared follow, he attacked six hundred and odd, entrenched in the forms, the usages, and the traditions of centuries. ' No measures shall pass until the demands of Ireland are granted,' was his battle-cry. Tories were shocked, Liberals indig- nant, Radicals amazed, and the Speaker paralyzed. Isaac Butt feared the re- sult and withheld the support. Shaw thought the movement was not respect- able, and most of the Irish members agreed with him. "Though threatened with the unknown perils and punishment, and the frightful possibilities of being named by the Speaker; though threatened with suspension and put under the ban of personal and social ostracism ; though treated with derision in the House and contempt in the press, the undismayed and unruffled leader stood with his little band across the path of public busi- ness, demanding justice for Ireland. "When he entered Parliament at the head of 83 out of 103 representatives from Ireland, he held in one hand party power and in the other the homes and the fortunes of his people. He had returned in triumph. The Commons were 194 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. bewildered. The calm and confident leader who had defied them with three followers now faced them with the larger number of the Irish members behind him. From that hour the Irish question became the foremost factor in British politics, and Parnell the most powerful member of the House of Commons. The time-worn policy of coercion put him in Kilmainham jail, and it became not the cell of a criminal, but the palace of an uncrowned king. The ministry which imprisoned him negotiated with him as with a conqueror. The question was not, on what terms will we set you free, but on what conditions will you accept release ? He did not mince matters. He demanded, and was accorded, the settlement of arrears of rent, the amendment of the Land Act, the abandon- ment of coercion, and the retirement of Mr. Forster, the coercion Minister. As Parnell, fresh from prison, entered the House, Mr. Forster, the defeated Minister, in a memorable speech, placed upon the brow of the victor this wreath, ' I think we may remember what a Tudor king said to a great Irishman in for- mer times : "If all Ireland cannot govern the Earl of Kildare, let the Earl of Kildare govern Ireland." In like manner, if all England cannot govern the Honorable Member for Cork, then let us acknowledge that he is the greatest power in Ireland to-day.' The Tories hailed his alliance with delight. " But Parnell was insensible to flattery and unmoved by promises. He wanted measures and not pledges. He was cordial with the party which was at the moment most likely to adopt and pass his bills, but he cared nothing for either party. He became the potential force in the Government. He made and unmade cabinets. He hurled the Gladstone ministry from power and de- feated that of Lord Salisbury. He compelled the adjournment of Parliament and an appeal to the country. The conversion of Mr. Gladstone to Home Rule for Ireland is the most momentous event in the English politics of our genera- tion. He went to defeat and out of power on the issue, and has steadily kept it as the test of faith. The splendor of this statesman's acquirements and achievements obscures his defects and weaknesses. He has had, in his time, no equal as the leader of the opposition. "Peerless as an orator, resourceful, versatile, aggressive, positive, fertile in attack and skillful in retreat, he soon puts his adversaries in the wrong, and re- gains the confidence of his countrymen. It is only in power that he shows un- certainty of policy. When he is burdened with the responsibilities of govern- ment, it often happens that it is only after he has made up his mind that he is HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 195 in doubt. But in the heat of battle and the fury of the fight this hero of many fields does not waver, and Home Rule is a desperate struggle until an Irish Par- liament convenes on Dublin Green. He saw that Parnell represented the Irish people, and formulated a Home Rule bill to meet their demands. His defeat, coming, as it did, through the defection of cherished friends, intensified his ardor and confirmed his purpose. He made the principle of Home Rule the cardinal doctrine of his party, and challenged Tories and Liberal Unionists to go to the country upon the issue. " Ireland no longer fights with one arm tied and the other held back by false friends ; Parnell freed them both. Ireland no longer struggles alone ; her cause is the stake of one of the great parties of England, and made so by Parnell. " Where all others failed, he succeeded. The weary waiting, the almost hopeless struggle of a century for local self-government, has nearly ended, and the victory is practically won, because, with the existing and growing sentiment and party support in England, Scotland, and Wales, backed by a united front from Ireland, the first act of the Parliament to be elected next year will be a complete and satisfactory measure of Home Rule. " The lesson of Parnell's life is the superiority of constitutional over revo- lutionary methods. He demonstrated that nothing is impossible for Ireland in the Imperial Parliament, if her sons are both united and wise. His agitation gave a distinct impulse to the English democracy, and educated and strengthened the radical element in British politics. ',' Integrity and courage are common qualities in representative men, but with Parnell they were faculties and forces. It was Parnell's task and fame that he brought together four millions of his countrymen who had been for genera- tions torn by bitter feuds among themselves, and then converted the thirty mill- ions of alien race and faith in the Confederate States of the Empire to see the justice of his course, and join in demanding of the Imperial Parliament that Ire- land should be granted for her domestic affairs self-government and Home Rule. " As the rays of the morning sun for coming ages penetrate the shades of the cemetery of Glasnevin, and glance from the tomb of O'Connell, the Libera- tor, to the monument of Parnell, the Deliverer, may they illume the homes of a contented, happy, and prosperous people." This eulogy was delivered at a time when passions were aroused for and 196 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. against Mr. Parnell on both hemispheres; but Mr. Depew simply spoke of the man — the patriot — c'est tout, and that is and should be all. I have taken from the London Standard a very remarkable letter from the pen of Miss Anna Parnell — Mr. Parnell's sister — which I do not hesitate to publish in full. It is full of patriotic sentiment, and should have put to shame many of those who, after the great leader's death, endeavored to revile him : " You know, I think, that I never believed in the sincerity of the English Liberals' professions as to Home Rule. I thought they just intended to play on until they had abolished the House of Lords and the Established Church, and by our exertions got other things that the English people want, but are too stupid to take by themselves. Then the promoted democracy would be freed from its domestic difficulties and could turn its whole attention to giving us our deserts and teaching us our place. I was always frightened, too, at the tend- ency we have shown since the Phoenix Park murders to adopt a servile atti- tude toward the English, and to reward trifling advances on their part with a disproportionate measure of recognition. I was afraid these manifestations might not always stop at words and formalities, and this fear has been justified by events. No doubt there were many others who shared my views, but re- frained from expressing them lest they might embarrass the action of our repre- sentatives. It seems to me now, however, that this total suppression of individual opinion was a mistake, and probably contributed to the monstrous growth of the Gladstone ' boom' till our English allies claimed, and were given the right, to put our leaders up or down — a claim that in itself shows their mental attitude toward us to be quite inconsiderate with a desire to restore our inde- pendence. The argument used by the Irish majority at the time they turned round — that we ought to make allowances for Mr. Gladstone's difficulties in his contest with English public opinion — is essentially a two-edged weapon. It is precisely because these difficulties are so great that any friends we have in the English camp must be thoroughly in earnest and uncompromising on the Radical principles which support our rights, if they are ever to be of the slight- est use to us. Our guiding idea hitherto has been, roughly speaking, that if we can only persuade the English that we are too good ever to differ from them, they will cut our traces, under the belief that they are unnecessary, and that we shall continue to follow their lead of our own free will ; but different people see things in different lights, and we may have put the idea into their heads that if HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. J 97 they can govern our minds there is no reason why they should not govern our bodies too. We may have made them think that since their efforts at our pub- lic instruction in private virtue have been attended with such happy results so far, it would be a pity to release us from the obligation of following their curric- ulum just yet. I hope the Cork candidate has not any of their virtues, such as generosity, in his cargo ; they are too costly (to the objects of them) for poor people like us ; we had better be satisfied with justice. And I hope there will be no strong language used on either side at the election, as I cannot see the use of it for either side. The majority might prove the late member to be the vilest creature who ever lived, without improving their position in the least, since he would not have been the less entitled to fair play for that, and fair play he did not get ; on the other hand, if the minority proves the majority to be mur- derers, or any other kind of felons, they do not gain anything so far as the election goes, for a simple murderer would be a good deal safer than a man of the most exalted virtue whose speech was subject to such strange eclipses that when he said, ' This is my unalterable determination,' you would have to take for granted the addition, ' Unless English Liberals wish me to alter it.' " It is from such utterances that the truth can be learned. But Miss Parnell's letter leads us back — back to the influences which first opposed, then upheld, and finally rejected Mr. Parnell as leader of the Irish people. It is indeed a strange political history — this fight of an Irish Protestant for Catholic Ireland's autonomy ; but it is all the more strange because that, at the beginning, it was fought against the Catholic priesthood. Then, when, despite their influence, he became successful, they fawned upon him, and more than one of them risked suspension (to wit : Canon John O'Mahony, of Cork) to uphold him as leader. But when his best life's work was done, and because of a private venality an English statesman said "he must be dethroned," they not only deserted him, but heaped anathemas upon him. But the cause does not lie in this. It has a far deeper root. I do not wish to deal in iteration ; I do not wish, if I could help it, to recall these things, but I am forced to it, if I shall only tell the truth, as I said in my opening chapter. For instance, and in illustration of how he was op- posed in the beginning, Doctor McNulty and almost the entire priesthood of Meath opposed his election for that county. Luckily, one or two priests in Kells and Navan advocated his return ; but, as a matter of fact — although he 198 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. was elected by a large majority— he would not then have been selected to rep- resent Meath only for the patriotic endeavors of the young men of Kells and Navan, chiefly concerned in this contest being Mr. George Saul, of Kells, him- self a nephew of one of the priestly opponents of Mr. Parnell. I have already alluded to how these same priesLs and bishops turned from opposition of him to energetic support, and I have also shown how that support was suddenly changed to the most vindictive denunciation. I shall not dwell upon this — it is, in the heat of the present controversy, too unripe for discus- sion. In years to come, when all that has happened in the past — or rather when the events of the recent past (that period during which his memory was endeavored to be blackened) — will have been forgotten, then will some historian do him justice. As a matter of fact, the life of any man cannot be properly digested and put into book shape until after his death. Prejudice is the strong- est element against success in the work of the historian — i. e., the historian of the time. After death men are either good or bad, great or valueless, to the generation among which they lived. As said an old writer to a literary friend of his : "And when you are dead, that world which you despised, and to which you have given so much, will begin to remember ' he was a great man.'" Prob- ably no such truth was ever written before — certainly not a more truthful truth — for truths are not truths when they are " used " for political purposes. This peculiar sentence of mine is proven amply by the political standpoints of Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Chamberlain, etc., who have time after time " swallowed their utterances." I do not hesitate to say here that political utterances, at any time, are not reliable. And I shall qualify this statement by saying that the utterances of Mr. Parnell and of the Irish party who followed him were the only reliable statements that, in history, ever have been made. I know this is very strong ; but it is the truth. They never occupied a false position in the Imperial Parliament ; Mr. Parnell decided otherwise. They were of one, unbroken idea ; they looked only for Irish autonomy. And who directed this ? One man — Charles Stewart Parnell— and nevertheless, when his one moment of trial came, they deserted him. Pshaw ! But, as said that great American speaker, " he should not now be forgotten." One of the peculiar features of Mr. Parnell's conduction of Irish affairs, as I have already told, was his extraordinary grasp of situation. Here is a case that happened just before the formation of the National League, when Mr. HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 199 Parnell spoke his ideas about the conditions that should exist — those between the Ulster Protestants and the Roman Catholics of the rest of Ireland. By his advice the following manifesto was issued : " Fellow-Countrymen : There is evidence that in parts of Ulster the opponents of land reform are endeavoring to create disunion between North and South. If these persons confined themselves to facts and fair arguments, the public would have no reason to complain, for this is an age when every principle and every public movement have to account for themselves before the bar of public opinion. But when men come forward who assume a tone of friendliness to the tenant farmers, and then strike at them from behind sectarian barriers, and from a platform with which the present land movement has no relationship either of alliance or antagonism, we think it right to protest against such conduct and repel the slanderous calumnies which have been heaped upon us, and upon the just and noble cause with which we are iden- tified. We are accused of agrarian crime by the class who, as landlords, have been willing instruments in committing the greatest agrarian crimes (we quote the words of the Times) 'ever one nation committed against another.' We are accused of sectarianism by men who, in the same breath and on the same plat- form from which they make these charges, apply themselves to the Satanic work of striving to create discord and hatred between people who conscientiously differ in matters of religion. To the first of these charges we answer that agrarian crime is the natural outcome of our present land system, and those who sustain that system are responsible for the crimes that spring from it. The second charge, that of sectarianism, we brand as a foul and malicious falsehood, and challenge the traducers of ourselves, and those who co-operate us, to point out a single instance in which sectarianism has shown itself in our proceedings, or as being the effect of our proceedings. Every observer who has followed the course of our present agitation must be aware that Catholics — even the Catholic hierarchy and priesthood — are as much divided on the great question we advo- cate as if they were not members of the same religious community, a portion being anxious to retain a territorial caste, while others lean to the side of a peasant proprietary. As a matter of fact, the present agitation has resolved itself into a struggle, pure and simple, between the tenants and their friends on the one side, and the landlords, Protestant and Catholic, and their supporters, on the other. That the state of feeline we here describe exists throughout the 200 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. other three provinces was clearly shown at the late general election, when, as in Roscommon, Mayo, and other places, Catholic gentlemen of the staunchest type and the oldest families were unseated solely on account of their not being suffi- ciently advanced on the question of land reform. If, then, the Catholics of the South give such evidence of their willingness to ignore party ties ; if they assert their right to differ, and maintain their right to differ, from the highest dig- nitaries of their Church on the great question of the day, are they to be met with denunciations and distrust ? are they to be left to fight the battle alone and unaided by the men of the North ? We think not ; we believe they will be met half-way ; we believe the men of Ulster will show the world that in the cause of justice, in the interest of the oppressed tenant farmers, they can raise themselves above the level of sectarian prejudice or party welfare. In this address we would prefer not touching on the question of religion, nor would we do so except to rebut falsehood and make known the truth ; and as some of the exaggerated statements put forward are calculated to mislead persons who do not look below the surface, we would meet these statements by calling attention to a few import- ant facts — facts which should be known to every farmer in Ulster. The first of these we take from the ' English in Ireland,' by Mr. Froude, who states that ' In the two years which followed the Antrim evictions, 30,000 evicted Protestants left Ulster for a land where there were no legal robbers, and where those who sowed the seed could reap the harvest' The Antrim evictions took place in 1772. The highest delinquents in those evictions were Lord Donegal and Mr. Upton, whose descendants are now foremost in hostility to the Land League. The second authority we give is Thorn's Almanack. Those who consult it for the present year will find that, leaving out the period of the famine, the number of emigrants who left Ulster from the 1st May, 1851, to the 31st December, 1878, was 732,807. It will also be found that from the year 1841 to 1871 the number of holdings above one acre and up to fifteen decreased by 103,941 in the prov- ince of Ulster. These figures require no comment; they tell plainer than we can how dearly the Protestant landlords of Ulster love the small farmers of Ulster. With these facts before their minds, we would ask the clear-minded, common-sense farmers of the North to judge of landlordism, not by its pro- fessions in the present, but by its conduct in the past. We would ask them to reflect calmly on the future, when, as Mr. Cousins, United States Consul at Birmingham, states, in an official report to his own Government, the British HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 201 farmer, even if rents were abolished, would not be able to pay taxes and com- pete with America. This statement of a disinterested party, of a Government official to the Government he represents, is pregnant with meaning to the Irish farmer. It tells plainly that in the near future landlord and tenant cannot co-exist in these islands ; that Ireland must become one vast pasture-land in pos- session of an idle, extravagant landocracy, or a land covered with comfortable homesteads — homesteads in possession of contented, industrious farmers : indus- trious, because they no longer save that others may waste ; contented, because they no longer toil that others may live idle. On this plain issue we have taken our stand ; on this plain issue we appeal to the men of the North ; we appeal to them as countrymen and brothers ; we ask them to be with us in this great con- test ; to stand by us in this the hour of trial. We ask them to share our labors and our dangers, as, should victory crown our efforts — and crown them it must — we would ask them to share in the benefits and in the glory of our triumph." " What is there in this that should exercise any people ? " That is what an English Cabinet Minister said. But there is that in this manifesto which exer- cised more than ordinary commendation ; for it said : " .... In the near future landlord and tenant cannot co-exist in Ireland ; that Ireland (by this idea) must become one vast pasture-land in possession of an idle, extravagant landocracy." And herein was Mr. Parnell's greatest forte. His first and last wish was to ameliorate the condition of the Irish tenant farmers. As he said in Galway : " I should not have taken off my coat if I did not believe that, in the hollow of my hand, I held the reconstruction of our Irish Parliament and the regeneration of the farmers of Ireland." And again he said : " The great object of my life is to settle the land question" (Hansard, vol. cclxix., p. 783). As Mr. Healy's name has lately occupied much attention in the controversy concerning Mr. Parnell since his death, I think it not inapropos to tell some- thing of him in these closing pages. When Mr. Parnell was in America, in 1879-80, the mass of correspondence, political and personal, which followed him immersed him in a sea from which he could not wade himself unless by the assistance of a secretary. He had previously made the acquaintance of a young Irishman, who was engaged as a clerk in a London business house and afterward as London correspondent of the Dublin Nation. This young man — who was no other than Mr. Timothy Healy — made a strong impression upon Mr. Parnell, and he requested Mr. Healy's presence in America by telegraph. 202 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. Upon the same day that he received the telegram Mr. Healy threw up his posi- tion, and the same evening he was on board ship to join the leader of the Irish race. It was the beginning of his political career. I shall say no more of it, or of him, except to tell something of his earlier life. Mr. Healy was born in Bantry, County Cork, in 1855. Bantry was also the birthplace of the Sullivan family, to whom Mr. Healy was connected by blood ties. He had peculiar op- portunities for becoming familiar with the awful horrors of the famine, for his father, at seventeen years of age, had been appointed Clerk of the Union at Bantry, and his occupation brought him into contact with all the dread realities of that terrible time. He had told his son that for the three famine years he never once saw a single smile. Outside the abbey in which the forefathers of Healy and the other men of Bantry are buried are pits in which many hundreds of the victims of the famine found a coffinless grave ; and Mr. Healy will tell you, with a strange blaze in his eyes, that even to-day the Earl of Bantry, the lord of the soil, will not allow these few yards of land to be taken into the graveyard, preferring that they should be trodden by his cattle. Reared in scenes like these, it is no wonder that Healy, whose nature is vehement and excitable, should have grown up with a burning hatred of English rule in Ireland. He went to school to the Christian Brothers at Fermoy ; but fortune did not permit him to waste any unnecessary time in what are called the seats of learning ; for at thirteen he had to set out on the difficult business of making a livelihood. It is characteristic of his nature that, though he has thus had fewer opportunities than almost any other member of the House of Commons of obtain- ing education — except such as his father, an educated man, may have imparted to him as a child — he is really one of the very best informed men in the place. He is intimately acquainted with not only English but also with French and with German literature, and the " rude barbarian " of the imagination of English journalists is keenly alive to the most delicate beauties of Alfred de Musset or Heinrich Heine, and could give his critics lessons in what constitutes literary merit and literary grace. Another of the accomplishments which Mr. Healy taught himself was Pitman's shorthand ; and shorthand in his case — as in that of Justin McCarthy and several other of his colleagues — was the sword which he had in life's beginning to open the oyster of the world. At sixteen years of age he went to England and obtained a situation as a shorthand clerk HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 203 in the office of the superintendent of the Northeastern Railway at Newcastle, which is the foundation of that "ticket-nipper" episode in the biography of society journalism. Newcastle-on-Tyne, as those who have ever visited it will know, has a very large and a very sturdy Irish population, who take an active part in all political movements that are going on, and when Healy went there he found himself at once surrounded by countrymen who, if anything, held to the National faith more sturdily than their brethren at home. Probably he himself, if he were to trace the mental history of his political progress, would declare that in his case, as in that of so many other Irishmen, it was an English atmosphere that first gave form and intensity to his political convictions. At all events, the newcomer was not long at Newcastle when he was a persistent and an active participator in all the political strivings of his fellow-countrymen, and it speaks strongly of his force of character and their discrimination that, though yet but a stripling, he was chosen for several positions of authority. In March, 1878, he removed to London, partly for commercial and partly for journalistic reasons. He is distantly related to Mr. John Barry, M.P. for Wexford, and at that period Mr. Barry was associated with a large Scotch floor- cloth factory. Mr. Healy was employed as confidential clerk in this firm, and in connection with this part of his career an anecdote will not be uninstructive. While Mr. Barry was visiting an English provincial town in company with one of his then partners, the conversation turned on Mr. Healy, who was taking a prominent part in the discussion of the Land Bill. The results of his vigilance are now written in imperishable letters on the land legislation of Ireland ; but naturally he was represented to the English public as a mere mischievous imp who was interfering with the beneficent designs of the good man, Gladstone, and comments upon him were uncomplimentary. One of his detractors asked Mr. Barry's partner whether it was true that Mr. Healy had at one time been a clerk in his office, and the reply, " It was," was given as if these two words set the seal on all Mr. Healy's other crimes. " Yes," said Mr. Barry, taking up the conversation, "and that's about the only fact that will survive about your blank-blanked office " ; which is so far untrue that probably not even the em- ployment of the author of the Healy Clause will secure the floor-cloth firm from the waters of oblivion. As will be seen from this biographical sketch of Mr. Healy, he owed his political prestige and public advancement to Mr. Parnell, and, nevertheless, 204 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. he is the one man who, after Mr. Parnell's death, fanned the flames that were engendered to destroy his character. Life is filled with such men. Up to the very end he fought the fight of patriotism against power ; even during that time of internecine strife which was stirred into flame by Mr. Glad- stone, and kept burning by the clerical party among his own followers, his first and last efforts, acts and utterances — although many of them were levelled against those whom he had brought into political prominence, and who deserted him because of one — only one personal venality — were always given for his first love, — his country. I shall not dwell upon the odious scenes that followed, in Ire- land and in the press, that remarkable meeting in Committee Room 15, in the House of Commons. At a later day, when the heat and passion of the now will have been forgotten, an impartial writer will chronicle these events as they are recorded in the book of doom. I shall pass over all these matters and sim- ply record that in the height of all this bitterness Mr. Parnell died in Brighton on October 6, 1891. The greatest spirit of the century ; the most resolute and potent Irishman who ever lived ; the only man who ever forced the most pow- erful nation in the world to bow to his will, passed away — Ireland lost her cham- pion, and how she mourned him I shall tell, from the account of his funeral, in the Dublin Freeman s Joiirnal oi October 17, 1891 : " The unexpected news of Mr. Parnell's death fell on Ireland like a stunning blow, producing stupor, amazement, and consternation. This sudden, untimely, tragic ending of a great and noble life awakened the profoundest grief among all parties, classes, and creeds of Irishmen. The reviling tones of hatred, cal- umny, and abuse — and even the voice of just and fair criticism — were, with just two insignificant exceptions in the Irish Press, hushed, and, let us hope, hushed forever so far as Parnell is concerned, in the eternal silence of the grave. He was remembered only as the Parnell of old — as one of the greatest Patriots we have ever known — as the Leader, and not alone the Leader, but the very Idol of the Irish Race. The memory of his former greatness and of all he suffered and endured for Ireland only remained. His fallen fortunes — his eclipse during the past few sad and terrible months — were remembered but to add an additional touch of poignancy to the overwhelming grief and bereavement of the Nation. Edmund Burke complained once of the hunt of obloquy which pursued him through life. So it was, too, alas ! with Charles Stewart Parnell. HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 0(>5 From the very opening to the very close of his public career he had to endure envy, calumny, hate, and pain. But IT IS ALL OVER NOW. ' How peaceful and how powerful is the grave that hushes all,' as the poet sings. Nothing was heard on Sunday from that mighty mass of people which followed the Dead Chief to his last resting-place, but expressions of uncontrollable grief — the subdued sobbing and weeping of strong men and the loud wailing of women. The fascination of that impenetrable, inscrutable, and mysterious per- sonality ended not with his death. During life Parnell was, eminently, a man to enkindle enthusiasm and command devotion. The same potent influences rise even from his ashes, as the demonstration on Sunday proves. It was as pathetic a picture of mingled affection, devoted loyalty, and desolate bereave- ment as the streets of Dublin have ever witnessed. It was, indeed, a memora- ble funeral procession. Who that saw it will ever forget it ? 'I was at Parnell's funeral,' shall be a proud yet melancholy boast in days to come. It was a sin- gular, strange, and impressive event, the funeral of Mr. Parnell — from its open- ing in Brighton at noon on Saturday to its close on Sunday evening at six o'clock. DUBLIN WAS ASTIR before morning dawned on Sunday. The silence of the streets was broken by the tramp of men at a very early hour. Crowds converged on Westland Row from all points of the city and suburbs, though a cutting wind and a drizzling rain prevailed. The train conveying the body from Kingstown was more than an hour late, owing to a delay in starting the mail-boat at Holyhead, and an ex- ceedingly rough passage ; but the people waited patiently, notwithstanding the discomfort of the morning, in Westland Row and Great Brunswick Street. At last, at eight o'clock, the sad strains of ' The Dead March,' played by a brass band, announced the arrival of the cortege, and, as the hearse, with a body-guard of Gaels with Camans draped, and followed by Mr. Parnell's Parliamentary colleagues, passed between the thick files of people, every hat was raised, and cries and sobs of anguish rent the air. On the melancholy procession marched in a drenching downpour of rain to St. Michan's Church, Church Street. In the vaults of this sacred edifice the Brothers Sheares, who were executed in '98, are 206 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. interred, and in the graveyard attached are buried Charles Lucas, the founder of the Freeman s Journal, and one of the first of the Irish constitutional patriots, and Oliver Bond, who sought in '98 by other methods to restore the freedom of Ireland. It is said the uninscribed tomb of Emmet is there also. Here, then, in this sacred edifice, rich with Irish National associations, the prayers for the dead, according to the ritual of the Protestant Church, were recited by the Rev. Mr. Fry, Rector of All Saints, Manchester. Is there any church in Dublin in which this sacred function could have been more appropriately discharged for the dead Irish Tribune? THE LYING IN STATE of the body of Mr. Parnell in the large circular room of the City Hall, to which it was conveyed after the services in St. Michan's Church, was another very impressive ceremonial. The coffin was placed on a low bier just below the massive statue Of O'Connell by Hogan, the base of which was draped with the well-worn and tattered colors of the two regiments of Volunteers raised by Sir John Parnell, the incorruptible Chancellor of the Irish Exchequer, in Wicklow, and brought up from Avondale for the melancholy occasion. The coffin was entirely covered with the wreaths, artistically arranged by loving hands, and at its feet was raised the floral offering of Mr. Parnell's colleagues, a Celtic cross five feet high. To the right of the coffin was the statue of Charles Lucas, to its left the statue of Henry Grattan and the bust of Denis Florence M'Carthy, and inscribed on a white ground, hanging in graceful Venetian folds from the heavily draped pillars of the hall, were the last words of Mr. Parnell : ' Give my love to my colleagues and to the Irish people.' " The hall, which was open to the public from ten till one o'clock, was visited by 30,000 persons. Meanwhile, from a far earlier hour than ten o'clock, prep- arations for the funeral procession were afoot. Special trains crowded with deputations, accompanied by bands, arrived from North, South, East, and West at the various termini of the metropolis, and poured their thousands on the streets. The weather continued inclement, yet even during the early fore- noon the city was thronged with people who moved about the streets unheeding the bitter wind and the rain, and the mud and slush below. The shadow of a deep desolation seemed to hang over all. The walls of the city were extensively placarded with huge posters, in heavy mourning borders, the letterpress of which was headed with the lines — HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 207 FUNERAL OF THE IRISH CHIEF, in large black letters, followed by particulars as to the order of the procession. Another poster, also heavily bordered in black, which attracted considerable notice, was the following : 'HIS LAST WORDS. " My love to my colleagues and to the Irish People." " If I were dead and gone to-morrow, the men who are fighting against English influence in Irish public life would fight on still ; they would still be independent Nationalists; they would still believe in the future of Ireland a Nation ; and they would still protest that it was not by taking orders from an English Minister that Ireland's future could be saved, protected, or secured." ' Charles Stewart Parnell, 'At Listowel, September 13, 1891.' " While the deputations were assembling in processional order in St. Stephen's Green, and in the neighboring streets, every possible position that could afford a view of the procession along the line of route was occupied. The windows were crowded, the footways were thronged. The streets through which the procession was to pass from the City Hall to Glasnevin were literally swarming with men, women, and children — curious, interested, and sympathetic — every one, almost, wearing the emblem of the mourners, a piece of crape set off with green ribbon, and eagerly awaiting the appearance of the cortlge. Street vendors did a roaring trade in portraits of the Dead Patriot, and in bal- lads singing his virtues. From many windows hung GREEN FLAGS TRIMMED WITH MOURNING, from others floral wreaths were suspended ; and in the poorer portions of the city through which the procession passed — in Thomas Street, James's Street, and along the Northern line of quays — pictures of Mr. Parnell were liberally dis- played. The depth, reality, and intensity of the sorrow felt by the people — spectators as well as processionists — for the death of their Chief was unmis- takable. As the monster procession, starting from the City Hall at a quarter past two, wended its slow, sad, and solemn way to the mournful cadences of forty bands, through serried files of people — up Lord Edward Street, past Christ Church Cathedral, along Thomas Street, James's Street, down Steevens 208 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. Lane, crossing the Liffey at Kingsbridge, proceeding along the Northern line of quays, recrossing the river over Grattan Bridge, advancing up Parliament Street, passing the City Hall again, proceeding down Dame Street, past ' the Old House in College Green,' through Westmoreland Street, over O'Connell Bridge, up O'Connell Street, through Rutland Square, along Blessington Street, over Berkeley Road, through Phibsborough, and thence to Glasnevin Cemetery — the keening and clapping of hands of the women were frequently heard ; heartrend- ing sobs burst from many a man, and tears were seen on the cheeks of not a few. As the hearse approached every hat in the throng on each side was doffed, and prayers for the dead were muttered. It was, indeed, a spectacle to touch the most callous heart to see the hearse — a splendid vehicle drawn by four sable horses, with outriders in mourning costumes — the coffin on top, completely hidden by floral wreaths, and the crushed and bruised and sorrow-stricken col- leagues of the heroic, the militant, the kingly Irishman who lay dead inside sur- rounding it as pall-bearers. THE DEMEANOR OF THE PEOPLE throughout the trying day was magnificent for its solemnity, dignity, good order, and sobriety. It was apprehended, it is true, that evil and angry passions would be aroused, and that the laying to rest of the Great Irish Leader who is gone from us forever would be marked by riot and bloodshed. Thank Heaven there was nothing of the kind. Thank Heaven that not the slightest viola- tion of the law, that not the least infraction of the public peace marred this solemn and mournful occasion ; and the only way the services of the police were brought into requisition was in the aiding of the marshals and stew- ards to clear the way and preserve unbroken the march of the procession. From the opening of the sad proceedings to their close no hitch occurred ; no disturbance took place, no accident happened, and neither jarring note nor a word of anger nor imprecation was heard. It was half-past five ere GLASNEVIN CEMETERY was reached, and then, at six o'clock, just as the shades of night were falling, with the gathering gloom lighted up by a half-moon in a cloudless sky, after prayers had been recited, the dull thud of the earth clods on the coffin of Charles Stewart Parnell was heard amid murmurs of sorrow from the multi- Historic Flags in Avondale. HIS BRILLIANT CAREER. 209 tude thronging round. The tragedy of that terrible moment to the devoted colleagues of the Dead Chief may be imagined, but it cannot be described." I do not think it prudent to add to this sketch of Mr. Parnell's life. I only hope that within my limited space I have been able to do him even a partial justice. But I do feel that, if what I have written will only cause my readers to examine into the wonderful work, self-sacrifice, and determined patriotism of Charles Stewart Parnell, I shall have written it for good ; for no man who reads his life, and understands the great purpose which formed the basis of his heroism, will fail to be inspired with more or less patriotic feeling, and they must recog- nize and mourn with Ireland that liberty has lost one of her greatest and most fearless champions. A fitting close to this sketch is, to my mind, the poetic tribute of Mr. Pat- rick Sarsfield Cassidy, of New York, and as it entirely coincides with the spirit of my work, I give it in full — with the author's permission : " Rest to the chieftain ! Let him rest : His troubled heart's at peace. The poisoned barbs that pierced his breast At last, at last, must cease ! And what a high and noble heart That dauntless breast contained ! — Now let his foes weigh well their part, And boast what they have gained. " The courage of the bravest knight That shines on history's page ; In freedom's cause no truer light Has blazed in any age. A heart of flame controlled by mind, Calm, stately in its might ; The puissance of a soul designed To battle for the right ! Far down the future do I see Ride on that soul of flame A beacon to the brave and free, And magic in his name ; 210 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. Serene on Fame's eternal height, Beyond the bridge of stars, While lost in everlasting night Are those who wrought his scars. " And while the true-born man keeps trace Of acts that make men great, Parnell shall hold a chieftain's place, To memory consecrate ! His fault — one fault — 'twas shouted free In Venom's fierce cyclone ; Nor shouter paused to think if he Had right to cast the stone ! " View not that dead and dauntless face Ye self-approved who claim A Godlike, extra-human grace That here lives but in name ! Nor ye who panted for the hour To play the envious part, To slay the chieftain in his tower, And rend a nation's heart ! " Beside his bier pale Erin weeps With all a mother's woe ; No truer son her memory keeps, No braver shall she know. And down to time's remotest day Shall children's children tell The glory and the tragedy That disk the name — Parnell ! " THE END. IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. CHAPTER I. The Causes which led to Irish Disaffection — Sir Charles Russell's Opinion— Why Irishmen agitated for Repeal of the Union— Antiquity of Irish Writings — The Fiscal Condition of Ireland at the time of the Union — Gladstone's Treachery — Richard Cobden and the " Times." " In writing the history of a people, it is neither just nor reasonable to omit the record of its prevalent crimes. But it is one thing to relate these ; it is quite another thing to select the criminals of a nation as the special represent- atives of its ideas " (Lecky, vol. ii., p. 378). Unhappily this has been the selected habit of English writers and of the English press, concerning Ire- land, without regard to causes — or rather, if I may be again permitted to use Mr. Lecky's words, "without endeavoring to trace the effects to their causes, or making due allowance for circumstances and for antecedents." Of much more importance to this sketch is the fact that this, too, has been the consistent attitude of English statesmen toward Ireland. As a result of their not having examined into the causes of Irish dissatisfaction, and of the fugitive and irresponsible criminality which existed during this period, they proceeded upon the assumption that the entire nation was criminal, and they passed laws to repress what did not exist, and, by the severity of their oppression, goaded the people to justifiable revolt. English oppression was at all times the prime cause of the various attempts which have, more or less successfully, been made by the Irish leaders to force justice from the British Government — or to impose upon it the advisability of repealing their most noxious statutes. But this fundamental cause for rebellion was whetted, from time to time, by such enormous outrages as the conspiracy of the Union ; the ruinous increase of taxation ; the inhuman treatment of political prisoners or suspects ; and a hundred other evidences of England's de- (213) 214 IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. termination to crush the national spirit of the people, and drive them from the country by the deliberate ruin of its prosperity. From the first day of the passing of the act of the Union the country be- gan to lose rapidly that prosperity which she had gained during the preceding eighteen years of legislative independence. A very remarkable indorsement of this opinion is given by Sir Charles Russell, late Attorney-General of England, in his opening speech for the de- fense in the celebrated Parnell- Times case. He says : " Herein, in my humble opinion, is the root of the Irish difficulty, that from the moment that act (the act of the Union) passed, the governing class in Ireland — mainly the landlord class, mainly the ascendency class, mainly the class separated by religion and often by race from the bulk of the people — ceased to be thereafter under the influence, the control, the impulse of the opinion of the people amongst whom they lived, and from whom they derived the means of supporting their stations of dignity and of affluence. In a word, they ceased to be patriotic. " My Lords, from that date they ceased to care for or to regard Irish opinion. They looked to England in times of trouble and of difficulty. They cried, as from the housetops, that they alone were the class to be depended upon." But they did more than this : they assumed — and no doubt justly — that this act was passed for their benefit, and to assist them in asserting an arrogance never before attempted by the landlords of any country. This was naturally resented by the people ; the partial harmony that heretofore existed between landlord and tenant now entirely ceased to exist, and the governing or landlord class began to absent themselves from Ireland, and to spend the rents, drained by them from the Irish people, in England or on the Continent. These are some of the reasons why Irishmen — as Irishmen — deemed it not alone desirable, but necessary to agitate for repeal. (As I advance I shall go more closely into the subject.) From the standpoint of patriotism they were in duty bound to so conspire and agitate ; and if their efforts were crowned with success, no paean of praise ever sounded which could out-herald that which would be raised for the efforts of Ireland's patriots. But unfortunately their efforts were not crowned with success, and as a result they are told that their " mad attempts were childish and only in keeping IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 215 with what could be expected from the denizens of Colony Hatch " (Colony Hatch is a lunatic asylum outside London), and these are the words of an Eng- lish Cabinet minister. I hope I shall not be understood as partial when I make the following com- parison : Would a man starving, or rather could a starving man, question the advisability of whether it was better to commit suicide or steal ; or would he be, in humanity, entitled to take a life to save his own ? That is a question Which has long puzzled the most advanced divines and doctors of law ; but here it is not the question. The question is, are not a people justified in seeking, by any means, to redress a wrong ? Even this is questionable, but where can we stop upon such an argument ? I say that the suicidal policy of the extinction of the leaders would be of vastly more injurious import to the cause of Ireland than was it to Poland, Hungary, or to France. The Irish people are a people of sentiment ; the suicide of their leaders would mean to them that their cause was a lost one. Ergo, the fact remains that not one of Ireland's patriots was ever a suicide — unless where his life was already forfeited. Herein we have the strength of our nationality — we are not cowards. But I must return to my subject. The difference between the matter at the student's disposal concerning Irish history previous to the O'Connell movement and since that period, is most re- markable. Look where you will in the older classical writings, and you will find mention of the literary and civil advancement of the ancient Irish ; matters of the minutest importance are detailed. Tacitus, in his life of Agricola (ist century), speaks with praise of the greatness of " the people of that island." The elder Pliny and many other famous writers of the earlier days of Christianity devoted many pages to Ireland. That wonderful compilation, the Annals of the Four Masters ; the histories of the Abbe MacGeoghegan and many others equally celebrated have detailed to modern' readers the history of early Ireland in a manner, not less profuse and per- haps more reliable than those wonderful accounts of ancient Rome and Greece, which have given to the literary world the basis of its best classics. How different is it to-day. We have practically no classical works upon modern Ireland, and nothing at all of a continuous story of the inside history of 216 IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. the country during the past fifty years. Many writers have compiled fugitive volumes concerning one or more of the peculiar incidents or movements of Irish history during the present period ; but a thorough and comprehensive history of the Irish people and movement from 1843, or let us sa y 1829, to the death of Charles Stewart Parnell, has never been written. I have already indicated the probable reasons why this was not adequately attempted, and although the same difficulties, to a greater or lesser extent, beset me, I hope to advance farther into the subject. And if, from the matter at my disposal, I am not less fortunate than were my predecessors, I can, at least, claim to have faithfully endeavored to perpetuate connectedly, in writing, the principal events of Irish history dur- ing the important period which I have elected to treat in these pages. Before I come to that most interesting and most important portion of this composite sketch which deals directly with the life and achievements of Mr. Parnell it is not alone necessary, but will prove valuable and interesting in the connection between 1829 and the Parnell movement, to treat briefly of those efforts of the Irish people, which are now generally known only in name to nine- tenths of the Irish people, and not well understood by even that one-tenth. I speak of the movements of 1848 and 1865-7. I question if there are many even among those Irishmen, whose sympathies are distinctly with their country, who fully comprehend the immense necessity which existed at these periods for such uprisings. It will be my endeavor to explain them. Lest prejudiced readers should here regard me as partial, I shall quote directly from English writers, and I think that, from these extracts, it will readily be admitted that the necessity existed for such agitation and even force, as was employed by the Young Irelanders, the people of Forty-eight and the Fenian leaders of '65 to '67. Here is a comparison made by one of the most anti-Irish Englishmen of his time. It was written in 1877 : " It is the fashion to sneer at the leaders of '48 and their plot ; at the former as rash idiots, at the latter as the most flagrant of follies. This is more than un- fair ; it is a folly in itself. Englishmen do not usually regard the conspirators of other countries than Ireland as lunatics, or treat them and the causes they advocate with contempt. For instance in their own eyes the Venetians of '48, and Daniel Manin their leader, were right altogether and heroic ; while the Smith O'Brien of the same date, and his followers, were anything rather than IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875, 217 right or heroic. Now, to those who knew the respective peoples and individu- als, and who can compare them calmly, there is no very mighty difference apparent. We are ourselves no enthusiastic admirers of either, but of the two we cannot help thinking that the Irish plotters were the superior men. Not a few of those same much-censured Irishmen of '48 have distinguished themselves since. Several of them have won praise and even title from the government that prosecuted them as felons. While the Venetians of '48, with scarce an ex- ception, have made no figure in Italy, or elsewhere, since." This extract is, of course, only the personal opinion of an individual Eng- lishman ; but that Englishman's writings on Ireland are filled with bitter de- nunciations of our race and methods for self-assertion, and are accepted by most Englishmen as containing an impartial history of the movements which he had the effrontery to record. The fact, which I have quoted, he could not, no mat- ter how eager to do so, distort. But as I have already stated that it is not my intention to tell only the good points, and that my sketch will be truthful as well as logical, I quote from page 378 of the second volume of the distinguished historian, Mr. Lecky, in which he agrees with the necessity of exposing the truth on both sides. Here is what he says : " In writing the history of a peop'le, it is neither just nor reasonable to omit the record of its prevalent crimes. But it is one thing to- relate these, it is quite another thing to select the criminals of a nation as the special representatives of its ideas. It is peculiarly necessary that the history of such a nation as the Irish should be written, if not with some generosity, at least with some candor ; that a serious effort should be made to present in their true proportions both the lights and the shades of the picture ; to trade effects to their causes, and to make due allowance for circumstances and for antecedents. When this is not done, or at least attempted, history may easily sink to the level of the worst type of party pamphlet." To my mind, the pith and true value of a historical sketch is herein perfectly described, and I shall endeavor to advance upon these lines. But before dwelling upon the criminal aspect of the case, I beg to be allowed to first show the causes which inspired Irishmen to adopt measures of physical rather than constitutional objection to England's laws. I do not call it rebellion ; for, to me, it seems that a rebellion can only exist insomuch as the nation 218 IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. rebelling endeavors to disrupt a policy or form of government which they had accepted. Ireland never accepted any form of government different from that which Irishmen could select. The Union was not acceded to by Irishmen. The Irish (?) Parliament of that time was not constituted of Irishmen. As a matter of fact, those men who at the time sold Irish nationality for a bribe were mostly either West Britons or their descendants ; those of the Irish House of Commons who voted against the Union being, almost to a man, Irish, or of Irish descent from one or both branches. Now, this fact of itself was a cause for dissatisfaction ; but for reasons which I shall afterward make clearer, as Mr. O'Neill Daunt says: ". . . . It was a very dangerous thing to unite with a country whose debt was sixteen and a half times as large as our own debt." And he continues : "The strong prob- ability was that, as soon as she got the power, she would put her hands into our pockets and take our money toward paying her own debts." How this was done can be told in a very few words. At the time of the Union the British national debt amounted to four hun- dred and fifty million five hundred and four thousand nine hundred and eighty- four pounds sterling (^450,504,984), or, in American money, $2,252,524,920. The amount of the Irish debt at the same time was ^28,545,134, or $142,725,670. The British annual debt-charge was then ,£17,718,851 ($88,594,255), while that of Ireland amounted to .£1,244,463 ($6,222,315). So that the relative indebt- edness was about 1 to 17 in favor of Ireland. These figures are collected from Parliamentary paper No. 35 of 1819, and, therefore, cannot be contradicted. By the seventh article of the Union it was agreed : first, that Ireland was to be protected forever from any liability to the British debt incurred before the Union ; secondly, the separate debts of the two countries being provided for by separate charges on each, Ireland was then to pay two-seventeenths toward the joint expenditure of the United Kingdom for twenty years. And there was a third proviso that it might, and should, under certain conditions, which it is unnecessary to give here, be increased to two-fifteenths of the Eng- lish debt. I shall not enter into the details of how that debt was raised ; it will suffice to say that in 1852 the amount of Imperial taxation paid during the twenty preceding years was ^86,667,175, or an average of ^4.333-358 per IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 219 annum — nearly four times the debt-charge of Ireland at the time of the act of the Union. And be it remembered that Ireland had just then passed through one of the most awful famines of the century. But the worst had not come. Great and unjust as was this increased taxation and unconstitutional defiance of the seventh article of the Union, it remained for Mr. William Ewart Glad- stone to continue to increase the taxes in a degree that was positively scandal- ous. In this year (1853) Mr. Gladstone was elected Chancellor of the Exchequer ; and although that famous English historian whom I have already quoted (Mr. Lecky) says in his second volume, pages 213 and 221, "The people were in such a state of poverty that every bad season produced an absolute famine." And notwithstanding the then impoverished condition of the people after a seven years' famine, Mr. Gladstone at once caused additional taxes to be imposed, until the effect of his proposals and laws augmented the already exorbitant taxation by ,£45,184,090 in twenty years — making the amount drained from Ireland from 1852 to 1872 for Imperial revenue ,£131,851,265, or ,£6,592,563 per annum. This, it will be observed, was more than five times the debt- charge WHICH WAS AGREED UPON BY THE ACT OF THE UNION. This Gladstonian tax still continues ; and as Mr. O'Neill Daunt says at page 217 of his " History of Ireland ": " It is obvious that as income tax and succession tax levied on employers must essentially diminish their ability to employ the laboring classes, an impulse is given to the exodus (emigration) by the consequent diminution of the demand for the people's labor." From these facts it will be seen that Mr. Gladstone's action at that time had more to say to the causes of Irish dissatisfaction than even the direct con- sequences of the so-called Union itself. As I proceed I shall, from other sources and from his own works and speeches, prove that his subsequent per- spicacity and inconsistency in dealing with Ireland have never failed to develop danger to the unity and prosperity of the Irish people. Perhaps it will seem to be invidious upon my part to make these observa- tions concerning a man whom three-fourths of the Irish race have been taught, by certain leaders at home, to look upon as not second to O'Connell or Parnell in his desire to benefit the people of Ireland ; but in this sketch I shall write only facts, and in justice to my countrymen and to him who has recently died, and who gained so much for Ireland — I mean Charles Stewart Parnell — I feel 220 IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. it to be a duty in this compilation to prove that, in the interest of Ireland, it was Mr. Parnell's duty to refuse to accept Mr. Gladstone's promises concerning Home Rule unless they were given in writing. The facts of Mr. Parnell's refusal to do this, and of Mr. Gladstone's shifting excuses for not putting his promises in writing, form, to my mind, one of the brightest incidents in the life of Parnell ; and they recall the historical vacillation and power-courting character of the " Grand Old Man." Another potent factor in the development of Irish dissatisfaction, apart from misgovernment and the treachery of the English leaders and statesmen, which I have already pointed out, was the consistent but unrelenting attacks of certain sections of the English press upon the Irish people. Here is a typical example from the foremost English paper and organ of the British Government. It is now a good many years ago, but the incident is an instructive one, when the Times, during the Lord-Lieutenancy of Lord Mulgrave, put into its col- umns these words : " It has been proved beyond a doubt that Lord Mulgrave has actually invited to dinner that rancorous and foul-mouthed ruffian O'Connell." We have here in these words the keynote to the misgovernment of Ireland. But the action of this paper has been ever hostile to the aspirations of every weak people. No better evidence of this is wanting than the following extract from the writings of that famous English statesman, Richard Cobden, who says of it : " By its truculent — I had almost said ruffianly — attack on every movement while in the weakness of infancy, it has aroused to increased efforts the energies of those it has assailed ; while, at the same time, it has awakened the attention of a languid public, and attracted the sympathy of fair and manly minds. It is thus that such public measures as the abolition of the corn laws, the repeal of the taxes on knowledge, the negotiation of the treaty of commerce with France, tri- umphed in spite of these virulent, pernicious, and unscrupulous attacks, until at last I am tending to the conviction that there are three conditions only requisite for the success of any great project of reform — namely, a good cause, persevering advocates, and the hostility of the Times." It did seem as though the collapse of the Times-VaxweW case would bear out Mr. Cobden's "conviction": for even the most bigoted among the English people sought refuge from their erstwhile championship of the Times in regret- IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 221 ful platitudes for Mr. Macdonald's having been " the victim of such a base forg- ery," while, at the same time, they honestly believed that Mr. Parnell and his cause had been unjustly dealt with by the governmental championship of these same forgeries. But, "a mind that wishes to hate cannot easily be moved to love "; and, soon, the acts of the Government, in endeavoring to shirk the respon- sibility for their part in the matter, occupied the minds of " all true Englishmen," and in their loyalty to their country — or shall I call it the dominant power — Mr. Parnell was forgotten, and the crime of the Tory ministry overlooked in their zeal for its defense. Yes, there is a great deal of wisdom in Mr. Cobden's impeachment of the Times — when the infant movement is not an Irish one — but, "great a project of reform " as is the one for which Mr. Parnell devoted his life, it was Irish, and consequently it did not succeed — then. But it would take more room than is at my disposal, to enter into the many causes why it was, in my opinion, justifiable for the Irishmen of this period to organize against oppression. Following Mr. Lecky's idea, I think it well to tell also of the criminal side of the history, and, for that purpose, and in order that I shall not be misunder- stood in the remarks which I shall afterward make, I take the liberty of quoting in full, from Sir Charles Russell's speech, that part of it which he entitles " Pre- disposing Causes of Crime," and the " History of Agrarian Crime." These extracts cover the ground, as a defense of the motives which led irresponsible but earnest and patriotic Irishmen to the commission of crime, in as able a manner as has such an exposition ever been written. CHAPTER II. Sir Charles Russell on the Predisposing Causes of Crime— Lord Dufferin's Statement— The Tithe Agitation. " Now, my Lords, I have to introduce to your Lordships a statement, his- torically considered, not of political movements, but what I may call for clearness and for convenience a statement of the predisposing causes to Irish crime, and as far as I shall make historical reference, I shall cite only historical authorities that are not supposed to be in political accord with those for whom I am speaking. It would perhaps be an impertinence if I were to suggest that a great deal of what your Lordships will be troubled with by me may be found in Mr. Lecky's second volume of the Eighteenth Century, in Mr. Froude's English in Ireland, and in Mr. Goldwin Smith's Irish History and Irish Character. But, my Lords, the four grounds, the predisposing causes, are these : the restrictions of Irish commerce and suppression of Irish manufactures ; the penal code, which, while commercial legislation had on the one hand thrown the people upon the land as their only means of livelihood, on the other hand came in to prevent the bulk of the people acquiring any permanent interest in the land ; the third cause, the uncontrolled power of the landlords in the exaction of oppressive rents ; and the fourth cause, the general misgovernment of the country, and the consequent distrust of the Government which was generated thereby in the Irish mind. " My Lords, I am literally within the bounds of truth when I say that all historians, English, Irish, and foreign, concur in this opinion, that until a period within living memory the story of Irish government was one of the blackest pages in the whole history of the world ; that until a period within living memory the government of the country was directed, not to the good of the many, but to the maintenance of a privileged few, and proceeded, until a period within living memory, upon what has been called by one distinguished writer ' the detestable principle that to keep Ireland weak was the most convenient way of governing.' " My Lords, I can pass over these subjects lightly, but I must touch upon each of them. To begin with, Ireland was excluded from the benefit of the (222) IRELAND, PROM 1848 TO 1875. 223 Navigation Laws ; she was shut out not only from colonial trading, she was act- ually shut out even from exports to the sister kingdom of Great Britain. Cat- tle could not be so exported. The result was the cultivation on a large scale of sheep farms ; from that grew rapidly, generally, and to important dimensions, a woollen trade in Ireland, and when that had grown to a point at which it seemed to threaten English trade, English traders came to the Crown to put it down, and it was put down by the imposition of enormous duties. The linen trade was not in rivalry with any corresponding English trade, and promises were held out — promises which were not fulfilled— that advantage was to be given to that trade as compensation for injury to the other. The result was that the only possible means, in the existing economic and political condition of things, of relieving the enormous pressure of desire for the possession of land was closed, for the manufactures and the export trade of Ireland were crippled and destroyed. And Mr. Lecky, my Lords, says, in his second volume, at page 208: ' The natural course of Irish commerce was utterly checked, and her shipping interest, such as it was, was annihilated.' And Mr. Froude, in his first volume, at page 395, says: ' The real motive for the suppression of agricultural improvement was the same as that which led to the suppression of manufactures— the detestable opin- ion that to govern Ireland conveniently, Ireland must be kept weak. The ad- visers of the Crown, with an infatuation which now appears like insanity, deter- mined to keep closed the one remaining avenue by which Ireland could have recovered a gleam of prosperity.' " My Lords, a distinguished man of remarkably calm and judicial mind, I mean Lord Dufferin, has in his Irish Emigration and the Tenure of Land in Ireland, at page 129, used this extraordinary language: 'From Queen Elizabeth's reign until within a few. years all the known and authorized commercial confraternities of Great Britain never for a moment relaxed their relentless grip on the trades of Ireland. One by one each of our nascent industries was either strangled in its birth or handed over gagged and bound to the jealous custody of the rival interest in England, until at last every fountain of wealth was hermetically sealed, and even the traditions of commercial enter- prise have perished through desuetude.' " Then he goes through the Acts, and proceeds in the sense which I have already explained to your Lordships to show that the effect of this had been to 224 IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. intensify and create the difficulty on the Land Question, and that state of things with which your Lordships are already too well familiar. ' The owners of England's pastures opened the campaign. As early as the commencement of the sixteenth century the beeves of Roscommon, Tipperary, and Queen's County undersold the produce of the English grass counties in their own market. By an Act of the 20th of Elizabeth, Irish cattle were declared a " nuisance," and their importation was prohibited. Forbidden to send our beasts alive across the Channel, we killed them at home, and began to supply the sister country with cured provisions. A second Act of Parliament imposed prohibitory duties on salted meats. The hides of the animals still remained, but the same influence soon put a stop to the importation of leather. Our cattle trade abol- ished, we tried sheep farming. The sheep breeders of England immediately took alarm, and Irish wool was declared contraband by a Parliament of Charles II. Headed in this direction we tried to work up the raw material at home, but this created the greatest outcry of all. Every maker of fustian, flannel, and broad- cloth in the country rose up in arms, and by an Act of William III. the woollen industry of Ireland was extinguished, and 20,000 manufacturers left the island. The easiness of the Irish labor market and the cheapness of provisions still giv- ing us an advantage, even though we had to import our materials, we next made a dash at the silk business ; but the silk manufacturer proved as pitiless as the woolstaplers. The cotton manufacturer, the sugar refiner, the soap and candle maker (who especially dreaded the abundance of our kelp), and any other trade or interest that thought it worth its while to petition, was received by Parliament with the same partial cordiality, until the most searching scrutiny failed to detect a single vent through which it was possible for the hated industry of Ireland to respire. But, although excluded from the markets of Britain, a hundred harbors gave her access to the universal sea. Alas ! a rival commerce on her own ele- ment was still less welcome to England, and as early as the reign of Charles II. the Levant, the ports of Europe, and the oceans beyond the Cape were forbidden to the flag of Ireland. The Colonial trade alone was in any manner open — if that could be called an open trade which for a long time precluded all exports whatever, and excluded from direct importation to Ireland such important arti- cles as sugar, cotton, and tobacco. What has been the consequence of such a system, pursued with relentless pertinacity for 250 years? This: that, debarred from every other trade and industry, the entire nation flung itself back upon " the land," with as fatal an impulse as when a river whose current is suddenly impeded rolls back and drowns the valley it once fertilized.' " So much for the commercial and industrial aspect of the misgovernment of Ireland. IRELAND, FROM 1843 TO 1875. 225 "My Lords, the penal code not merely deprived the great bulk of the population of the elective franchise, but it excluded them from corporations, the magistracy, the bar. They could not become sheriffs, solicitors, even game- keepers or constables. They could not buy or inherit land. They could only, and that was a relaxation, have a terminable leasehold interest in land, and even that could not be within a certain distance of a town, and if the profits derived by reason of that terminable lease exceeded a third of the rent they became dis- entitled to reap the further profit. Bribes were held out to the Protestant in- former against his Catholic kinsman, to the Protestant wife against her Catholic husband, to the Protestant child against his Catholic father. The simplest rites of the religion of the multitude were proscribed ; and, my Lords, the exclusion from partnership in the corporations and the trade guilds had a still further in- jurious effect in the same direction, because, inasmuch as the corporations were exclusively in the hands of Protestants, inasmuch as the trade guilds were exclu- sively in the hands of the Protestants, even the common handicrafts were not acquired, could not be acquired to any considerable extent, by the great bulk of the Catholics of Ireland. " My Lords, that reformation which threw open these corporations to some extent was not accomplished until the year 1841 ; and O'Connell, I think I am right in saying, was the first Catholic Lord Mayor of the city of Dublin. But, my Lords, the so-called reformation of the corporations again worked serious mischief, because, in place of preserving the existing corporations, reforming and throwing them open to the whole people, and thus giving them at least some kind of local self-government, the corporations which existed, numbering, I think, altogether — I do not pledge myself to the exact figure — sixty-five, were in great part abolished, and I think only either ten or eleven of them left with local municipal government at all. My Lords, I will avoid again going into the de- tail which is not necessary, but I must trouble your Lordships with one passage which summarizes and sums up the evils of this system and points out its lasting effects upon future generations. It may be said that this is some years ago, that I am speaking of ancient history. It is true that it is some years ago, but, my Lords, fifty or one hundred years is, in the life of a nation, less than a day or a week in the life of mortal man. If there has been by evil govern- ment in the past a crippling of the effect of that progressive principle which is in all human society, if there has been a crippling of that natural effort. 226 IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. its evil effects do not pass away immediately the restrictive force has been removed. " Mr. Froude, in summing up this question in his first volume at page 301, says of this system : ' It was intended to degrade and impoverish, to destroy in its victims the spring and buoyancy of enterprise, to dig a deep chasm between Catholics and Protestants. These ends it fully attained. It formed the social condition ; it regulated the disposition of property ; it exercised a most enduring and perni- cious influence upon the character of the people, and some of the worst features of the latter may be traced to its influence. It may indeed be possible to find in the statute-books both of Protestant and Catholic countries laws correspond- ing to most parts of the Irish penal code, and in some respects introducing its most atrocious provisions, but it is not the less true that that code taken as a whole has a character entirely distinct. It was directed not against the few, but against the many. It was not the persecution of a sect, but the degradation of a nation. It was the instrument employed by a conquering race supported by a neighboring power to crush to the dust the people among whom they were planted, and indeed when we remember that the greater part of it was in force for nearly a century, that the victims of its cruelties formed at least three-fourths of the nation, that this degrading and dividing influence extended to every field of social, political, professional, intellectual, and even domestic life, and that it was enacted without the provocation of any rebellion, and in defiance of a stat- ute which distinctly guaranteed the Irish people from any further persecution on account of their religion, it may justly be regarded as one of the blackest pages in the history of persecution. In the words of Burke : ' " It was a complete system, full of cohesion and consistency, well digested and well fitted in all its parts — it was a machine of wise and elaborate contriv- ance, and as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment, and degradation of the people, and the debasement in them of human nature itself, as ever pro- ceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man." "The judgment formed of it," says Mr. Froude, " by one of the noblest representatives of English Toryism was very similar." " The Irish," said Dr. Johnson, " are in a most unnatural state, for we see the minority prevailing over the majority. There is no instance even in the ten persecutions of such severity as that which the Protestants of Ireland have exercised against the Catholics in Ireland."' " My Lords, I have mentioned as the third predisposing cause to Irish crime the uncontrolled landlord power. This is a subject which I must develop at greater length later. For the present purpose, I say that that system gave practically the power of life and death over the tenants of Ireland ; that the IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 227 only measure of the protection of the tenant was the sense of justice, but too often no protection, of the landlord ; that the greed for land led to the promise to pay impossible rents; that those rents were extracted from the people so far as they could be extracted, until they were reduced to the condition in which Lord Palmerston described the Irish people as being upon the whole the worst clad, the worst housed, the worst fed people upon the face of God's earth. My Lords, Mr. Froude has given in a sentence at once a description and a condem- nation of the Irish land system. He said : ' Russia is spoken of as a political despotism, tempered by assassination ; so may the Irish land system be described as a social despotism, tempered by assassination.' " If any of the persons here accused had made a speech in that sense, clearly it would have been one of the most formidable items in the indictment now pre- ferred against them ! My Lords, this state of things could not have endured — a state of things in which the interests of the many were overlooked for the benefit of the few — if there had been in Ireland that force of public opinion greater than the law, stronger than the law ; greater than the law, for it makes the law in a healthy, freely governed community — stronger than the law, for it controls the exercise of the rights which the law gives — rights which could not have existed if it had not been that the political condition of Ireland had given to the Irish landlords, the men who have gathered into their hands the dignities and honors and power of the country — given to them no motive to conciliate Irish local opinion, for they had long ceased in any real sense to be Irishmen, and had become merely Irish rent-receivers. I am not speaking — I wish it to be understood — of all of them, I am speaking of the broad features of their his- tory, and I am speaking of them as a class. " My Lords, the results of this system were many. It was not merely social degradation, it was even also moral degradation, and the direction of that uncon- trolled power has been manifested in some remarkable ways. At times when the interests, the passing interests of the landlords seemed to induce them to regard the living population on the land simply as vermin to be rooted out, it led, in times of distress and difficulty, to those wholesale clearances which have led in turn to an anomaly, than which there is none more remarkable in the economic history of any country — I mean the fact that you could go through Ireland to-day, in Roscommon, in Meath, in Mayo, in many other counties, where there is fertile land capable of producing great wealth, and yet you may 228 IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. come across the ruins of a home, the traces of a hamlet, but no human habita- tion or living being for miles, and a little farther on the sterile bleak hillside, as any one can see in Donegal to-day, a crowded, congested, miserable population. What does that mean ? It means that those wretched creatures, having nowhere to turn and nothing to look to but the attempt to earn an existence from the land, and driven from the wealth-sustaining portions of the country where the population might be doubled or trebled without disadvantage, are driven to hud- dle together on the barren bosom of those hills to earn such a livelihood as might scantily support life. " My Lords, the fourth and last of the reasons or causes which I suggest as predisposing to Irish crime is of course the misgovernment of the country, and the consequent mistrust with which that Government was regarded. I have already indicated the general grounds for that distrust. I am anxious to avoid repeating myself. They are, that the Government was directed, not by a regard and fair consideration of the interests of the many, but with the view to the in- terests of the few. The result was to show to the Irish people, or the great bulk of them, the repressive not the beneficent and protective side of govern- ment. The result further was to reverse the natural order of the relation of governors to the governed. I take leave to say, I presume in these days no one would doubt, that kingships, republics, all manners of government known to the world and its political history, have been invented, not for the benefit of kings or the leaders of republics, but for the benefit of the people governed ; I say further, that in the true and broad and just conception of the relations of gov- ernors and governed, the governors are responsible to the people whom they govern. I say that in Ireland all that has been forgotten and has been reversed ; that in the administration of the law, in the executive processes of the law, in the whole spirit of the law itself, it has been in its main and broad lines carried out in a way not to remove but to intensify and increase the spirit of aversion to law and government which undoubtedly a great portion of the Irish people feel. " My Lords, Mr. Goldwin Smith, in his Irish History and Irish Charac- ter, says, at page 139, that the Irish government during the eighteenth century is, in fact, one of the foulest pages in history, and goes on to say that the mass of the people were socially and economically in a state the most deplorable perhaps which history records as having ever existed in any civilized nation. IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 229 " I ask any candid-minded man, apart from the heat of politics, apart from questions of prejudice, what would he expect to follow from such a state of things ? Would he expect a people well affected to the law, which brought them little comfort, and brought no sunshine into their lives — a law which to them showed mainly its aggressive side ? No ; you would expect what history shows has happened, an abiding distrust of the law — I am glad to think not so strong now as it once was, for there are mitigating circumstances — but you would expect to find a people, so exposed as these people were, when recurrent distress came, prone to resort for self-protection to combination, to extra-legal, to unconstitutional, aye, and even to criminal means, for their own protection, for the most profound observers upon the question of Irish crime and its causes (to some of whom I shall have to call your Lordships' attention in a few moments) have observed that the crime of Ireland differs from the crime of every known country in the world in this, namely, that it is to a large extent not the crime of an individual directly, and in hot blood revenging a crime committed by an individual, or an injury committed by an individual, but that it is a crime which, as Sir George Cornewall Lewis calls it, is of a protective kind, and committed, if not by, with the sympathy and in the interest of, a great part of the people. " From this state of things what would your Lordships expect ? That secret societies would spring up ; secret societies at once the effect of misgov- ernment, and themselves the cause of crime." " I now come to a serious and, as I conceive it to be, an important part of this narration ; and that is the actual history of crime in Ireland, in order to show your Lordships, as I have already foreshadowed, that when there was no Land League which could be blamed, no popular leaders who could be branded as accomplices in crime, the same state of things which existed in 1879 existed in those former days, producing the same results, intensified, aggravated, recur- ring again and again, with again and again recurring distress. It is, of course, obviously necessary that I should do this, because if I establish that and show in the condition of things in 1879 an ^ subsequently adequate reasons, historically judged, for the crime, the milder crime, which then took place, I, of course, have gone a long way to relieve those who are here charged ; but it is here an imperative duty, in view of the mode in which the case has been conducted by 230 IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. the Attorney-General, who was instructed to assure your Lordships that the crimes which occurred in 1879 and in subsequent years were crimes unknown in the history of Ireland before the appearance of the Land League. " When your Lordships adjourned I was about to endeavor to establish by reference to the actual authentic history of crime in Ireland the two propo- sitions which I had previously advanced. First, that with recurrent distress connected with given definite causes there was recurrent crime ; and secondly, that that recurrent crime was of the same kind — directed against the same per- sons, aimed at effecting the same results, but much greater in volume and intensity than that which your Lordships have on this occasion to inquire into. " Something has been said in the course of this case as to one of the most reprehensible of the crimes which has been proved before your Lordships, I mean the maiming of dumb beasts — a cowardly, detestable crime. I do not know how far back it goes, but there is certainly a concurrence of testimony on the point, that it took its rise from, and was the criminal expression of, disap- proval of the system of clearances of tenants from arable land with a view to turn that land into pasture land. These houghing crimes in 171 1 are mentioned by Mr. Lecky, amongst others, as having come into existence by reason of the wholesale clearances which then took place with the object of turning, as I have intimated, arable land into pasture land ; and in 1 761, which is the beginning of the formidable rising known under the name of ' Whiteboyism,' it is undoubted that the crimes and actions of the Whiteboys arose from cognate causes. In- deed, I might state to your Lordships the opinion of no less a person than a celebrated Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, namely, Lord Chesterfield, who, in the fifth volume of his letters, uses this extraordinary language dealing with the question of Whiteboyism. He ascribes the Whiteboy rising (these are his words) : ' To the sentiment in every human breast that asserts man's natural rights to liberty and good usage, and which will and ought to rebel when provoked to a certain degree.' When your Lordships recollect the position which the writer held in Ireland in relation to the government of Ireland, I think it will be admitted that it must have been a very strong state of circumstances which would have driven him to make or justified him in making that remarkable pronouncement. "The history of those clearances was followed by the action of a section IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 231 of the Whiteboys, known by the name of ' Levellers,' because one of their oper- ations was the throwing down walls by which the landlords sought to inclose for the purpose of letting to fresh tenants or for pasture certain commonable lands which the tenants themselves had previously enjoyed ; and there is a very curious account of the events of that period given in a book, which I do not myself possess, but which I have read, by an intelligent English traveller called Bush, in a volume which he has entitled Hibernia Curiosa. Your Lordships will find it referred to in Lecky. He gives an account of this matter in the fourth volume, beginning at page 319. He says : 'As we have already seen, the commercial code had artificially limited industrial life, and the penal code, long after it had ceased to be operative as a system of religious persecution, exercised the most pernicious influence in deep- ening class division, rendering the ascendency party practically absolute, driving enterprise and capital out of the country, and distorting in many ways its economical development. A great population existed in Ireland, and were habitually on the verge of famine, and when any economical change took place which converted a part of the country from arable land into pasture, and restricted the amount of labor, they found themselves absolutely without resources. The Whiteboy movement was first directed against the system of inclosing commons, which had lately been carried to a great extent. According to a contemporary and concurrent statement of Crawford the Protestant, and of Curry the Catholic historian of the time, the landlords had even been guilty not only of harshness, but of positive breach of contract, by withdrawing from the tenants a right of commonage which had been given them as part of their bargain when they received their small tenancies, and without which it was impossible that they could pay the rents which were demanded.' " My Lords, this movement spread over Limerick, Tipperary, Waterford, and Cork, and afterward to Kilkenny and Queen's County, and there is a record — a shocking record — of crime, even (strange as it may seem to your Lordships) in more revolting forms and in greater intensity than anything that has been suggested or proved in this case. There were the levelling of inclosures, wholesale crowds of threatening letters, rescues of property seized for rent, grass lands ploughed up, threats against any who paid more than the specified amount of charge, no One allowed to bid for a vacant farm unless it was vacant for at least five years, the penalty being death or burning, the houghing of cat- tle to a large extent ; and you have thus an exact reproduction of the state of things complained of in this case, and that, my Lords, at a time when there 232 IEELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. was no Land League, no constitutional agitation of any shape or kind on foot. This being the outcome of the action of this secret body, and of those who were in sympathy with that secret body, Sir George Cornevvall Lewis, in per- haps the most important and most philosophic inquiry into the causes of Irish crime ever written, points to the parallel which existed in 1761, and the subse- quent years,, with the later period which he comes to consider, and which brings us down to the date of his publication in 1836. " The subsequent history of this crime I shall trace to your Lordships in the history of the Parliamentary Inquiries and of Royal Commissions. Your Lordships probably know the name of Sir George Cornewall Lewis' book. It is called Causes of Irish Disturbance, published in 1836. I shall have to refer to it later. Your Lordships will see how entirely uninstructed the Attor- ney-General was, how grievously misinstructed the Attorney-General was, when he put before your Lordships, as I have already intimated, the state of things in 1879 an d subsequent years as a new and previously unknown state of things, disclosing a new and previously unknown state and class of crime. I shall presently call attention to figures to show how vastly in excess of those of the present years were the figures of crime at the time with which I am about to deal. " Take the case of land-grabbing. Amongst the things which was visited with the penalty of death and burning was the taking of an evicted farm, or land- grabbing. Well, I do not know how far the Attorney-General's historical re- searches have gone, but certainly in very early and primitive states of society land-grabbing was regarded as a crime by the community, and the reason is ob- vious. The reason is particularly obvious in the case of a country like Ireland. I am not at this moment doing anything except examining the matter, so to say, historically and philosophically. I am not stopping to consider whether justifi- cation, or palliation, or anything of that kind, can be suggested. I am examining the facts, but the reason is obvious why it should be regarded as a crime against the interests of the community, because of course if landlords, the moment a ten- ant was evicted from a farm, could immediately get another tenant to take it, I need not say it would be a great step toward making evictions easy, and there- fore tenants would lose, by the removal of interposed difficulties in the way of actual evictions, the protection which they greatly relied upon as lessening the evils to which they were exposed. IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 233 " I do not want to trouble your Lordships with very remote historical prec- edents, but there is the very celebrated and early case of land-grabbing of Ahab v. Naboth.or Naboth v. Ahab. I confess, my Lords, that I always thought that was an exceedingly mild case of land-grabbing, because, according to authentic records, Ahab first of all offered Naboth full value for his vineyard, and offered him an alternative vineyard as well circumstanced in another place ; and yet so strong was the reprehension at that period of the offense of land-grabbing that the apparently fair proposals of Ahab did not restrain Elijah the Tishbite from animadverting, and animadverting most strongly, upon his conduct. And through the whole history of the Irish question, and in every community where the same need for self- protection existed, you will find the reprehension and condemnation of the community for acts of this kind — acts considered by the community as detrimental to the interests of the community. " Mr. Lecky says, at page 340 of his fourth volume : ' The truth is that the real causes of the Whiteboy outbreak are to' be found upon the surface ; extreme poverty, extreme ignorance, extreme lawless- ness made the people wholly indifferent to politics, but their condition was such that the slightest aggravation made it intolerable, and it had become so miserable that they were ready to resort to any violence in order to improve it.' " And he cites the Knight of Kerry, writing at this very period, the period which we are now considering, ' The lower orders,' says the Knight of Kerry, ' are in a state of distress beyond anything known in the memory of man.' " My Lords, that was in the southern counties. In the north, two years later, a violent outbreak of the ' Oakboys ' occurred, which spread over and af- fected the counties of Armagh, Tyrone, Londonderry, and Fermanagh. And it arose from causes comparatively trivial, as it would seem. It arose from this cause, that the magistrates, in the exercise of their powers as a grand jury, to which some reference has been made in the course of this case, had been using those powers to their own direct and immediate advantage, and had caused the making of roads for the improvement of their own particular estates and do- mains, which were not for the general benefit, and the whole burden and cost of which it was sought to throw on the occupying peasants. The people of the north rose against it. It was not so formidable a movement, it was not so fero- cious a movement. Lord Charlemont, a man as well of distinction as of ability, points out the cause of the difference between the two movements in the north and 234 IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. south. He points out how as regards the north a number of circumstances, which I will not here dwell upon at length, had given to the people a much bet- ter position, a greater stake in the country than those in the south ; how there had been preserved to the tenants in the north in the shape of tenant right, a remnant of a much greater interest in the land, which undoubtedly it was the object of the great plantation settlement to give them ; how they had been free, or a great proportion of the community had been free, from the intolerable perse- cutions which had characterized the south ; and in explaining the difference be- tween these movements, he uses this expressive language : ' The rebellion of slaves is always more bloody than an insurrection of free men.' My Lords, that was in 1763, 1764, and 1765. " In 1 771 a much more important and a much more formidable movement rose in the north, that is the movement of the ' Steelboys,' who were the prede- cessors in title of the Orangemen of to-day. The causes again of their action are precisely the same ; the chronicles of the period state them in almost identi- cal language. Rents excessive, wholesale confiscation of improvements, the put- ting up of farms and of houses to the highest bidder, without regard to the rights or claims or interests of the ancient tenant, were the immediate causes of the out- burst and the formation of that which became a formidable body, and which in its later history, I am sorry to say, became sectarian in its character, and not so- cial as it originally was. So the effect of this was that there was crime much more serious than in the time of the Oakboys. They marched in a body to re- lease men, who had been taken up for crimes committed, from the jails of the town. The juries which tried these men for various crimes acquitted them wholesale. They moved the venues to Dublin, and the Dublin juries did the same. The immediate cause was that one great landed nobleman in that neigh- borhood, namely, the Marquis of Donegal, had, upon a large scale, endeavored to forfeit the interest which the tenants had in their homes. Mr. Lecky says in the same volume, at page 347, ' The improvements were confiscated, land was turned into pasture, and the whole population of a vast district were driven from their homes.' My Lords, the consequences of these particular wholesale clear- ances were, unhappily, momentous. They caused a large proportion of the emi- gration of the sturdy Presbyterians of the north to America, and when the War of Independence came, as the chronicles of that day tell us, amongst the stoutest men in opposing the British forces, and in asserting American independence, IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 235 were these very expatriated Presbyterian farmers of the north and their children. From 1780 down to 1806 a number of political events, to which I have already referred, were occurring, and as I have, I think, at least once pointed out, in times of political movement, social oppression and social griev- ances seem for the time to recede into the background, and their existence at all events is not made apparent by the presence of remarkable crime. " There had occurred in the interval the establishment of Grattan's Parlia- ment as it has been styled, the attempted rebellion of 1798, the inchoate rebel- lion of Emmet in 1803 ; but from 1806 to 1820 again we have the same thing repeated — in the west this time, as well as in the south, and also in the midland counties, the Threshers in Connaught, the Whiteboys in the south and in the midland counties, and at that period there was a remarkable depression in the agricultural interests in Ireland and severe pressure was felti Without dwelling too long upon the story, it is true to say that in taking the history of the cen- tury, of which we are now speaking, there have been at least five periods during that time, times of what would be regarded in this country as destitution of the great mass of the people, and certainly two of absolute famine. " It is recorded that, owing to the high prices that had prevailed, rents had enormously gone up, but in two years, from causes not altogether easy now to trace, wheat, at this time one of the considerable products of the country, which in 181 2 was worth £6 a quarter, had fallen in 18 14, a period of two years, to ^3 a quarter. Rents were still maintained at a high standard and at a high press- ure. Crime again arose, and was the subject of the charges of judges to juries on criminal trials, and many lives were lost on the gallows, and many men were lost by expatriation. In that year, or about that time, the year 1814, one of the most remarkable judicial pronouncements which probably ever was delivered from any bench of justice was delivered by Mr. Baron Fletcher to the grand jury in the county of Wexford. Your Lordships will find it reported at full length in the Annual Register for the year 18 14. He begins by congratulating Wex- ford on its previous condition. He goes on to consider the causes which had produced the disturbances, which then prevailed throughout the country, refer- ring to the widespread appearance of those disturbances, and pointing to his ex- perience on the northwestern circuit, which included amongst others the coun- ties of Mayo, Donegal, Londonderry, and Roscommon, and he says: ' But various deep-rooted and neglected causes, producing similar effects 236 IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. throughout this country, have conspired to create the evils which really and truly do exist. First, the extraordinary rise of land occasioned by the great and in- creasing demand for the necessaries of life, which, by producing large profits to the possessors of farms, excited a proportionate avidity for acquiring or renting lands. Hence extravagant rents have been bid for lands, without any great con- sideration, and I have seen these two circumstances operating upon each other like cause and effect— the cause producing the effect, and the effect by reaction producing the cause.' " He then goes on in a remarkable passage, which I do not think it is per- tinent to read in this connection, in which he speaks of the action of the Orange Society as poisoning the fountains of justice, and then he proceeds as to the im- mediate and distinct causes of the distrust of law, and the crime which prevailed, in a passage than which I have never heard any more remarkable : ' Gentlemen, that modern pittance which the high rents leave to the poor peasantry the large county assessments nearly take from them ; roads are fre- quently planned and made, not for the general advantage of the country, but to suit the particular views of a neighboring landholder, at the public expense. Such abuses shake the very foundation of the law ; they ought to be checked. Superadded to these mischiefs are the permanent and occasional absentee land- lords, residing in another country, not known to their tenantry but by their agents, who extract the uttermost penny of the value of the lands. If a lease happen to fall, they set the farm by public auction to the highest bidder. No gratitude for past services, no preference of the fair offer, no predilection for the ancient tenantry, be they ever so deserving, but, if the highest price be not ac- ceded to, the depopulation of an entire tract of country ensues. What, then, is the wretched peasant to do ? Chased from the spot where he had first drawn his breath, where he had first seen the light of heaven, incapable of procuring any other means of existence, vexed with those exactions I have enumerated, and harassed by the payment of tithes, can we be surprised that a peasant of unen- lightened mind, of uneducated habits, should rush upon the perpetration of crimes, followed by the punishment of the rope and the gibbet ? Nothing {as the peas- antry imagine) remains for them, thus harassed and thus destitute, but with strong hand to deter the stranger from intr tiding upon their farms, and to ex- tort from the weakness and terrors of their landlords (from whose gratitude or good feelings they have failed to win it) a kind of preference for their ancient tenantry.' " There is a great deal more of this which is worth reading. He proceeds to dwell upon what amounts to a charge on the grand jury of fraud, enlarging the charges which I have already mentioned. He points out that ' Ribbonism,' IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 237 which then began to show its head, was the product of oppression. He then proceeds to point out how, not content with the extraction of the utmost far- thing of rent, these absentee landlords through their agents claim the political power which the tenant, as a voter, had at his command as part of the price which he has to pay for his holding, and he says : ' The tenantry are driven to the hustings, and there, collected like sheep in a pen, they must poll for the great undertaker who has purchased them by his jobs ; and this is frequently done with little regard to conscience or duty, or real value for the alleged freehold.' "Then he proceeds to deal at greater length with the results of the fact that so large a class of the Irish landholders are absentees. I will not dwell upon that passage. Then he proceeds to consider the question : Is there no remedy for all this except the remedy of coercive legislation ? I will show your Lordships in a moment that during the whole of this time there is a continual and dismal record of coercive measure after coercive measure, with hardly a year's intermission, for a hundred years. " He then proceeds, in a passage which your Lordships will forgive my reading, as it will a little lighten the more serious part of what I have to say, to point out how difficult it is for the English mind, which he recognized in the political relations between the two countries as really the governing mind of the matter, to get hold of reliable information, and in a positively humorous passage he describes the course of an intelligent English visitor who is coming to learn the truth for himself. He says : ' Does a visitor come to Ireland to compile a book of travels, what is his course ? He is handed about from one country gentleman to another, all inter- ested in concealing from him the true state of the country ; he passes from squire to squire, each rivalling the other in entertaining their guest, all busy in pouring falsehoods into his ears touching the disturbed state of the country and the vicious habits of the people. Such is the crusade of information upon which the English traveller sets forward ; and he returns to his own country with all his unfortunate prejudices doubled and confirmed, in a kind of moral despair of the welfare of such a wicked race, having made up his mind that nothing ought to be done for this lawless and degraded country.' " I have said that I will point out what was the nature of the coercive measures, as for convenience sake and brevity's sake they are called, in exist- ence at this period. In 1 8oo there was in existence the Insurrection Act, the 238 IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. Habeas Corpus Suspension Act, and, during a part of the period, martial law. The same in 1801. In 1803 there was the Insurrection Act. In 1804 there was the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act. In 1807 and 1808 the Insurrection Act and martial law, and the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act. In 1809 and 1810 the same. In 1814, 1815, 1816, and 1817 the same. In 1822, 1823, and 1824 the same. " I now pass on, although there are one or two intervening incidents that I might dwell upon, and I take up at this point, namely, from the years 1824 to 1825, the best, the most reliable, the most philosophic inquiry that I have come across into the causes of Irish crime — I mean Sir George Cornewall Lewis' book. If your Lordships are not familiar with it, and have not got it, I should be very glad to be allowed to hand it up. " It is the work of a man eminently fitted for the task he undertakes ; a scholar, a statesman, a man of eminently fair and judicial mind ; and, my Lords, while I make an apology for the length at which I refer to this, I will promise that I will not trouble your Lordships with any other authorities that I refer to at anything like the same length. The book was published in 1836, and prac- tically takes up the whole field of inquiry, beginning with a parliamentary in- quiry by a Select Committee in the year 1824, so that it covers altogether a period of twelve years. He proceeds to consider the question under these heads : ' The causes of Irish Disturbance ; their character and objects ; the means used for accomplishing these objects ; and the effects produced by them.' " Now, at page 46 he points out the causes of disturbances in Ireland, and says : ' According to the prevailing system, which has to a greater or less extent been acted upon nearly up to the present day, every Irish Catholic was presumed to be disaffected to the State, and was treated as an open or concealed rebel ; the entire government was carried on by the Protestants, and for their benefit, and the Protestants were considered the only link between England and Ireland. The English thought it for their interest that Ireland should belong to them, and they supported the Irish Protestants in oppressing the Irish Catholics, who, it was assumed, without that oppression would throw themselves into the arms of France. At the same time that the wide and impassable line was drawn by the law between the two religions in Ireland, and the one persuasion was made a privileged, the other an inferior, class, the whole of Ireland was treated as a IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 239 province or colony, whose interests were to be sacrificed to those of the mother country.' "And then at page 49 he elaborates that point and says : ' In these two ways ' — that is to say, the landlords being few in proportion, and to a large ex- tent Englishmen, and to a still larger extent not professing the religion of the great majority of the Irish people, being Protestants — ' In these two ways all friendly connection between the landlord and tenant of the soil was broken ; either the landlord was at a distance and was represented by an oppressive, grasping middleman, or, if on the spot, he was the member of a dominant and privileged class, who was as much bound by his official ties as he was prompted by the opinion of his order, by the love of power, and by the feeling of irresponsibility, to oppress, degrade, and trample on his Catholic tenants.' " Hence it was impossible that the different classes of society should be shaded into one another, that the rich should pass into the poor by that insensi- ble gradation which is found in England, or that those amicable relations should ever be formed between landlord and tenant which (with temporary and partial exceptions) have subsisted for some centuries in the latter country, to its great and manifest advantage. The sharp separation of the upper and lower ranks, the degradation of the peasantry, their ignorance, their poverty, their reckless- ness, and their turbulence were as necessarily the consequence of the system pursued in Ireland as the comparative comfort of the laborer, the occupation of the land by a respectable tenantry, the general tranquillity of the agricultural population, and the gradual passage of the richer into the poorer ranks were the consequences of the system pursued in England. And any person who had attentively studied the state of society in England and Ireland at the opening of the eighteenth century might, without any remarkable gift of political prophecy, or without hazarding any rash conjecture, have foretold the respective destinies of the agricultural population in either country. " My Lords, he then refers to Arthur Young, who toward the end of the eighteenth century visited Ireland, and who gives proof of a deeper, darker kind still than I care to advert to, of the degradation to which the wives and daughters of the Irish tenants were subjected as part of this pernicious system. He goes on : ' The landlord of an Irish estate inhabited by Roman Catholics is a sort of 240 IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. despot, who yields obedience, in whatever concerns the poor, to no law but that of his will.' " The following, my Lords, is indeed a philosophical observation worth bearing in mind in the progress of this case, and at every part of it : ' To discover what the liberty of a people is we must live among them, and not look for it among the statutes of the realm ; the language of written law may be that of liberty, but the situation of the poor may speak no language but that of slavery. There is too much of this contradiction in Ireland ; a long series of oppressions, aided by many very ill-judged laws, have brought land- lords into a habit of exerting a very lofty superiority, and their vassals into that of an almost unlimited submission; speaking a language that is despised, pro- fessing a religion that is abhorred, and being disarmed, the poor find themselves in many cases slaves even in the bosom of a written liberty.' " My Lords, let me here observe that, although I do not mean to suggest that there have not been in operation causes outside the law which have miti- gated the ferocity of this landlord system in Ireland, I do maintain, and I hope I shall demonstrate to your Lordships, that until the year 1881, and then as one of the products and fruits of the very revolution your Lordships are trying, there was no real or effective check imposed by the law upon landlord op- pression. " He then again proceeds to cite the evidence, which I will not do in great detail, taken before a committee as to the causes of crime. My Lords, this was a committee which was appointed in 1824, and afterward became a committee of both Houses of Parliament, and which practically sat for a number of years, and I think finally made its report, I am not quite sure of the date, but I think somewhere about 1826 or 1827. He refers to one witness who was one of the barristers appointed to administer the Insurrection Act in 1822, and who assigned distress as one of the causes of the state of things in Ireland, and he was then asked by some member of the committee, ' Have you ever directed your atten- tion to the ultimate causes of it ? ' to which the witness answered : ' The ultimate causes must be sought much further back in the history of the country.' "Then, my Lords, he proceeds to give his reasons bearing on this head, which I shall have to trouble you with, though at a later stage, when I come to put before you the history of the details of the land legislation relating to Ire- land. Then he refers to the evidence of an inspector of police, who is asked : 'To what do you attribute the long disturbance you have described as pre- IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 241 vailing among the lower orders in that part of the country (Munster) ?' and he answers : ' It is very difficult for me to form an opinion, it arises from so many causes. I think a great deal of disturbance has arisen about the rents ; the land during the war was set very high in most parts of Ireland, and in peace there was a great reduction in the price of produce, a most considerable reduction in Ireland, and I think that the landlords were proceeding to distress the tenantry and to get those high rents which the produce of the land did not enable them to pay, and I think that that caused a number of persons to be turned out of their farms, and from that arose a number of outrages from the dispossessed tenants.' " Mr. Justice Day, judge of the Court of King's Bench in Ireland, whose tenure of the judicial bench appears to have been twenty-one years, is asked a question upon the same subject, and in reference to his circuit experience he points as an example to one case in the county of Limerick, upon the estate of one Lord Courtenay. There was a good deal of oppression and disturbance in consequence, into which he goes at some little length. " Then another witness says — I will not trouble your Lordships by repeating the same thing, but he gives the same causes, ' the prime one always being the rent and tithe, and other charges on the land, which it was utterly impossible to pay. The people could not pay anything like the demands.' All through I find the same keynote. " Then there are one or two questions in this connection, although it will come a little later in the second head that he mentions. One is asked at page 73 : ' What was the object of some of these movements? From the history of the disturbance it appears that it originated in the conduct of a gentleman on the Courtenay estate. He was very severe toward the tenants, and the people who were in wealth previous to that were reduced to poverty, and they thought proper to retaliate upon him and his family.' " I ask the Attorney-General's attention to this : 'And upon those who took their lands, and this was the origin of it.' " When Mr. Leslie Foster, at that time a member of Parliament, is asked his opinion, and to what he attributed the frequent recurrence of disturbances, he says : ' I think the proximate cause is the extreme physical misery of the peas- antry, coupled with their liability to be called upon for the payment of different charges, which it is often practically impossible for them to meet. The imme- diate cause of these disturbances I conceive to be the attempt to enforce these demands by the various processes of law ; we are also to take into consider- 242 IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. ation that they are living under constitutions for which they have neither much affection nor much respect. I have assigned what I conceive to be the prox- imate cause of the disturbance. I think the remote one is a radically vicious structure of society which prevails in many parts of Ireland, and which has orig- inated in the events of Irish history, and which may be in a great measure palli- ated, but which it would, I fear, be extremely difficult now wholly to change.' "Then a stipendiary magistrate of experience in Queen's County is asked: 'Are the Committee to understand that you consider the spirit of outrages has not been got under?' — ' It has not.' — ' Can you give any hint to the Commit- tee as to what you consider likely to accomplish that desirable object ?' — ' I think if the laws were amended in one, two, or three instances which I will suggest, it would tend to the security of the public peace. There is scarcely an outrage committed relative to land but what the people assign a cause for it ; if I may use that expression, in some instances the unfortunate people do show a cause for it.' " Mr. Blackburne was examined, who was Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench, as your Lordships may probably recollect, and afterward Lord Chancel- lor of Ireland, and in introducing his name at page 78, Sir George Cornewall Lewis sums up a portion of the case included in his evidence. He says : 'All the above witnesses agree in a remarkable manner with regard to the causes of the Whiteboy disturbances. All trace them to the miserable condi- tion of the peasantry — to their liability to certain charges, the chief of which is rent, which they are very often unable to meet — and to their anxiety to retain possession of land, which, as Mr. Blackburne truly states, is to them a necessary of life, the alternative being starvation. With the dread of this alternative be- fore their eyes it is not,' says Sir George Lewis, ' to be wondered that they make desperate efforts to avert it — that crime and disturbance should be the consequence of actual ejectment is still more natural.' " And, by the way, Mr. Blackburne mentions one case on the estate of Lord Stradbroke, where, he says : ' The agent, attended by the sheriff, went upon the land and dispossessed a numerous body of occupants ; they prostrated the houses, leaving the people to carry away the timber. The number of persons that were thus deprived of their houses on that occasion was very large. I am sure that there were about forty families, but I cannot tell you the number of individuals. They were persons of all ages and sexes, and, in particular, a woman almost in the extrem- ity of death.' And then the question follows, 'What do you conceive became of them?' and the answer is : ' I should think they have been received from charity up and down the country.' IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 243 " Mr. Barrington is a gentleman who appears to have had a very long official life, because I find the same gentleman — I think it is the same gentleman — turning up as a witness at another of these perennial commissions to inquire into the causes of Irish crime in the year 1852 ; he agrees with the general comment upon the lamentable condition which Sir George Lewis points out, and which is summed up by him at page 88 : ' There is so much permanent misery in the southern and western parts of Ireland, the mass of the county population are in such a state of distress and suffering, they have so little either to hope or to fear, that they are ready at almost any time to break out into disturbance, in order, if not to rebel, at least to weaken that law which they have always been accustomed to consider as their enemy.' " And he makes one very curious comment upon a suggestion which has been made in the course of this case, when the question was addressed earlier by one of my friends, that there is a degree of wretchedness in which the people have been so completely prostrated that crime is not found to be rancorous amongst them. 'Do you think it reasonable to expect perfect tranquillity?' is the question put to Colonel Rochfort — ' Do you think it reasonable to expect perfect tranquillity in Ireland when there is such a state of wretchedness, and the people so badly clad, fed, and housed?' What is the answer? 'My abstract opinion is, the lower in the scale of society the populace is, the more sure you are of its obe- dience.' Then the question is put : ' In order to keep the country quiet you would keep the country wretched?' And the answer is : 'I would not keep it so, but I think it would secure the tranquillity of the country.' And then Sir George Cornewall Lewis upon that observes : 'The disturbances in question appear to prevail most where the peasantry are bold and robust, and one degree removed above the lowest poverty, and where the land is productive and consequently thickly peopled.' " My Lords, Sir George Cornewall Lewis was writing before the years of the famine — he was writing before the enormous clearances that have taken place in the present century — clearances starting principally from the famine time, not beginning, but starting in increased volume during the famine time, when the landlords, just as distress increased, increased in their urgency of legal process, as it will be shown to your Lordships they did in 1879, 1880, 1881, and 1882. He then cites another authority upon this subject, and a very valuable one, an English historian, Wakefield, in his account of Ireland. 244 IRELAND, PROM 1848 TO 1875. This is upon another point. In his first volume Wakefield says, at page 244: ' In Ireland landlords never erect buildings on their property, or expend anything in repairs ; nor do leases in that country contain so many clauses as in England. The office of an agent is thus rendered very easy, for he has nothing to do but to receive his employers' rents twice a year, and to set out the turf-bog in lots in the spring.' That is, of course, upon a point with which I am not now directly dealing. " My Lords, I leave the consideration of the causes of Irish agrarian crime, which really means the causes of Irish crime. " The next point which Sir G. C. Lewis proceeds to consider are the char- acter and objects of that crime, and this will, I think, be found to be very important. He says : ' In order to comprehend the peculiar character of the offenses springing from the Whiteboy system in Ireland, it is desirable to consider all crimes as divided into two classes, not according to the ordinary distinction of crimes against the person and crimes against property, but with reference to the motive with which they are committed, or the effect which they are intended to pro- duce.' (That is at page 94, third chapter.) ' Under one class may be arranged those crimes which are intended to intimidate, to determine men's wills, to pro- duce a general effect not necessarily even limited to the individual whose person or property is the object of the crirne, but at any rate calculated to influence his conduct in respect of some future action. Such are threatening notices, mali- cious injury to property, beatings, murders, etc., in consequence of some act of the party injurious to a particular person, or to classes of persons. The object of these is either directly to prevent or to compel the performance of some future act, which a specified individual is supposed to be likely to perform or not to perform ; as when a man is threatened, either orally or by a written notice, that he will be killed if he ejects or admits such a tenant, if he dismisses or does not dismiss such a servant, if he prosecutes or gives evidence against such a party ; or, secondly, it is to punish a party for having done some act.' And then he proceeds to enumerate in the same way cases in which a man is threatened because he has rejected or admitted such a tenant, because he has not dismissed such a servant, because he has prosecuted or given evidence against such a party. Then he points out the motive of the crimes that he is considering. ' In this character' (he says) 'they look not merely to particular, but also to general results ; not merely to the present, but also to the future; not merely IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 245 to themselves, but also to those with whom they are leagued and with whom they have an identity of interests. The criminal who acts with these views is, as it were, an exectitioner who carries into effect the verdict of an uncertain and non-apparent tribunal ; and it usually happens that others profit -more by his offense than he himself who committed it. To the other class may be referred those crimes whose effect is limited to that which is actually done by the offender.' " I will not trouble your Lordships by pursuing that passage ; but I do ask attention to the fact how ill this historical record fits in with the statement of the case which the Attorney-General, upon what I must designate most imper- fect instructions, put before your Lordships. We have here the very same class of things carried out in the very same way, apparently with the very same class of object. Then he proceeds : ' Now the characteristic difference between the crimes of Ireland and of England, France, and indeed of almost every civilized country in the world, is, that in a large part of Ireland the former class appears to preponderate consider- ably beyond the latter.' That is to say, the class in which the offense is committed, not to revenge a wrong done upon the individual committing it by an individual who has com- mitted it, but in the sense which Sir George Cornewall Lewis subsequently ex- plained, namely, the protective sense. Then he continues : ' The preponderance of the exemplary or preventive crimes ' (which is an- other term he applies) ' may be particularly seen in certain districts of Ireland. Thus in Munster, in the year 1833, illegal notices, administering unlawful oaths, assaults connected with combination, attacks on houses, burnings, maiming of cattle, malicious injury to property, and appearing in arms, nearly all of which were of this description, comprehended 627 out of a total of 973 crimes, and even of the others, homicides, etc., many were doubtless committed with the same motive It is to the state of things which we exhibited in the last chapter, to the wretched condition of the mass of the Irish peasantry, their in- ability to obtain employment for hire, and their consequent dependence on land, to the system of combination and self-defense thus engendered, in short, to the prevalence of the Whiteboy spirit, that this peculiar character of Irish crimes is to be attributed. It has already been explained how the Irish peasant, constantly living in extreme poverty, is liable, by the pressure of certain charges, or by ejectment from his holding, to be driven to utter destitution, to a state in which himself and family can only rely on a most precarious charity to save them from exposure to the elements, from nakedness, and from starvation. It is natural 246 IRELAND, PROM 1848 TO 1875. that the most improvident persons should seek to struggle against such fearful consequences as these, that they should try to use some means of quieting appre- hensions which (even if never realized) would themselves be sufficient to embit- ter the life of the most thoughtless ; and it is to afford this security that the Whiteboy combinations are formed.' " Then he proceeds to use this language, more than once quoted, but cer- tainly remarkable : ' The Whiteboy Association may be considered as a vast trades union for the protection of the Irish peasantry ; the object being, not to regulate the rate of wages or the hours of work, bzit to keep the actual occitpant in possession of his land, and in general to regulate the relation of landlord and tenant for the benefit of the latter That the main object of the Whiteboy disturbances is to keep the actual tenant in undisturbed possession of his holding, and to cause it to be transferred at his death to his family, by preventing and punishing ejectment and the taking of land over another's head ' [which is land- grabbing], ' is proved by a whole body of testimony. A secondary, but not unfrequent object is to regulate the rate of wages by preventing the employment of strangers, or by requiring higher payment from the farmers. The VVhiteboys of late years have rarely interfered with the collection of tithe, which was at one time their principal object of attack.' " Now, my Lords, he gives at this point a classification of the crimes then prevalent. It reads like a record of the crimes your Lordships have been inquir- ing into — crimes which the Attorney-General was instructed to say were previ- ously unknown : . ' To force the party to quit land in his occupation. To avenge the taking of land. To force the party not to eject tenants, or to punish him for ejecting them. To force the party not to take land. To force the party not to let land to certain persons. To force the party to let land to certain persons. To force the party to let land at a certain rate. To prevent the party from recovering possession of a house. To force the party not to pay more than half a year s rent. To force the party to quit his service. To force the party not to employ or to punish him for employing certain persons. To punish for discharging from his employment. To prevent persons working under a certain rate of wages. To prevent or avenge the collection of rent, tithes, or county cess, or the taking of legal measures to enforce payment of them. To rescue parties arrested. To prevent the party giving information to the military. To prevent the execution of a warrant ; ' and so on, and so on. It is a classification of many offenses which have been IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 247 proved to have existed in this case. There is ah answer at page 109 by the Rev. Nicholas O'Connor, one of the witnesses examined, which is not without significance. It is asked : 'What are the principal objects they have in view? — To keep themselves upon their lands. I have often heard their conversations when they say, " What good did the emancipation do us ? Are we better clothed or fed, or our chil- dren better clothed and fed ? Are we not as naked as we were, and eating dry potatoes when we can get them ? Let us notice the farmers to give us better food and better wages, and not give so much to the landlord and more to the workman. We must not let them be turning the poor people off the ground." Then some of them that went to England and saw the way the English labor- ers are fed and clothed, came back and told them: " If you saw the way that the English laborers lived, you would never live as you do "; and some persons from another part of the country told them that they managed things a great deal better ; that the way " was to swear to be true to each other, and join to keep the people upon their ground, and not let the landlords be turning them off"; then it is proposed that they should meet at some shebeen house, of which there are too many, unfortunately, in the country, or some licensed house of low description where they get drunk and become demoralized, and thus they are seduced into the Whiteboy system.' " My Lords, I recollect a conversation, publicly quoted some years ago, which made a deep impression upon me, for I knew the conversation had taken place as it was reported. A peasant in the south of Ireland in the year 1881, complaining of his hard lot and of the exactions and raisings of rent which had been put upon him by his landlord, whose name I will not mention, was bidden to be of good hope, that there had been promise of land reform and protection for the Irish tenant. The man's answer was very significant. He said : ' I believe Government mean well, but,' he said, ' the people have done more for themselves than the Government will do for them. I am told that down Tipperary way' (this man was a Kerry man) 'the landlords were at one time the worst in Ireland, and some of them got badly hurt, God help them, and now they tell me that the landlords of Tipperary are as good as any of the landlords in the rest of Ireland.' " My Lords, that is a sad spirit to have got hold of the people, looking to themselves and to such means, not to the Government of the country and the Legislature of the land, for the redress of grievances. There are many other things in this interesting book that I would have desired to call attention to, but 248 IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. I have so much to say that I cannot dwell on it as long as I should otherwise desire to do. My attention is called to page in. Very much the same thing has been said by Mr. Bennett, speaking of other counties, Kildare and Queen's County. ' The character of crime appeared to me to result from a conspiracy to prevent any person from taking land, or from possessing land from which the previous tenant had been ejected for rent, and threatening strangers of every description from coming into the country ; also particularly directed against wit- nesses who either have come forward, or it was apprehended would come for- ward to give evidence upon criminal prosecutions, or with respect to land ; that was the impression that was made upon my mind from the evidence I received.' " My Lords, to the classification of crime I have already referred. I should like now to call your Lordships' attention to the quantity of crime referred to. Now, you will see, sad and regrettable as is the state of crime which you have been inquiring into for a period of ten years — many of those years, years of dire distress, as your Lordships will have demonstrated to you — how slight that crime is compared with the period I am now upon. The particular table I have is the year 1833. ' Riots in Ulster, 340.' It appears that figure ought to be corrected, because a note says that in one of the districts of that province included under the head of riots are assaults. That, of course, is unimportant for what I am upon. ' In Leinster, 94 ; in Munster, 46 ; in Connaught, 59 : total for that year of riots, 539. Rescue and resistance to legal process: Ulster, 127; Leinster, 41 ; Munster, 48; Connaught, 226; total, 442, for the year 1833. Illegal meetings: Ulster, 83; Leinster, 128; Munster, 6; Connaught, 64: total, 281.' " Then there are ' notices,' which I do not trouble your Lordships with. 'Administering unlawful oaths,' total, 167. 'Appearing in arms,' total, 145. ' Robbery or demand of arms, 393. Assaults connected with combination, 926. Attacks on houses, 1,325. Burnings, 489. Maiming or destroying cattle, 271. Malicious injury to property, 890. Homicides : Ulster, 45 ; Leinster, 56 ; Munster, 80; Connaught, 57: total, 237,' in the one year 1833! 'Firing at persons' (this was at the beginning of the tithe war), total, 237. ' Cutting and maiming, 31.' Then ' burglary ' I need not trouble your Lordships with, nor the others, making as the grand total of all crimes for that year the enormous number of 9,943 offenses. " Now, I think I am justified in saying that, so far, I have shown, in a con- IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 249 dition of things in many respects far below the intensity and pressure upon the great body of the population which existed in 1879, when the people had no open organization, a state of crime much worse than anything that can be sug- gested as having existed in the worst years since 1878 ; and I hope to make it apparent to your Lordships that, although it may be suggested (that I will here- after deal with) that the Land League exercised an oppression and a tyranny of its own, yet I say it is demonstrable that, just in proportion as it was effective in these results, which will be alleged to have exercised a certain petty tyranny or pressure, it had the effect of lessening so far from increasing serious crime. And it seems to me that the consideration of the case makes it apparent that that must be so, because if you have got, focussed, the expression of the opinion of a largely preponderating class in the community in condemnation of a par- ticular line of conduct supposed to be inimical to the general interests of the community, whether it takes the form of boycotting, or what you please, it is perfectly obvious that in proportion as that force is effective, it must tend not to increase but to diminish weighty crime. You may say that is itself crime. I will deal with that hereafter. You may say that boycotting is crime and a re- lentless form of tyranny. I shall examine that presently, but I say it is demon- strable that, just in proportion as there is a focussing of the public opinion in the localities and throughout the country, it must have the result of lessening serious crime. "The tithe war began in 1830, and it to some extent overlaps the period Sir George Cornewall Lewis refers to. It includes the year 1833, the statistics of which he gave us. It continued with (what shall I call it ?) great force until the year 1835, when one of the few statesmen charged with the conduct of pub- lic affairs in Ireland who ever showed a comprehension of his position and of the state of things in Ireland — I mean Thomas Drummond — succeeded to the Irish Office as Under-Secretary, and took a bold and resolute step — a step difficult perhaps to justify upon narrow technical legal grounds, because the tithe farmers and the tithe owners had the right to their pound of flesh, and they had a right to invoke in aid the civil authority ; they had a right to invoke the executive forces of the Crown in assertion of those rights. Thomas Drummond refused them that help ; and from 1835 until finally the Tithe Act was passed ,in 1839, there was comparative peace in Ireland in the matter. Boycotting ex- isted ; all the evils which are here referred to, as Sir George Cornewall Lewis' 250 IRELAND, PROM 1848 TO 1875. book shows, existed in a marked degree. Men were ordered out of particular employments of obnoxious persons who would not yield to the suggestions or the behests of the anti-tithe organizers, and in this connection I will quote from a book which is the only work of any historian that I shall have occasion to re- fer to who may be said to be in sympathy with the defendants here accused ; but he quotes his authorities, and I refer to his book because I find them con- veniently collected there — I mean the book of my learned and able friend, Mr. Barry O'Brien, entitled Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland. I am reading from the first volume. He gives an instance of the mode in which the attempts at seizures for tithes were resisted, and at page 397 he gives this instance of the way in which those public sales were treated. Notices were put up to this effect : ' (1) It is requested that no auctioneer will lend himself to the sale of cows distrained for tithes. (2) It is requested that no person will purchase cows distrained for tithes. (3) It is resolved, that the citizens will have no inter- course or dealings with any person who aids in the sale of the cows as auctioneer or purchaser.' " The result was there were no sales. He then goes on to describe a scene which has a humorous aspect. The anti-tithe organizers of Dublin caused notices to be served on five leading persons in their community, calling upon them not to pay tithes. These five persons were Lord Cloncurry, Mr. Armstrong, Mr. Bourne, Mr. Bagot, and Mr. Graydon. The notices were disregarded, and orders were then issued directing their servants and laborers to leave the employment of those gentlemen. These orders were instantly obeyed. A meeting was next held in the neighborhood where these gentlemen lived, and they were all summoned to attend the meeting and explain their conduct in disobeying the injunction. Graydon, Armstrong, Bourne, and Bagot, I believe, all, after an interval, came in and said they would not pay tithe any more. The question was asked by the chairman, Mr. Neill, where was Lord Cloncurry ? An answer came that his lordship was not there, but that he had sent a number of laborers in his employ to represent him. The chairman said : 'What have you got to say ? Why did Lord Cloncurry pay the tithe ? ' — ' He did not pay it,' said the spokesman, ' and he was always a friend to the people, and always against the tithe, and he has not paid a shilling in tithe to Dean Langrishe since the Dean came to this parish.' So far the case seemed very good, and Lord Cloncurry was going to be dismissed as having accorded with the popular IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 251 wish in the matter, when one of the laborers, more indiscreet than the others, shouted out : ' And what's more, the divil a copper of rent the Dane pays me Lord.' So that immediately it became apparent that Lord Cloncurry, on the one hand, was not paying his tithe to Dean Langrishe, but, on the other hand, that Dean Langrishe was getting it in meat if not in malt, because he was not called to pay any rent to Lord Cloncurry. The result was that steps were taken that these servants should not go back to work for Lord Cloncurry except he undertook not to pay the tithe. Well, my Lords, I could multiply these instances. These are not cases where, as described in the indictment of the Times, self-interested, self-seeking politicians constructed the machinery for this anti-tithe war. It sprang up naturally, because there was a strong sense of the injustice and oppression which the system was working upon the people ; and then, as naturally takes place in every such movement, there came to the front men who held the same views, men who were fit to do work which the needs of the country at the time required to be done to meet a social wrong and a social oppression. "There is a Lords' Committee of 1839 which tells the same story that I have been already telling your Lordships. I do not propose to trouble your Lordships with a repetition of that. I merely give the reference to it in pass- ing, and I pass over other similar accounts at other periods. " Now we come to still later days. A parliamentary committee of the House of Commons was appointed in 1852 ; and here the venue is changed from the south and west of Ireland to the north of Ireland, the three counties whose disturbed state was then inquired into being the counties of Armagh, Monaghan, and Louth, two of them Ulster counties. The committee was to inquire into the outrages in Ireland, and into the state of those parts of the counties of Armagh, Monaghan, and Louth which were referred to in Her Majesty's speech, into the immediate cause of crime and outrage in those dis- tricts, and into the efficiency of the laws and their administration for the sup- pression of such crime and outrage. I will not trouble you at the same length as I have done, and will give your Lordships a summary of the evidence. It is noticeable that what I may call the official class of witnesses, with hardly an exception — district inspectors, if they existed then, police magistrates, landlords, and so forth — all said the Land Question had nothing to do with the state of things then existing ; all that was wanted to secure peace in Ireland was a 252 IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. strengthening of the criminal law ; and they added that the effect of any con- cession in the shape of further yielding (as they called it) to the demands of the Irish tenants would be but to encourage them in their lawlessness, and to encourage their agitators. The agitators at that time were the men whose names I have already given to you in an earlier portion of my address. The agitators in the south were, prominently, Frederick Lucas, Sir Charles Duffy, John B. Dillon (the father of the accused John Dillon in this case), and, in the north, Dr. M'Knight, editor of the Banner of Ulster, and the Rev. John Rogers, Moderator then or thereafter, as I have already said, of the General Assembly of Ulster. " But, notwithstanding this official evidence, the committee made two suggestions. Some witnesses had insisted upon the distrust which existed in the administration of the law, and others had insisted upon the state of the land law, as the cause of the disturbance being inquired into. The committee make these two suggestions — (i) That there shall be but' one panel of jurors to try issues civil and criminal at these assizes, in addition to any special jury which may be lawfully summoned, and that measures shall be adopted to secure strict impartiality in the construction of the jury panel ; (2) That the attention of the Legislature be directed to an early consideration of the laws which regulate the relations of landlord and tenant in Ireland with a view to their consolidation and amendment, and especially to consider the practicability of such legislation as might provide adequate security to tenants for permanent improvements, and otherwise place the relation on a more satisfactory basis. " Sir Charles Duffy, Mr. Lucas, Mr. Isaac Butt, a host of men, had again and again, as I shall have to point out, tried to do this thing and failed. Atten- tion had not been sufficiently awakened and arrested in the mind of the English people and in the mind of the Imperial Legislature. They had not realized the significance and importance of it. The Devon Commission of 1845, seven years before, had recommended the same thing, in the same direction, on the same lines ; and yet nothing was done till a quarter of a century after that recommenda- tion of the Devon Commission, namely, in 1870, and then but little. The rec- ommendation being in 1845, nothing was done till 1870, and then an Act was passed which, to use the language of Mr. Leonard, agent for Lord Kenmare — language with which I agree — produced little or no effect. ., "The point I am now upon, of course, is still the history of crime. The IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 253 committee took the evidence of magistrates, police inspectors, and Catholic clergymen, and they reported on the 4th June, 1852. The general state of things proved was the occurrence of numerous murders and other outrages, difficulty in detecting offenders and securing their punishment, strained relations between landlords and tenants, a widespread secret Ribbon society, and an open and avow- edly constitutional organization called the Tenant League, the heads of which I have mentioned. Evidence was given that murders of landlords and land agents and magistrates had taken place, one notably attracted a great deal of attention at the time, the murder of one Mauleverer, which was the occasion (I may men- tion it, as I have animadverted strongly upon the Times in general) of an article in the Times, stronger in its language than any speech or combination of speeches that have been read in the course of this case ; bailiffs beaten for serving tenants with notices calling upon them to attend and pay their rents ; herds and care- takers of evicted farms murdered ; outrages upon occupiers of evicted farms; the murder of an agent, Powell, who had been clearing lands to enlarge the demesne of the owner, one Quinn ; a baker threatened for collecting his debts ; an agent murdered for collecting rents ; threats to the bailiff who served the notices to pay the rents and to come into the office ; and threats also to tenants who were going to pay rent and who had paid without reduction — the very same class of thing as is in question here ; proof that it was customary for gentlemen to travel armed ; threatening notices with coffins and the rest ; outrages to prevent bidding for farms ; outrages upon the occupiers. A number of these it was proved, as in this case, although connected with land, probably arose from private quarrels and differences. " Then, as regards the incidents and effects of these crimes, the great major- ity of the witnesses admitted that the Land Question was at the root of them ; that the principal object was to get reductions of rents and to prevent evictions ; that a large quantity of land was waste, because none dared to take it, and the landlords were afraid to stock it with cattle lest the cattle should be injured ; general indisposition to take land from which tenants had been evicted ; general sympathy with outrage, leading to the withholding of evidence ; evidence of get- ting up subscriptions for the defense of prisoners in agrarian cases ; and regretta- ble but true — I mean as connecting cause with effect — reductions of rents, stop- pings of contemplated evictions after and in consequence of outrage or the dread or apprehension of outrage ; and lastly, the agents in the commission of these 254 IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. offenses, the active workers, shown to be laboring men and the younger sons of small farmers — the very thing which you have again in this case — men who are described as moral in other relations of life; crime in Ireland spoken of as the ' crime of the community.' An illustrious man, whose tongue is now silent for- ever, Mr. John Bright, was a member of this committee, and I only wish your Lordships had the time and the opportunity to go through this evidence and read his cross-examination of witnesses, and see, reading between the lines, the views that were in full pressure and force upon his mind as to the difficulties and the causes which lie at the bottom of this disturbance. " Now, the evidence also showed that the rents had previously been punctu- ally paid until the bad seasons of the potato crop. That is exactly what I shall prove, and, what already has been proved to be the case here, that those rents were paid partly out of the produce of the land, partly by harvest earnings in England, for even from the county of Armagh persons have gone for the pur- pose of working in the English harvests ; partly from remittances from relatives in service in England, and from relatives in America ; that in the period of distress small subscriptions and little help came from the landlords to alleviate the distress ; that the greatest number of the outrages were in the baronies and parts of the counties where there were most ejectments and most threats of ejectment ; and according to some of the witnesses that the outrages were due to the high letting of the land and to the evictions, and to people having no other resource but the land. " I am now reading (rather than read the whole thing at great length) a summary of the evidence, and opposite the summary the number of the question is in each case given, and I shall be glad to hand up both the book and the sum- mary, if your Lordships desire to look at it. " It was further shown that the machinery of outrage was organized by a secret society of Ribbonmen ; that these societies were working by identical methods in the north and in the south ; and that they were of long standing and under various names. Then it was shown that the Ribbonmen belonged to a particular religious section just as the Steelboys belonged to one particular relig- ious section, though, so far as their methods and the objects of their attacks were concerned, Catholics equally with Protestants were attacked. They made self- constituted tribunals to settle the affairs of the country ; forced contributions ; lots were drawn as to the commission of outrage ; persons not allowed to take IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 255 land from which others had been evicted. And, in answer to a suggestion — a very faint and unimportant suggestion— which was made in the course of the in- quiry as to the part which the Tenant League had in the matter, I should like to read two or three questions at greater length. The only persons who made that suggestion were what I have called the police or official witnesses. I think this particular witness, a clergyman, was being examined by Mr. John Bright, who apparently had a proof of his evidence. ' You have stated that the origin of Ribbonism was the existence of Orange Societies.' ' You have alluded to the case of Mr. Powell ' (and so on. I need not trouble your Lordships about that). ' You are perhaps aware that the Ten- ant League Association has been formed recently ? (A). Yes. (Q.) Would you ascribe the increase of crime in your district, or in neighboring districts, to the existence of the Tenant League? (A.) I would not (Q.) Would you say there is any connection between the Tenant League Association and the perpe- trators of crime in the districts with which you are acquainted ? (A.) I think the Tenant League has a directly opposite effect, inasmuch as hopes are held out that the condition of the tenant may be improved ; and I think that very expec- tation tends very much to promote peace, and that any hope which is at all afforded that at any prospective time protection will come in the shape of a quiet and peaceful arrangement of the differences between landlord and tenant tends very much to the preservation of peace (Q.) Do you believe that the Tenant League are taking a peaceable aud constitutional mode of accomplishing that object ? (A.) I do ; and their motto is, in point of fact, that every one who does commit a crime in the prosecution of that object is an enemy to the Tenant League. (Mr. Bright) I presume what you mean in regard to the Tenant League is, that they endeavor to make the people understand the question, and they make efforts to get legislation in their favor? (A.) Yes. (Q.) Are you to be understood as justifying and defending and identifying yourself with every statement which is made by the Tenant League ? (A.) No.' " My Lords, a good deal more evidence is given to that effect, but there is the evidence of one witness which struck me as particularly important, the official witness whose name I have already read — namely, Sir Matthew Barring- ton, who appears to have been a Crown official for a great many years of his life. He was clerk of the Crown, I think, in Munster. I just interpose one other question. The Rev. Daniel Brown, Presbyterian clergyman, of Newtown- Hamilton, in the county of Armagh, is examined. He is asked : ' Have agrarian outrages increased within the last few years? (A.) They 956 IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. appear to me to have increased since the failure of the potato crop, when the small farmers found it difficult to make up the rents they had been accustomed to pay, and landlords and agents commenced evicting and serving notices to quit. (Q.) Can you assign any reason for these outrages ? (A.) I think the want of a constitutional remedy for the social wrongs connected with the rela- tion of landlord and tenant has led to many of these offenses and crimes. I think if you gave a constitutional remedy for these social wrongs you would cut up crime by the root, and establish order on the basis of justice.' "Again, the same Presbyterian clergyman, on page 583, says this: ' (Q.) Do you think that the outrages which have occurred in those dis- tricts are the result of Ribbon conspiracy? (A.) I cannot say what may have been the agency employed — I am not cognizant of that ; but I feel satisfied in my own judgment and conscience that they arose from the unfortunate state of the relations between landlord and tenant. I do not impute them to religion or to politics ; and I say further, that when the State has not provided a constitu- tional remedy for social wrongs, the principles of our nature look for a remedy, and bad men, taking advantage of that, very often commit crime. Coercion without remedial measures will only aggravate the disorders of the community. Justice is the only firm basis of public order. The oppression of rack-rents and of extra police taxation, punishing the innocent for the guilty, exasperates and disturbs the community, and drives multitudes away to a land where labor finds its reward.' " My Lords, I merely call attention to the evidence of Sir Matthew Bar- rington, but before I leave this Committee I should like to call your Lordships' attention to the figures of crime. It is at page 590 of the Appendix to the Report. First, there is the return of the number of cases in which parties have been made amenable to justice for the years 1849 an d 1850. Then there is a comparative return of outrages and arrests reported as distinguished. from those for which parties had been made amenable. I will only trouble your Lordships with the more important offenses of homicide and firing at the person. " In 1849 parties made amenable : Homicides, 163 ; firing at persons, 44; total number of cases of all kinds at sessions, general sessions, assizes, magis- trates, 199,009. That is for the year 1849. In 1850, homicides, 165 ; firing at persons, 22. Your Lordships of course understand that this is not conversant only with agrarian crime; it deals with all crime, the total being 214,181 for the whole of Ireland. That is everything. I am citing it merely for my present purpose under the head of homicide. Those are the cases for which parties have Forcing Gladstone's Land Bill upon the Irish People- IRELAND, PROM 1848 TO 1875. 257 been made amenable. Now, the cases of homicide reported in 1849, are 2 °3 J in 1850, 139. I remind your Lordships that over the whole period of ten years, which has rightly or wrongly been covered in this inquiry (I mean by the evi- dence given in this inquiry), going down to as late as the year 1888, I think, if not the year 1889, the entire number of murders of which full and direct evi- dence has been offered to your Lordships, connected with agrarian causes, amounts, I believe, to about 26. •' My Lords, when the Court adjourned yesterday I was pursuing the his- tory of agrarian crime in Ireland, and I was following in order the account, with which I troubled your Lordships at some length, of what I described as the historical predisposing causes to crime in times of distress, and particularly to agrarian crime in Ireland. I have nearly arrived at the end of that branch of the case. I have referred your Lordships to the remarkable parallelism between the state of things shown to exist in 1852 in the three counties of Armagh, Monaghan, and Louth, two of those counties being Ulster counties. " Next in order of date came the Land Act of 1870, but I do not propose to give your Lordships a history of that Act at this moment. I desire to give it under the next head, as part of the historical treatment by legislative action of the Land Question itself. But in 1870 or 1871 there was another outbreak of crime in Ireland, which prevailed in a most marked degree in West Meath, which was one of many counties in Ireland which had been subjected to clear- ances upon an enormous scale. Whole villages and hamlets and houses by the hundred had disappeared under the operations of those clearances ; and in 1870 and 1871 undoubtedly crime had risen to a very high point in West Meath. There was one of the usual committees of inquiry, and at that time, and in rela- tion to that measure, a speech was made by a statesman, I mean Lord Harting- ton, in 1871, describing the state of things there. After describing the crimes which existed, he proceeds thus : ' All these acts of violence are, we have reason to believe, the work of the Ribbon Society. The reports which we receive show that such a state of terror- ism prevails that the society has only to issue an edict to secure obedience. Nor has it even to issue its edict ; its laws are so well known and infringement of them is followed so regularly by murderous outrage that few indeed can treat them with defiance. Ribbon law and not the law of the land appears to be that which is obeyed. It exercises such power that no landlord dares to exercise the commonest rights of property. No farmer or other occupier dare exercise his 258 IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. own judgment or discretion as to whom he shall employ. In fact, so far does the influence of the society extend, that a man scarcely dares to enter into open competition in fairs and markets with any one known to belong to the society.' " My Lords, this was a time when there existed no open organization in relation to the Land Question, at whose door could be laid the blame of these events." CHAPTER III. The Young Ireland Movement — Events between 1848 and 1865— James Stephens — The Fenian " Conspiracy"— John O'Mahony — An Explanation of why the Irish People were justified in these uprisings— the kllclooney wood incident— corydon the Informer. Although a great deal of the matter quoted from the speech of Sir Charles Russell does not deal with the connecting period between O'Connell and Parnell, it is not the less interesting, and will materially assist the reader in carefully studying the sketch of Mr. Parnell's life and achievements. The facts which I have indicated tell of the crimes which prevailed in Ire- land, and of the predisposing causes of these crimes. The judgment which I have attached to that criminal record — in the language of the late Attorney- General for England — will absolve me from the charge of partiality, or that I did not advance upon the lines laid down by Mr. Lecky as constituting the most perfect method of recording the history of a people. I have shown also the causes which led the people of Ireland to, from time to time, band themselves together, and by physical force endeavor to throw off England's yoke. I shall now briefly outline these uprisings, or the work and constitution of these movements. The Young Ireland movement in 1848, in its later development, was unquestionably an unconstitutional movement — a physical force movement, in the English mind principally associated with that aspect of the case ; but that is not the true import of the story of the Young Ireland movement of 1848. That physical force part of it was but an insignificant and unimportant part. That movement was the precursor, in its earlier stage, of the later and stronger and more successful movement with which the name of Mr. Parnell is associated as its leader, carried on by him under happier conditions, with an awakened public intelligence, with a broader franchise, and with, therefore, a broader plat- form of action. To that Young Ireland movement, in connection with which are such honored names as O'Brien and Thomas Davis, and John Mitchel — (259) 2(50 IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. with all his faults as to methods and as to means — Charles Gavan Duffy, John Martin, John B. Dillon, and many others whom I could name : to that party the merit is to be attributed that they sowed the seeds then amongst the Irish people of self-reliance and unsectarianism, for sectarianism had too often blotted and corrupted Irish movements. Insisting, as they did, upon the right of self- government, they worked might and main for the removal of what they con- sidered social grievances — for land reform, church disestablishment, and for education. The reward at this time was prosecution, exile, broken hearts, for some of them. Of those who survive, one may point to Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, who, despairing of any success in his own land, went abroad to Australia, and, in the free air of a self-governing colony, rises to the highest position that that colony could afford him as Speaker, as Prime Minister, and comes back in his advanced years here, the man four times prosecuted in Ireland, to receive titles and dignities at the hands of the Sovereign. There are other names not so directly associated with the political move- ment in Ireland at that time, but honorably associated with the creation of a body of literature little known in this country, but a body of literature which, considering the circumstances under which it came into existence, and the comparatively brief period over which it extended, is creditable to the genius of the nation and to the efforts of the men who produced it. And notable amongst those names are the names of Thomas Davis, of Mr. Justice O'Hagan, the president of the Land Court in Ireland, of Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, of John Kells Ingram, of Trinity College, Dublin, and a number of others whose names I will not stop to recite. After this movement of 1848 there came a relapse, and I would ask you to note — for it has significance and importance in the consideration of this ques- tion — how the waves of constitutional and unconstitutional agitation succeeded one another, and how, after the country made an effort in a constitutional direction and failed, it seemed to fall back into the slough of despond, and then secret societies and illegal combinations burrowed the country. In 1852 the country pulled itself together again. They had in Ireland a strangely restricted franchise. They have to this day, compared with England and Scotland, a strangely restricted municipal franchise. I am now only refer- ring to the Parliamentary franchise. So remarkable is the contrast that, given two towns of equal population, the one in Ireland and the other in England, IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 261 the English town would have twice, sometimes three times as many voters as the town of corresponding population in Ireland. There was in these days also no right, except the right of open voting. These were the times when, as record after record shows, the voters were driven to the poll as sheep into a pen by the landlord, the agent, and the bailiff. But still, in face of great diffi- culty and by great sacrifice, a party was returned to the House of Commons at Westminster, pledged to independent opposition, pledged to land reform, pledged to take no office under, but to hold aloof from, every Government that did not make that a cabinet question. The prime figures of that movement were again Sir Charles Gavan Duffy and a noble-hearted Englishman of great head and of great magnanimity of character, Frederick Lucas, who went to Ireland not as a politician but as ed- itor of a Catholic newspaper, whose great and magnanimous soul and sympa- thies were touched by the oppression which he saw around him, and who threw himself earnestly into the effort to try and relieve the people among whom he had chosen to live, from some portion at least of the evils that weighed upon them. They started a tenant league in the North and the South. The principal rep- resentatives of the South were Lucas and Duffy ; in the North, Dr. M'Knight, a Presbyterian journalist, and the Rev. John Rogers, then or afterward Moder- ator of the General Assembly in the North. The story of that party of inde- pendent opposition is a shameful story, and I pass it over — a story of violated oaths, of broken pledges, and of another relapse of the Irish people into the slough of despond. They had with effort and sacrifice sought to create and maintain this party — a great majority of the party were honest, but they had failed in obtaining redress ; they had tried, implored the British Parliament to deal with this land question and had failed ; and then years passed over during which the Parliamentary representation of Ireland was of a character that I will not describe further than by saying that it was self-seeking and discreditable. Meanwhile events had been happening abroad — across the Atlantic — which have an important bearing on one part of this case. The stream of emigration had been going on to America. A new generation had sprung up there. The American war of North and South had taken place. In the armies, of the North principally, many Irishmen had served, and amongst those men arose, and from those men mainly came, the impulse of this Fenian movement which 262 IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. began to raise its head very soon after the cessation of the American war, and which became undoubtedly an important factor in the secret movement in rela- tion to Ireland. I have pointed out the constitutional efforts made in 1852, and for years subsequently. Now we have the unconstitutional, the illegal, the secret movement. I wish to be quite plain in my treatment of this, as of every other Irish movement. I think that a politician of our day, and a member of the present Government, was most unfairly treated when he expressed his views, as far back as 1868, about the true character of the Fenian movement. I mean Mr. Henry Mathews. He, with great courage, at a time when there was a great tide of popular prejudice against, and as he thought misrepresen- tation of, the Fenians, said some words, at least in palliation, if not in justifi- cation of their conduct and position. It is true to say of the Fenian organ- ization as it then existed that it was not a party of assassination, but that it was a revolutionary party that looked to physical force for the redress of Irish grievances. What some sections of it, or some organizations springing from it, may in later days have developed into, when its responsible heads have been drawn away into the constitutional agitation, I know not, and will not for the moment inquire. But it was not true historically, it was a calumny, to allege that the Fenian body was anything but a physical force movement ; and, it is right further to say, that so far as agrarian crime was concerned, the lowest point that agrarian crime ever reached in Ireland was the time when the Fenian movement was at its height. The truth is that in every movement which took place in Ireland, constitutional or unconstitutional, anything which afforded the hope of redress can be shown historically to have always led to a diminution and not an increase of crime. And right here it will not be inapt to quote John Rutherford, whose effrontery I have already noticed. Of the '48 movement he says : " Whatever else the rebellion of '48 contained, there was no lurking treach- ery therein. " We are no partisans of the men of '48 ; their political opinions are not ours ; and we can see no necessity for Irish rebellion then or since. But we must be fair even to insurgents ; and it is but right to say this much of the leaders of '48, that they were very frank and daring in their proceedings, that there was something which, if not chivalrous, was yet exceedingly like chivalry in their bearing-. Nor were they so very unwise, except in points to be noticed IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 263 immediately. There was revolution in full swing all over Europe ; there was something like rebellion impending in England ; there were dark clouds hanging over more than one important dependency, and there was the hope, we might say the certainty, of substantial aid from republics already established. " We need not remark that republicans, more than men of any other polit- ical creed, are prone to making converts. That has been shown over and over again. The Italian republics of past centuries did much toward their own ruin, by their endless attempts to revolutionize neighboring states not governed as themselves. The French revolutionists of the eighteenth century exasperated all monarchical Europe by similar conduct. And the French republicans of 1848 could hardly have refrained from aiding the Irish republicans of the same date, had the latter made anything like a respectable appearance in arms. As to North American republicans, it was stated in the House of Commons by one who was no friend to republicanism, and the statement remained uncontradicted, that 1,000,000 dollars had been transmitted by the Irish in America in aid of the projected rebellion. " The very audacity of the Irish chiefs of '48 was another great point in their favor. The British Government had never before been called upon to deal with anything like it ; it was utterly unprepared for the novel state of affairs ; new laws had to be made to meet the exigency. All this took time ; the gov- ernment could only act according to law ; it was a great advantage to the pro- moters of rebellion. But the latter made a most unfortunate selection in their chief. A gentleman in most essentials of the highest personal character, tracing his lineage back directly to the hero of Clontarf, Smith O'Brien had faults that far more than counterbalanced all these recommendations. He was childishly fond of pomp and show ; he was vain and weak in the extreme ; in many re- spects he was wrong-headed ; apart from his physique, he had not one com- manding quality. Such a leader would have ruined any plot. "Then his lieutenants — bold, energetic, and able, as most of them were — committed a grievous error. The outbreak ought to have taken place in the spring ; they postponed it till the autumn. It must be allowed that they had reasons, apparently of great weight, for taking this course. The farmers and the peasantry, in whom consisted the strength of the intended insurrection, were averse to a struggle while the crops were still on the ground ; it would have been ruinous to many among them. But the harvest gathered, they were ready 264 IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. to rush into the fight with all the reckless dash of their race. The consideration thus forced upon the chiefs of '48 was an important one. " But similar considerations are perpetually forcing themselves upon states- men and generals. Every crisis of war and peace is full of them ; but it is not every leader who is qualified to estimate them at their just import, when weighed against other considerations. And of the few who possess the requisite accuracy and coolness of judgment, not every one has the firmness to decide according to his judgment, and to act instantaneously and energetically upon his decision. " Here time was a more important consideration than the harvest, and time was disregarded. The struggle was deferred till the close of the autumn. The government, forewarned and alarmed, had time for ample preparation. Troops were poured into Ireland and concentrated in masses, at all the strategic points ; not a single weak detachment was exposed to the risk of surprise. War steam- ers lined the coasts, and enfiladed the principal thoroughfares of the leading sea- ports with their broadsides. Laws suited to the emergency were passed in haste. The more dangerous districts of Ireland were proclaimed under despotic law. Every measure, in short, was adopted that policy could dictate. " The outbreak took place three months at least too late. As might have been expected, it proved an utter failure. The probabilities against success were indeed so generally obvious that few, except the reckless and those who con- sidered themselves bound in honor to appear in arms, would have anything to do with it. Most, if not all, the chiefs felt that the attempt would be vain, but they owed it to their sense of honor to make it, and many of them were already so deeply committed that the course, however desperate, could render their position worse, while there was a chance that actual rebellion might result in safety. The attempt was made— how, everybody knows ; and here, for the first time, do we meet the noted leader of the Fenians, James Stephens." And I make no apology for also giving Mr. Rutherford's short account of Stephens' early career. To give the gentleman his due merit, he was painstak- ing in his research, no matter how prejudiced were his feelings on the subject. He says : "James Stephens was born at Kilkenny in 1824. He has no claim to ancient lineage, nor even to pure Celtic blood. He belongs to a mixed race, in which the Saxon predominates. In those days, at least, his relatives occupied but a low station, being most of them artisans, peasants, or very small farmers. TITE RETURN OF THE IRISH EXIL] IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 265 His father, occupying about the best position of any, was an auctioneer's clerk, who possessed and cultivated a small holding of his own. We have reason to believe that he was educated a Protestant, and we know that many of his blood and name were Orangemen. The farming portion of his father's pursuits had much influence in moulding the prejudices of the son, since it rendered him familiar, from his cradle, with the leading Irish grievances — those connected with the land. " With Saxon solidity, energy, and reach of purpose, James Stephens in- herited the quickness and ardor of the Celt. From his earliest days he was noted for his thirst for knowledge and his devotion to its acquisition. As it happened, his father was able to foster and direct his tastes, and the boy was saved from that which is so often the curse of genius — self-education, with its disjointed studies — things which so often hamper ability and baffle its aspira- tions. Method and a practical aim were given to his reading, with due effect. Displaying a marked preference for mathematics, pure and applied, it was de- termined to train him as an engineer. To qualify him for the pursuit, his scho- lastic education was prolonged to his twentieth year. At that age he obtained an appointment on the Limerick & Waterford Railway, then in the course of construction. So far, his studies and his avocations occupied all his time, and kept him aloof from politics. " The completion of the railway throwing him out of employment, he be- took him to the Irish capital. It was precisely the period when the ' Young Ireland ' party was developing its fervor, and its brilliant advocates soon made a convert of the young engineer. He was not one to play the part of a mere automatic follower. He attended the meetings, spoke occasionally, and threw off a newspaper article now and then ; but neither as a speaker or a writer did he display that sort of power which is most effectual in swaying the Irish mind. He was vigorous and argumentative, but not declamatory; mere declamation was not in harmony with his temperament. In after years he attained to some- thing like it by study and practice; but a comparison of his speeches with those of such men as John Mitchel and Magee will show the difference between them. " When work was to be done, however, James Stephens had no superior. In preparing rebellion in '48, he was one of the most active agents. He did his work very quietly and cautiously, so cautiously as to attract little or no atten- tion from the authorities — but most ably and effectually. In establishing the 266 IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. ' clubs,' no one was more successful. While thus employed, he traversed most of the south of Ireland. " During one of his journeys he fell in love with a young woman who dwelt in the heart of Tipperary. The wooing was a short one. Feverish times heat other passions besides that of patriotism, and perhaps more warmly in Irish- women than in Irishmen. Stephens' occupation, and the perils in which it in- volved him, gave him a sort of heroism in the eyes of a female sympathizer. Besides he was very prepossessing — with the graceful Celtic figure and the smooth, bright Saxon face — and most persuasive. The passion was mutual. An en- gagement was formed at once, and the marriage was to follow the impending struggle, which neither doubted would be successful." But I cannot delay too long upon the career of James Stephens. He lives to-day ; and from his double exile — exiled from Ireland, and afterward, through British machinations, exiled from France — he came to assist at the funeral serv- ices of Ireland's greatest leader — Charles Stewart Parnell. However, even such a brief sketch of the '48 movement and of some of the men who took part in it — notably of those who afterward became prominently connected with the Fenian movement — would be incomplete if I were not to tell something of the sufferings of those men. It was on June 29th, at Ballingarry, that the men of '48 made their initial and only attempt at open insurrection. It was a miserable affair — a mere sum- mons to a Captain Trant and his party of 45 policemen to surrender a strong stone house in which they had entrenched themselves. They refused to sur- render, and were shortly relieved by 60 additional police. O'Brien, illy sup- ported by the few hungry followers who attended him, desisted from the attempt, and (togetherwith Thomas Francis Meagher, McManus, and Patrick O'Donahue) was soon afterward arrested at Thurles and committed to prison. These four men were tried before a special commission, held at Clonmel, and all received the sentence of death, which was afterward commuted into life banishment. Of the sufferings of the few remaining leaders I shall give a short narrative in the words of one of them— Michael John Doheny, a barrister, who, with Ste- phens, spent many weeks — nearly three months — wandering among the moun- tains, to avoid capture and watching for an opportunity of escape. This ex- tract, which is from the " Felon's Track," published by Mr. Doheny in New IBELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 267 York in 1849, gi ves a clear vision of the indomitable pluck and patriotism, as well as the all-absorbing love of country of James Stephens and of the author himself. He says : " It was Sunday, a fortnight after Stephens joined me, the cold and wet of the preceding evening had given way to calm and sunshine ; and we made rapid way along the slopes of the Comeraghs, thence to the Knockmeildown moun- tains, having one main object in view, to place the greatest possible distance be- tween where we were to rest that night and where we last slept. The greatest difficulty we experienced was in passing deep ravines. The steep ascent and descent were usually wooded and covered with furze and briars. Far below gurgled a rapid and swollen mountain stream, which we crossed without undress- ing, and always experienced the greatest relief from the cold running water. But toiling our upward way through trees and thorny shrubs was excessively fatiguing." A second passage recounts an experience of another kind. The circum- stance, it may be explained, occurred toward evening, after many hours of travel. " We hoped to find refreshments in a small public-house on the road leading from Clogheen to Lismore. I entered the house rather hurriedly, and the first object that met my view was a policeman. I turned quickly round and disappeared. The rapidity of my movement attracted his attention, and calling to his comrades and some countrymen who were in the house, commenced a pursuit. At first they appeared little concerned, but walked quickly. We accordingly quickened our pace when it became a regular chase, which continued four miles, until we dis- appeared in the blue mists of the Mitchelstown mountains, as night was falling around us. When we saw our pursuers returning we ventured to descend, and entered a cabin, where we found a few cold, half-formed new potatoes and some sour milk, which we ravenously devoured. I do not ever remember enjoying a dinner as I did this. My comrade, who had suffered much from illness, was un- able to eat with the same relish. It was night when we had finished our repast, and we set off in search of some place where to lay our heads. We met several refusals, and succeeded with great difficulty at last in a poor cabin." Next day it rained incessantly, but they pursued their way over the Kil- worth mountains, being anxious to get as far as possible from their pursuers. In the dusk of the evening they crossed the river Funcheon, by means of a tree, which, half-uprooted by the flood, hung over the stream. Climbing the tree, they dropped from the branches into the shallow water near the opposite bank. 268 IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. They often found themselves at a loss respecting the position of places and the paths to follow. " On such occasions," writes Mr. Doheny, " we would call in at the nearest national school to make the necessary observations on the map. Sometimes we examined the children, sometimes the master; generally one of us was so employed while the other was noting down carelessly on the map the points of observation to direct our path. When we found we were traced and discovered, our first care was to consider how our enemies would be likely to judge respecting our future movements. If we had reason to suspect that we were recognized on a mountain, we sought shelter in or near a town ; and after we appeared in a public place for a day or an hour, we kept the mountain-side for a week following." Yet it was not altogether for the sake of safety that they kept so cease- lessly afoot, and, by preference, among the mountains. " We had another and, it must be confessed, a more powerful motive. In either alternative which our fate presented (capture or escape), there was no hope of beholding these scenes again, and we could not omit this last opportunity of minutely examining and enjoying what was grandest and loveliest in our native land. We resolved, therefore, to leave no spot un visited, whatever toil it cost or risk it exposed us to." They kept their purpose, traversing all the more magnificent scenes of the South, from Tipperary to the extremity of Kerry. They climbed to the sum- mit of Cairne-Tuthal, and they skirted the lakes of Killarney, for days crossing morass and stream by primitive means, often in great peril of capture, — often ex- periencing disheartening rebuffs where they had reason to anticipate something very different. On one occasion, when hardly pressed, sharply hunted, and ex- hausted for lack of food, they resolved to seek the aid of a priest who dwelt in a lonely mountain gorge some miles distant. "We descended the eastern slope of the hill, and after proceeding some distance through corn-fields and meadows, we reached the mansion of the clergy- man, wayworn and half-famished. He whom we sought had won a character for truth, manliness, and courage, and we calculated upon his unrestrained sympa- thies, if not generous hospitality. He was absent from home when we reached his door, and we waited his arrival for more than an hour, and, through delicacy for his position, we remained concealed in a grove some distance from his house. He at length appeared, and I proceeded alone to meet him and make known my name. He started involuntarily, and retreated a few steps from me. After re- IRELAND, PROM 1848 TO 1875. 269 peating my name for a few seconds, he said, ' Surely you are not so unmanly as to compromise me?' I replied that so sensible was I of the danger of commit- ting him, that I refused to enter his house, though we all, and particularly my female companion, [at this period the fugitives were accompanied by the sister- in-law of Doheny, who was exposing herself to much danger in order to secure their escape,] sadly needed rest and shelter. After some time he began to pace up and down in front of his door, repeating at every turn that it was indis- creet and dishonorable to compromise him. Among the many trials to which fate had doomed me through hours of gloom, of peril, and disaster, and even during reveries of still darker chances, which fear or fancy often evoked, I never felt a pang so keen as that which these unfeeling words sent through my heart." He bitterly reproached the priest as " one of those who had urged them to their fate," giving them "every assurance that, in any crisis, they would be at their side" — merely to abandon them when the crisis came. The priest replied by directing them how to recross the mountains by another route, and closed his door in their faces. " His table and sideboard bespoke abundance and frequent merry-makings ; but we turned toward the mountain, hungry and exhausted, without being asked to taste food or drink. It was already evening. Dense masses of fog had gathered on the hill, and lurid streaks, spreading far out on the sea, portended a night of storm and gloom. However, we had no resource save to regain the house where we had slept two nights before, and which we supposed might be distant about seven miles." All, however, were not like the priest— notably "a man of giant frame and noble features !" squatting among the mountains near Kenmare — a myste- rious personage with the look and habits of an outlaw, who treated them hospit- ably to the wild delicacies of the wood and stream, who gave them his son to guide them when they departed, and who astonished them by mentioning Doheny's name in his emphatic directions to the youth — the owner of the name being unable to guess how his host had learned it. During all these wanderings, Stephens is described as manifesting the most astonishing coolness, never complaining, though his track was often marked with blood, but always doing his best to cheer Doheny with song and jest. .Once, indeed, he broke down, but the cause was sufficient. Through all this trying time the pair contrived to maintain communication with their friends. Their safety was mainly due to their command of money, and with this essential 270 IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. they were supplied from time to time, as well as with letters, through sure channels. It was toward the close of their vagabond life, and when they were expecting hourly to hear that the means of flight to another land had been secured for them. They awaited the next messenger and the letters he was to bring with much anxiety. He came at last, reaching them after many twists and turns, and delivered his charge into eager hands. Doheny's letters were satisfactory ; not so those of Stephens. " My companion's," writes the narrator of this trying period of their lives, " was a sad, sad blow. Where he had most trusted on earth (the lady of his love) his application had been coldly received, and his most unlimited confidence utterly disappointed. Money was forwarded to him from other sources, but the spirit that braved every disaster up to that broke under disappointed affection and blighted love. For some time he refused to take another step, but, yielding himself up to the agony of his shattered feelings, he ardently desired to abandon a struggle involving nothing but the life he no longer desired to save. From my knowledge of the country and other resources, he regarded my chances of escape as favorable, and his own pres- ence as an impediment and a check. He was, therefore, anxious to relieve me of a burden, at the same time that he would free himself from a weight still more intolerable. In that he was mistaken. His imperturbable equanimity and ever-daring hope had sustained me in moments of perplexity and alarm, when no other resource could have availed. During the whole time which we spent, as it were, in the shadow of the gibbet, his courage never faltered, and his temper was never once ruffled." The visit of a lady — an enthusiastic friend of Doheny and his cause — one who sought and obtained the interview through many difficulties, and at some personal risk — and her judicious words of comfort and expostulation, roused Stephens from his despairing mood, and he resumed "the felon's track," in Doheny's company, with all his former courage and equanimity, but not with his former gayety. This episode of the love of the far-reaching conspirator and its end is exceedingly suggestive. What was its effect on him ? Trials like this temper the soul. A few days afterward they managed to leave the country. Stephens sailed from Cork as the servant of a lady in the secret. It was proposed at first that he should assume the dress of a lady's maid, for personation of whom his slender figure, his small hands and feet, and his delicate features fitted him ; IRELAND, PROM 1848 TO 1875. 271 but he refused to put it on under any circumstances. He saw the last of Ire- land, for the time, on the 24th of September. Doheny followed, sailing from the same port a week later, in the dress of a drover. Both had to traverse England ere they could reach France. This passage was easily effected by Stephens. Doheny met with much more difficulty. The fugitives rejoined each other a little later in Paris. Thither they were speedily followed by one who was destined to be a leading coadjutor in the Fenian movement — John O'Mahony. The last, after the arrest of O'Brien, managed to raise a consider- able band, with which he continued to move among his native mountains for several weeks. Finding that the insurrection was not likely to spread, while an overwhelming force was being concentrated against him, he dispersed his fol- lowers and went into exile. Doheny made' but a short stay in the French capital, departing at an early date for the United States. There he resumed his joint professions of barrister and journalist ; there his " Felon's Track," which I have quoted, appeared the following year ; and there also he began immediately to lay the foundation of American Fenianism. As for Stephens and O'Mahony, they made France their principal home for several years. The spirit of the Irish nation had received no severe shock in 1848. There had been no great rising ; no actual struggle, and consequently no defeat. It was in 1853 that James Stephens and John O'Mahony left France, the former to organize the people of Ireland, and Mr. O'Mahony to introduce the doctrines of the " new conspiracy," as Rutherford calls it, among our people in America. In Ireland, Stephens began his work, assisted by Thomas Clark Luby, whose able life of O'Connell precedes this sketch. But, before Stephens would take any decided steps toward remodelling the movement, he determined to sound the precise state of the Irish mind on the question. And for this purpose he set out with Mr. Luby on a tour of obser- vation. This journey lasted ten months, and during its course the two patriots walked " not less than 3,500 miles." The inspection was gratifying to them, and forthwith they decided to begin the task of establishing the organization in deadly earnest. Counting from 1853 to the end of 1865, the Fenian organization was thir- teen years in growth. The United Irishmen and the Young Irelanders de- veloped their plots much more quickly ; but their schemes fell to pieces at the 272 IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. very opening attempts, whereas, although the Fenian movement could not boast much more of direct success, its ramifications were more deeply rooted. It had enlisted in its ranks more than a million of the Irish in America, and nearly half of that number at home, and its effect, both upon the people of Ireland and the British Government, was more far-reaching than any previous attempt to secure Irish autonomy. Even to-day — after all the deaths and imprisonments and exiling of those who were leaders of that movement — its teachings and doctrines are upheld, among the more patriotic Irishmen, in every part of the globe. And in this there is a justice — a patriotic justice — which is unexampled. Because, were it not for the " Fenian " uprising or " conspiracy," the later constitutional methods of Butt and Parnell would have had no weight on the political balance of the Imperial Parliament. The men of '66 and '67, and the gigantic proportions of the conspiracy, proved to England and to the world that, in the government of Ireland, there was something very wrong. It was simply the outcome of mis- government, and Lord Bacon, in his paper " On Seditions," admirably exposes the matter in this way : " To give moderate liberty, for griefs and discontent- ments to evaporate, is a safe way ; for he that turneth the humors back and maketh the wound bleed inwards, endangereth malign ulcers and pernicious im- posthumations." And in this is the root of Irish discontent. By false promises and empty and misleading measures of reform (?), the wounds of Ireland have been made to "bleed inwards"; the energies of the community were misdirected, and the elements of political progress destroyed — or, rather, converted into the outpour- ing of the inward spirit of the people — repelling the perverted channel of its opinion. It operated as does nature — it rebelled against the immoral practices which were being used as irritants to the inward health of the public feeling. I do not believe a more plastic people ever existed than the Irish Every act which was passed by the English Parliament, that seemed to tend toward justice, or the amelioration of Ireland's wrongs, created a reaction in the public sentiment toward England ; and, in their gratitude, the enormity of their wrongs was often forgotten. Every act that seemed to them to increase their position of bondage, begat increased hate for the Government which had stolen their liberty. This was the people whose patriotism the Fenian leaders elected to mould IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 273 into a solid phalanx of unrelenting rebels — rebels against injustice. That they succeeded even so well is a lasting monument to their patriotism and persever- ance. Concerning this very subject, or rather in direct analogy with it, Mr. Lecky says : " In no other history can we investigate more fully the evil consequences which must ensue from disregarding that sentiment of nationality, which, whether it be wise or foolish, is at least one of the strongest and most enduring of human passions. This, as I conceive, lies at the root of Irish discontent." Quite true. The disregard of the national feelings and aspirations of the Irish people by the Government of England is undoubtedly the primal germ of their discontent. And it is a magnificent spectacle, in the history of nations, to find that national spirit unbroken after centuries of oppression and wrong-doing unexampled. The admirable methods of conspiracy used by the leaders of the Fenian movement may be learned from Mr. Rutherford's exposition of it (vol. i., pages 6 1 and 62). He says : " The grand object of Stephens, let it be borne in mind, was to form an army fitted to cope successfully with the army of England. The members of the I. R. B. were all to be men capable of taking the field. Nor were they to seek an encounter until fully prepared for it. The task before the Chief Organizer was not only to enlist followers, but to discipline them up to the modern military standard, to arm them with the best weapons, to provide them with all necessary munitions of war, and to place them under the command of competent officers. " His conspiracy bore no resemblance, in its plan, to the usual run of his- toric conspiracies. The latter, for the most part, depend on effecting a surprise — on paralyzing the enemy for the moment by striking an unexpected stroke — as the seizure of the capital, or the slaughter of the leading ministers ; and then, while the surprise holds the masses terrified and motionless, to install themselves firmly in power. Stephens had sense enough to see that the success of such conspiracies is only possible under peculiar circumstances — as in the limited re- publics of ancient Greece, and in the free cities and great communes of mediaeval Italy and Flanders. Such a conspiracy might attain success also under a despot- ism — provided it were organized in the interests of a prominent member of the ruling family. But in a country where representative government is established, 274 IRELAND, FROJI 1848 TO 1875. it was clear to him, that any revolutionary plot intended to succeed must em- brace a large proportion of the people, and must array them on the field as fully trained and equipped as their opponents. We do not pretend to state that Stephens laid down these principles for himself. He borrowed them every one from the revolutionists of the Continent, by whom they had been elaborated out of long experience and many failures. But he deserves some credit for borrowing these principles ; and still more for the skill with which he applied them. Nor was his attention confined strictly to the matters we have men- tioned. From the outset — and here again he showed how admirably he had learnt the lesson of conspiracy, as taught on the Continent — he neglected no means of diminishing the moral strength of his opponent, and of adding to the moral strength of the I. R. B. He did his best to sap the reputation of his antagonists and to shake the faith of their adherents, while preparing to en- counter them hand to hand." But the ends for which he sought were not destined to be reached. Yet, although the direct result for which Stephens and O'Mahony labored was not a success, their labors did more toward drawing nearer that end than did any other scheme of the century. It prepared the people to understand the true meaning of Nationalism ; it caused the masses in Ireland to watch more closely the workings of the government under which they groaned, and it effected, among the most apathetic, a spirit of patriotism and unity that never before ex- isted together in the island. In a word, the Fenian movement educated the people to the understanding that their concerted will could not be overlooked, and hence the success of the Parnell movement. The chaotic condition of the Irish people, after the failure of '48, was welded into a solid National feeling by the leaders of '66, and the Home Rulers had a much better ship to ride upon than broken and uneven planks. And now we have come to the stirring events of " the rising," — which astounded the world by its daring, and concerning which the world was even more aston- ished by the ferocity with which that uprising was quelled and its leaders punished. As a matter of fact, the rising of February, 1867, would have been a com- plete success only for the treachery of one man. That man was Corydon. Than whom, in any period of the world's history, no greater scoundrel lived. He was trusted by the leaders ; he was their favorite messenger for many IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. 275 months, and he used that friendship and confidence only to betray them and their schemes for Ireland's regeneration. There cannot be a doubt but that, if the attack on Chester Castle had suc- ceeded, the features of the "conspiracy" would have shown to greater advan- tage if its scheme did not result as had been conceived. To use the words of Rutherford, " It was a clever plan, and, had the secret been kept, we think it would have succeeded." But Corydon had communicated the plans of the leaders to the British Gov- ernment, hence no attack was made. Almost every move in a similar direction in Ireland was frustrated by similar venality upon the part of some coward or informer. It is useless to go into the details of the various meetings of determined Irishmen on the 5th of March, 1867. Their every move was known to "the authorities"; the cause of the failure was not want of organization or want of generalship. Everything was planned in such a manner that success could not have failed, if the peculiarly strategic arrangements of the chiefs had been kept secret ; but there were more than a dozen Corydons — veritable excrescences upon the fair name of Irishman. And, to put the case in a nutshell — the up- rising failed. It was not a failure ; its importance has done much toward forc- ing England to regard Ireland's claims ; and only for the men of '67, the great Parnell movement could never have succeeded as it has done. In consequence of the treachery of a few, the leading measures of the "rising" had to be abandoned, and, as a result, "only one affair on the open" happened which is worthy of particular notice. It was at Kilclooney Wood, near Mitchelstown. Here five or six of the leaders, McClure, Peter O'Neill Crow- ley, Kelly, John O'Neill, and Thomas Walsh among the number, had secreted themselves. They lived upon bread and milk for several days, which was brought to them from the village by Crowley's little nephew. But the authori- ties discovered their hiding-place. Luckily, Or unluckily, they did not discover how many of them were there, and, supposing that a large body of Fenians were concentrated there, they ordered two divisions (one of military and one of constabulary) to surround the wood. Just at the time when these large bodies of the English army were marching down the hillsides from opposite directions, a very curious incident happened, which I do not believe has ever before been published (I have it upon the authority of two of those who were present). 276 IRELAND, FROM 1848 TO 1875. It was in the dawn of the morning. A mist had gathered around the hill- tops and was settling thickly in the valley, where a small stream ran through the wood. From the Cork side the constabulary (numbering several hundred) moved down the hill toward an opening in the wood near the river. They had information that it was here the Fenian force was concentrated. Upon the other side about two thousand soldiers marched down the wood- side, bravely as did the 600 make their charge at Balaclava. And all of this force was directed against five half-starved Irishmen. Half-starved because of their outlawry. When, in the gray dawn, the soldiers saw the dark mass of constabulary on the opposite bank, their leaders decided that they were the Fenians and ordered their men to fire. Result — ten policemen killed and several wounded. The constabulary waited for no order ; they promptly returned the fire of the "red coats"; but with much more deadly effect — they are much better marksmen. Result — about forty soldiers killed and innumerable wounded. It was just then that, when the smoke cleared away, the fog lifted and Her Majesty's men discovered their mistake ; and it was just then, too, that Peter O'Neill Crowley, against the advice of his companions, decided to force his way through the English forces or die there. And he did die there. Standing in the middle of the little stream he discharged every chamber of his revolver at the British soldiery and fell, pierced by a score of bullets. He was used as a positive target by the now maddened soldiers and police ; and in this way can be explained the fact that the fatal bullet struck him in the back ; for he stood between the lines. A monument to his memory has been erected close by the spot where he fell ; and it will, in times to come, be pointed to as the grave of the last man who shed his blood doing battle for Ireland. ^^y^c-c^/G From an original drawing; from life. LIFE AND ACHIEVEMENTS Daniel O'Connell. Honoring the Memory of the great Irish Liberator. " Every man of Irish birth or blood will treasure this statue to O'Connell by the celebrated Irish sculptor, Dennis B. Sheehan, to be erected among the other historic figures adorning Central Park, New York City." CHAPTEE I. Birth — Family— Sceneey of Ireland in general, and op Kerry in particular. AJSTIEL O'CONNELL — one of the most illustrious, if not the most illustrious, of the public men of Ireland — was born in Car- hen House, the residence of his father, Mr. Morgan O'Connell, ■^jEjT near the small town of Cahirciveen, in the county of Kerry, on the 6th of August, 1775. When, long years after, the flippant "Times " commissioner said derisively of Cahirciveen that "there wasn't a pane of glass in the whole town," O'Connell replied humorously in behalf of a town that might almost be called his birthplace, " If the commissioner had as many pains in his belly, his tongue would be more veracious and his wanderings less erratic" There now remains not a vestige of the house in which O'Connell was born. One morning, when already an old man, he stood with his friend and secretary, Mr. O'Neill Daunt, on the high ground at Hilgrove, overlooking the spot where he first saw the light. He pointed to the crumbling ruins of Carhen House, and spoke thus : "I was born there, but not in the house whose ruins you see. I was born in a house of which there is now no vestige, and of which the materials were used in constructing the edifice now dilapidated. Do you see that stream ? Many a trout I have caught in it in my youthful days. Those meadows near the river were always good land, but beyond was very unprofitable, boggy soil. My father always grew enough of wheat for the use of the family. Those ash trees behind the house on the other side of the river stand where there was once an old grove of much grosser ash trees. They were worth one hundred pounds, and my father one day thought proper to sell them for fifteen pounds. My uncle, General O'Con- nell, left Ireland to enter the French service at the age of fourteen, and he rose so rapidly that I was inspired by his example with an ambition THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. to distinguish myself. I always had one object in my ambitious views, and that was to do something for Ireland. My family had ever been Jacobites, as was only natural from the persecution the Catholics suf- fered. But they committed no overt acts of Jacobitism, their zeal extended no farther than keeping a print of the Pretender in the house. When the first emancipation acts passed, in 1778 and 1782, their spec- ulative Jacobitism was very much melted away as they saw the pros- pect opening to them of doing well under the reigning dynasty." O'Connell was very much displeased with " Mask," an anonymous writer who described his origin as humble. He states himself that his father's family was very ancient, and that his mother was a lady of the first rank. O'Connell was a Celt of pure blood ; his mother's maiden name was Kate O'Mullane ; she was the daughter of Mr. O'Mullane of Whitechurch, near Cork, the representative of an old Catholic family and proprietor of a fair estate, which subsequently passed by purchase into the hands of the O'Connells. For this mother O'Connell seems to have felt all that unbounded love and veneration of which his large, exu- berant and loving nature was capable. He delighted in giving expres- sion to these feelings. Long after her death, when he was himself a grandfather, he writes of her to the " Belfast Vindicator " of the 20th of January, 1841, in the following terms: "Yes, I ought to respect the sex in a peculiar manner. I am the son of a sainted mother, who watched over my childhood with the most faithful care. She was of a high order of intellect, and what little I possess has been bequeathed by her to me. I may in fact say, without vanity, that the superior situation in which 1 am placed by my countrymen has been owing to her. Her last breath was passed, I thank Heaven, in calling down blessings on my head, and I valued her blessing since. In the perils and the dangers to which I have been exposed through life, I have regarded her blessing as an angel's shield over me, and as it has been my protection in this life, I look for- ward to it also as one of the means of obtaining hereafter a happiness greater than any this world can give." From this it will be seen that O'Connell was of opinion that he in- herited his abilities from his mother, and that the splendid success which crowned his efforts during so long a portion of his career, and which caused him to occupy so vast a space in the minds of his country- THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. men, and even of foreigners, was mainly due to her. The great Napo- leon held much the same opinion respecting his mother. He believed that the marvelous energy of his character was derived from her. Goethe and numbers of other great men believed that they owed a similar debt of gratitude to their mothers. Indeed, though it be not universally the case, the instances in biography and history are striking and of frequent occurrence in which great men are under obligations to their mother for the possession of their highest gifts and energies, both intellectual and moral. Tet, however large may have been the share of his solid or more brilliant qualities which O'Connell owed to his mother, he must likewise have derived many strong features of his character from the paternal side, for the O'Connells who came before him were no common stock. They possessed both energy and shrewdness in a high degree. The latter quality appears to have enabled them to steer their way rather adroitly through the long ages of strife and intrigue and warfare and proscriptions and confiscations and penal laws that passed away from the invasion of Henry II. to the birth of the future "liberator." This craft or shrewdness at least helped them to preserve a far goodlier portion of landed property, indeed, a better share of the world's goods in general, than what many families far more renowned in Irish history were able to retain. Indeei, as a rule (and we might naturally expect that it would be so), the powerful Irish families and those most illus- trious for stern heroic resistance to the encroachments of the foreigner suffered the greatest reverses. We see this in the history of the varying fortunes of the O'Neills, O'Donnells, MacCarthys, O'Byrnes, MacMahons, O'Connors, O'Eeillys, Fitzgeralds of the south, and numbers of other tribes. The families that prospered were generally families of time- servers and deserters from the national cause. The O'Connells (or O'Conals) of old times, if not exactly lukewarm in their country's cause, and too ready to serve the stranger, at least possessed a good deal of worldly prudence, or, in other words, something of the wisdom of the serpent. Originally driven from Connelloe in Limerick, they became chiefs of Iveragh in Kerry. Generally speaking, they prospered. In 1337 we find King Edward III. authorizing Hugh O'Connell to reduce to submission, by force of arms, certain clans in the county of THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL Limerick. This chief's son, another Hugh, vigorously defends the lands of his clan against the invasions of the Munster Geraldines, and also mixes the blood of the O'Connells with the illustrious race of Brian Boiroihme, by contracting a marriage with Marguerita, daughter of the prince of Thomond. Jeffery O'Connell (the son of Hugh and Mar- guerita), whose name appears as chief of his "nation " in a royal order on the Irish exchequer bearing date 1372, married Catherine O'Connor, whose father was chieftain of Traghty O'Connor. Their son Daniel is mentioned as chief in a treaty dated 1421. He married a daughter of the gallant house of 0' Sullivan Beare. Their son, a third Hugh, was knighted by Sir Richard Nugent, who subsequently became lord-deputy of Ireland. King Henry VII. rewarded this chief for promoting the interests of England. By Hugh's marriage the house of O'Connell was able to boast another splendid family alliance, for Mary, his bride, was the daughter of MacCarthy More. Maurice, their son, took sides against King Henry VII. with Perkin Warbeck when that impostor or adventurer landed in Ireland to assert his claim to the sovereignty cf England and Ireland, in his assumed character of duke of York and son to King Edward IV. Somehow, Maurice managed to procure a pardon from Henry VII. on the 24th of August, 1496. Later we find Morgan O'Connell paying crown-rent in acknowledgment of the authority of Henry VIII. , and figuring as Edward VI. 's high- sheriff for the county Kerry. Eichard, son of Morgan, served in the army of Queen Elizabeth during the wars of Desmond. During the commotions and wars that followed the outbreak of 1641, Daniel O'Con- nell of Aghgore, in Iveragh, contrived to preserve his estate by carefully abstaining from taking any part in the rebellion. It is agreeable to find that in the "Williamite wars the O'Connells took the side of their country; Maurice O'Connell, of the county Clare, was brigadier-general and colonel of the king's guards; John O'Connell, the lineal ancestor of "the liberator," and possessor of the very place which was bequeathed to him by his uncle, Darrynane Abbey, raised and commanded a com- pany of foot, which was embodied in this regiment of royal guards ; Cap- tain John O'Connell fought, not without distinction, at Deny, the Boyne and Aughrim ; he was included in the capitulation of Limerick. O'Con- nell, in the face of considerable stupid and unmeaning uproar and inter THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. ruption, told an amusing anecdote of this military ancestor of his to that whimsical body of legislators, the English House of Commons, which, though on most occasions sufficiently observant of the decorum that befits grave deliberative assemblies, occasionally takes a fit of transform- ing itself into an uproarious and unruly mob. In spite of " their beastly bellowings," to use the language by which he characterized their vocife- rations on sundry occasions, he told this anecdote of Captain John: " On the morning of the battle of Aughrim, an ancestor of mine, who commanded a company of infantry in King James's army, reprimanded one of his men who had neglected to shave himself. ' Oh, your honor/ said the soldier, ' whoever takes the trouble of cutting my head off in battle may take the trouble of shaving it when he goes home.' " The captain's son was named Daniel. He was "the liberator's" grandfather. "The liberator's" father, Morgan, appears to have pos- sessed all the shrewdness of the race. In spite of the obstacles which the penal laws (concerning which detestable enactments I intend pres- ently to speak more at large) threw in the way of all inheritance, acqui- sition or testamentary devising of landed property by Catholics, Morgan contrived to acquire a small estate by purchase. This estate was held in trust for him by a Protestant, and so the prohibitory enactment was evaded. O'Connell on one occasion observed very justly, in reply to a priest who expressed wonder that the operations of the penal laws "left any Catholic estates in possession of their rightful owners," that "there would not have been any, only that individual Protestants were found a great deal honester than the laws. The Freeman family of Castlecoj' were trustees for a large number of Catholic gentlemen in the county of Cork. In Kerry there was a Protestant named Hugh Falvey who acted as trustee for many Catholic proprietors there. In Dublin there was a poor Protestant in very humble circumstances who was trustee for several Catholic gentlemen, and discharged his trust with perfect integrity." All this surely is very honorable to human nature in general and to Irish nature in particular. Mr. O'lSTeill Daunt, in his interesting "Personal Eecollections of O'Con- nell" — to which I may here observe I am indebted for the above partic- ulars, and to which I shall be under a large amount of indebtedness before I reach the conclusion of the present biography- — tells us that 6 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. O'Connell had an estate called Glencara, near the lake of Cahara, which had been in the O'Connell family from days anterior to those of the penal code. "When Mr. Daunt expressed astonishment that Glencara had escaped confiscation, O'Connell replied, " Oh, they did not find it out. It is hidden among wild mountains in a very remote situation, which was wholly inaccessible in those days from the want of roads, and thus it- escaped their clutches." On another occasion O'Connell said to O'Neill Daunt, "If ever I took a title it would be earl of Glencara." In Dr. Smith's history of Kerry, strange to say, there is hardly any mention of the O'Connell family. But this can be satisfactorily accounted for. It appears that Dr. Smith once visited Darrynane, and spent some days with O'Connell's grandfather. The old gentleman entertained the historian most hospitably, and gave him many interesting details of local and family history. Dr. Smith, pleased with the particulars communi- cated to him, announced his intention of giving a conspicuous place in his history to the traditions of the O'Connell tribe. But his host entreated him not on any account to carry out this flattering idea. " "We have peace in these glens, Mr. Smith," said old Mr. O'Connell, " and amid their seclusion enjoy a respite from persecution. We can still in these solitudes profess the beloved faith of our fathers. If man is against us, God assists us. He gives us wherewithal to pay for the education of our children in foreign lands and to further their advancement in the Irish Brigade; but if you make mention of me or mine, these seaside solitudes will no longer yield us an asylum. The Sassenagh will scale the mountains of Darrynane, and we too shall be driven out upon the world without house or home." Dr. Smith complied with the wishes of the venerable head of the O'Connells. In his histoiy there is only a slight mention of the O'Connell clan. CHAPTEB II. ■Childhood of O'Connell — Paul Jones off the coast of Kerry — O'Connell masters THE ALPHABET QUICKLY — HlS FEAR OF DISGRACE — CAPTAIN Cook's " VOYAGE ROUND THE World " — Nomadic gentry — Early Anticipations of greatness — O'Connell's uncle Maurice, surnamed "Hunting-Cap" — His love of old ballads — Encounter with a mad bull — Active habits — The Crelaghs and the Kerry " colonels " — His father ATTACKED BY A BAND OF ROBBERS — PRIVATE THEATRICALS — HlS EARLY RELIGIOUS TRAIN- ING — Protestant visitors and holy water — His uncle Maurice's coffin — MacCar- thy More and the priest — The American war. 'zp 1ST a former chapter I said O'Connell was born in 1775. By a M remarkable coincidem coincidence this was the year that the illustrious Henry Grattan, Ireland's most splendid orator, and perhaps her greatest patriot too, first took his seat in the Irish House of Commons, and commenced his glorious career of patriotism. This year also was signalized by the skirmish of Lexington, the battle of Bunker's Hill, the leaguer of Boston, — in a word, the uprising of the American colonists in that memorable revolt against English taxation and tyranny, that was destined not merely to humble the pride of Britain by transforming her colonies into a mighty young republic, but to shake the foundations of the worn-out institutions of the Old "World and lead the way to tremendous revolutions, which, if they have failed to cause any veritable progress in the affairs of. mankind in general, at least have opened the path of liberty and glory to many down-trodden nations, and, in their remote results, have tended in a great degree to modify the forms of society and government and life in general in all civilized and many uncivilized countries First and foremost, this American war was sure to benefit Ireland, for it placed England in a position of difficulty and humiliation. Even in the third year of the war a British army, com- manded by a man of genius, the poetic lieutenant-general Burgoyne, was forced to surrender. To repeat O'Connell's oft-uttered saying, " England's difficulty is always Ireland's opportunity." Every one has heard of the celebrated Paul Jones, who, if he cannot, THE LIFE OP DANIEL O'CONNELL. in strictness, be said to have been the first who hoisted the " star-span- gled " banner on board an American ship-of-war, was at least the first who made the American navy a terror to the foes of the thirteen repub- lics. Paul Jones was hovering off the coast of Kerry in the year 1778 ; one of O'Connell's earliest recollections was associated with this cruise of the redoubtable Paul ; the great Agitator was then a child in his nurse's arms ; she carried the little fellow down to the shore, where he beheld, no doubt with curious and wondering eyes, the two boats' crews whom Paul had sent off with towing-ropes to get his vessel out of shal- low water ; these fellows had been prisoners of war at Brest ; the choice had been offered them of either sailing with Jones or staying in prison ; they had agreed to sail with the bold sea-rover, with a mental reserva- tion to escape at the earliest opportunity that presented itself ; here, off the coast of Kerry, they found the opportunity ; they cut the towing- ropes and rowed ashore ; immediately on landing they went to the near- est public-house to have a jolly carouse in sailor's fashion, leaving some firearms in the boats. Some peasants found the guns and drenched them, and the sailors were arrested by orders of Mr. Hassett and brought to the jail of Tralee, the county town of Kerry ; they exclaimed loudly against their incarceration, maintaining, not without a show of justice, that they had neither been guilty of, nor intended to commit, any breach of the laws, and that consequently the authorities had no right to con- sign them to "durance vile." O'Connell, referring to the occurrence in after years, said, " I well recollect a tall fellow, who was mounted on a gray horse, remonstrating angrily at this coercion. ~No legal charge, of course, could be sustained against them, and accordingly, in the end, they were released." The tall fellow "seemed to be the lawyer of his party." It is no wonder that this occurrence fixed itself deeply in O'Connell's memory. Adventures and adventurers of the sea have been at all times dear to the imaginations of children. The boys of antiquity no doubt delighted alike in the mythical voyage of Jason and the Argonauts for the golden fleece; in the poetic legends of the wanderings and ever- varying adventures of Ulysses and iEneas ; in the authentic accounts of the voyages of Hanno and Nearchus, and in the sea-fights of Phor- mion and the Athenian navy. THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. In early boyhood O'Connell was adopted by his uncle Maurice, known throughout Kerry by the sobriquet of " Hunting-cap ;" this nickname stuck to old Maurice on account of his fondness for that style of head- gear. As Charles XII. of Sweden seldom or never laid aside his jack- boots and coarse soldier's coat, or Frederick the Great his blue military coat and cocked hat, so Uncle Maurice was hardly ever seen without his hunting-cap. It was this gentleman who defrayed the expense of the boy's education and sent him to the school of that Eev. Mr. Harrington to whom I have already referred ; this school was in Little Island, near Cork. It is said that, owing to his tendency to become too much ab- sorbed in study, our hero, when a boy, got the reputation of being some- what cold and distant. Mr. O'lSTeill Daunt, in his "Personal Recollections," tells us that often during their journeys together, O'Connell, after a tolerably long silence, would suddenly "break out with a snatch of some old ballad in Irish or English." One day he sang out — "I leaned my back against an oak, I thought it was a trusty tree; But first it bent and then it broke — ; Twas thus my love deserted me." Mr. Daunt expressed surprise that these snatches of old ballads should linger in his memory. "Oh," cries O'Connell, " I liked ballads of all things when I was a boy. In 1787 I was brought to the Tralee assizes. Assizes were then a great mart for all sorts of amusements, and I was greatly taken with the ballad- singers. It was then I heard two ballad-singers, a man and a woman, chanting out the ballad from which you heard me sing that verse ; he sang the first two lines, she sang the third line ; both sang together the fourth, and so on through the whole ballad." This stanza, remembered from the Amcebean performance of the man and woman in Tralee, if infinitely superior is certainly less amusing than some verses composed by an unlucky poet of "the kingdom of Kerry," which stuck in a corner of O'Connell's memory among all sorts of metrical odds and ends. The poor bard, being in a starving condition 10 THE LIFE Of DANIEL O'CONNELL. in Pans, was recommended to pay his court to the minister Sartine in a strain of panegyric. Here is the first couplet : "Yellow Phoebus, inspire my poitrine To sing the praises of Monsieur de Sartine." Between Hillgrove and Cahirciveen, O'Connell, when a lad, very nar- rowly escaped losing his life in an encounter with an infuriated bull. The bull, like his namesake, John Bull, in after times, was seized with a mighty great desire to annihilate poor Dan. He ran at him, and Dan's retreat was cut off by a high ditch. The career of the future Liberator seemed about to be prematurely cut short. But it was written in the book of fate, as the great Napoleon would say, that Dan was to speak and do great things. At the moment that his destruction appeared inevitable the brave little fellow faced the taurine monster pretty much in the same courageous way he used to face and outface the other formidable Bull in after years. He threw a good-sized stone at the bull's forehead, and stunned him. This gave Dan breathing-time before the brute could recover himself. Meanwhile, a troop of boys came to the assistance of our juvenile hero and pelted the discomfited bull out of the field ; and thus Dan was rescued, and lived on to enjoy before he died almost the highest earthly greatness and renown. It were curious enough, if one had time and inclination, to speculate on the very considerable differ- ence it would have made to Ireland and the Irish if that mad bull had succeeded in carrying out his wicked will, and had incontinently tossed young Daniel on his horns and out of existence. One can easily guess, after hearing this anecdote, that O'Connell was from his earliest years blessed with a fair share of physical as well as mental energy. He says of himself, " Activity is with me a habit. I was always active, and my brother John was always active. I re- member one morning, when John was a lad, seeing him prepare to set off on a walk of several miles at sunrise, after having sat up the whole night dancing and without having gone to bed at all. I said to him, ' John, you had better take your mare.' ' Oh,' said John, ' I'll spare the mare ; the walk will do me good.' So off he set, and his mare expired t>f fat in the stable the very same day. How often have I heard the voice of old John O'Connell calling out at cockcrow under our gate. ' Cur THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 11 a ma/ugh Shane O'Connell agios an cu' " ("Send out John O'Connell and the greyhound 11 ). In a subsequent portion of this biography we shall have occasion to see Daniel O'Connell, even in his old days, on foot, with a leaping-pole in his hand, hunting the deer over his native mountains of Kerry, and with a vigor and activity unsurpassed by the most youthful and indefat- igable of his companions in the chase. O'Connell used to tell some very curious and amusing particulars of a class of cow-stealers that existed in Kerry in the days of his child- hood. These anecdotes will give the reader a curious picture of the state of society in Kerry in those wild times antecedent to the repeal of the penal laws. " When I was a child " — O'Connell is speaking — " there was a horde of cow-stealers called the Crelaghs inhabiting the mountains of Glan- cara. They used to steal cows in Galway and Clare and sell them in this part of the country ; and then, with admirable impartiality, they would steal cows here and sell them in Clare or Galway. They were a terrible nuisance to the peasantry, but they received a sort of negative protection — that is, they were left unmolested by the leading Protestant gentry, who then were popularly called 'colonels.' To these 'colonels' they occasionally made presents of cattle. Impunity emboldened them, and at length they stole fourteen cows from my father, who was in indif- ferent health at the time. This was intolerable, and my father collected a numerous party to surround the Crelaghs' hut in one night, in order to take and surrender them to justice. The Crelaghs rushed out and made a desperate defence. Two of them were taken, but the rest escaped. My father shot one man through the hand in the scuffle, but the wounded fellow contrived to get off. Those who escaped still continued their dep- redations, and the power of the few Catholic gentry to check them was sadly crippled by the legal incapacity of Catholics to hold the commis- sion of the peace. "The Crelaghs resolved to avenge themselves upon my father, who got information one dark evening, when out riding, that the gang lay in wait to murder him. His informant desired him to go home by a dif- ferent road ; he did so and encountered the ruffians, who rushed down the hills to meet him and fired ; his mare, which was very wicked, kicked and 12 THE LIFE OP DANIEL O'CONNELL. threw hirn. Whilst he was down they fired again, and missed him a second time; he remounted, and, striking spurs in his mare, was speedily oeyond their reach, escaping several shots that were fired after him. " It was not very easy for a Catholic to interest the law in his behalf even against these pestilent vagabonds ; but at length, by good luck, one of the gang robbed a Mr. Hassett, a Protestant gentleman, of his purse and dress-wig upon the highway ; this incited Mr. Hassett to spirited measures, amongst which was his getting himself made a magistrate and using his justiceship to bring the rogues to punishment. After this the gang was soon dispersed; three were taken and hanged the rest escaped." The Crelaghs, we see, made presents of cattle to the Protestant gen- try, who, being ,of the Ascendency faction, could be magistrates or what- ever they pleased to be, and so were objects of terror to these outlaws. The Catholic gentry, on the other hand, few in numbers and deprived of all civil rights, were in no degree formidable ; on the contrary, they were alike incapable of protecting themselves or others. The Crelaghs, then, did not think it worth while to conciliate them by offering them the gift of any portion of their spoils ; of course, if the Catholic gentry had pos- sessed the same influence that the "colonels" had, they too would have been tempted to forget their duties to society. Would they have yielded to the bribes of the Crelaghs in the same manner ? Truly it was a sin- gular state of society when such despicable bribes could seduce men of rank to a base connivance at the miserable thefts and depredations of a gang of cow-stealers. For us, living in the present day, it is surprising to contemplate the great extent to which, in the times I am referring to, the belief in the absolute power of these " colonels " was rooted in the minds of the peo- ple ; in fact, the authority of the law seemed as nothing when cast into the balance against their good will and pleasure. The odd notion even prevailed amongst the predatory gangs which infested some of the wild fastnesses of Kerry that to give validity to a judicial sentence it should be backed by the assent of one or other of these local potentates. Mr. Daunt gives a singular instance in illustration of this : A man was con- victed of horse-stealing at Tralee ; as he seemed quite careless and indif- THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 13 ferent while the judge was passing sentence of death upon him, a by- stander asked him, "Do you know what my lord is saying, you stupid omadhawn?" "To be sure I do!" replies the convict, preserving the same surprising air of unconcern, "but I don't care what he says, for Colonel Blennerhassett is looking at me all the time, and he says nothing." This would be ludicrous to a degree if the circumstances in which the man stood did not rather make it shocking ; in truth, the adminis- tration of the law in Ireland in those wild days is a curious subject and worthy of deep study. In ordinary cases between man and man it was doubtless far worse than it is at present; in all cases, however, of a political complexion, things legal move to-day pretty much in the same groove that they moved in then ; nor do the country-people of Ireland meet with any improved administration of justice worth speaking of in cases of the agrarian kind. Mr. Gladstone's new law of landlord and tenant, though doubtless it has made some improvement on the past condition of the tenant-farmers, has fallen far short of the too-sanguine and even foolish expectations which that minister's accession to the office of prime minister awoke in the minds of too many gullible Irish- men. "We have already had experience enough of the workings of the new act to see clearly that landlords can still make the laws an instru- ment for the oppression, and even extermination, of their tenantry ; in short, Irishmen should receive and lay to heart as gospel truth the memorable maxim uttered by John Mitchel in 1848, and since inculcated over and over by him and by other patriots, that " no good thing, nor even the commencement of a good thing, for Ireland can come out of the English Parliament." To return for a moment to " Colonel" Blennerhassett. Shortly after the first accouchement of his lady, a neighbor called at " the big house," and, after some other inquiries, asked how " the colonel was ?" "Which do you mean, the young colonel or the old one?" asked the servant in return. This "young Colonel" Blennerhassett was at that moment rather less than one week old. This was belief in the " colonel- ship" of the gentry of the Protestant Ascendency with a vengeamce! In his boyhood, O'Connell sometimes took a part in private theat- ricals. His memory was so good that he once got sixty lines by heart 14 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. in an hour, and that without the slightest trouble. All amateurs, how- ever are not, like O'Connell, blessed with excellent memories. Some persons, indeed, are awfully stupid about getting a part off by heart. Sometimes the stupidity is very droll. "When our hero, in his young days, along with some companions, got up a private play in Tralee, his friend, Ralph Hickson, was to take a part. All he had to say was, " Put the horses to the coach ;" and yet he contrived to make a stu- pendous blunder in trying to repeat on the stage even that little sen- tence of six short words. "How could he manage to blunder that?" a friend asked O'Connell. " Why, he said ' Put the horses into the coach !' " O'Connell was carefully instructed in religious matters in his youth. Doubtless his parish priest, Father 0' Grady, was an excellent and con- scientious pastor, zealous like most of the Catholic priests in Ireland during the rage of penal persecution. I have already given some anec- dotes illustrative of the whimsical humor of this spiritual guide of O'Connell's early years. He seems to have been a primitive, merry- souled, kind-hearted old man, characterized by a sort of quaint and guileless simplicity altogether pleasant to meet with. While there can be no doubt that he and others took great pains to rear O'Connell in the strict- est religious principles, so that in every period of his after- life "the Lib- erator's" devotion to and reverence for the faith of his fathers remained earnest and unalterable, there is yet no just foundation for the statements of those who have asserted that he was originally intended for the priest- hood. In a letter addressed to the editor of The Dublin Evening Post, bearing date the 17th of July, 1828, O'Connell endeavors to correct this and another misstatement: "It is right to be accurate even in trifles." Then, referring to a paragraph which had appeared in the papers, his letter says : "It contained two mistakes. It asserted that I was born in 1774; and, secondly, that I was intended for the Church. I was not intended for the Church. No man respects, loves or submits to the Church with more alacrity than I; but I was not intended for the priesthood. It is not usual with the Catholic gentry in Ireland to de- termine the religious destiny of their children ; and being an eldest son, born to an independence, the story of my having been intended for the Church is a pure fabrication. I was not born in the year 1774. Be it THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 15 known to all whom it may concern that I was born on the 6th of Au- gust, 1775 — the very year in which the stupid obstinacy of British oppression forced the reluctant people of America to seek for security in arms, and to commence that bloody struggle for national independence which has been in its results beneficial to England, whilst it has shed glory and conferred liberty pure and sublime on America." O'Connell used to tell a good story of two Protestant gentlemen who were visitors on one occasion at Darrynane Abbey, the seat of his uncle Maurice. Our hero himself was stopping there at the time. " On Sun- day," says O'Connell, "as there was no Protestant place of worship near, they were reduced to the alternative of going to mass or doing without public worship. They chose to go to mass, and on entering the chapel they fastidiously kept clear of the holy water which the clerk was sprinkling copiously on all sides. The clerk observed this, and feeling his own dignity and that of the holy water compromised by their Prot- estant squeamishness, he quietly watched them after service, and plant- ing himself behind the sanctuary door, through which they had to pass, he suddenly slashed the entire contents of his full-charged brush into their faces. I thought I should have been choked with laughing. You can't conceive anything more ludicrous than the discomfited look the fellows had." O'Connell's fancy was so tickled with the recollection of this grotesque incident that, when telling it, he couldn't refrain from chuckling heartily for some minutes. lie used to tell a singular anecdote of his uncle, old Maurice, alias "Hunting-cap." "Old Mr. Connell of Darrynane pitched upon an oak tree to make his own coffin, and mentioned his purpose to a carpenter. In the evening the butler entered, after dinner, to say that the carpen- ter wanted to speak with him. ' For what ?' asked my uncle. ' To talk about your honor's coffin,' said the carpenter, putting his head inside the door over the butler's shoulder. I wanted to get the fellow out, but my uncle said, ' Oh, let him in by all means. Well, friend, what do you want to say to me about my coffin ?' ' Only, sir, that I'll saw up the oak tree your honor was speaking of into seven-foot plank.' 'That would be wasteful,' answered my uncle ; ' I never was more than six feet and an inch in my vamps the best day I ever saw.' 'But your honor will stretch after death,' said the carpenter. 'Not eleven inches, I am 16 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. sure, you blockhead ; but I'll stretch, no doubt, perhaps a couple of inches or so ; well, make my coffin six feet six, and I'll warrant that will give me room enough.' " "We may feel satisfied that the old ruins to be found in so many parts of romantic Kerry, with the hoaiy traditions and legends hanging and clinging like the ivy around them, deeply impressed the mind of O'Con- nell in his youth, and bound his heart by the strong chain of association more and more firmly every day to the love of his birthplace and his entire fatherland. Doubtless, ere he reached manhood, he had often vis- ited Killarney and all the other enchanting spots that make the south- west of Ireland a sort of fairy region. On the occasion of such visits he would see Muckross Abbey, still beautiful and impressive even in decay ; the crumbling walls of Ross Castle and other time-haunted ruins, not less venerable or suggestive of the past and its vanished forms of life; he would hear recited the innumerable local legends of The O'Donohoe ; alike the ruins and the tales of other days would take hold of his imagination and become mysteriously intertwined with all his feelings. The subtle influences of old legendary stories, whether of love or terror, are wellnigh inexplicable. O'Connell used occasionally to refer in after life to the particulars connected with local antiquities and traditions which he had gleaned and treasured up in the days of his youth. On one occasion, having asked a clergyman if he had seen the old church of Kilkee, near Greena, on the road from Killarney, he told the following traditional anecdote of an act of sacrilege committed by one of the fierce and haughty chiefs of Desmond. Doubtless he had often thrilled at the recital of this and similar wild deeds in his boyhood. Speaking of the old church, he said, "It was unroofed and desecrated over three centuries ago; the Macarthy Mhor of the day was in the habit of attending mass there, and ordered the officiating priest to delay the celebration of mass every Sunday until he should arrive. The priest complied for some Sundays, but one day the chief was so late that the priest, in order no longer to detain the congregation, commenced divine service ; he had not proceeded far when Macarthy Mhor entered the church, and being enraged at the presumption of the priest in neglecting to wait for him, rushed to the altar, and felled the priest to the floor. The bishop could not bear that the scene of such a crime should continue the centre of parochial devo- THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 17 don, and accordingly he got the church unroofed and another one built in a different part of the parish." It appears that a great many Protestants of Killarney used to get married in this old ruined church of Kilkee. As, in case of their not get- ting a license, it was necessary for them to be married in a parish church, many couples modestly preferred the seclusion of the ivy-festooned walls of mouldering Kilkee, where they would be safe from all prying intrusion during the matrimonial ceremony, to the staring and curious crowds sure to gather around all wedding-parties in the church of Killarney. He spoke thus on another occasion of certain old burial-grounds between Cahirciveen and Darrymore: "I never can pass the old burial-grounds of Kilpeacon and Killogroin, among the hills, without thinking how strange it is that they should be totally deserted by the present generation ; nobody ever is buried in either of them now, and they have been disused so long ago that not even a tradition exists among the peasantry of the time when, or the cause wherefore, inter- ments were discontinued in them." On one of the old castles of his native county he made these reflec- tions : " What an undigested mass of buildings are the relics of the earl of Desmond's court at Castle Island! and how much the difference between our habits and those of our forefathers is marked by the archi- tecture of their dwellings and of ours ! The old castles, or rather the old towers, of Ireland were manifestly constructed for inhabitants who only stayed within when the severity of the weather would not allow them to go out ; there seems to have been little or no provision in the greater number of them for internal comfort ; and what a state of social inse- curity they indicate ! Small loopholes for defence, low, small entrance- doors for the same purpose — evidently it was a more important object to keep out the enemy than to ventilate the house." The earls of Desmond here referred to were the Norman Fitzgeralds, not the chiefs of the Macarthy clan, who had been princes of Desmond in the old Celtic times. CHAPTER III. Youth and early manhood of O'Connell — O'Connell at Louvain, St. Omer's and Douay — In danger during the French Revolution — Anecdote of John and Henry Sheares and the execution of louis xvi. — o'connell and the crowns of france and bel- GIUM — Dan and the banker — Jeffreys of Blarney Castle: — Further relaxations OF THE PENAL LAWS — CATHOLICS ADMITTED TO THE BAR — O'CONNELL A LAW-STUDENT IN London — Anecdotes of George IV., Mrs. Fitzherbert and Charles James Fox — O'Connell sees George III. in danger — Slow travelling of the last century — Pitt and fox as orators — drinking habits of the last century resisted by o'connell — Cousin Kane, an odd character — O'Connell in the yeomanry — He attends a political meeting in '97 — Sees Lord Edward Fitzgerald — O'Connell gets a fever from sleeping in wet clothes, and is near dying — sallies forth on his first cir- CUIT — O'Connell, Harry Deane Grady and the soldiers — Robbers — Anecdote cf Grady — Journey with H. D. Grady — Passing the Kilworth Mountains — Sudden DEATH OF A COUSIN OF O'CONNELL'S — INNS WHEN O'CONNELL WAS A YOUNG MAN — He travels with John Philpot Curran — Arthur O'Connor — Humorous bar anecdotes — Robber incident — Death of Brennan the robber — O'Connell thinks of writ- ing A NOVEL — O'CONNELL'S COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE — ANECDOTE OF COLLINS — AUTO- biographical anecdote o'connell a zealous advocate of mary queen of scots — Lalor of Kellarney and the farm of Lisnababie — Old roads — Inn at Milstreet — a cow of feeling! "dark oblivion of a brow" — corrupt judges. 'CORNELL spent about a year at the school of Father Harring- ton. The reputation for ability and application which he acquired there reached the ears of his uncle, General Count O'Connell, who began to feel a considerable interest in the boy. At the solicitation of the count, Uncle Maurice, alias " Hunting-cap," decided on going to the expense of giving their nephew a continental edu- cation. Accordingly, Dan was sentfirst to Louvain, and next to St. Omer's. This arrangement seems to have been quite agreeable to the lad, who at this period burned to make his name as distinguished as that of the general his uncle. O'Connell showed at St. Omer's the same cleverness he had already displayed at Father Harrington's ; he was always the foremost boy in his class. Another Munster boy, a cousin of his own, who subse- quently attained high position, was a formidable school-rival of his ; this was Christopher Fagan. The president of the college in Connell's time was the Reverend Dr. Stapylton. At this period (1791) the career of the THE LIFE OF DA.NIEL O'CONNELL. 19 great Kevolution in France was advancing with daily-increasing terror and velocity. The outrages done to religion, the cruelties perpetrated against the members of the French aristocracy and the royal family in the course of this tremendous revolution naturally revolted O'Connell, whose instincts and training alike tended to make him in sentiment both an aristocrat and a Catholic. From this period may be dated his decided love of monarchic institutions, and his still more decided re- pugnance to all measures of a thoroughly revolutionary tendency. He afterwards, indeed, became a democratic leader and more or less dem- ocratic in principle, but his notions of democracy had little or nothing in common with those of the chief representatives of the European continental democracy. On one occasion, travelling in France at this period, he met in a dil- igence a very loquacious Gaul, who poured forth endless torrents of in- vective against England. O'Connell preserved an unbroken silence. At last, the Frenchman, surprised at his apparent callousness, exclaimed, "Do you hear? do you understand what I am saying, sir 9 " " Yes, I hear you ; I comprehend you perfectly." " Yet you do not seem angry." " Not in the least." " How can you so tamely bear the censures I pronounce against your country ?" "Sir, England is not my country. Censure her as much as you please, you cannot offend me. I am an Irishman, and my countrymen have as little reason to love England as yours have — perhaps less." When O'Connell went to St. Omer's he was accompanied by his younger brother, Maurice. They remained at that seminary for about a year. Their uncle begged the president, Dr. Stapylton, to give a can- did opinion of the merits and demerits of each of the lads. The presi- dent's answer proves that, in one instance at least, he was a man of pro- found penetration and remarkable foresight. " You desire," writes the reverend doctor, " to have my candid opinion respecting your nephews ; and you very properly remark that no habit can be worse than that of the instructors of youth who seek to gratify the parents of those under their care by ascribing to them talents and qualities which they do not really possess. You add that, being only the uncle of these young men, 20 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. you can afford to hear the real truth respecting their abilities and de- ficiencies. It is not my habit to disguise the precise truth in reply to such inquiries as yours ; you shall therefore have my opinion with per- fect candor. " I begin with the younger, Maurice. His manner and demeanor are quite satisfactory. He is gentlemanly in his conduct and much loved by his fellow-students. He is not deficient in abilities, but he is idle and fond of amusement. I do not think he will answer for any labor- ious profession, but I will answer for it he will never be guilty of any- thing discreditable — at least, such is my firm belief. " With respect to the elder, Daniel, I have but one sentence to write about him, and that is, that I never was so much mistaken in my life as I shall be unless he be destined to make a remarkable figure in society." The two O'Connells seem to have spent about a year at St. Omer's. Daniel distinguished himself greatly there. We next find him spend- ing some months in Douay College in the year 1792. O'Connell does not appear to have incurred any personal danger in those terrible days of revolutionary bloodshed, save on one occasion. He frankly admits, however, that he was always in terror lest " the scoun- drels," as he calls the French " sans-culottes" "should cut our throats." The occasion of his being in personal danger was this: A wagoner of Dumouriez's army scared him and a set of his fellow-collegians who had walked out from Douay, crying, " Voila les jeunes jesuites ! les cap- ucins! les recollets" ("Behold the young Jesuits! the Capuchins! the Franciscan friars!") Panic-stricken, O'Connell and his companions ran back to their college. Luckily, they were not pursued. Our hero used long after this to repeat occasionally the verses composed at the time of the sanguinary Marat's death: "Marat est mort! Marat est mort! La France encore respire; Satan! Prends garde de toi, Car anjourd'hui a'il entre votre empire, Demain tu ne seras plus roi!" ("Marat is dead! Marat is dead! France once more breathes freely. Satan! take care of yourself, for if to-day he enters your empire, to-morrow you shall be king no more.") THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 21 O'Connell, in the decline of his life, told the following anecdote of those two unfortunate "United Irishmen," Henry and John Sheares, to Dr. R. R. Madden, the author of " The Lives of the United Irishmen." One day the doctor called upon him. " Oh, Madden !" cried " the Liber- ator " as he entered, " I was thinking, as I read your book, how glad you would have been to learn a trifling incident I could have told you about the Sheareses. I travelled with them in the Calais packet to England in 1793. I left Douay on the 21st of January in that year, and arrived in Calais the very day the news arrived that the king and queen (?) had been guillotined. The packet had several English on board, who all, like myself, seemed to have been made confirmed aristocrats by the sanguinary horrors of the Revolution. They were talking of the execu- tion of the king and queen (?), and execrating the barbarity of their mur- derers, when two gentlemen entered the cabin — a tall man and a low one. These were the two Sheareses. Hearing the horrible doings at Paris spoken of, John Sheares said, 'We were at the execution.' 'Good Heaven!' exclaimed one of the Englishmen; 'how could you have got there ?' ' By bribing two of the National Guard to lend us their uni- forms,' answered Sheares. ' We obtained a most excellent view of the entire scene.' 'But, in God's name, how could you endure to witness such a hideous spectacle?' resumed the Englishman. John Sheares answered energetically — I never can forget his manner of pronouncing the words — 'From love of the cause!' " In telling this anecdote O'Connell's memory seems for the moment to play him false. He forgets that the king and queen of France were not either tried or executed together. Louis was executed on the 23d of January, 1793, and Marie Antoinette in the October of the same year. Perhaps, however, a false rumor had got aboard the vessel. The Shearses would necessarily be in a position to correct it. O'Connell added a slight particular about Henry Sheares, the elder brother. Henry remarked that it was the only time he had ever been at sea without danger of shipwreck. "I think, Madden," said Dan, in conclusion, " the whole story would have derived some zest from my being mixed up in it." What a singular contrast there was between the sub- sequent fate of O'Connell and that of those two hapless brothers, who 22 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. were tried and executed together for their devotion to Ireland in the fatal and blood-stained year of '98 ! The bishop of Ardagh, probably Dr. O'Higgins, told O'Neill Daunt a whimsical circumstance — that a French captain of artillery said to him shortly after " the three glorious days of July " in 1830, " Some of us imagined that your O'Connell was born at St. Omer. Ah ! if he had been a native of our country, we should have made him king of the French." We have his own authority for the fact that at the election at which Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg was chosen king of the Bel- gians, shortly after the revolt of the citizens of Brussels in 1830 against their Dutch masters, three votes were given to place O'Connell on the throne of the newly-created kingdom. In his early youth O'Connell won the friendship of Mr. Charles Jef- freys of Blarney Castle, county Cork. One night they met at the Cork theatre, where Mr. Jeffreys somehow or other got into a row. He would have been overmatched but for the timely assistance of O'Connell. From this night forward Mr. Jeffreys was always polite and attentive to our hero. Though a nephew of that infamous destroyer of his country's independence, the earl of Clare, Mr. Jeffreys through all his life remained an enemy of the act of union. He had been one of the members of an Irish deputation appointed to lay an anti-union petition at the feet of George III. in 1799, and in his old age, in 1840, we find him at a Eepeal meeting at Cork beside his old friend, O'Connell, moving one of the anti-union resolutions. After his speech on this occasion, feeling op- pressed by the heat and the crowd, the old man was forced to retire for a few moments from the building — Batty 's circus — in which the meeting was held. On his return a gentleman remarked to him that it was a dangerous experiment to expose himself again to the heat and the throng of the vast assembly. "I could not help it," said the fine old gentleman, enthusiastically; "my heart is with you all." In the years 1792 and 1793 concessions were made to the Catholics, one of which, at least, had the most important influence on the destiny and renown of Daniel O'Connell. Admission to the Bar was at last con- ceded to the Catholics. But for this O'Connell could never have stepped into that forensic arena in which some of his most glorious laurels were won. THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 23 In O'Connell's young days guests in Ireland were forced by their hosts to drink, whether they liked to do so or not. O'Connell tells us he was the first person in Iveragh to rebel against this custom of the fine old Irish gentlemen "all of the olden time." "After I returned from the Temple " (?), says he, "I introduced the fashion of resistance, and I soon had abettors enough. It was fortunate for me that I never while a youth could drink more than three glasses of wine without being sick, so that I had my personal convenience to consult in aid of tempe- rance. To be sure, I have seen some rare drinking-bouts ! In 1785, when less than ten years old, I was at the house of a friend near the seaside, and a sloop came in, of which the whole crew got drunk every night — Monday night on wine, Tuesday night on punch, Wednesday night on wine, Thursday night on punch, and so on, the only variety consisting in the alternation. What a change in our social habits since those days ! — a most happy change in this respect ! I believe there is no nation under heaven save our own in which the apostle of a great moral movement could meet the success that has attended Father Mathew." It is hardly necessary to say that O'Connell agreed with those who not merely thought Father Mathew' s success "highly honor- able to the Catholics," but "probably destined to be one of the means of extending the Catholic religion." Some anecdotes which he used to tell of a whimsical character, called " Cousin Kane," who flourished in Kerry in the days of his youth, are curiously illustrative of the jovial habits and of certain other singular features in the manners then prevalent in Irish society. "On occasion of festivity," says O'Connell, "I loved to preside at a side-table at Darrynane. I remember a jolly fellow of the name of Kane — everybody called him ' Cousin Kane.' He always lived from house to house, and kept two horses and twelve couple of dogs at other people's expense. One day there was a large dinner at Darrynane, and Kane was one of the guests at my side-table. A decanter of whisky stood before me, and I, thinking it was sherry — which it exactly resembled in color— filled ' Cousin Kane's ' glass. He drank it off, but immediately got into a rage with me for giving him whisky instead of wine. He gave me a desperate scolding, which he ended by holding out his glass and saying, ferociously, ' Fill it again, sir V 24 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. It was in the spring of 1798, on the eve of some of Ireland's darkest days of agony, that Daniel O'Connell was called to the bar. After such a long and iniquitous exclusion of the Catholic body from the field of legal distinction, the time had at length arrived when a young Catholic Irishman of the highest forensic genius was to commence his career as a barrister, destined to win such triumphs in his profession as would necessarily cast the lustre of renown over himself, his despised co-re- ligionists, and even the whole Irish race. In this year of '98, so full of melancholy recollections for Ireland, we find O'Connell joining one of the yeomanry corps embodied to defend Dub- lin against the rebels. Of the members of O'ConneU's corps — the " Law- yers' Yeomanry Corps " — many were discovered to be members of the great secret organization of " United Irishmen." This discovery alarmed O'Connell, who was naturally under an apprehension lest, in some man- ner, he might be involved in a charge of disaffection to " the powers that be." I have just given his own admission that he was himself a United Irishman. Accordingly — manifesting some of the safe worldly prudence I have pointed out as characteristic of the O'Connell race — he determined to withdraw from the danger. In June, 1798, he left Dublin. As com- munication by land with the interior of the island was then cut off, he sailed with eighteen others for Cork in a potato-boat, bound for Court- masherry. They each gave the pilot half a guinea to put them ashore at the Cove of Cork. There they landed after a capital passage of six- and-thirty hours. We may rest assured that the discomforts of this odd voyage in the potato-boat were more than counterbalanced by the fun and frolic of the passengers. Doubtless, O'Connell himself, with his vein of genial, exuberant humor, was the very soul of the mirth on board. Even of the demon of sea-sickness the merry voyagers were sure to make a laughing-stock. Having landed safely, O'Connell travelled to his native Iveragh, and remained for some months at Carhen. Here the career of the future " liberator " was within a little of being prematurely cut short by an enemy fully as insidious and fatal as the Saxon government. In plain words, he was assailed by a severe fit of typhus fever in the August of '98. It was caused by his sleeping in wet clothes. He had dried them on him at the fire in a peasant's cabin. THE LIFE OP DANIEL O'CONNELL. 25 Between Milstreet and Macroom, O'Connell used to point out the old mountain-roads, over which, in former days, the judges when on cir- cuit were obliged to travel. If persons observed to him that these roads seemed quite impassable for wheel-carriages, he would remark that the old infirm judges travelled over them in their carriages at a foot-pace ; the younger judges went circuit on horseback. On one occasion Mr. Daunt asked O'Connell "whether he admired and sympathized with Arthur O'Connor?" Arthur O'Connor, it ia scarcely necessary to observe, was one of the most prominent leaders of the "United Irishmen." He was also uncle to Fergus O'Connor, O'Con- nell's assistant-agitator at a later period of his career. "More no than yes," was O'Connell's reply to Mr. Daunt's inquiry.. " I had, indeed, admired him until Curran disclosed to me that he had a plan for an agrarian law, dividing the land in equal portions among all the inhabitants. That, I saw at once, involved consequences so anti-so- cial that it greatly cooled my admiration of him." Mr. Daunt observes that, except from O'Connell, he never heard of Arthur O'Connor's plan for the division of the land. He seems inclined to conjecture that it may, after all, have been a plan for a small allot- ment system, calculated to promote " the comfort of the humbler classes without encroaching upon the interests or rights of the landed aristoc- racy," involving, in short, no "anti-social results." We have seen O'Connell travelling with Harry Deane Grady, but in the earlier portion of his career he sometimes had far more distinguished fellow-travellers. He once travelled with the illustrious Curran in the Cork mail. At the period of this journey travellers by the mail reached Dublin from Cork in eight-and-forty hours. On this occasion there were six insides and unlimited outsides (in later times the number of passengers a mcwY-coach could carry was limited, if I remember rightly, to eight ; ordinary day-coaches were licensed to carry nineteen, but they often crowded more on the top of the luggage on the roof). The passen- gers got off the coach and walked two or three miles on the rising ground on the Dublin side of Clonmel. In the course of a conversation, in which the name of Arthur O'Con- nor chanced to turn up, that gentleman's celebrated letter to Lord Cas- tlereagh, written in 1798. was spoken of. " Do you know," said O'Con- 26 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. nell to Mr. Daunt, "who got that letter printed? It was your friend, old Cornelius McLoughlin. He was walking past Kilmainham prison, and was hailed by Arthur O'Connor from a window. Arthur threw his manuscript out, saying, 'Will you do me the service of getting that printed?' 'If I find on perusal that it merits publication, I will,' said McLoughlin. 'Promise me positively!' 'No; but if I like the production I shall gladly bear the expense of printing it.' So saying, McLoughlin took it home, read, approved, and got it printed. For act- ing thus, Cornelius was brought before the select committee of the House of Commons. When asked who got the pamphlet printed, he boldly answered, ' It was I .' ' Why did you do so ?' ' Because I ap- proved of the principles contained in it.' Whereupon Castlereagh said, ' That's a brave fellow ! We won't inflict any punishment upon him.' " Mr. Daunt, feeling somewhat surprised at this instance of lenity in Castlereagh, remarked that "he had not thought his lordship had so much good in him." " Oh," replied the Liberator, " he had a good deal of pluck, and liked spirit in others. Besides, at that period, as the Union was virtually car- ried, there did not exist any pressing occasion to shed innocent blood." O'Connell, contrasting the reputation for wit which the Irish bar enjoyed at the close of the eighteenth century with that which it pos- sessed at a much later period of his life, admitted, indeed, that in the more recent period the profession could boast no such wit as Curran, but that still it had within its ranks members largely endowed with the talent for provoking laughter. "Holmes," said he, "has a great share of very clever sarcasm. As for myself, to the last hour of my practice at the bar, I kept the court alternately in tears and in roars of laughter. Plunket had great wit. He was a creature of exquisite genius. Noth- ing could be happier than his hit in reply to Lord Eedesdale (Mitford, the historian of Greece 's br oilier — a dry Englishman sent over to be Irish chancellor) about the kites. In a speech before Eedesdale, Plunket had occasion to use the phrase ' kites ' very frequently, as designating fraud* ulent bills and promissory notes. Lord Eedesdale, to whom the phrase was quite new, at length interrupted him, saying, ' I don't quite under- stand your meaning, Mr. Plunket; in England kites are paper play- things used by boys ; in Ireland they seem to mean some monetary THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 27 transaction.' 'There is another difference, my lord,' said Plunket; 'in England the wind raises the kites; in Ireland the kites raise the wind? " Curran was once defending an attorney's bill of costs before Lord Clare [chancellor of Ireland, an infamous Irishman, who was mainly in- strumental in carrying the accursed act of Union that extinguished the legislative independence of his country). 'Here, now,' said Clare, 'is a flagitious imposition : how can you defend this item, Mr. Curran : "To writing innumerable letters, £100"?' 'Why, my lord,' said Curran, ' nothing can be more reasonable. It is not a penny a letter V And Cur- ran' s reply to Judge Robinson is exquisite in its way. ' I'll commit you, sir,' said the judge. ' I hope you'll never commit a worse thing, my lord !' retorted Curran. "Wilson Croker, too, had humor. When the crier wanted to expel the dwarf O'Leary, who was about two feet four inches high, from the jury-box in Tralee, Croker said, ' Let him stay where he is— Zte minibus non curat lex.'' (About very small things the law cares not.) And when Tom Goold got retainers from both sides, ' Keep them both,' said Croker; ' you may conscientiously do so. You can be counsel for one side, and of use to the other.' " It was probably during the early days of his professional life that O'Connell was about to write a novel. When asked what his story was to have been, he said, " Why, as to the story, I had not that fully deter- mined on. But my hero was to have been a natural son of George III. by Hannah Lightfoot, his Quaker mistress. The youth was to have been early taken from his mother,' and I meant to make him a student at Douay, and thence to bring him through various adventures to the West Indies. He was to be a soldier of fortune— to take part in the American war — and to come back finally to England imbued with republican principles." Mr. Daunt failed to remember clearly whether O'Connell intended that this young adventurer, on his return to his native land, should be confronted with the king his father. O'Connell was a zealous advocate of the beautiful and unfortunate Mary queen of Scots. This doughty champion was inclined to do des- perate battle for the honor of her name and memory in the teeth of all the charges and aspersions levelled and flung against her fair fame. In 28 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. fact, he seems to have felt a glow of downright enthusiasm for the mem- ory of the hapless queen, and to have almost reverenced any relics of her still remaining. "I saw her manuscript," said he, "in the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh ; I kissed the writing and pressed it to my heart." This was rather a high-flown style of devotion or chivalry, to say the least. Few persons, in the present stage of the nineteenth century at all events, could be made to admire or even comprehend such a cherish- ing of royal souvenirs, and such a thorough devotion to those old if not obsolete feelings and sentiments of loyalty that were felt rather on account of the associations hanging around a dynasty than on account of the sovereign's own sterling merits. This extreme admiration of Mary queen of Scots formed, no doubt, a large part of the romance of our hero's more youthful days. But his heart and imagination could not for any length of time remain contented with a mere ideal romance, in which the ill-starred and beautiful Scottish queen of the sixteenth century should reign as the sole heroine. His soul now began to long for an object of love and devotion having more touch of reality than the melancholy historic or poetic phantoms of the past. And soon these cravings of his whole being were more than satisfied, for his fair cousin, Mary O'Connell, glided before him a most "delightful vision" — real, indeed, yet idealized too by his own enamored fancy, and made all-radiant by the "purple light of love." The dreams and longings of both are indeed more than real- ized. Youth's magic power carries them for a time far away from " dull earth," and they wander blissfully hand in hand through regions of delicious enchantment. O'Connell himself gives us a glimpse of the supreme moment of happiness in this the love-romance of his life. " I never," he says, "proposed marriage to any woman but one — my Mary. I said to her, 'Are you engaged, Miss O'Connell?' She answered, 'I am not.' 'Then,' said I, 'will you engage yourself to me?' 'I will,' was her reply. And I said I would devote my life to make her happy. She deserved that I should : she gave me thirty-four years of the purest hap- piness that man ever enjoyed. My uncle was desirous I should obtain a much larger fortune, and I thought he would disinherit me. But I did not care for that. I was richly rewarded by subsequent happiness." Had his uncle and other relatives, who were indignant at the match, not THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 29 relented, his profession would, even from the outset, have sufficed to make him independent. The lovers were privately married on the 23d of June, 1802, in Dame street, Dublin, at the lodgings of Mr. James Connor, the lady's brother- in-law. The bride was the daughter of a physician in Tralee, who was indeed skilful in his profession, but not sufficiently rich to give a mar- riage-portion with his daughter. This it was which caused the resent- ment of O'ConnelTs family when they came to know of the marriage, for it was kept secret for several months. The Reverend Mr. Finn, then parish priest of Irishtown, was the clergyman who pronounced the nup- tial benediction. The young wife resided in Tralee with her grandmother. It used to be O'ConnelTs delight to quiz the old lady by pretending to complain of her granddaughter's want of temper. "Madam," he would say "Mary would do very well, only she is so cross." " Cross, sir ?" the old lady would hastily reply, in the greatest state of amazement and vexation. "My Mary cross? Sir, you must have provoked her very much. Sir, you must yourself be quite in fault. Sir, my little girl was always the gentlest, sweetest creature born !" " And so she was," O'Connell would exclaim, when recalling in after days these tender passages of his early wedded life. "She had the sweetest, the most heavenly temper, and the sweetest breath." O'Connell used to tell this anecdote of his wife's days of childhood : "When my wife was a little girl she was obliged to pass, on her way to school every day, under the arch of the jail, and Hands, the jailer of Tralee, a most gruff, uncouth-looking fellow, always made her stop and courtesy to him. She despatched the courtesy with all imaginable expe- dition, and ran away to school to get out of his sight as fast as possible." Here is a specimen of O'ConnelTs style of responding to a toast given in honor of Mrs. O'Connell: "There are some topics of so sacred and sweet a nature that they may be comprehended by those who are happy, but cannot possibly be described by any human being. All that I shall do is to thank you in the name of her who was the disinterested choice of my youth, and who was the ever-cheerful companion of my manly years. In her name I thank you. And this you may readily believe — for experience, I think, will show to us all that a man cannot battle and 30 THE LIFE OP DANIEL O'CONNELL. struggle with trie malignant enemies of his country unless his nest at home is warm and comfortable — unless the honey of human life is com- mended by a hand he loves." With the above contrast the following passage, which was delivered at a temperance soiree that was given to him in Belfast, in the year 1841, by four hundred and fifty ladies of various religious sects. It was re- ported in " The Belfast Vindicator " of the 20th of January, 1841 : "But that subject brings me back to a being of whom I dare not speak in the profanation of words. No, I will not mention that name. The man who is happiest in his domestic circle may have some idea of what my happiness was. Tes, I was her husband then. Did I say was? Oh, yes ! I am her husband still. The grave may separate us for a time, but we shall meet again beyond it, never, I trust, to be separated more." Mr. Fagan tells us in his life of O'Connell that Mrs. O'Connell was an exceedingly amiable, strong-minded woman; and Mr. O'Connell, it was said, was, during her life, very much guided by her advice. Perhaps it may not be out of place here to give some curious remarks of O'Connell on the subject of courtship. Speaking one day of the assi- duities of a friend (I believe Tom Steele) to a certain widow, he ob- served : " One blunder the fellow made was, that he asked her to marry him at far too early a period of the courtship. This was highly injudi- cious. JSTow, by this precipitation he lost the advantage which female curiosity would have otherwise given him. He might have been tender and assiduous, but he should not have declared himself until after he had rendered her considerably curious as to whether he would propose for her or not. This would have created, at #11 events, an interest about him. " Then, again, as to his telling her that he was confident of brilliant political distinction, and holding out as a lure that she would be the sharer of his honors — it showed great want of tact, great want of know- ledge of human nature. If he had tact he would have said, ' I am open- ing a career of ambition ; perhaps I overrate my prospects of success in public life ; but there is one thing which I deeply feel would essentially contribute to it, and that is domestic felicity.' He should have spoken this with a tender earnestness, and left her to conjecture his meaning. But instead of thus delicately feeling his way, the fellow blurted out his THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 31 trashy brag of successful ambition and fame and his offer of marriage all at once. Then as to the raptures — why every woman past girlhood laughs at raptures ! had fine opportunities, only that the block- head didn't know how to make use of them." It is probable that the fact of his being obliged, owing to the hostility of his uncle and other near relations to this marriage with an undowered bride, to trust for a time to his own exertions, had the most salutary effect upon his future fortunes. All the vast energies of his being were aroused that he might be able the better to place his beloved one in such a position as he believed she merited and was fitted to adorn. From this time forward he became every day more and more conspicuous among the public men of his own country for his marvellous industry and activity, his broad views and mastery of details, his amazing fertility of resources. Indeed, in these qualities he was inferior to the public men of no country in the world. Ere long it became quite evident that he was destined to succeed equally in his professional career and in political life. I remember once hearing or reading an account of some rich indi- vidual who went to Lord Chief-justice Kenyon, I believe, to ask him as a friend what were likely to be the chances of his son at the bar. The chief-justice made the following reply: " Sir, your son must spend his for- tune; let him marry and spend his wife's ; and then he may be expected to apply in earnest." In " Curran's Life," too, we find that he attributes his success to the fact of his being left without a shilling. " C'est des dif- ficulUs qui naissent les miracles." (" It is difficulties which give birth to miracles.") Bather different was the advice given, some years ago, by one of the senior fellows of Trinity College, Dublin, who was a lay-fellow and a bar- rister, to a friend who came to consult him about the law-books his son should study in order to secure success at the bar. "Books!" cries the old fellow. " Oh, don't trouble yourself about books. Let your son go to a shooting-gallery and practice pistol-shooting for two hours every day for a year. That's the way to rise at the bar in Ireland." The old gen- tleman had been living a secluded life for at least a score of years. In his learned retreat he had failed to observe the changes that had taken place in Ireland, both in society in general and forensic training in particular. 32 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. f ■ He imagined that the age of Irish duelling, when all questions were liable to be decided by the arbitrament of the pistol, had not yet passed away — that rising lawyers might still be able to boast, like the sanguinary Toler, that they owed their success in life to the parental present of a pair of good duelling-pistols and the skill and courage requisite to make good use of them on any and every possible occasion. He had not, good, easy old man, the remotest idea that it had come to pass at length that it was of far more importance, even in Ireland, for the aspirant after forensic distinction to be master of the contents of dry and crabbed tomes of legal lore than to be the most formidable "crack shot" of the day. He was blissfully ignorant, in short, of the important fact that his life had glided on into a dull prosaic age, when even the fate of Irish elec- tions was wont to be decided without the occurrence of a single "affair of honor " between either the rival candidates or their counsel or any of their supporters, and when a man might become the most prominent of Irish politicians without having once in his whole life pulled a hair- trigger in anger. To return to O'Connell. Perhaps if at this period of his life he had seen before him the certainty of affluence independent of his own exer- tions, he might have sunk into ignoble sloth. Something like this hap- pened in the case of a talented barrister named Collis, with whom our hero was intimate during the early portion of his career at the bar. This Collis, in 1800, wrote an anti-union pamphlet, in which he predicted that the ruin of Ireland would result from that baleful measure. Afterwards, in 1826, he insisted that things had turned out just as he had foretold. O'Connell, in speaking of Collis, described him as " a clever fellow. He had talent enough to have made a figure at the bar if it had not been for the indolence induced by his comfortable property. His wife was a Miss Kashleigh, an uncommonly beautiful woman. He and I went cir- cuit together. Going down to the Munster circuit by the Tullamore boat, we amused ourselves on deck firing pistols at the elms along the canal. There was a small party of soldiers on board, and one of them authoritatively desired us to stop our firing. " ' Ah, corporal, don't be so cruel/ said Collis, still firing away. " ' Are you a corporal ?' asked I. He surlily replied in the affirmative. " 'Then, friend,' said I, 'you must have got yourself reduced to the THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'UONNELL. 33 ranks by misconduct, for I don't see the Y's upon your sleeve.' This raised a laugh at his expense, and he slunk off to the stern quite chap- fallen." On the occasion of this Counsellor Collis's marriage with the beau- tiful and rich co-heiress, Miss Rashleigh, the perpetrators of puns were guilty of an indifferent one enough. They said "that he had been a long time thinking of marrying, and at last he married ' Rasldeigli! " Among O'Connell's earlier contemporaries was a young barrister who on one occasion was retained as counsel against a cow-stealer. He burst into a vehement denunciation of the rogue, who had branded his own name on the horns of the stolen cow. The closing words of the perora- tion of the advocate's harangue were a singularly happy instance of un- conscious burlesque: "If, my lord, the cow were a cow of any feeling, how could she bear to have such a name branded on her horns?" It was Bully Egan, I believe, who in those days uttered a sentence of magnificently-audacious nonsense that can hardly be paralleled, not to say surpassed, even in the speeches of our old friend, "Mine Ancient Pistol." Interrupted on some occasion or other by one of the opposing counsel, who happened to have black eyebrows and a hot temper, Egan turned on him with a glare of theatric fierceness and exclaimed, "I would have my learned friend to know that, in the fulfilment of my sacred duty to my client, I am not the man to be intimidated by the dark oblivion of a brow." " Egan," whispered one of his colleagues beside him, eagerly plucking at his gown, " what the devil do you mean ? Sure, that's infernal nonsense you're talking." " I know it is," says Egan, answering the " aside " speech of his friend in another of the sub- limest effrontery, "but it is good enough for a jury!" Some of my readers will be astonished to learn that Daniel O'Con- nell became a member of the society of Free and Accepted Masons in the year 1799. His lodge met in Dublin, and consisted of one hundred and eighty-nine members. O'Connell was, it appears, master of the lodge. He writes thus about this passage of his life : " It is true, I was a Freemason and master of a lodge. It was at a very early period of my life, and either before an ecclesiastical censure had been published in the Catholic Church in Ireland prohibiting the taking of the Masonic oaths, or at least before I was aware of that censure. Freemasonry in 34 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. Ireland may be said to have (apart from its oaths) no evil tendency, save so far as it may counteract the exertions of those most laudable and useful institutions, the temperance societies. The important objec- tion is the profane taking in vain the awful name of the Deity in the wanton and multiplied oaths — oaths administered on the book of God — without any adequate motive." Of course O'Connell after a time left the Masonic body. A Mason, speaking of this withdrawal, uses language which is another fine speci- men of unconscious burlesque: "A dark hour came upon him, and he shunned the light." The following entertaining piece of autobiography is given by Mr. O'Neill Daunt in page 148 of the second volume of his amusing " Per- sonal Eecollections of O'Connell." " In the winter of 1801," said O'Connell, " I had been supping at the Freemasons' Hotel, at the corner of Golden lane, with a jovial party. "We were returning home late, after having drunk a good stoup of claret, when a fire broke out in a timber-yard and spread rapidly. I was pro- voked at the awkwardness of a fellow who was beating the ground with a pickaxe, but making no progress in getting at the water-pipes. I shoul- dered him away, seized the pickaxe, and soon got at the plug; but, instead of stopping then, I kept working away con amove, and would soon have disturbed the paving-stones all over the street if I had not been prevented. There was a large crowd. Sheriff Macready (an old auc- tioneer) kept order, with the aid of a party of the Buckinghamshire militia. I was rather an unruly customer, being a little under the influ- ence of a good batch of claret, and on my refusing to desist from pick- ing up the street one of the soldiers ran a bayonet at me, which was intercepted by the cover of my hunting- watch. If I had not had the watch, there was an end of the Agitator." "Yes," said Mr. Daunt, after he had listened to the Liberator's rela- tion of this anecdote, "but Ireland would have had other agitators. A country so aggrieved could not have lacked patriot leaders, though they might not have agitated prudently or wisely." "Wisely!" echoed O'Connell. "Why, when I took the helm I found all the Catholics full of mutual jealousies ; one man trying to outrival another ; one meeting rivalling another ; the leaders watching to sell THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 35 themselves at the highest penny. sold himself. "Woulfe sold him- self — sold himself, and no doubt at a marvellous price." O'Connell, long after he got to the head of Irish affairs, remarked to a Father Barry of Clare, on that gentleman's expressing surprise at the appointment to office of certain place-hunters, who, to judge from their utter insignificance, were miserable bargains for the British government to think of buying: "My dear friend, you have no idea what carrion finds a ready sale in the markets of corruption." As you travel from Killarney to Milstreet, on the left-hand side of the road stands the farm of Lisnababie. Pointing this out to a friend, O'Connell once exclaimed, " I may say with honest pride that I was a good help to keep that farm in the hands of its rightful owner, Lalor of Killarney. I was yet very young at the bar when Jerry Connor (the attorney concerned for Lalor) gave me two ten-guinea fees in the Lisna- babie case. Lalor remonstrated with Connor, stating that the latter had no right to pay so expensive a compliment out of his money to so young a barrister. This was at a very early period of the cause, which was tried in Dublin before Sir Michael Smith ; but a motion being made in court to dismiss Lalor' s bill, I rose and combated it so successfully that Sir Michael Smith particularly complimented me ; and Lalor wrote to Jerry Connor, saying that I gave him the full worth of his money, and desiring (what indeed was a matter of course) that I should be retained for the assizes. We were finally successful, and I had the chief share in the triumph." O'Connell received a whimsical compliment from a client a few months after he commenced practising at the bar. After our hero had succeeded in obtaining his acquittal, the fellow took the first opportu- nity of saying to him with great enthusiasm, " I have no way here to show your honor my gratitude, but I wish to God I saw you knocked down in my own parish, and maybe I wouldn't bring a faction to res- cue you! Whoop! Long life to your honor!" O'Connell was, it may easily be believed, immensely amused at this singular demonstration of gratitude. I shall conclude this chapter with a curious story told by O'Connell, which presents a vivid picture of the corruption which polluted the judi- cial bench towards the close of the last century. O'Connell, on one of 36 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. his political tours, after breakfasting at Fermoy in the county Cork, was passing the bridge at Moorepark. He said to his friend, Mr. Daunt, " There is a story connected with this place which shows how the law was ad- ministered in Ireland some seventy or eighty years ago. I think Lord Annaly was the judge who figured in it, but as I am not quite sure, I don't like to attach a discreditable tale to his name without stating my uncer- tainty on this point. He was coming to the Cork assizes, where he was to try a heavy record involving the right of a gentleman named Nagle to a large estate. This bridge did not then exist, and the road descend- ing to the ford was of course a great deal steeper than it is at present, and you see it is bad enough now. The judge's carriage was encoun- tered in the stream by a large drove of bullocks, and considerable delay arose to his progress from the crowded and unruly animals. He bore it in silence for a few minutes, but at length, impatient of the continued impediment, he angrily called out to the driver of the herd, 'Halloo, friend! make way there at once. How dare you stop me?' 'I can't help it, sir,' returned the bullock-driver; 'I'm obeying the orders of my master, Mr. Nagle, who ordhered me to drive these beasts to ' (naming Lord Annaly' s residence in another county). On this announce- ment his lordship's ire softened down considerably. He inquired who Mr. Nagle, the owner of the bullocks, was, and having satisfied himself that the drove were intended by that gentleman as a douceur for his lordship previously to the pending trial, he awaited the clearance of the passage in philosophic silence. When the trial came on he took excel- lent care to secure a verdict in favor of Nagle. On his return to his own abode after the circuit had closed, the first question he asked was, ' Where the drove of bullocks were ?' But bullocks, alas ! there were none! JSTagle had fairly bit the judge. The fact was, that his cause had been disposed of at an early period of the Cork assizes, and seeing no utility in giving away his bullocks for a verdict which was now secured, he despatched an express, who overtook the drover within six miles of the judge's residence, and ordered him to countermarch. Here is another story for you : The noted Denis O'Brien had a record at Ne- nagh ; the judge had talked of purchasing a set of carriage-horses, and Denis accordingly sent him a magnificent set, hoping they would answer his lordship, etc., etc. The judge graciously accepted the horses and THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 37 praised their points extravagantly, and, what was more important for Denis, he charged the jury in his favor and obtained a verdict for him. The instant Denis gained his point he sent in a bill to the judge for the full value of the horses. His lordship called Denis aside to expostulate privately with him. 'Oh, Mr. O'Brien,' said he, 'I did not think you meant to charge me for those horses. Come now, my dear friend, why should I pay you for them?' 'Upon my word that's curious talk,' re- torted Denis in a tone of defiance ; ' I'd like to know why your lord- ship should not pay me for them ?' To this inquiry of course a reply was impossible; all the judge had for it was to hold his peace and pay the money." * * The books to which I am chiefly indebted for the materials of the above chapter are O'Neill Daunt's "Personal Recollections," Fagan's "Life of O'Connell," Mitchel's "Continuation of Mac- Geoghegan," " Curran's Life," by his son, " Memoirs of Theobald Wolfe Tone," " Select Speechai of O'Connell, with Historical Notices." by his son John. etc. CHAPTER IV. Theobald Wolfe Tone and the "United Irishmen" — Peep-o'-Da* Boys and Defend- ers — Orange atrocities— Tone in Bantry Bay — Injustice and tyranny of Lord Camden's government — Secession of Grattan and his friends from the House of Commons — O'Connell's comments on this step — The Texel expedition — Arrests at Bond's house — Death of Lord Edward Fitzgerald^Rebellion of '98 horrors — John P. Curran defends the United Irishmen — Death of Wolfe Tone and others — The Union — Clare and Castlereagh — Daniel O'Connell's first appearance on THE POLITICAL STAGE AS AN ORATOR — HlS AnTI-UnION SPEECH — HENRY GrATTAN's SUD- DEN REAPPEARANCE IN PARLIAMENT? — HlS FIERCE INVECTIVE AGAINST CORRY — DUEL BE- TWEEN Grattan and Corry — Grattan's Anti-Union speeches — The Union carried — Insurrection of 1803— Robert Emmett's. speech in the dock — His execution — O'Con- nell's opinion of Emmett's attempt. TIRING the year in which Daniel O'Connell was called to the bar an historical event, in itself most serious and attended with ^wi^ momentous consequences to the people of Ireland, took place. This was the rebellion of '98, of which it is necessary to say some- thing here. So early as the end of 1791 the first club of " Uni- ted Irishmen" was founded in Belfast by the celebrated Theobald Wolfe Tone. Soon, however, so many prominent men came forward to occupy the leading positions that he was completely in the shade for a time. This, of course, pleased him, as he was a thoroughly earnest and single- minded man, "My object," he says, "was to secure the independence of my countiy under any form of government, to which I was led by a hatred of England so deeply rooted in my nature that it was rather an instinct than a principle. I left to others better qualified for the inquiry the investigation and merits of the different forms of government, and 1 contented myself with laboring on my own system, which was luckily in perfect coincidence as to its operation with that of those men who viewed the question on a broader and juster scale than I did at the time I mention." Indeed, the professed objects of the society did not at that period go the length even of national independence. The opening sen- tence of the constitution of the first club at Belfast is very moderate in its language : "1st. This society is constituted for the purpose of for- THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 39 warding a brotherhood of affection, a communion of rights and a union of power among Irishmen of every religious persuasion, and thereby to obtain a complete reform in the legislature, founded on the principles of civil, political and religious liberty." But ere long the principles of the French Revolution began gradually to influence and carry the members of the society beyond the limits within which they were originally con- fined. The government, too, began to persecute the association. In January, 1794, Archibald Hamilton Rowan, a prominent member, was convicted of sedition by a packed jury. Their place of meeting, at the Taylors' Hall, in Buck lane, was shortly after invaded by the police, the meeting dispersed and their papers seized. The timid now fell off, but the determined members of the society resolved on reorganizing it on a bolder and more revolutionary basis. Other prosecutions were menaced. Indeed, the Reverend William Jackson, an emissary from France, w T as convicted on the testimony of the informer Cockayne, but avoided a pub- lic execution by committing suicide in the dock. He had furnished him- self with arsenic for the purpose. His dving words, addressed to his advo- cate, were those spoken by the chief conspirator Pierre to his friend Jaf- fier in the tragedy of " Venice Preserved," when the latter stabs Pierre to save him from being broken on the wheel : "We have deceived the senate !" Tone had to quit the country to avoid a similar conviction on Cock- ayne's testimony. Hamilton Rowan, who was also liable to a fresh prosecution (this time for high treason), to be sustained by the evidence of the same informer, contrived to escape from Newgate and to reach France, whence he subsequently proceeded to America. Other causes tended to inflame the people besides those I have mentioned. In '95 Lord Fitzwilliam was sent over as viceroy on the understanding that complete Catholic emancipation was to be made a government measure. The hopes of the people were high. Grattan was prepared to support the new lord-lieutenant in his beneficent measures ; other patriots were to accept office in order to be in a better position to assist in carrying them through. Probably, if the policy of Lord Fitzwilliam had taken effect, the people would have been satisfied and the rebellion of '98 might never have occurred. But all these ardent hopes that had been raised in the minds of the people were doomed to bitter disappointment. The partisans of the faction of Ascendency began to tremble for their 40 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. places and influence when they saw Mr. Beresford — one of their most prominent men and a member of one of the most powerful Protestant houses — dismissed by Lord Fitzwilliam from his post of commissioner of the revenue. Beresford complained to Mr. Pitt, and even to the king him- self, not without effect. It is said, too, that Pitt, England's prime min- ister, even wished to see Ireland plunged in rebellion, that he might the more easily accomplish a legislative union between the two countries. Be this as it may, Lord Fitzwilliam was speedily recalled. The Catholic Eelief Bill, that had been brought forward by Henry Grattan with every prospect of success, fell to the ground, and was no more heard of till 1829. It is in no degree surprising that the people of Ireland, seeing their expectations thus dashed to earth, should every day, from this time for- ward, put more and more faith in French ideas, and begin to look to rev- olution as the only likely method of achieving emancipation and reform. Indeed, French principles were in those days more or less disseminated in almost every part of Europe. Even in England itself several soci- eties modelled on the revolutionary pattern had sprung up from time to time. The Protestants and Catholics of Ireland were fast becoming united in the cause of their country's independence. However, it must be owned that this brotherly feeling was by no means universal. A set of wretches called by the several names of "Peep-of-Day Boys," "Wreckers" or "Protestant Boys," who were afterwards developed into the too famous or notorious "Orange Society," had come into existence in the JSTorth of Ireland some few years before. Their main article of belief was the lawfulness, and even desirableness, of exterminating "pa- pists." Their fanaticism was spurred on in 1795 by agents of the place- holding gentry to increased hostility to the Catholics. Those in place and power at that time naturally feared the union of Irishmen, and tried hard to prevent or break it up. It was in '95 that the "Peep-of-Day Boys " assumed the name of Orangemen. Mr. Thomas Verner was the first grand-master. Their form of oath is said to have been: "In the awful presence of Almighty God, I, A. B., do solemnly swear that I will, to the utmost of my power, support the king and the present government ; and I do further swear that I will use my utmost exertions to exterminate all the Catholics of the kingdom of Ireland." To protect themselves against the hostility of the "Peep-of-Day Boys," the Catholics in the JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN. THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 41 North had formed an association called the " Defenders." The two hos- tile bodies came into sanguinary collision at the village of the Diamond, in the county Armagh, on the 21st of September, 1795. This is the en- counter known as "the Battle of the Diamond." The Catholics, who were almost totally unarmed, were, as might be expected, defeated by the Orangemen, who had abundance of weapons and were sure of mag- isterial protection to boot. A few Defenders were killed and several more were wounded. This miserable and shameful affair, magnilo- quently styled by the Orangemen a battle, has been boastfully toasted at their drunken orgies and celebrated in doggerel ballads, the sanguin- ary spirit of which is disgraceful not merely to the Orange Society, but to human nature itself. The Orangemen after this contemptible skirmish gave full scope to their fury. They commenced a persecution of the northern Catholics which was perfectly fiendish. Thomas Addis Emmett, in his " Pieces of Irish History," tells us that "they posted up on the cabins of these un- fortunate victims this pithy notice, ' To Hell or Connaught,' and appointed a limited time in which the necessary removal of persons and property was to be made. If after the expiration of that period the notice had not been complied with, the Orangemen assembled, destroyed the furni- ture, burned the habitations and forced the ruined families to fly else- where for shelter." The magistrates seemed more inclined to help than to oppose these outrages. Dr. E. E. Madden, the author of "The Lives of the United Irishmen," has preserved and printed many of the ill- spelled notices that were affixed to the cabin doors. The Orangemen also indulged in the exciting pastime of committing fearful murders ; but in the year 1796 they surpassed themselves. It is calculated that in that year not less than seven thousand of the unresisting Catholics were either slain or expelled from their homes in the one small county of Ar- magh. These wretched outcasts had no place of shelter to fly to. They wandered about the mountains — some died, others were lodged in prison. The younger men, in pursuance of a suggestion of the Irish commander- in-chief, Lord Carhampton, were unceremoniously packed off to one or other of the seaports, placed on board a tender and thence finally drafted on board an English man-of-war. This outraging of all law and justice was, by a delicate euphemism, styled "a vigor beyond the law." Lein- 42 THE # LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. ster and Munster, as well as "Ulster, were under a sort of reign of terror this year. Arbitrary arrests and imprisonments occurred every day. We can learn even from that rabid partisan of the Protestant Ascendency, Sir Kichard Musgrave, how the Catholic peasantry were treated by Lord Carhampton and the squirearchy : " In each county he (Lord Carhamp- ton) assembled the most respectable gentlemen and landholders in it, and having in concert with them examined the charges against the lead- ers of this banditti (the Catholic peasantry) who were in prison, but defied justice, he, with the concurrence of these gentlemen, sent the most nefa- rious of them on board a tender stationed at Sligo to serve in His Ma- jesty's navy."' Is it any way wonderful that every day the masses of the Catholics became more and more disaffected towards the king's gov- ernment, that connived at and tolerated, if it did not actually prompt, these atrocities of the Orange brigands and of Lord Carhampton and the squirearchy ? Or is it any wonder that the people so hunted and tor- tured should begin to long for a complete separation of the two islands, which would necessarily place them on an equal footing with their Prot- estant countrymen ? The tyranny went on. Lord Camden, the new viceroy, called for laws against dangerous secret societies. An insurrection act was passed against " The Defenders," An act of indemnity was passed to indem- nify magistrates and officers of the army against the consequences of any of their illegal and unconstitutional outrages upon the Catholics. But no bill was passed against the Orange banditti, who were the real distuib- ers of the peace and well-being of the country. Mr. Grattan denounced this gross partiality of the government in his usual splendid style of eloquence. He then showed that the Orangemen had robbed, massacred and endeavored to exterminate the Catholics ; that these lawless brigands had, in point of fact, "repealed by their own authority all the laws recently passed in favor of the Catholics;" that they had established instead "the inquisition of a mob, resembling Lord George Gordon's fanatics, equalling them in outrage, and surpassing them far in perse- verance and success." He denounced the system of terror they had established ; masters, by intimidation, were forced to dismiss their Cath- olic servants ; landlords, to eject their Catholic tenantry. Catholic wea- vers were illegally seized as deserters by these " Orange boys or Protest- THE LIFE OP DANIEL O'CONNELL. 43 ant boys — that is, a banditti of murderers, committing massacre in the name of God and exercising despotic power in the name of liberty." The alleged deserters were sometimes tried by a set called "the Commit- tee of Elders;" if the accused gave this expeditious tribunal liquor 01 money, he might be discharged ; if he failed to offer them either money or a bottle, the thirsty elders would send him " to a recruiting officer as a deserter." The notices to quit served by the Orangemen on the Cath- olics were generally in words short but plain: "Go to Hell, Connaught won't receive you — fire and faggot. WillTresham and John Thrustout." Shortly after giving such a notice they would pay a visit to the house of the poor Catholic, rob or destroy his property, and force him to leave home and everything with his miserable family and take refuge in vil- lages. " In many instances this banditti of persecution threw down the houses of the tenantry, or what they called racked the house, so that the family must fly or be buried in the grave of their own cabin." Murders of Catholics had been of frequent occurrence. In fact, "the Catholic inhabitants of Armagh had been actually put out of the protection of the law. The magistrates were supine or partial." To this supineness the success of the brigands was owing. At last, the evil of these disorders went to so shameful an excess that the magistrates felt obliged "to cry out against it." Thirty of them, in a resolution, declared that the Roman Catholic inhabitants of Armagh "are grievously oppressed by lawless persons unknown, who attack and plunder their houses by night and threaten them with instant destruction unless they abandon immediately their lands and habitations." Mr. Grattan's speeches, Mr. Mitchel says, " more than any records or documents, illustrate this period of the history of his country." Here is Grattan's commentary on "the Indemnity Act," passed early in 1796 along with "the Insurrection Act:" "A bill of indemnity went to secure the offending magistrates against the consequences of their outrages and illegalities — that is to say, in our humble conception, the poor were stricken out of the protection of the law and the rich out of its penalties ; and then another bill was passed to give such lawless proceedings against His Majesty's subjects continuation — namely, a bill to enable the magis- trates to perpetrate by law those offences which they had before com- mitted against it — a bill to legalize outrage, to barbarize law and to give 44 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. the law itself the cast and color of outrage. By such a bill the magis- trates were enabled, without legal process, to send on board a tender His Majesty's subjects, and the country was divided into two classes, or formed into two distinct nations, living under the same king and inhab^ iting the same island — one consisting of the king's magistrates and the other of the king's subjects — the former without restraint and the latter without privilege." ISTo wonder that the " United Irish Society " continued to live and flourish and multiply. I may here observe that the " Irish Eevolution- aiy Brotherhood" in Ireland, commonly but incorrectly called the "Fe- nian Organization " (the " Fenian Brotherhood " was, in reality, merely an American-Irish society affiliated with the home or purely Irish move- ment ; originally, indeed, it was a subordinate branch of the home move- ment"), — the "Irish Eevolutionary Brotherhood," I say, seems to be in our own days the legitimate successor of the society of " United Irish- men " in '98. Mr. Mitchel is certainly mistaken in the following pas- sage of his "Continuation of MacGeoghegan :" "The 'Whiteboy' organ- ization, which was itself the legitimate offspring of the ' Eapparees,' and which in its turn has given birth to 'Eibbonism,' to the 'Terry alts,' and finally to the ' Fenians.' The principle and meaning of all these various forms of secret Irish organization has been the same at all times," etc. It is not so ; Mr. Mitchel is here astray. The " Irish Eevolutionary Brotherhood" and the "Fenian Brotherhood" have no special resem- blance to any of the other organizations mentioned by Mr. Mitchel, which were all for the most part agrarian, and even local. The " Eibbon " so- ciety has a sectarian element also, but, like the " Whiteboy s" and "Ter- ry alts," it has little or nothing, properly speaking, of a political or revo- lutionary complexion ; whereas, both the " Irish Eevolutionary Brother- hood" and the " Fenian Brotherhood " are unsectarian and purely political and revolutionary, precisely like the " United Irishmen " of '98. Possibly, certain individual acts of members of the three last-named bodies may have a slight resemblance to some of the deeds of the " Whiteboy s" or '' Eibbonmen," but such exceptional cases, assuming that there are such, cannot in the slightest degree affect the general political and revolution- ary character of either the " Irish Eevolutionary Brotherhood," the "Fen- ian Brotherhood " or the society of the " United Irishmen " of '98. THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL,. 45 Still, England was not secure yet : a rebellion in Ireland had become almost inevitable. During the whole of the year 1796 the government acted as if their sole object had been to drive the people of Ireland to despair. Armagh was covered with the ruined homes of the poor Catholics. Thousands of victims of all ages and of both sexes were houseless, starving wanderers. Though the grand jury of that county talked at length of justice and impartiality, nothing but injustice pre- vailed. A venal press defended all the iniquitous acts of the govern- ment and their accomplices, the Orange banditti. A hireling print called Faulkner's Journal applauded to the skies all the bloody and law- less deeds of this league of blind besotted bigots, who were wont to sally forth on excursions of cold-blooded murder and mutilation, or even to burn whole hamlets. While Faulkner's Journal was doing this base work for government pay, The Northern Star, an able and patriotic Bel- fast journal, was suppressed, like the patriotic papers of '48 and The Irish People in these latter days, by military violence; its office was ransacked ; Samuel Neilson, the editor, and several others were arrested, brought to Dublin, cast into prison and kept there for more than a year without trial. In vain Grattan lifted his voice to demand justice, and that such laws should be enacted as would "ensure to all His Majesty's subjects the blessings and privileges of the constitution without any distinction of religion." In vain the eloquent and patriotic Curran demanded that evidence should be heard at the bar of the Commons, which would satisfy the House that not less than fourteen hundred fam- ilies had been barbarously driven in open day from house and home to wander miserable outcasts about the neighboring counties. Some, in- deed, had been butchered or burned in their cabins ; fatigue and famine had ended the sufferings of others. This was the substance of Curran 's testimony. But the voice of an angel would have failed to move the fell government of Lord Camden or the corrupted legislature that sustained and abetted him in his tyranny. Had not the Parliament suspended the habeas corpus act this session, thereby placing outside the pale of the constitution near nine-tenths of the nation ? When Parliament met again, in January, '97, the patriotic party in the Commons were most anxious to have a permanent popular force for the defence of the country. Sir Lawrence Parsons and Grattan strug- 46 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COKNELL. gled hard for another people's army. The government opposed them violently. The patriotic motion of Sir Lawrence was of course lost — only 25 voting for it, while 125 voted against it. During December '96, and the early months of '97, several districts of Ulster were proclaimed under the insurrection act. The terrible reign of martial law had commenced. General Lake was dragooning the peo- ple. Vainly Grattan uttered eloquent protests in behalf of justice and reform, and maintained that the government severities only increased the influence of the " United Irishmen." He concluded his speech and the debate thus : ""We have offered you our measure ; you will reject it. We deprecate yours ; you will persevere. Having no hopes left to per- suade or dissuade, and having discharged our duty, we shall trouble you no more, and after this day shall not attend the House of Commons." Filled with despair of effecting any further good for their country in that corrupt and venal assembly, Grattan and Lord Henry Fitzgerald refused to allow themselves to be re-elected for Dublin at the next gen- eral election. Curran, Arthur O'Connor and Lord Edward Fitzgerald adopted a similar course. When Tone heard of this secession, he ob- served in his journal: " I see those illustrious patriots are at last forced to bolt out of the House of Commons and come amongst the people, as John Keogh advised Grattan to do long since." Arthur O'Connor and Lord Edward, indeed, speedily joined the " United Irishmen ;" but Grat- tan, Curran and Lord Henry Fitzgerald kept aloof from them. Accord- ingly, while some, like Mr. O'Connell, blame them for seceding at all, others blame them because having taken that step they didn't go farther and join the " United Irishmen." Mr. Mitchel, for various reasons, which are certainly not without weight, hesitates to blame them for not doing so. Possibly many will consider his views on this question the most just of any. Every measure that could be adopted to goad the people into insurrection was resorted to. Judicial murders, like that of the gallant and much-loved William Orr, condemned on palpably perjured testimony, and whose memory was kept alive in the hearts and on the lips of all by the words, " Remember Orr ! " awoke the desire of vengeance in the pop- THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 47 ular mind. In the early part of '98 the Press newspaper, on account of a letter signed Marcus, which commented severely on Lord Camden's conduct in suffering Orr to be done to death by perjury and unheard-of treachery, was prosecuted. Father Coigley was taken and hanged in England. Arthur O'Connor was arrested. General Lake was named com- mander-in-chief provisionally. Lord Carhampton and his successor, the gallaut Sir Ealph Abercrombie, had severally resigned that position — the latter because his humane nature recoiled in disgust from the odious ser- vices required at his hands ; the former because, however cruel he may have been, he at least desired to suppress the conspiracy before it burst forth into actual revolt. He even " publicly declared that some deep and insidious scheme of the minister was in agitation, for, instead of suppressing, the Irish government was obviously disposed to excite, an insurrection." Abercrombie, before he resigned, stated in general orders that his army, owing to its disorganization, "would soon be much more formidable to their friends than to their enemies." Two regiments of foreign mercenaries, the ruthless and licentious Hessians, were intro- duced into Ireland to aid in dragooning the people. On the 30th of March, 1798, the whole country was placed under martial law by proc- lamation. This was the first time Wexford had been proclaimed under the "Insurrection Act." "From that moment," Miles Byrne tells us, " every one considered himself walking on a mine, ready to be blown up, and all sighed for orders to begin." The military had now full license ; any officer might have recourse to any measures of repression he might deem proper. The magistrates too might outrage law, secured as they were by the "act of indemnity." Castlereagh was determined that the rebellion should break out immediately. "Free quarters" were resorted to as a judicious means of goading the people to desperation when they would see a licentious soldiery living in their houses and amongst their families. In the absence of their male relatives, women were now continually forced to submit to the grossest insults and brutal- ities from the military ruffians quartered in their homes. These were the days of free-quarters, half-hangings, picketings, pitch-caps, floggings, house-burnings, military executions, especially in the counties of Kildare, Carlow and Wicklow. These were the days of the infamous torturing mag- istrates, Hawtry White, Solomon Richards and Parson Owens, the latter, 48 THE LIFE OP DANIEL O'CONNELL. above all, notorious for putting on the pitch-cap. These were the days when the still more infamous and inhuman Hunter Gowan (who was, however, ultimately shot like a dog) could murder with impunity in cold blood his Catholic countrymen — such as poor Garret Fennell and "James Darcy, a poor inoffensive man, the father of five children." Miles Byrne tells us this, and also how " twenty-eight fathers of families were shot and massacred in the Ball Alley of Carnew without trial. Mi. Cope, the Protestant minister, was one of the principal magistrates who presided at this execution. I knew several of the murdered men, particularly Pat Murphy of Knockbrandon, at whose wedding I was two years before. He was a brave and worthy man, and much esteemed. Wil- liam Young, a Protestant, was amongst the slaughtered." He tells us also how " at Dunlavin, county of Wicklow, previous to the rising, thirty-four men were shot without any trial ; officers, to their disgrace, presiding and sanctioning these proceedings." I myself remem- ber hearing an aged countrywoman, some years ago, tell with what hor- ror she gazed in " fatal '98 " on the bleeding corpses of, I think, fourteen farmers' sons, all young men, on Dunlavin green. Such was the miser- able condition of parts at least of Ireland at the beginning of May, 1798. To maintain this terrible reign of martial law General Lake had now in the island a force of more than 130,000 men, including regular troops, English, Welsh and Scotch fencible regiments, Irish militia and the fell Hessians. The Orange yeomanry were among the most ferocious tor- turers of the people of Leinster. But while Pitt and Castlereagh desired a rebellion in order that they might afterwards the more easily carry the Act of Union, they knew that such a policy was attended with risk. The rebellion might chance to succeed — Ireland might in the struggle shake off the yoke of England. To guard against this, in the words of the cold-blooded Castlereagh him- self, "measures were taken by government to cause its premature explo- sion." Then disunion was stirred up among the patriots by means of lies and calumnies and forgeries — some of which remind us of "the miserable man Barry's" false charges against the so-called "Fenians," who were arrested in Dublin in '65 — and doubts of their Catholic brethren were sown in the minds of some of the Protestant members of the " Union." In fact. mam 1- Presbyterian "United Irishmen" were becoming lukewarm THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 49 and separating from the Catholics. As Mr. Mitchel says, "From one cause or another it is evident that towards the close of '97 the union rather abated than increased." Some of the Catholics, too, first in the North and then elsewhere, published addresses and resolutions hostile to the principles of the "United Irishmen." Indeed, there were numerous loyal addresses from both Dissenters and Catholics. The bishops and higher clergy tried to procure these Catholic addresses of loyalty. In February, '98, the parliamentary grant to the Royal College of May- nooth — a college which had been incorporated by law for the education of Catholic ecclesiastical students in '95 — was increased from £8000 to £10,000. This measure tended to throw dust in the eyes of weak Cath- olics, and it was referred to to justify their servility by selfish and time- serving members of that persuasion. A speedy complete emancipation too was promised, if not expressly, at least by implication. But while the vigor of the " union " had in some degree broken up in the North, in some other parts of the island it was still augmenting in strength. The conspiracy might after all prove too strong for the Mac- chiavellian statesmen, who, in order to carry out their sinister policy, had so long connived at its existence. It was above all desirable then that, when the rebellion would burst forth, the people should be deprived of leaders. To attain this end the services of informers were called into requisition. The first of these wretches, who demands notice, was the notorious Thomas Reynolds. He was a Dublin silk-mercer, and posses- sor by purchase of an estate in the county Kildare called Kilkea Castle. His wealth gave him considerable influence over his Catholic co-religion- ists. He was in the confidence of Oliver Bond and Lord Edward Fitz- gerald. He had been sworn in as a " United Irishman " at the house of the former, and had successively filled in the organization the offices of colonel, treasurer and representative of Kildare, and delegate for Lein- ster. It happened, in the early part of '98, that he and a Dublin mer- chant, named Cope, had occasion to travel together to the country — to a place called Castle- Jordan — on business connected with a mortgage in which both were interested. In the course of their conversation, Cope was lamenting the troubled state of the country, which seemed to por- tend an immediate rebellion. Reynolds said he was acquainted with a United Irishman who, he thought, had repented his rashness in joining a 50 THE LIFE OF DANIEL CCONNELL. treasonable league and would fain make atonement to society by defeat- ing the plans of the conspirators. In short, Eeynolds made terms with Cope, received his first instalment of blood-money and agreed to betray his associates. On the 12th of March, in consequence of infcrmations given by this miscreant, Oliver Bond and fourteen other Leinster del- egates were arrested by Major Swan and his myrmidons in colored clothes, at Bond's house, in Lower Bridge street, Dublin. Other leaders were arrested the same day — Thomas Addis Emmet, Dr. McNeven, Sweet- man, Henry and Hugh Jackson. Warrants were also issued against Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Counsellor Sampson and Mr. McCormick, but they, receiving timely notice, escaped for the present at all events. A few days after these arrests the principal committee met at the "Brazen Head Hotel." It was there and then proposed by one Rey- nolds, a distant relative of his, that the traitor Reynolds should be made away with. The proposal was unanimously rejected. It is also stated that Bond had been warned prior to the arrests. He is said to have even held a pistol to Reynolds's breast, and to have demanded of him, " "What would you do to the traitor who would reveal our secrets, if he were in your power ?" " I'd shoot hiin through the heart!" replied RejTiolds without flinch- ing. Bond was staggered, and began to think he had been misinformed. In short, Reynolds's cool intrepidity saved his worthless life. Every effort was made by the patriots to supply the loss of the lead- ers who were thrown into prison, and to keep the people quiet till the ar- rival of a French auxiliary force. The brothers, Henry and John Sheares, both barristers, stepped into the vacant post of leadership. They took steps to rally the nation. A circular, said to have been written by Lord Edward Fitzgerald, was handed round among the people. Its last words were: "Be firm, Irishmen, but be cool and cautious. Be patient yet a while. Trust to no unauthorized communication ; and, above all, we warn you — again and again we warn you — against doing the work of your tyrants by premature, by partial or divided exertion. If Ireland shall be forced to throw away the scabbard, let it be at her own time, not theirs." "But," as Mr. Mitchel says, "Lords Camden, Clare and Castlereagh were determined that it should be at their time." The proclamation of the 30th of March, already referred to, was doing its THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 51 work ; also the manifesto of the 3d of April, which Sir Ealph Aber- crombie had been obliged to issue from his head-quarters at Kildare, requiring the inhabitants of the county to surrender their arms within ten days, and threatening them, in case of non-compliance, with "free quarters." Confessions of concealed arms and of plots were wrung from some individuals by torture. Any one "wearing the green" was of course outraged. Any one wearing short hair was looked on as a revo- lutionist, called " a croppy, and subjected to the grossest insults." Malev- olent individuals, under pretence of loyalty, would gratify private malice by fixing on the heads of those to whom they might bear some grudge, if they chanced to wear short hair, "pretended loyalist caps of coarse linen or strong brown paper, smeared with pitch on the inside, which in some instances, adhered so firmly as not to be disengaged without a laceration of the hair and even skin." The "croppies " sometimes, with a sort of grim humor, retaliated on the loyalists by cropping their hair short, thus rendering them liable to outrages from other loyalists, real or counterfeit. We have the authority of persons altogether in the interests of the British government for the atrocities inflicted on the Irish people by the sustainers of English rule. The gallant and humane Sir John Moore, who held a command in Ireland in the year '98, gives it as his opinion " that moderate treatment by the generals, and the preventing of the troops from pillaging and molesting the people, would soon restore tranquillity, and the latter would certainly be quiet if the gentry and yeo- men would only behave with tolerable decency, and not seek to gratify their ill-humor and revenge upon the poor." Major-general Sir William Napier, the admirable and high-souled author of that famous military classic, the " History of the Peninsular War," in a review of the life of Sir John Moore in the " Edinburgh Eeview," bursts into the following- indignant strain: "What manner of soldiers were thus let loose upon the wretched districts which the Ascendency -men were 'pleased to call dis- affected? They were men, to use the venerable Abercrombie's words, who were ' formidable to everybody but the enemy.' We ourselves were young at the time ; yet, being connected with the army, we were contin- ually amongst the soldiers, listening with boyish eagerness to their con- versation, and we well remember — and with horror to this day — the tales of lust and blood and pillage — the record of their own actions 52 THE LIFE OF DANIEL OCONNELL. against the miserable peasantry — which they used to relate." All this, be it remembered, took place before any insurrection had broken out. Mr. Gordon, a Protestant clergyman, in his " History of the Rebellion," tells the following: "Thomas Fitzgerald, high-sheriff of Tipperary, seized at Clonmel a gentleman of the name of Wright, against whom no grounds of suspicion could be conjectured by his neighbors, caused five hundred lashes to be inflicted on him in the severest manner, and confined him several days without permitting his wounds to be dressed,, so that his recovery from such a state of torture and laceration could hardly be expected. In a trial at law, after the rebellion, on an action of dam- ages brought by Wright against this magistrate, the innocence of the plaintiff appeared so manifest, even at a time when prejudice ran amaz- ingly high against persons accused of disloyalty, that the defendant was condemned to pay five hundred pounds to his prosecutor. Many other actions of damages on similar grounds would have been commenced, if the Parliament had not put a stop to such proceedings by an act of indemnity for all errors committed by magistrates from supposed zeal for the public service. A letter written in the French language, found in the pocket of Wright, was hastily considered a proof of guilt, though the letter was of a perfectly innocent nature." On one occasion Sir John Moore, on his march from Fermoy, entered the town of Clogheen, in Tipperary. The first sight which struck him was an unfortunate man tied up and undergoing the torment of the lash. The street was lined with country -folks on their knees. Sir John was informed that the high-sheriff, Sir Thomas Judkin Fitzgerald, was mak- ing great discoveries by flogging the truth out of many respectable per- sons. His plan, it appears, was " to flog each person till he told the truth." Sir John Moore was filled with intense disgust, both towards the sheriff and his infallible method of arriving at "the truth." It is almost unnecessary to add that the memory of this wretch is embalmed in the traditional hatred of the people of Tipperary ; so much so that a few years ago, when his grandson, under the pressure of some private misfortunes, committed suicide by tying a heavy stone round his neck and drowning himself, the rage of the peasantry would hardly suf- fer his remains to receive human, not to say Christian, burial. It was with the utmost difficulty that the unfortunate man's body finally found THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 53 a grave. It appears Sir Thomas's son also met with a violent death, and that his great-grandson hung himself by accident when showing some playmates how his grandfather used to hang the '• Croppies." Lord Edward Fitzgerald had been in concealment since the 12th of March. Towards the middle of May the bloodhounds of the Castle, headed by the notorious Major Sirr, were hot upon his track. On the night of the 17th he had a very narrow escape in Watling street, Dub- lin. A scuffle took place between Lord Edward's party and the myr- midons of Sirr. Sirr was pinioned by two of Lord Edward's attend- ants. One of them — Pat Gallagher — struck at him several times with a dagger, but Sirr was protected by a coat-of-mail worn beneath his uni- form. The major's was as much a hairbreadth escape as Lord Edward's. But on the 19th of May the fatal hour arrived : it was seven o'clock in the evening. Lord Edward was reposing on a bed in the house of a citizen named Murphy. The house was No. 153 Thomas street, Dublin. Murphy entered the room to ask him would he take a cup of tea. Lord Edward thanked him, and said he would after a while. They then chat- ted for some time on indifferent topics, when suddenly Murphy heard the trampling of feet upon the stairs. He turned round with a startled air and saw Major Swan at the door. According to Murphy, some person in a soldier's jacket, with a sword in his hand, was behind him. Mur- phy placed himself between Swan and the bed. Swan, however, looked over him, and saw Lord Edward. He then informs his lordship that he has a warrant against him and that resistance will be vain, assu- ring him at the same time that he will treat him with the greatest respect. Then Swan advances towards the bed, but, as he does so, Lord Edward springs up in an instant, snaps a pistol at him, which misses fire, then "like a tiger" (this is Murphy's expression) closes with him. Swan now puts his hand in his breast pocket, but Lord Edward, perceiving the motion, strikes at him with the dagger he has drawn from beneath the pillow, pinioning his hand to his breast. Swan loses three fingers and receives a superficial wound in the side, but man- ages in the struggle to fire his pistol and hit Lord Edward in the shoul- der. Lord Edward staggers and falls against the bed, but, rousing all his energies, immediately rallies, springs again upon his antagonist, and by a grand sudden effort flings him to the other side of the room. Swan 54 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. has already cried out, "Ryan, Ey an! I am basely murdered!" Captain Ryan lias heard these words while engaged in searching another part of the house ; so now he arrives on the scene of deadly conflict — deadly for him as for the heroic Geraldine. In the act of entering the room he aims his pistol, pulls the trigger, but misses fire. He next makes a lunge at Lord Edward with a sword-cane, as he is still engaged with Swan. The blade bends on Fitzgerald's ribs, affecting him so much for the moment that he throws himself on the bed. But when Ryan throws himself upon him, the scuffle becomes fiercer and more terrible. Lord Edward does fearful execution with his " awfully-constructed double-edged dagger." He inflicts wound after wound on Ryan to the number of four- teen, one of which lays open the lower part of his belly, so that his bowels are falling out. Lord Edward tries to make his way to the door, tramp- ling Ryan under his feet. The latter, however, clings to him with tena- cious death-grasp and impedes his endeavors to escape. According to the account of Captain Ryan's son, Mr. D. F. Ryan, of the excise in Lon- don, the captain's hands were at this stage of the ferocious struggle dis- abled, so that it was with his legs he clung round Lord Edward. But Major Sirr's account is somewhat different. " On my arrival," the major writes to Mr. D. F. Ryan, "in view of Lord Edward, Ryan and Swan, I beheld his lordship standing with a dagger in his hand, as if ready to plunge it into my friends, while dear Ryan, seated on the bottom step of the flight of the upper stairs, had Lord Edward grasped with both his arms by the legs or thighs, and Swan in a somewhat similar situa- tion, both laboring under the torment of their wounds, when, without hesitation, I fired at Lord Edward's dagger-arm, lodging several slugs in his shoulder, and the instrument of death fell to the ground. Having secured the titled prisoner, my first concern was for your dear father's safety. I viewed his intestines with grief and sorrow." Sirr up to this moment had been below with from two to three hun- dred men. and had been busy placing guards round the house to prevent the possibility of escape. When he came up the stairs he was accom- panied with a strong body of soldiers. In truth, it was hardly safe to ascend without them. Even after his dagger-arm was disabled, the indomitable Geraldine refused to give in. He made one desperate effort to burst through the guard of soldiers, but was at last overpowered and THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 55 rendered insensible by repeated blows. The whole struggle lasted little more than a minute. He was carried 'down stairs in a sheet taken off' the bed in which he lay. The soldiers brutally kicked him : a wretched drummer wounded him in the back of the neck. This wound was the source of exquisite torture to the noble patriot in his last moments. At the time of his capture he was already in bad health : he was suffering from an attack of cold, and was quite feverish. All the soldiers, however, were not so savage. When Sirr called upon them to follow him up stairs, one soldier exclaimed : " I fought by Lord Edward's side in America. He was a kind and brave officer, and by G — d I'll never assist in capturing him!" Sirr reported him to his commanding officer: he was shot next morning. In the biographies of Lord Edward the reader will find related in detail the sad sequel of this story; how calm Lord Edward became when he was brought to the castle, just as the fighting Swedish king, Charles XII., after his fierce combat against overwhelming numbers of Turks and Tartars in the house at Bender, became immediately all- smiling and serene ; how, when he was lodged in Newgate prison, the under-jailer having been heavily bribed, he enjoyed the last delight of one brief stolen interview with his young French wife, the gentle and lovely Pamela, illegitimate daughter of the duke of Orleans by the cel- ebrated Madame de Genlis, and half-sister to King Louis Philippe ; how the mean British viceroy and his meaner Irish advisers forced Lady Pamela Fitzgerald into exile while he was still lingering on his dungeon death- bed (but when did British statesmen show aught like magnanimity to a fallen foe, especially if that foe were Irish-?) ; how his wounds, which at first appeared not to show fatal symptoms, at last grew worse; how, when raging fever set in the night before his death, in his wild delirium he fancied himself again in that fierce grapple of life and death, and shouted to his imaginary foes, " Come on, damn you ! come on !" finally, how the base legislature after his death pursued both him and his with craven vindictiveness. They were so lost to all feeling of manhood as to pass a bill of attainder to rob his wife and children of all means of subsistence. Reynolds, the informer, was the chief " credible " witness examined on this occasion. Vainly Curran, at the bar of the House of 56 THE LIFE OF DANIEL OCONNELL. Commons, denounced him in accents of noble wrath, and pleaded with generous pathos for the hapless widow and orphans. " I have often," he said, " of late gone to the dungeon of the captive, but never have I gone to the grave of the dead to receive instructions for his defence, nor, in truth, have I ever before been at the trial of a dead man!" Cm-ran entered into an elaborate argument, contending that a posthumous attainder was at variance with the principles of British law ; was, in its nature, inhuman, impolitic and against all notions of equity. The close of his speech is one of the noblest outbursts of Irish eloquence: " One more topic you will permit me to add. Every act of the sort ought to have a practical morality flowing from its principles. If loy- alty and justice require that these infants should be deprived of bread, must it not be a violation of that principle to give them food or shelter ? Must not every loyal and just man wish to see them, in the words of the famous Golden Bull, ' always poor and necessitous, and for ever accompa- nied by the infamy of their father, languishing in continued indigence and finding their punishment in living and their relief in dying ' ? If the widowed mother should carry the orphan heir of her unfortunate husband to the gate of any man who might feel himself touched with the sad vicissitudes of human affairs, who might feel a compassionate reverence for the noble blood that flowed in his veins, nobler than the royalty that first ennobled it, that like a rich stream rose and ran till it hid its fountain, — if, remembering the many noble qualities of his unfor- tunate father, his heart melted over the calamities of the child, if his heart swelled, if his eyes overflowed, if his too precipitate hand were stretched out by his pity or his gratitude to the poor excommunicated sufferers, how could he justify the rebel tear or the traitorous humanity?" He then conjures them to reflect that the fact "of guilt or innocence, which must be the foundation of this bill, is not now, after the death of the party, capable of being tried, consistently with the liberty of a free people or the unalterable rules of eternal justice ; and that as to the for- feiture and the ignominy which it enacts, that only can be punishment which lights upon guilt, and that can be only vengeance which breaks upon innocence!" The death of Lord Edward was a terrible blow to the Irish cause. He was a brave and skilful soldier. In the British army he had been a THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 57 major, and had distinguished himself in the latter years of the Amer- ican war. No military leader of any great importance now remained to the "United Irishmen," at least in Ireland. Seeing what the insurgents were able to do even without leaders or discipline, it may be doubted whether, if Lord Edward had lived to place himself at their head, they might not have held out against the whole power of England, in spite of all the drawbacks that crippled their efforts, till France could come to the rescue with forces adequate to the task of securing Ireland's libera- tion. The intrepidity, which nerved Lord Edward in his desperate strug- gle against his captors, he showed all through life on every occasion cal- culated to call it forth. On the battle-field, in encounters in the lonely woods of America, where single-handed he fought against odds, in the Irish House of Commons, where he defied the rage of the venal majority, and in various other situations of difficulty, he braved alike hostile opin- ion or physical danger with fearless eye and soul. A trifling incident that occurred to him one evening, when he was riding home from the races at the Curragh of Kildare, in company with Arthur O'Connor, will serve to show his power of proper self-assertion. He was in the habit, at the time, of wearing a green cravat. A party of dragoon officers, who were also at the races, saw this symbol of disaffection round his neck, and determined to take it from him. As Lord Edward and his friend rode along side by side, the band of British champions galloped past, and then wheeled round and faced the two gentlemen. Thus, as it were, intercepted, Lord Edward, reining in his steed, asked the mean- ing of this unlooked-for impertinence. The spokesman of the British cavaliers at once made a demand that he should "doff" the rebel sym- bol, which offended them as British officers. " The uniform you wear," said Lord Edward in reply to their polite request, "would lead one to suppose that you are gentlemen ; your con- duct, however, conveys a very different impression. As to this neck- cloth that so offends you, all I can say is, here I stand ; let any man among you, who dares, come forward and take it off." Lord Edward could hardly say or do more than this to oblige them or meet their wishes halfway, but, singular to say, not a man of the British he- roes budged an inch forward. If they didn't exactly stand with their fin- gers in their mouths, at least their faces looked wondrous blank and foolish. 58 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. But if Lord Edward showed an anxiety to do ever}- thing in reason to make himself agreeable to those loyal cavaliers, his politeness was noth- ing to the obliging courtesy of Arthur O'Connor. This gentleman, desi- rous to gratify their love of fighting, which he thought only natural in military men, and believing the pistol to be the proper arbitrator in all such disputes, at once himself proposed that they should select two of their number. " Just select two," says he, " and my friend, Lord Edward, and myself will be most happy to meet them, and give them every sat- isfaction about the green cravat that gentlemen can desire." But all this polite compliance went for nothing. Instead of jumping with alacrity at Mr. O'Connor's amiable suggestion of "pistols for four and coffee for two," the British heroes suddenly felt their generous indig- nation at "the wearing of the green" cool down a bit. They felt their valor, like that of their countryman, Bob Acres, rapidly " oozing out, as it were, at the palms of their hands." The cravat, which smelt of sedition at least, if not " flat burglary," and irritated so dreadfully their loyal nervous systems, remained intact on Lord Edward's neck. In short, these paladins in embryo absolutely sneaked away just as if they were bullies or cowards, or both. The most imaginative of British bards could hardly sing of their retreat — "Oh, 'twas a glorious sight to see The march of English chivalry !" In fact, the ladies at the county ball, which was held in Kildare a short time after, seemed to regard them as actually bullies and pol- troons, for they all refused to dance with them. In almost every age of Irish history some one or other of the Ger- aldines has appeared in arms against British rule. Lord Edward was the representative Geraldine of his day. Indeed, he may be called the last genuine patriot of his house, though a feeble gleam of patriotic feeling is still now and then perceptible in the once glorious family of Leinster. Lord Henry Fitzgerald, an elder brother of Lord Edward, might justly claim the praise due to patriotism. But their eldest brother, William Robert, duke of Leinster, though amiable and liberal in his opinions, was weak and vacillating. Tet one incident in his life struck a terror as great, albeit absurd, into the hearts of the English people as the appear- ance of his brother Edward at the head of 100,000 " United Irishmen," THE LIFE OP DANIEL O'CONNELL. 59 in '98, could possibly have inspired. Though the occurrence may be a little out of place in this part of my narrative, yet, as a sort of relief to the terrible scenes with which I have crowded this chapter, I may be allowed to introduce it. During the glorious volunteer movement the duke was appointed commander of the Dublin volunteers. The cere- mony on the day of his assuming the command was conducted with the utmost pomp and military display. The artillery was drawn out in Col- lege Green, and multitudinous masses of spectators cheered enthusias- tically for the popular chief of the popular House of Leinster. While the triumphant shouts of the populace are still ringing through the air, the captain of an English collier chances to land on the Dublin quays. He hears the din, and quickly, with eyes and mouth all open, he asks those standing near, " What is the meaning of all this rejoicing?" "Oh!" quoth a wag, "they are crowning William Kobert, duke of Leinster, king of Ireland!" The poor skipper hastily concludes that, under such a revolutionary state of things, it would not be safe for him and his cargo to remain in Ireland. In a twinkling he hurries on board his ship again, weighs anchor, and makes sail for England as if pursued by Paul Jones or the devil himself. Once he finds himself safe in Liverpool, without losing a moment he makes an affidavit before the worshipful mayor that he saw the duke of Leinster crowned king of Ireland. An express forthwith conveys the startling intelligence to London. A cabinet council is sum- moned. The alarming news spreads like wildfire. The modern Babylon remains panic-stricken till the regular mail arrives, after which the por- tentous rumor is heard no more. We have seen that the testimony of Reynolds was used to furnish grounds for the posthumous bill of attainder. That wretch had been under the greatest obligations to the generosity of the noble Geraldine, yet he did not for a moment shrink from the odious task of helping to rob his benefactor's wife and children of their means of subsistence. His base ingratitude need not in the slightest degree excite our aston- ishment. The man, who is a traitor to his country, will be equally faith- less to his friends, if by his faithlessness he can promote his seeming self- interest. Indeed, this base ingratitude is one of the most salient charac- teristics of the informer tribe. We find the infamous Xaaie, the informer 60 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. of our own days, obliged to admit in cross-examination at one of the state prosecutions of '65, that he owed the possession of two situations • — his daily bread, in short — to the writer of these pages, whom he had just helped to consign to penal servitude under a sentence of twenty years. For long years the source, whence the English government derived their knowledge of Lord Edward's place of concealment, was a complete mystery. Some persons, altogether innocent, fell under the dishonoring suspicion of having disclosed the secret hiding-place. It was unchari- tably whispered by many that poor Murphy, who suffered imprisonment and was utterly ruined in consequence of his connection with Lord Ed- ward, was the traitor. Honest, rough, manly Samuel Neilson, who dined with him the very day on which he was captured, was by others sus- pected of having done this deed of perfidy. Time and research and the publication of certain letters and state papers, bearing on the events of '98, have at last brought the truth to light. The innocent Murphy and Neilson are cleared of all taint of suspicion, and the treachery is, to all appearance, brought home to the door of a sleek, respectable Catholic law- yer named Francis Magan. Dr. Madden and Mr. Fitzpatrick may claim a large share of whatever merit belongs to this discovery. The lan- guage of Dr. Madden in the following passage is somewhat cautious, if not exactly hesitating : "To those who may be disposed to follow up these efforts of mine to bring the villain's memory to justice, I would suggest : Let them not seek for the betrayer of Lord Edward Fitzgerald in the lower or middle classes of the society of ' United Irishmen ;' and per- haps, if they are to find the traitor a member of any of the learned profes- sions, it is not the medical one that has been disgraced by his connec- tion with it." In truth, there is little doubt that Francis Magan was the traitor. This gentleman enjoyed to the close of his life a snug pen- sion from the Castle government for his valuable services. The "Corn- wallis Correspondence" makes us aware of the fact that that other double-dyed monster of perfidy, Higgins, otherwise called "the sham squire," was made the channel through which the information, fatal to Lord Edward, reached the government. There were unhappily others besides Magan who, in those dark times, stood high in the confidence of the United Irishmen, while they were THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 61 secretly in the pay of the alien government, and who contrived to con- ceal their rascality to the very end of their lives. Such a one was Leon- ard MacNally, the barrister. We have already heard O'Connell tell a humorous anecdote, in which he and his son figure more comically than creditably. This man was associated Avith the illustrious Curran in the defence of most of the prisoners tried during the state prosecutions of those days. In fact, MacNally was himself a "United Irishman." Curran had boundless confidence in this arch-deceiver. Both were retained for the defence of Patrick Finney. On this occasion Curran could not refrain from impulsively throwing his arm round the rascal's neck and saying, with emotion, " My old and excellent friend, I have long known and respected the honesty of your heart, but never until this occasion was I acquainted with the extent of your abilities." W. H. Curran, in his excellent life of his father, talks of " the uncompromising and romantic fidelity " of friendship shown by MacNally to Curran for forty-three years. The elo- quent Charles Phillips refused to believe him a betrayer. When his guilt became known after his death, Curran's son was horrified. Such was the extreme good-nature or weakness of the latter that he refrained from bringing out a fresh edition of the biography of his father, in order to avoid hurting the feelings of MacNally' s family by the remarks which he should necessarily have to make on the old sinner, Leonard. Per- haps it is not so very wonderful that men were deceived by MacNally's specious semblance of patriotism. He constituted himself the cham- pion of the " United Irishmen " when Sir Jonah Barrington sneered at them, and actually fought their quarrel in a duel with that eccentric and exquisitely humorous knight. People on the patriot side, during Leon- ard's life, thought it a horrible grievance that the government would never give him a silk gown. His friend, Curran, when the Whigs came into power, used all his influence with the duke of Bedford to get him made a king's counsel. But His Grace, for some private reason, reso- lutely refused to call him to the inner bar. In 1807, General Sir Arthur Wellesley, after vvards the famous " Iron Duke " of Wellington, wrote the following letter to Mr. Trail, an officer of the Irish government : "I en- tirely agree with you respecting the employment of our informer. Such a measure would do much mischief. It would disgust the loyal of all descriptions ; at the same time it would render useless our private com- 62 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. munication with him, as no further trust would be placed in him by the disloyal " This letter is believed to have reference to MacNally. The following passage from a letter of Sir Arthur to Lord Hawkesbury, writ- ten in 1808, alsc throws a lurid light on the ghastly spy-system of those noble Britons, who, if you believe themselves, hate anything like a crooked or concealed policy, and are always manly and aboveboard in their dealings. It is curious to find the blunt and apparently straight- forward Arthur Wellesley busying himself in these dirty doings in the dark, and apparently such a proficient in the noble art of state "hugger- mugger." Here is the passage: " The extracts of the letters sent to you by Lord Grrenville were sent to us by , the Catholic crator, two months ago. The — mentioned is a man desirous of being em- ployed by the government as a spy, and his trade is that of a spy to all parties. He offered himself to Lord Fingal and others, as well as to me, and we now watch him closely." O'Connell, like so many others, was somewhat astonished when the fact of MacNally's guilt became publicly known. This took place after his death, in 1820, when, his family claiming the reversion of his reg- ular pension of £300 a year, Lord Wellesley demanded a statement of the terms on which it had been granted. Besides this regular pension, he received, according to the secret service papers, various other pay- ments. In 1803 he was Robert Emmet's counsel (such was the trust reposed in him), and on the 14th of September, a few days before the trial, it would appear from an entry that L. M. received £100 from the Castle. In the same year we find this government record: "Mr. Pol- lock for L. M., £1000." He visited Emmet in prison, and on the morn- ing of his death took leave of him, apparently with all the emotion and grief of a faithful friend. From MacJNTally's case, and others like it, O'Connell used to deduce arguments against secret societies. He used to say the MacNallys were not all dead yet. Doubtless this is more or less true. It cannot reasonably be denied that secret societies are ex- posed to the danger of informers, any more than that soldiers are liable to be shot in battle or seamen to go to " Davy Jones's locker." But this obvious fact does not make conspiracies, in some shape or form, one whit the less absolutely necessary to struggling nations under various conceiv- able circumstances. THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 63 The contrast between the manner in which the rebels and that in which the king's soldiery demeaned themselves towards females in '98 is very striking, and altogether in favor of the former. The Rev. Mr. Gor- don, a Protestant clergyman, though in no degree partial to the rebels or their cause, admits that they cannot with justice be accused of violating in any way the respect due to female honor. " In one point," he says, " I think we must allow some praise to the rebels. Amid all their atroci- ties, the chastity of the fair sex was respected. I have not been able to ascertain one instance to the contrary in the county of Wexford, though many beautiful young women were absolutely in their power." Indeed, without vouching for its accuracy, I have seen it stated in more places than one that some of the fair royalist ladies — " dames exuberant with tingling blood," to borrow Thomas Davis's expression — complained of the coldness and insensibility to female charms of the United Irishmen. In short, they are asserted to have accused " the Croppies " of want of gallantry. It is not possible in a brief and hasty sketch of the conspiracy of the " United Irishmen," like the present, to give the reader any adequate idea of the atrocious means by which the government succeeded in precipita- ting the insurrection. In the numerous works devoted expressly to the subject the reader will find ample details of the baleful arts of Pitt, Cas- tlereagh, Clare and the rest of the set, and notices of the vile instru- ments employed by these statesmen to aid in giving effect to their hell- ish schemes. I have been able to do little more than mention the names of Sir Thomas Judkin Fitzgerald, Hunter Gowan, and John Claudius Ber- esford, whose " riding-school " became famous or infamous for its scenes of rebel-torturing. Of these monsters of infernal cruelty it is enough to say (and the remark applies to many more of their contemporaries) that by their deeds they have consecrated their names to lasting infamy. Of one of the inhuman wretches of that day, however (Lieutenant Hempenstall), I shall say a few passing words. His cruelties are gro- tesque as well as horrible. Their strange aspect even makes them seem incredible, but they are sufficiently well authenticated. His name is somewhat in keeping with his pursuits and pastimes. He was a man of gigantic stature, and his great delight was to hang rebels over his shoulders. Hence he received the odd nickname of "the walking gal- lows." 64 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. It was the burning of his house and chapel by the cowardly yeo- manry, who, thinking the people had surrendered all their arms, had now commenced burning and destroying all around them, that drove Father John Murphy of Boolevogue, an accomplished and worthy priest, into rebellion, at the head of his persecuted flock. He had exerted him- self to the utmost to preserve peace and to oblige the people to surren- der their arms. But now he felt it his duty to tell his suffering flock, who crowded round him in the woods asking for advice, that it was bet- ter for them to die bravely in the field than be butchered in their houses. They all promised to follow him. Almost immediately he defeats the Camolin yeomanry. Their acting commander, Lieutenant Bookey, is killed. On the 27th of May he defeats Colonel Foote and the North Cork militia in the memorable combat of Oulart Hill. His skirmishers retire up the hill before the royalists, who are blown and disordered in the pur- suit. As the North Cork approach the summit of the hill, Father John and his merry men jump up from behind a ditch which serves them as an intrenchment. The North Cork fire a volley. Before they can reioad the insurgents dash forward and swarm round them. In a few minutes all is over. The persecuting North Cork are cut to pieces. None of them escape save Colonel Foote, a sergeant, a drummer and two privates. The different cavalry corps, who are mere helpless spectators of the fight, retreat precipitately — some to "Wexford, some to Gorey, some to Ennis- corthy. They commit atrocities of every kind on their retreat, shooting men and burning houses. The next victory gained by Father John was that of Enniscorthy on the 28th of May. After some hard fighting the town was left in the hands of the insurgents. Some additional royalist checks having followed, the garrison of Wexford became panic-stricken and abandoned the town, which was surrendered to the peasant army. Before the close of the month of May, the whole of the county Wexford was in open insurrection. The space at my disposal does not permit me to enter into any length- ened details regarding the events of this rebellion, or even to mention the names of all the combats that were fought. The battle of Tubberneering or Clough was a complete victory for the insurgents of the camp of Cor- rigrua. As they were marching towards Gorey they suddenly met the column of Colonel Walpole, who was on his way to attack their camp, THE LIFE OF DA.NIEL O'CONNELL. 65 This officer was completely surprised. The insurgents opened a heavy fire from the fields. Early in the action Walpole was shot through the head. His troops fled in great confusion, severely punished, and obliged to leave their three pieces of cannon in the hands of the rebels. The battle of New Eoss, fought on the 5th of June, was very obsti- nately contested. The insurgents, under Beauchamp Bagenal Harvey, a Protestant barrister and man of property, who had been elected com- mander-in-chief of the Wexford army, were anxious to drive General Johnson out of New Eoss, because then they would be in communica- tion with Kilkenny and Munster. They expected, in short, that a gen- eral rising of the south of Ireland would follow if they could win the town of New Eoss. Nothing could exceed the impetuosity and despera- tion of the rebel attack. The town was carried, the royal troops driven across the wooden bridge over the Barrow into Kilkenny. Unhappily, the Irish then began to drink, and soon hundreds were imbecile and be- sotted with liquor. Johnson rallies the troops and returns to the assault. After some fierce fighting he is once more master of the town, the out- skirts of which are now in flames, fired by the insurgents, as Enniscorthy had been on the 28th. Again, the rebels, having rallied, advance to the assault. Again the troops give way. The lost ground is regained by the Irish, but they repeat their folly, and are once more driven out. A third time their obstinate bravery penetrates to the heart of the town ; the firing continues till night-time, but at last, wanting officers to direct them, the main body of the insurgents are finally driven out, after an obsti- nate engagement of more than ten hours, leaving behind them some thou- sands of their comrades, hundreds of whom are put to the sword. Ac- cording to Sir Jonah Barrington, "more than five thousand were either killed or consumed in the conflagration." Such was the well-fought com- bat of New Eoss, which was lost mainly, if not solely, through the intox- ication of a large portion of the insurgents. A horrible deed — the burn- ing of the barn of Scullabogue — the same night, stained the noble cause of the insurgents. Some fugitives from New Eoss, headed by John Mur- phy of Loughgur, excited and maddened by the deeds of cold-blooded slaughter perpetrated both on that day and on other occasions by the royalists, deliberately set fire to the barn, containing about a hundred prisoners, and consumed it and its inmates by way of retaliation. Bar- 66 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. rington, Plowden, Mitchel and others prove clearly, by impartial testi- mony, that the rebels were induced to do this horrid deed solely by the circumstance "that they had received intelligence that the military were again putting all the rebel prisoners to death in the town of Eoss, as they had done at Dunlavin and Carnew." After the defeat of New Eoss, Bagenal Harvey, who was horrified and anguish-stricken at the massacre of Scullabogue, was deposed from his command, and Father Philip Eoche was elected in his stead. Harvey was an amiable and patriotic man — clever, too, but he wanted military talent and energy. He had sat up carousing the night before the bat- tle. Though personally brave, during the conflict he showed himself alike destitute of decision and mental resources. On the 9th of June twenty thousand insurgents, about five thousand of whom had guns of some sort or other, the rest being armed with pikes, with three pieces of cannon, commanded by Fathers John and Michael Murphy, attacked on all sides, at four o'clock in the evening, the king's forces in Arklow. These insurgents were the men who had totally de- feated the unfortunate Walpole's column at Tubberneering. This battle also was obstinately contested. General Needham, the king's general, was only prevented from retreating by his second in command, Skerrit. These officers, be it remarked here in passing, were both Irishmen. Both sides claim the victory. Sir Jonah Barrington terms the fight " a drawn battle." Miles Byrne says the insurgents won, but admits that they did not follow up their victory with vigor. Possibly their ardor was damped by the death of Father Michael Murphy, who fell as he was bravely leading them to the attack. The brave Esmond Eyan, who skil- fully directed the three pieces of rebel artillery, was wounded. Possibly, if they had possessed an energetic commander to lead them on to Dub- lin, it might have been all over with British rule in Ireland. Much has been said by the partisans of England of the cruelties per- petrated by the insurgents in W exford town while their short-lived repub- lic had sway there. These cruelties have been grossly exaggerated, but if all that has been asserted against them by their enemies were true, their crimes would not equal in number a third of those perpetrated by the English and the Orange Ascendency faction against the Irish people. The Eev. Mr. Gordon is inclined to set down the number of persons exe- THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 67 cuted without law in Wexford during the insurgent regime at one hun- dred and one. These were executed on the principle of retaliation. Mr. Mitchel justly remarks : " Probably ten times that number of innocent country-people had been, during the same three weeks, murdered in cold blood by the yeomanry." The insurgents of Wexford were distributed in several camps. The chief of these was that in the centre at Yinegar Hill, on the banks of the Slaney, at the foot of which eminence lies the town of Enniscorthy. Here Father Philip Eoche commanded. On the 21st of June the com- mander-in-chief of the royal forces, Lieutenant-general Lake, having concentrated from all quarters — Arklow, Boss and elsewhere — the differ- ent bodies of troops under Lieutenant-general Dundas, Major-generals Sir James Duff and Loftus, Johnson and Eustace, to the number of thirteen thousand men (he had deemed twenty thousand necessary), advanced to the attack of the rebel camp. Eustace and Johnson were to attack En- niscorthy ; the other columns were to ascend the hill. The rebels had a few pieces of half-disabled artillery. About two thousand were armed with firearms of one sort or another, but the vast majority had nothing better than pikes. Their supply of ammunition was scanty. In spite of these great disadvantages, they made a gallant stand. Even Sir Arch- ibald Alison, Tory and enemy of the Irish cause though he is, admits that they fought much better than could have been expected under the circumstances. Their leaders encouraged them by words, their women by cries. They gave the enemy back defiant shouts as they faced with de- spairing valor the storm of shot and shell that burst on the four sides of their position. Lake's horse was shot under him ; many of his officers were killed or wounded, some ran away or hid themselves. But, in spite of the intrepid front shown by the insurgents, the royal troops steadily mounted the hill. Their superior armament at length prevailed over the half-defenceless crowd of untrained peasants. The latter broke and abandoned their position. It was fortunate for them that the non-arri- val of General Needham's column at its appointed time left a space open in their rear. Owing to this " the insurgents were enabled to retreat to Wexford through a country where they could not be pursued by cavalry or cannon." In short, they suffered no punishment worth speaking of in the pursuit. 68 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. The battle of Vinegar Hill was the last engagement that took place of any great importance. On this occasion atrocities were committed on both sides. During the days preceding the battle the insurgents in the camp at Vinegar Hill, maddened at seeing the track of the royal col- umns everywhere marked by havoc, conflagration and ruin, shot or piked about eighty-four (some say more) of their prisoners. On the evening of the day of battle the royal troops, especially the Hessian mercenaries, committed fearful excesses in Enniscorthy, treating loyal- ists as badly as rebels. Their " most diabolicalact of this kind was the firing of a house which had been used as a hospital by the insurgents, in which numbers of sick and wounded, who were unable to escape from the flames, were burned to ashes." (MitcheVs Continuation.) The Eev- erend Mr. Gordon, however, states that he heard the burning was acci- dental. I have not space to enter into any details of the horrors that now took place. We have British breach of faith and British cruelty as of yore. We have our anti-Irish countrymen of the Ascendency faction emulating and outstripping the English in the race of atrocity. Of course we have occasional sanguinary reprisals by the rebels. The for- eign dragoons of General Ferdinand Hompesch are perhaps the most savage of all. These brutal Germans not merely ill-treat women, but occasionally shoot them. Such was the fate of a respectable lady of En- niscorthy, at her own window — one Mrs. Stringer. "The rebels (though her husband was a royalist) a short time after took some of those for- eign soldiers prisoners, and piked them all, as they told them, 'just to teach them hoiu to shoot ladies.'" [Mitchel.) The rebels are admitted by all authorities to have been guiltless of outrages against the fair sex. In those terrible days you might have seen along the roads dead men "with their skulls split asunder, their bowels ripped open and their throats cut across ;" dead women, around some of whom their surviving children were creeping and bewailing; dead children, too. In Gorey, one day, you might have seen the pigs devouring the bodies of nine men who had been hung the day before. Several others recently shot lay there, some still breathing. The Wexford insurgents held out for some time longer. Indeed, Dwyer and other outlaws braved the British government for years in \ THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 69 the mountain-fastnesses of Wicklow. I shall only, however, ere conclud- ing this notice of the Wexford outbreak, refer to one more notable skirmish, that of Bally ellis, in which " that infernal regiment " of cavalry, as Miles Byrne properly styles them, the Ancient Britons, were, by a just retribu- tion, cut to pieces to the last man. On the 29th of June the Irish, worn- out by constant marches and half starved, were on their march to Car- new. The Ancient Britons pursued them. " At Ballyellis, one mile from Carhew, the Ancient Britons, being in full gallop, charging, and as they thought driving all before them, to their great surprise were suddenly stopped by a barricade of cars thrown across the road, and at the same moment that the head of the column was thus stopped, the rear was attacked by a mass of pikemen, who sallied out from behind a wall, and completely shut up the road, as soon as the last of the cavalry had passed. The remains or ruins of an old deer-park wall, on the right- hand side of the road, ran along for about half a mile — in many parts it was not more than three or four feet high. All along the inside of this our gunsmen and pikemen were placed. On the left-hand side of the road there was an immense ditch, with swampy ground, which few horses coulcl be found to leap. In this advantageous situation for our men the battle began — the gunsmen, half covered, firing from behind the wall, whilst the English cavalry, though well mounted, could only make use of their carbines and pistols, for with their sabres they were unable to ward off the thrusts of our pikemen, who sallied out on them in the most determined manner. " Thus, in less than an hour, this infamous regiment, which had been the horror of the country, was slain to the last man, as well as the few yeoman cavalry who had the courage to take part in the action ; for all those who quit their horses and got into the fields were followed and piked on the marshy ground. The greater part of the numerous cavalry corps which accompanied the Ancient Britons kept on the rising ground, to the right side of the road, at some distance, during the battle, and as soon as the result of it was known they fled in the most cowardly way in every direction, both dismayed and disappointed that they had no opportunity on this memorable day of murdering the stragglers, as was their custom on such occasions. I say 'memorable,' for during the war no action Dccurred which made so great a sensation in the country. 70 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. But enough of this. Pitt undertook to mend the state of affairs, and in his famous speech, he said: "Among the great and known defects of Ireland, one of the most prominent features was its want of industry and of capital. How were those wants to be supplied but by blending more closely with Ireland the industry and capital of Great Britain ? " Of course he made his bid for the Catholics. The concessions they sought, he said, could not be made to the Catholics while Ireland remained a separate kingdom; but .the question of their emancipation could be agitated safely in an united imperial Parliament. When he argued that Irish dissensions and ignor- ance were to be put an end to by the union, he forgot to tell the English Commons that both were the creation of the British government. He admitted that the absenteeism sure to be caused or increased by the union might be some injury to Ireland ; but it would be more than com- pensated by the numerous advantages that would result from that bene- ficial measure. As for looking on the union as a means of subjecting Ireland to a foreign yoke, any such idea was monstrous. The two invin- cible nations were to be amalgamated on terms of the most perfect equality. It is needless to say that "the silent refutation of time" has overthrown this fabric of ingenious sophistry. After the experience of near seventy-two years of union, Ireland is almost the only country in Europe that has retrograded in prosperity. Mr Mitchel. giving a sum- mary of Pitt's great speech, says: "All this looks to-day like cruel and deadly irony. It was with the most severe gravity, however, that Mr. Pitt enumerated all the great blessings which would flow from the union to Ireland. If England was to benefit by it, he did not seem to be aware of that circumstance — did not think of it apparently at all ; so much absorbed was he by the generous thought of binding up the bleed- ing wounds of Ireland and whispering peace to her distracted spirit." That most brilliant and versatile Irishman, Richard Brinsley Sheri- dan, opposed the union strenuously in the English House of Commons. "Let no suspicion," said he, "be entertained that we gained our object by intimidation or corruption. Let our union be a union of affection and attachment, of plain dealing and free will. Let it be a union of mind and spirit as well as of interest and power. Let it not resemble THE LIFE OF DANIEL 0'CONNELL. 71 those Irish marriages which commenced in fraud and were consummated by force. Let us not commit a brutal rape on the independence of Ire- land, when, by tenderness of behavior, we may have her the wi-lling part- ner of our fate. The state of Ireland did not admit such a marriage. Her bans ought not to be published to the sound of the trumpet with an army of forty thousand men. She was not qualified for hymeneal rites, when the grave and the prison held so large a share of her pop- ulation." The furious Clare determined to repress the tumultuous rejoicings of the Dublin populace. He had the privy council hastily summoned to- gether, and impressed on them the necessity of making a salutary example in the usual government style. A party of soldiers silently sallied forth. They were commanded by a mere sergeant. They had no civil magis- trate along with them. They arrived in Capel street, where the populace were indulging in loud huzzas for their friends. There and then, with- out any reading of the Riot Act, without any tumult to justify the inter- ference o+* troops, without being attacked, these soldiers fired a volley of ball-cartridge into the crowd. A few were killed and wounded. Among the lulled were a woman and a boy. A man was shot dead at the feet of Mr. P. Hamilton, the king's proctor of the admiralty, who was merely amusing himself by looking on at the illumination and other signs of popular joy. This incident gives a fair specimen of the system of ter- ror adopted by the government to carry through the accursed Act of Union. The cold-blooded Castlereagh, however, chiefly relied on government patronage and corruption. Even felons in jails were promised pardon if they would consent to sign union petitions. Lord Cornwallis himself set out on an experimental tour through the parts of the country where the nobles and gentry were most likely to entertain him, and where he had the best chance of meeting corporations at public dinners. Ireland, in short, was canvassed. The memoirs of this viceroy prove that he was a willing instrument of intimidation and the vilest corruption. In his letters he sometimes feels, or affects to feel, scorn for the persons cor- rupted by him ; he even occasionally feels his toe itching to kick some nobleman at once rude and corrupt. He affects not to like his job ; still, he never shrinks from doing Pitt's dirtv work. He labors hard to pro- 72 HE LIFE OF DAjSLEL O'CONNELL. cure the fifty majority, without which that minister says the measure should not be pressed. This man, Cornwallis, has got an unmerited reputation with some for honor and humanity. Certainly, he somewhat relaxed the cruelties that had stained Camden's administration ; he does not seem to have been altogether destitute of a sense of justice. The Orangemen, indeed, because he showed any mercy at all to rebels, nick- named him " Croppy Corney." However, at best, he was, like nearly all his predecessors, when occasion required, a corrupter, if not himself corrupt — false, unscrupulous, tyrannical. The marquis of Downshire soon experienced this. Seeing the determination of the government to carry the union by any and every means, foul or fair, this nobleman, the venerable earl of Charlemont, and "William Brabazon Ponsonby, member for Kilkenny county, sent circulars abroad calling on the people to ex- press their sentiments on the question of the legislative union in peti- tions to Parliament. In consequence of this step, the marquis of Down- shire was at once dismissed from the government of his county and the colonelcy of the Koyal Downshire regiment of twelve hundred men ; his name, too, was erased from the list of privy councillors. In spite of all the efforts of the government, however, countless petitions poured in against the union — scarcely any for it. Protestants and Catholics indiscriminately signed the anti-union petitions. Most of the Orange- men, indeed, were for the union ; the grand master aud grand secretary, who were both members of Parliament, voted for it. I have already intimated that the government had succeeded in winning over to their side a large proportion of the Catholic aristocracy and clergy. Others were simply indifferent to the national cause. Mr. Plowden accounts for this by "the severities and indignities practiced upon them after the rebel- lion by many of the Orange party, and the offensive confusion in the use of the terms papist and rebel producing fresh soreness in the minds of many." Mr. Mitchel is not satisfied with this way of accounting for their union proclivities. He remarks very justly that if the Catholics did see some Orangemen in the national ranks, "they also saw there all their old and tried friends and advocates." Probably the true method of accounting for the course pursued in this crisis of the nation's destiny by the Catholic clergy and aristocracy is suggested to our minds by tbs following passages from the writings of Sir Jonah Barrington : THE LIFE OF DANIE^ O'CONNELL. 7$ " The viceroy knew mankind too well to dismiss the Catholics w th- Dut a comfortable conviction of their certain emancipation; he tinned to them the honest side of his countenance ; the priests bowed before the soldierly condescensions of a starred veteran. The titular arch- bishop was led to believe he would instantly become a real prelate, and, before the negotiation concluded, Dr. Troy was consecrated a decided unionist, and was directed to send pastoral letters to his colleagues to promote it." Again, Sir Jonah informs us that " some of the persons assuming to themselves the title of Catholic leaders sought an audience in order to inquire from Marquis Cornwallis, ' What would be the advantage to the Catholics if an union should happen to be effected in Ireland ?■' "Mr. Bellew (brother to Sir Patrick Bellew), Mr. Lynch, and some others, had several audiences with the viceroy; the Catholic bishops were generally deceived into the most disgusting subservience ; rewards were not withheld ; Mr. Bellew was to be appointed a county judge, but that being found impracticable, he got a secret pension, which he has now enjoyed for thirty- two years." But all the Catholics of position and intelligence were not weak and base enough to yield to these insidious and soul-corrupting influences. ¥ov example, the trading and commercial class of Catholics in Dublin were violently hostile to the bare idea of the union. On the 13th of January, 1800, a meeting of the Catholic citizens of Dublin was held in the hall of the Royal Exchange to protest against the union. This meet- ing is memorable as being the occasion on which Daniel O'Connell com- menced his political career. On this day he delivered his first speech at a public meeting. I shall presently give the speech in full, because it is specially interesting to mark how his sentiments in the opening scenes of his public life entirely correspond with his most cherished opinions at life's close. As his last and greatest movement was the repeal "agitation," so this his earliest effort was to save the legislative independence of his coun- try. His son tells us that this meeting in 1800 was mainly " got up by his efforts." His friends, including his uncle Maurice, were all opposed to his putting himself forward in any public struggle. It was difficult for a lawyer at that time to rise in his profession unless he were willing to be the parasite and the slave of the government. O'Connell saw clearly 74 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. enough that strong reasons existed which counselled him to keep himself out of political strife ; and that, by engaging in the turmoil of politics, he would expose himself to many disadvantages and obstacles, if not absolute dangers. But, at the same time, he saw just as clearly that a crisis in the affairs of his country and his co-religionists had arrived, when, if he were a true Irishman, all mere prudential considerations should be flung to the winds, and his only course should be to step Doldly into the arena. The "natural leaders" of the Catholics, as they were styled, hung back timidly, or they were bribed or deluded into a short-sighted acquiescence in the fatal measure. The bulk of the Cath- olics, though sound in their views on the vital question of legislative independence, were unaccustomed to act in concert. It was absolutely necessary, then, that some one should come forward and show them the way to maintain the reputation and the independence of the Catholic body. Fortunately, the requisite man for the hour was there to do his duty. Fortunately, too, that' man was the promising young barrister Daniel O'Connell. The first impulse of the tyrannical Clare was to prevent the meet- ing by that military violence which was still of every-day occurrence, although the alleged necessity for it had ceased with the extinction, more than a year previously, of the last embers of the civil war. How- ever, it was finally resolved to suffer the meeting to proceed. Still, in the early part of the proceedings, a panic was created by the arriva] of Major Sirr at the head of a band of soldiers. The rumor of the medi- tated interference on the part of government had already got abroad. When, then, the measured tramp of the soldiery was heard, and the red uniforms became visible under the portico of the Exchange, which faces Parliament street, when they halted suddenly and brought their mus- kets to the flag-stones with a clash, a sensible diminution took place on the outskiits of the meeting, However, the exertions and exhortations of O'Connell and other gentlemen present rallied the crowd, so that the main body of the assemblage stood firm. O'Connell then advanced to parley with the redoubtable Sirr. "Let me see the resolutions," demanded that sinister-looking fund' tionary. " Here they are," said the chairman, Mr. Ambrose Moore. THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 75 The major scrutinized them closely. At last, evidently disappointed at the peace and good order and readiness to submit to law which cha- racterized the meeting, the baffled major threw down the resolutions and growled forth, " There is no harm in them." Reluctantly he suffered the meeting to proceed, and took himself and his myrmidons off. Then Counsellor O'Connell rose, and in the following short speem introduced the resolutions. He said "that the question of the union was confessedly one of the first magnitude and importance. Sunk, indeed, in more than criminal apathy must that Irishman be who could feel indifference on the subject. It was a measure to the consideration of which we were called by every illumination of the understanding and every feeling of the heart. There was, therefore, no necessity to apolo- gize for the introducing the discussion of the question amongst Irish- men ; but before he brought forward any resolution he craved permis- sion to make a few observations on the causes which produced the neces- sity of meeting as Cathodes — as a separate and distinct body. In doing so, he thought he would clearly show that they were justifiable in at length deviating from a resolution which they had hitherto formed. The enlightened mind of the Catholics had taught them the impolicy, the illiberality and the injustice of separating themselves on any occasion from the rest of the people of Ireland. The Catholics had therefore more than once resolved — and they had wisely resolved — under the cir- cumstances of the present day and the systematic calumnies flung at the Catholic character, never more to appear before the public in political discussion as a mere sect — as a distinct and separate body ; but they did not, they could not, then foresee the unfortunately existing circum- stances of this moment. They could not then foresee that they would be reduced to the necessity either of submitting to the disgraceful imputa- tion of approving of a measure as detestable to them as it was ruinous to their country, or once again, and he trusted for the last time, of com- ing forward as a distinct body. " This resolution which they had entered into gave rise to an exten- sive and injurious misrepresentation, and it was daringly asserted by the advocates of the union — daringly and insolently asserted — that the Ro- man Catholics of Ireland were friends to the measure of union, and silent allies to that conspiracy formed against the name, the interests and the 76 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. liberties of Ireland. This libel on the Catholic character was strength- ened by the partial declarations of some mean and degenerate members of the communion, wrought upon by corruption or by fear, and, unfortu- nately, it was received with a too general credulity. " There was no man present but was acquainted with the industry with which it was circulated that the Catholics were favorable to the union, a measure which would annihilate the name of their country. In vain did multitudes of that body, in different capacities, express their disapprobation of the measure. In vain did they concur with others of their fellow-subjects in expressing their abhorrence of it, as freemen or freeholders, electors of counties or inhabitants of cities; still, the cal- umny was repeated. It was printed in journal after journal; it was published in union pamphlet after pamphlet ; it was uttered in speech after speech; it was circulated with activity in private companies; it was boldly and loudly proclaimed in public assemblies. How this clam- or was raised and how it was supported was manifest — the motives of it were apparent. "In vain had the Catholics (individually) endeavored to resist the torrent. Their future efforts, as individuals, would be equally vain and fruitless ; they must oppose it collectively. " In the speeches and pamphlets of anti-unionists it was rather admit- ted than denied, so that at length the Catholics themselves were obliged to break through the resolution which they had formed, in order to guard against misrepresentation, for the purpose of repelling this worst of mis- representations. To refute a calumny directed against them as a sect, they were obliged to come forward as a sect, and in the face of their country to disavow the base conduct imputed to them, and to declare that the assertion of their being favorably inclined to the measure of a legislative incorporation with Great Britain was a slander the most vile — a libel the most false, scandalous and wicked — that ever was directed against the character of an individual or a people. " There was another reason why they should come forward as a dis- tinct class — a reason which he confessed had made the greatest impres- sion upon his feelings. Not content with falsely asserting that the Catholics favored the extinction of Ireland, this their supposed inclina- tion was attributed to the foulest motives — motives which were most THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 77 repugnant to their judgments and most abhorrent to their hearts. It was said that the Catholics were ready to sell their country for a price or, what was still more depraved, to abandon it, on account of the unfor- tunate animosities which the wretched temper of the times had pro- duced. Can they remain silent under so horrible a calumny? This calumny was flung on the whole body — it was incumbent on the whole body to come forward and contradict it ; yes, they will show every friend of Ireland that the Catholics are incapable of selling their country ; they will loudly declare that if their emancipation were offered for their con- sent to the measure — even were emancipation after the union a benefit — they would reject it with prompt indignation." [Tins sentiment, we are told, met with approbation.) "Let us show to Ireland that we have nothing in view but her good ; nothing in our hearts but the desire of mutual forgiveness, mutual toleration and mutual affection; in fine, let every man who feels with me proclaim, that, if the alternative were offered him of union, or the re-enactment of the penal code in all its pristine horrors, he would prefer without hesitation the latter as the lesser and more sufferable evil ; that he would boldly meet a proscrip- tion and oppression which would be the testimonies of our virtues ; that he would rather confide in the justice of his brethren, the Protestants of Ireland, who have already liberated him, than lay his country at the feet of foreigners*" [This sentiment, John O'Connell assures us, was met with much and marked approbation.) "Yes, I know — I do know, that although exclusive advantages may be ambiguously held forth to the Irish Catholic, to seduce him from the sacred duty which he owes his country, I know that the Catholics of Ireland still remember that they have a country, and that they will never accept of any advantages as a sect which would debase and destroy them as & people." In conclusion, he observed that, "with regard to the union, so much had been said, so much had been written on the subject, that it was impossible any man should not before now have formed an opinion of it. He would not trespass on their attention in repeating arguments which they had already heard, and topics which they had already considered ; but if there was any man present who could be so far mentally degraded as to consent to the extinction of the liberty, the constitution, and even the name of Ireland, he would call on him not to leave the direction and 78 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. management of his commerce and property to strangers, over whom he could have no control.' 7 He then moved the following resolutions, which being seconded, passed unanimously. John O'Connell tells us that these resolutions were drawn up by O'Connell himself. On this account, and because this was his first public meeting, I give them in full; though, I must remark, that elsewhere it is stated that these resolutions were drawn up by the celebrated John Philpot Curran. Be this as it may, here they are : "Royal Exchange, Dublin, January 13, 1800. " At a numerous and respectable meeting of the Roman Catholics of the city of Dublin, convened pursuant to public notice, Ambrose Moore, Esq., in the chair — "Resolved, That we are of opinion that the proposed incorporate union of the legislature of Great Britain and Ireland is, in fact, an extinction of the liberty of this country, which would be reduced to the abject con- dition of a province, surrendered to the mercy of the minister and legis- lature of another country, to be bound by their absolute will and taxed at their pleasure by laws in the making of which this country would have no efficient participation whatsoever. "Resolved, That we are of opinion that the improvement of Ireland for the last twenty years, so rapid beyond example, is to be ascribed wholly to the independency of our legislature, so gloriously asserted in the year 1782, by virtue of our Parliament co-operating with the generous recom- mendation of our most gracious and benevolent sovereign, and backed by the spirit of our people, and so solemnly ratified by both kingdoms as the only true and permanent foundation of Irish prosperity and Brit- ish connection. "Resolved, That we are of opinion that if that independency should ever be surrendered, we must as rapidly relapse into our former depres- sion and misery, and that Ireland must inevitably lose, with her liberty, all that she has acquired in wealth and industry and civilization. "Resolved, That we are firmly convinced that the supposed advantages of such a surrender are unreal and delusive, and can never arise in fact ; and that even if they should arise, they would be only the bounty of the master to the slave, held by his courtesy, and resumable at his pleasure. "Resolved, That, having heretofore determined not to come forward any THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 79 more in the distinct character of Catholics, but to consider our claims and our cause not as those of a sect, but as involved in the general fate of our country, we now think it right, notwithstanding such determina- tion, to publish the present resolutions, in order to undeceive our fellow- subjects, who may have been led to believe, by a false representation, that we are capable of giving any concurrence whatsoever to so foul and fatal a project; to assure them that we are incapable of sacrificing our common country to either pique or pretension ; and that we are of opinion that this deadly attack upon the nation is the great call of na- ture, of country and posterity upon Irishmen of all descriptions and per- suasions, to every constitutional and legal resistance ; and that we sa- credly pledge ourselves to persevere in obedience to that call as long sis we have life. "Signed, by order, James Ryan, Sec." When these resolutions had passed unanimously, the meeting broke up. Such was Daniel O'Connell's first appearance in public as a polit- ical orator and a patriot. It would appear from a statement made by Mr. Daunt that O'Connell never wrote a speech beforehand. Of this his maiden speech, however, he wrote the heads, a mode of preparation not unusual with him during the subsequent part of his oratorical career. After the close of the anti-union meeting he gave a full report of his first speech to the " Dublin Evening Post." O'Connell used to contrast his natural embarrassment in delivering this maiden effort of his faculty for swaying popular masses by eloquence with the matchless ease and self- possession which constant practice in public speaking and long expe- rience of the varying tempers of audiences bestowed upon him later in life. " My face," he would say, " glowed and my ears tingled at the sound of my own voice, but I got more courage as I went on." O'Con- nell also declared repeatedly that this maiden speech of his, denouncing as it did the accursed Act of Union, should be looked on as the text- book of his entire political life. Here is his own account of the state of his feelings in 1800, while the struggle for and against the union was raging: "The year of the union I was travelling through the mountain-district from Killarney to Kenmare ; my heart was heavy at the loss that Ireland had sustained, and 80 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. the day was wild and gloomy. That desert district, too, was congenial to impressions of solemnity and sadness. There was not a human hab- itation to be seen for many miles; black, giant clouds sailed slowly through the sky and rested on the tops of the huge mountains : my soul felt dreary, and I had many wild and Ossianic inspirations as I traversed the bleak solitudes. " It was the union that first stirred me up to come forward in politics. My uncle Maurice was scarcely pleased at my taking a public part; not that he approved of the union, but politics appeared to him to be fraught with great peril ; and he would have preferred my appearing on some question which would, in his opinion, have more directly concerned the Catholics." Mr. Daunt asked O'Connell if he was in Dublin when the union passed ? "Yes," O'Connell answered, "but there was less excitement than you would imagine ; the hatred which all classes (except the small gov- ernment clique) bore to the measure had settled down into sulky despondency. I was maddened when I heard the bells of St. Patrick's ringing out a joyful peal for Ireland's degradation, as if it was a glorious national festival. My blood boiled, and I vowed, on that morning, that the foul dishonor should not last if I could ever put an end to it." But this is anticipating. It is necessary that I should complete my sketch of the passing of the fatal act. During the whole of the year '99, the government made superhuman efforts to purchase a majority in Parliament and to intimidate the nation. Some members were directly -bought ; others, for a consideration, accepted the escheatorships of Mun- ster, Leinster or Connaught. These (somewhat analogous to the stew- ardships of the Chiltern Hundreds in England) were nominal offices with salaries of forty shillings, on acceptance of which members should necessarily vacate their seats. The government would immediately fill the vacant seats with their partisans. Under-secretary Cooke was the immediate agent of corruption for Cornwallis and Castlereagh. Indeed, Castlereagh himself boldly and openly declared his determination to carry the measure by bribery, or, as he styled it, compensation for losses. To every nobleman who would return union members to Parliament he promised fifteen thousand pounds. Every member purchasing a seat THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 81 was promised repayment of the purchase-money out of the Irish treasury. To all members of Parliament or others who should be losers by the union a full recompense for their losses was promised. One million five hundred thousand pounds were to be appropriated for this purpose. This sum, however, represents but a small portion of the bribery. O'Connell, in his grand speech in favor of repeal, delivered in the Dublin corpora- tion early in 1843, estimates the bribes paid out of the secret service- money at more than one million sterling. About forty new peerages were conferred as bribes. Eight thousand pounds, or an office worth two thousand pounds fer annum, was the price of a vote. Ten bishop- rics, one chief-justiceship, six puisne-judgeships, besides regiments and ships to officers of the army and navy, were given away. The amount of all this in money has been estimated at five million pounds. By means of these bribes, men who had made the most ostentatious display of patriotism at the banquet of one hundred and ten patriotic members, held at the close of the session of 1799 — men who had there spouted forth the most vehement patriotism, given strong anti-union toasts, vowed before God and man "war to the knife" against so pestilent a measure, sung anti-union songs of their own composition, — by means of these bribes, I say, certain noisy patriots of '99 were brought round to admit in 1800 the superior force of the minister's reasoning, and to sing songs in favor of the union. Just such a patriot was Mr. William Hand- cock, the member for Athlone. He received a large money-bribe. "But," says Barrington, "still he held out until title was added to the bribe ; his own conscience was not strong enough to resist the charge ; the vanity of his family lusted for nobility. He wavered, but he yielded ; his vows, his declaration, his song, all vanished before vanity, and the year 1800 saw Mr. Handcock of Athlone, Lprd Castlemaine." The strength of the opposition was the more easily undermined by the government from the heterogeneous nature of the elements composing it. Side by side in the ranks of the anti-unionists were reformers and enemies of reform; Catholic emancipationists and foes of the Catholic cause, even rabid Orangemen. Then men, who had hitherto supported the measures of the court, were now obliged reluctantly to submit to the leadership of the knot of talented men who had ever been hostile to the Castle. 82 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. Violent means of intimidation were also resorted to by the govern- ment. In Birr a meeting of magistrates and people was dispersed by military force. A column of troops, with four pieces of cannon in front and matches lighted, approached the session-house where the meeting was held, prepared to attack it. Major Rogers, the commander of the troops, said that he waited but for one word from the sheriff that he might blow them to atoms. Many other meetings were prevented by simple "dread of grape-shot." Anti-union addresses were stigmatized by the hireling scribes of the government faction as seditious and dis- loyal, " while," as Sir Jonah Barrington tells us, "those of the compelled, the bribed and the culprit were printed and circulated by every means that the treasury and the influence of the government could effect." Yet, in spite of all the terrorism that prevailed, seven hundred thou- sand persons petitioned against union ; and all the seductions of the government could only persuade three thousand to sign petitions in favor of the measure, and of these three thousand, most were govern- ment officials or prisoners in the jails. At a dinner-party at Lord Castlereagh's house, in Merrion Square, Dub- lin, about twenty Irish members of Parliament, of what were then termed "righting families," were brought together. The dinner was exquisite. The choicest vintages of Champagne and Madeira sparkled on the table. After dinner, when the guests had become sufficiently exhilarated, and many loyal and joyous toasts had been sent round amid great mirth and flashes of jo- vial wit and humor, the convivial but at the same time astute and polished Sir John Blaquiere (afterwards, for his services in helping to carry the union, Lord de Blaquiere) proposed " a gentlemanly, convivial, fighting conspiracy," as Barrington terms it, of unionist members, to be always- on hand during the ensuing session, equally ready to make a House or to fasten a quarrel, should it seem expedient to do so, on any obnoxious member of the opposition. After affecting " some coquetry, lest this idea should seem to have originated with him," Lord Castlereagh assented to the strange proposal. Immediately "one of his lordship's prepared accessories (as if it were a new thought) proposed, humor- ously, to have a dinner for twenty or thirty every day in one of the committee chambers, where they could be always at hand to make up a House, or for any emergency which should call for an unexpected rein- THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 83 forcement during any part of the discussion." This novel idea, so whim- sical and humorous, was eagerly embraced. "Wit and puns began to accompany the bottle." Under-secretary Cooke, with nods and smirks, began to hint at lucrative official rewards for all the company. " Sir John Blaquiere pleasantly observed that, at all events, they would be sure of a good Cook at their dinners. After much wit and many flashes of convivial bravery, the meeting separated after midnight, fully resolved to eat, drink, speak and fight for Lord Castlereagh." (Barrington.) The preparations of the government for the coming struggle might now be deemed complete. The last session of the Irish Parliament began on the 15th of Jan- uary, 1800. ]So reference was made to the union in the viceroy's speech. Sir Lawrence Parsons, after a powerful oration, moved an amendment to the address declaratory of the resolution of Parliament to preserve the settlement of '82 and maintain the independence of Ireland. Lord Cas- tlereagh commenced the bullying system, and spoke contemptuously of the arguments of Sir Lawrence. A fierce debate followed, in which Pon- sonby, Bushe and Plunket distinguished themselves on the patriot side. Mr. Egan was speaking warmly against the union, when a whisper began to run through the House. The name of Grattan, who, since his seces- sion from Parliament, had been an invalid and most of the time away from Ireland trying to recruit his broken health, was mentioned. But an expression of incredulity was visible on the faces of nearly all who were present. The ministerialists even smiled derisively. Presently, Mr. George Ponsonby and Arthur Moore stood up, and left the House. Suddenly, along College Green a tremendous shout arose; an instant after it was taken up within the walls of the Parliament House, and rang through the corridors. The doors of the chamber of the Commons are flung wide open. The inspired countenance of Henry Grattan is seen once more. His emaciated form and his eye, kindling preternat- urally as he surveys the theatre of his former glory on the eve of being closed for ever, give him an unearthly aspect. As he totters feebly for- ward towards the table, supported by Ponsonby and Moore, the whole House rises respectfully; cheer follows cheer. There are tears in the eyes of many. Even the ministerialists feel themselves compelled to do him honor. Castlereagh himself, cold as he usually is, rises at the head 84 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. of the whole treasury bench, bows with stately courtesy, and remains standing till Grattan has taken the oaths and his seat. Grattan had just been returned, almost against his will, for the close borough of Wicklow, which belonged to Mr. Tighe. When the vacancy occurred, the government withheld the writ as long as possible, in order to keep Grattan out of Parliament till the discussion should be past. In fact, it was only on the day of the opening of the session that the writ reached the returning officer. Through the exertions of Grattan' s friends the election was held at once. Their energy was such that voters enough were got together to return him before midnight. The return reached Dublin by 5 o'clock in the morning. Friends of Grattan has- tened to the house of the proper officer ; he was forced out of bed and made to present the writ to Parliament before seven, while the fierce debate on the union was still going on. Meanwhile, Mr. Tighe had ridden from Wicklow to Dublin, and called at Grattan' s house in Baggot street. ""Will they not let me die in peace?" Grattan exclaimed when he heard of Mr. Tighe' s arrival. But his brave-hearted wife tells him at once that "he must get up immediately and go down to the House." In his old volunteer uniform, with a brace of loaded pistols in his pocket, he is borne to the House in a sedan chair. His wife looks anxiously after him. When a friend assures her that, in the event of a personal quarrel with the bravoes of the Castle, others would take the part of Grattan, she stoutly replies, like a true Geraldine, "My husband cannot die better than in the defence of his country." Bully Egan makes no attempt to resume his harangue. Willingly he gives way to the great orator. And now that he is about "To thunder again those iron words that thrill like the clash of spears," Grattan feels the glow of his former energy reviving within his wearied heart and wasted frame. A smile brightens his face. Still, when he attempts to rise, he finds himself unable to stand at first ; he is obliged to ask permission to speak sitting. His soul, rising supreme over his bodily frailty, soon bears him rushing along into the full swing, tide and tempest, so to speak, of his grandest oratory. For two hours his eloquence blazes before the House with unprecedented fire and splendor : THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. 35 " Sir, the gentleman who spoke last but one (Mr. Fox) has spoken the pamphlet of the English minister (Pitt) — I answer that minister. He has published two celebrated productions, m both of which he declares his intolerance of the constitution of Ireland. He concurs with the men whom he has hanged in thinking the constitution a grievance, and differs from them in the remedy only ; they proposing to substitute a republic, and he proposing to substitute the yoke of the British Par- liament — the one turns rebel to the king, the minister a rebel to the constitution. ... " I will put this question to my country. I will suppose her at the bar, and I will ask her : Will you fight for a union as you would for a constitution ? Will you fight for that Lords and that Commons who, in the last century, took away your trade, and in the present your constitution, as for that King, Lords and Commons who have restored both ? Well, the minister has destroyed this constitution; to destroy is easy; the edifices of the mind, like the fabrics of marble, require an age to build, but ask only minutes to precipitate ; and as the fall of both is an effort of no time, so neither is it a business of any strength ; a pickaxe and a common laborer will do the one — a little lawyer, a little pimp, a wicked minister the other. "The constitution, which, with more or less violence, has been the inheritance of this country for six hundred years; that modus tenendi parliamentum {method of holding 'parliament), which lasted and out- lasted of Plantagenet the wars, of Tudor the violence, and of Stuart the systematic falsehood ; the condition of our connection — yes, the consti- tution he destroys is one of the pillars of the British Empire. He may walk round it and round it, and the more he contemplates the more must he admire ; such a one as had cost England of money millions and of blood a deluge, cheaply and nobly expended ; whose restoration had cost Ireland her noblest efforts, and was the habitation of her loyalty— we are accustomed to behold the kings of these countries in the keeping of Parliament — I say of her loyalty as well as of her liberty, where she had hung up the sword of the volunteer — her temple of fame as well as of freedom — where she had seated herself, as she vainly thought, in modest security and in a long repose. "I have done with the pile which the minister batters; I come to 86 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. the Babel which he builds; and as he throws down without a principle, so does he construct without a foundation. This fabric he calls a union, and to this his fabric there are two striking objections: fbst, it is no union — it is not an identification of people, for it excludes the Catholics ; secondly, it is a consolidation of the Irish legislatures — that is to say, a merger of the Irish Parliament, and incurs every objection to a union, without obtaining the only object which a union professes — it is an extinction of the constitution and an exclusion of the people. Well, he has overlooked the people as he has overlooked the sea. I say he excludes the Catholics and he destroys their best chance of admission — the relative consequence. Thus he reasons : That hereafter, in a course of time (he does not say when), if they behave themselves (he does not say how), they may see their subjects submitted to a course of discussion (he does not say with what result or determination) ; and as the ground for this inane period, in which he promises nothing, and in which, if he did promise much, at so remote a period he could perform nothing, unless he, like the evil he has accomplished, be immortal — for this inane sentence, in which he can scarcely be said to deceive the Catholic, or suffer the Catholic to deceive himself, he exhibits no other ground than the physical inanity of the Catholic body accomplished by a union, which, as it destroys the relative importance of Ireland, so it destroys the relative proportion of the Catholic inhabitants, and thus they become admissible because they cease to be anything. Hence, according to him, their brilliant expectation. 'You were,' say his advocates, and so im- ports his argument, ' before the union as three to one ; you will be by the union as one to four.' Thus he founds their hopes of political power on the extinction of physical consequence, and makes the inanity of their body and the nonenity of their country the pillars of their future ambition. . . . "The minister has not done with bribes; whatever economy he shows in argument, here he has been generous in the extreme. Parson, priest (I think one of his advocates hints the Presbyterians) are not for- gotten ; and now the mercantile body are all to be bribed, that all may be ruined. He holds out commercial benefits for political annihilation ; he offers you an abundance of capital, but first he taxes it away ; he takes away a great portion of the landed capital of the country by the necessary THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 87 operation of union ; he will give you, however, commercial capital in its place ; but first he will give you taxes. It seems it is only necessary to break the barriers of liberty and the tides of commerce will flow in of course; take away her rival in landed capital, and then commercial capital advances without fear. Commerce only wants weight — i. e., taxes — it seems, in order to run with new spirit. He not only finds commerce in the retreat of landed capital, but he finds corn also. His whole speech is a course of surprises ; the growth of excision, the resource of incumbrance and harvests sown and gathered by the absence of the pro- prietors of the soil and of their property. All these things are to come. When ? He does not tell you. Where ? He does not tell you. You take his word for all this. I have heard of a banker's bill of exchange, Bank of England's notes, Bank of Ireland's notes, but a prophet's prom- issory note is a new traffic ; all he gets from Ireland is our solid loss ; all he promises are visionary, distant and prophetic advantages. He sees — I do not — British merchants and British capital sailing to the prov- inces of Connaught and Munster ; there they settle in great multitudes, themselves and families. He mentions not what description of manu- facturers — who from Birmingham, who from Manchester; no matter, he cares not ; he goes on asserting, and asserting with great ease to him- self, and without any obligation to fact. Imagination is the region in which he delights to disport; where he is to take your Parliament, where he is to take away your final judicature, where he is to increase your tases, where he is to get an Irish tribute, there he is a plain, direct, matter-of-fact man ; but where he is to pay you for all this, there he is poetic and prophetic ; no longer a financier, but an inspired accountant. Fancy gives her wand ; Amalthea takes him by the hand ; Ceres is in her train. . . . "He (the minister) proposes to you to substitute the British Parlia- ment in your place, to destroy the body that restored your liberties, and to restore that body which destroyed them. Against such a proposition, were I expiring on the floor, I should beg to utter my last breath and record my dying testimony." But all this eloquence was unavailing. The ministers, indeed, became savage, and Castlereagh incited one of the Castle bravoes, Isaac Corry, to make a truculent attack on Grattan, which he was too much exhausted 88 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. by his unwonted exertions to notice on that occasion. The government defeated the motion of Sir Lawrence Parsons by a bribed majority of forty-two. Even Plowden, a decided unionist, admits the profligate means by which this majority was obtained, and that the minister had but slender grounds for triumphing in it ; also that it was far from rep- resenting " the genuine sense of the independent part of that House and of the people of Ireland." In the Lords, about the same time, Clare spoke that able and celebrated, but unscrupulous, libel on his country- men, to which Grattan afterwards wrote an answer. " His idea," said G-rattan, " was to make the Irish history a calumny against their ances- tors, in order to disfranchise their posterity." On the 5th of February Grattan ably argued against the union on constitutional grounds, giving copious quotations from the greatest writers on political science and government and jurisprudence, in support of his opinion that Parliament was incompetent to pass such an act. He says, prophetically, " The project of union appears to me to be noth- ing less than the surrender of the constitution. It reduces the Commons of Ireland to one-third, leaving the Parliament of England their present proportion ; it reduces the Commons of Ireland, I say, to one-third ; it transfers that third to another country, where it is merged and lost in the superior numbers of another Parliament. He strikes off two-thirds, and makes the remaining English. Those Irish members residing in England will be nominally Irish representatives, but they will cease to be Irishmen. They will find England the seat of their abode, of their action, of their character, and will find, therefore, the great principles of action — namely, sympathy and fame — influencing them no longer in favor of their own country, but prepollent motives to forget Ireland, to look up to England, or rather the court of England, exclusively for countenance, for advancement and for honors, as the centre from which they circulate and to which they tend. " I therefore maintain that the project of a union is nothing less than to annul the Parliament of Ireland, or to transfer the legislative authority to the people of another country. To such an act the minister main- tains the Irish Parliament to be competent, for, in substance, he main- tains it to be omnipotent. I deny it ; such an act in the Parliament, without the authority of the people, is a breach of trust. Parliament ia THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 89 not the proprietor, but the trustee, and the people the proprietor, and not the property. Parliament is called to make laws, not to elect law- makers." He fortifies these views by the high authority of Locke, Puffendorf, Hooker, Mr. Lechmere, Sir Joseph Jekyl, Edmund Burke, Lord Boling- broke and Junius, and he concludes a powerful argumentative speech with the following noble words: "The question is not now such as occu- pied you of old — not old Poyning's, not peculation, not plunder, not an embargo, not a Catholic bill, not a reform bill : it is your being — it is more — it is your life to come, whether you will go with the Castle at your head to the tomb of Charlemont and the volunteers" (Ckarlemont had died recently, and had been succeeded by his son Francis) "and erase his epitaph, or Whether your children shall go to your graves saying, ' A venal, a military court attacked the liberties of the Irish, and here lie the bones of the honorable dead men who saved their country!' Such an epitaph is a nobility which the king cannot give his slaves ; it is a glory which the crown cannot give the king." The faction of the Castle now thirsted for Grattan's blood. On the 14th of February the "right honorable" bravo, Corry, made another truculent personal attack on him. To this Grattan replied in one of the finest and most scathing invectives in any language: "Has the gentle- man done ? Has he completely done ?" thus Grattan bursts forth. " He was unparliamentary from the beginning to the end of his speech. . . . I did not call him to order — why ? because the limited talents of some men render it impossible for them to be severe without being unparlia- mentary. But before I sit down I will show him how to be severe and parliamentary at the same time. ... I know the difficulty the right honorable gentleman labored under when he attacked me, conscious that, on a comparative view of our characters, public and private, there is nothing he could say which would injure me. The public would not believe the charge. I despise the falsehood. If such a charge were made by an honest man, I would answer it in the manner I shall do before I sit down. But I shall first reply to it when not made by an honest man. "The right honorable gentleman has called me 'an unimpeached traitor.' I ask why not ' traitor ' unqualified by any epithet ? I will 90 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. tell him ; it was because he dare not. It was the act of a coward, who raises his arm to strike, but has not the courage to give the blow. I will not call him villain, because it would be unparliamentary, and he is a privy counsellor. I will not call him fool, because he happens to be chancellor of the exchequer. But I say he is one who has abused the privilege of Parliament and freedom of debate to the uttering language, which, if spoken out of the House, I should answer only with a blow. I care not how high his situation, how low his character, how contempt- ible his speech; whether a privy counsellor or a parasite, my answer vould be a blow. . . . " The right honorable member has told me I deserted a profession where wealth and station were the reward of industry and talent. If I mistake not, that gentleman endeavored to obtain those rewards by the same means; but he soon deserted the occupation of a barrister for those of a parasite and a pander. He fled from the labor of study to flatter at the table of the great. He found the lord's parlor a better sphere for his exertions than the hall of the Four Courts ; the house of a great man a more convenient way to power and to place ; and that it was easier for a statesman of middling talents to sell his friends than for a lawyer of no talents to sell his clients. . . . "The right honorable gentleman says I fled from the country after exciting rebellion, and that I have returned to raise another. No such thing. The charge is false. The civil war had not commenced when I left the kingdom, and I could not have returned without taking a part. On the one side there was the camp of the rebel, on the other the camp of the minister, a greater traitor than that rebel. The stronghold of the constitution was nowhere to be found. I agree that the rebel who rises against the government should have suffered, but I missed on the scaf- fold the right honorable gentleman. Two desperate parties were in arms against the constitution. The right honorable gentleman belonged to one of those parties, and deserved death. I could not join the rebel — I could not join the government — I could not join torture — I could not join half-hanging — I could not join free quarter — I could take part with neither. I was therefore absent from a scene where I could not be active without self-reproach, nor indifferent with safety. •• Many honorable gentlemen thought differently from me; I respect THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 91 their opinions, but I keep my own ; and I think now, as I thought then, that the treason of the minister against the liberties of the people was infi- nitely worse than the rebellion of the people against the minister. " I have returned, not, as the right honorable member has said, to raise another storm — I have returned to discharge an honorable debt of gratitude to my country that conferred a great reward for past services, which, I am proud to say, was not greater than my desert. I have returned to protect that constitution, of which I was the parent and the founder, from the assassination of such men as the honorable gentleman and his unworthy associates. They are corrupt — they are seditious — and they, at this very moment, are in a conspiracy against their country. I have returned to refute a libel, as false as it is malicious, given to the public under the appellation of a report of the committee of the Lords. Here I stand ready for impeachment or trial. I dare accusation. I defy the honorable gentleman ; I defy the government ; I defy their whole phalanx ; let them come forth. I tell the ministers I will neither give them quarter nor take it. I am here to lay the shat- tered remains of my constitution on the floor of this House in defence of the liberties of my country." G-rattan and Corry both left the House immediately after the close of this terrible philippic. Lest he should be arrested and so prevented from fighting, Grattan kept away from home, but he tells us he sent for his favorite duelling-pistols. He had already refused to listen to a pro- posal for an amicable arrangement made to him by the Speaker, who had sent for him to his chamber (the House being at the time in com- mittee), Grattan remarking that he saw and had been for some time aware of a set made at him to pistol him off on that question. Next morning, in a field by the Dodder bank, not far from Ball's bridge, Grat- tan and Corry met to exchange shots. A crowd was present, all sym- pathizing with the great patriot. Suddenly there is a cry of "the sheriff." The antagonists are told to fire at once, without waiting for the regular formalities. When the sheriff and his myrmidons approach, General Cradock, Corry' s second, shoves that functionary into a ditch and holds him there while the duel takes place. The result of the first rapid fire is that Corry is wounded in the arm, while Grattan stands unscathed. Grattan tells us he could have killed Corry if he willed 92 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. to do so. A second exchange of shots takes place; but this time Grat- tan fires in the air, while Cony, having discharged his pistol, falls bleed- ing on the ground. The populace cheer; there was reason to believe that, if any harm befel Grattan, Corry would have fallen a sacrifice to the popular fury. And now Grattan is hurried off the field by his friends. As he passes Corry he shakes hands Avith him. Years after Grattan is in Brighton. A man broken down in health and spirit knocks at his door. The members of Grattan' s family are disinclined to admit the strange visitor. At last Grattan himself opens the door, stretches forth his hand and warmly grasps that of the stranger, who, sick in body, is more bruised and sore in spirit from humiliations in the British senate, from remorse and vain regrets. Grattan' s kindness deeply affects Corry, for the visitor is Grattan' s old foe. This unmerited kindness stabs the worn-out and dying courtier to the heart. He crawls away. On this side of the grave they meet no more. Mr. Ponsonby's proposal that an address should be presented to the king, stating that twenty-six counties and various cities and towns had petitioned against the union, was insolently rejected. The proposals of Mr. Saurin and Sir John Parnell, that an appeal should be made to the people by a dissolution of Parliament, had no better fate. Still the patriots hoped against hope ; they fought the government inch by inch. On the 19th of March, Grattan delivered another splendid anti-union oration. Speaking of the advocates of the measure, he said, "that according to their doctrine, should the government of France, Bonaparte for instance, be able to corrupt a majority of the two Houses of the British Parliament, that majority is competent to transfer the powers of the British legislature to Paris." He argued that the numerous anti- union petitions showed that there was no real feeling of identification between the two nations. The peroration was splendid : " I might here appeal to the different branches of the constitution, which you are going to devote. To the Lords : will they burn their robes, overset the throne, disgrace their ancestors, disqualify their blood, and consent to become slaves with nicknames, instead of peers with privileges?" Indeed, the conduct of the less powerful lords, who had only Irish peerages, was absolutely suicidal. The Irish peers were only to be represented in the Parliament of the empire by four spiritual and twenty-eight temporal THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 93 peers. The Irish lords, then, who could not get themselves chosen as rep- resentative peers, could have no voice as Irishmen in Parliament, for they were debarred by law from sitting in the House of Commons for Ireland. An English constituency, indeed, might send them to the lower House. Hence Mr. Speaker Foster complained that the article relating to the Irish peerage created a sort of mongrel peer — half lord, half commoner. He also pointed out as a natural consequence of the eligibility of Irish peers as members of the Commons for English constituencies, to which they were strangers (while absurdly and even monstrously they could not be chosen legislators where they had connections, property and dwell- ings), that, in order to solicit interest, these nobles would necessarily be- come absentees, and gradually cease all intimate acquaintance with their native land. Mr. Grattan, after appealing to the Lords, asks the Commons, who remember '82, "Will you violate the obsequies of our dead general and renounce publicly and deliberately for ever your constitution and renown ? ... Do not now scandalize your own professions on that occa- sion, as well as renounce your former achievements, and close a political life of seven hundred years by one monstrous, self-surrendering, self- debasing act of relinquishment, irretrievable, irrecoverable, flagitious and abominable." He even appeals to the king not to sink his house "to the level of other kings by corrupt and unconstitutional victories ob- tained over the liberties and charters of his subjects." It was the spirit of a free constitution, he says, "that in former times drove old Bourbon in battle; it was this that made His Majesty's subjects men, not slaves; and it is this which you are going in Ireland, along with the constitu- tion from whence it emanated, to extinguish for ever. " I conclude, in these moments — they seem to be the closing moments of your existence — by a supplication to that Power whom I tremble to name, that Power who has favored you for seven hundred years with the rights and image of a free government, and who has lately conducted you out of that desert where for a century you had wandered, that He will not desert you now, but will be pleased to permit our beloved consti- tution to remain a little longer among us, and interpose His mercy between the stroke of death and the liberties of the people." All was now gloom and terror in Dublin. The Houses of Parliament were constantly surrounded by bodies of soldiers, skilfully posted in Col- 94 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. lege Green and in Dame and Westmoreland streets. This was by way of preserving the peace, but the real object was manifestly to crush or prevent the expression of popular feeling. The anti-unionists wanted unity of direction and organization. Cooke's persuasive powers were every day making fresh converts. The Catholic bishop of Kilkenny, Dr. Lanigan (like other Catholic prelates), and his clergy, sent in an address to the viceroy favorable to the union. This grievously pained the Cath- olic body. However, an amusing blunder in the servile document made them laugh till their sides ached. Cornwallis had a queer defect in one of his eyes : it was diminutive and always moving in some grotesque, nervous way. Unluckily for their reputation as adroit courtiers, Dr. Lanigan and his clergy had never seen His Excellency. Wherefore they oddly and awkwardly commenced their abject address in these somewhat inappropriate terms : " Tour Excellency has always kept a steady eye on the interests of Ireland." The marquis forgot to thank his right-reverend and reverend admirers for this graceful compliment. In the Lords everything went smoothly for the government. Two amendments to the act were carried by Chancellor Clare. One was to the effect that always, on the extinction of three Irish peerages, one might be created, till the number of Irish peers should be reduced to one hundred, after which a new one might be created in place of every peerage that should become extinct ; the other amendment declared that the quali- fications of Irish members in the United Parliament should be the same with those of the English members. In the last clays of March, after the articles of union had been separately argued and assented to, both Houses addressed the king in favor of the union of the two kingdoms. After this the business rested in the Irish Parliament, while the British Parliament was doing its share of the work so fatal to the liberties of Ireland. There was some opposition in the English Houses. Lord Hol- land opposed the measure in the Lords. In the Commons, Sheridan nobly fought the battle of his native country. The year before he had boldly said that " such an insult would not have been offered to her while her volunteers were in arms." This year his opposition to the baleful measure was fully as vigorous. He insisted that the people of Ireland were opposed to the measure. He denounced the corrupt means employed to carry it ; he asserted that no attempt had been made to deny THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELJ. 95 the notorious fact, that sixty-five seats had been vacated to make places for men whose obsequiousness would not permit them to oppose the measure. It is pleasant to find our brilliant Sheridan " true to his sire- land " in this terrible crisis of her fate : "My country has claims upon me which I am not more proud to acknowledge than ready to liquidate to the full measure of my ability." This he said in the English Commons in '99. We find in Grattan' s Memoirs, by his son, vol. v., p. 68, the fol- lowing passage, in which an utterance most honorable to Sheridan occurs : "Unquestionably, Lord Clare and Lord Castlereagh deserved to die. The popular execution of such state criminals would have been a national as well as a noble judicial sentence. " Some weak old women might have cried out ' Murder!' but it would have been the deed of a Brutus ; and in the eyes of posterity the people would have been justified, for the union was a great and legitimate cause of resistance. Sheridan, in a conversation he had with Mr. Grat- tan on the subject, exclaimed, ' For the Irish Parliament I would have fought England — ay, I would have fought up to my knees in blood.' " But, to return, Mr. Grey, afterwards Earl Grey, also opposed the union strenuously in the English Commons — he even moved to " suspend pro- ceedings on the union till the sentiments of the people of Ireland should be ascertained ;" but his vote was negatived by a vote of two hundred and thirty-six against thirty. In short, Pitt had no difficulty in hurry- ing the act of union through the English Houses. His partisans in the Lords cushioned a motion of Lord Holland's intended to give the Cath- olics some pledge for the abolition of their disabilities. On the 21st of May, Castlereagh, in the Irish Commons, formally moved for leave to bring in his bill for the legislative union. Grattan denounced the bill with a divine fury. Lord Castlereagh, in a style of insolent menace, censured what he called the inflammatory language of Mr. Grattan. "But he defied their incentives to treason, and had no doubt of the energy of the government in defending the constitution against every attack." In the fiery debates that ensued, Plunket, after- wards a. peer of the empire and Irish chancellor, Bushe, afterwards chief- justice of Ireland, and Saurin, afterwards Irish attorney-general, spoke those memorable passages against the union, which, as O'Connell was always repeating them in his "Repeal" speeches and letters, must ever -96 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. form an indispensable part of any complete biography of " the Liberator." Plunket said, "You are appointed to act under the constitution, and not to alter it ; and if you do so, your act is a dissolution of the government. . . . Sir, I state doctrines that are not merely founded on the immutable laws of truth and reason, . . . but I state the practice of our constitu- tion as settled at the era of the revolution, and I state the doctrine under which the House of Hanover derives its title to the throne." He would not sacrifice British connection to revolution aiy projects. "But," says he, "I have as little hesitation in saying that, if the wanton ambition of a minister should assail the freedom of Ireland, and compel me to the alternative, I would fling the connection to the winds and clasp the independence of my country to my heart." The year before, Plunket had said, when denying the competency of the Irish Parliament to trans- fer its rights to another legislature, "Yourselves you may extinguish, but Parliament you cannot extinguish. It is enthroned in the hearts of the people. It is enshrined in the sanctuary of the constitution. It is immortal as the island it protects. As well might the frenzied suicide hope that the act which destroys his miserable body should extinguish his immortal soul. Again, I therefore warn you, do not dare to lay your hands on the constitution : it is above your power." At the same time he galled Castlereagh by describing him as "this young philosopher, who has been transplanted from the nursery to the cabinet to outrage the feelings and understanding of the country." He also, while the splendid Lady Castlereagh was sitting in the gallery, called her husband "a green and sapless twig." This was a withering allusion to the suspected impotency of the childless minister, who, in the wantonness of his arrogance, had described the opposition as "a desperate faction," led by " levellers and pettifoggers," and trading on the prejudices of a barbarous people. Bushe says, "I see nothing in it (the union) but one question, Mill you give up the country? ... I look upon it simply as England reclaim- ing in a moment of your weakness that dominion which you extorted r rom her in a moment of your virtue — a domiuion which she uniformly abused, which invariably oppressed and impoverished you, and from the cessation of wliieh you pertains to that confidence. Think not, my lords, I say this for the petty gratification of giving you a transitory uneasiness. A man, who never yet raised his voice to assert a lie, will not hazard his cha- racter with posterity by asserting a falsehood on a subject so important to his country, and on an occasion like this. Yes, my lords, a man, who does not wish to have his epitaph written until his country is liberated, will not leave a weapon in the power of envy, or a pretence to impeach the probity which he means to preserve even in the grave to which tyranny consigns him." THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 117 [Here he was again interrupted by the court.] "Again I say, that what I have spoken was not intended for your lordship, whose situation I commiserate rather than envy; my expres- sions were for my countrymen. If there is a true Irishman present, let my words cheer him in the hour of his affliction." [Here he was again interrupted. Lord Nbrbury said he did not sit there to hear treason.] "I have always understood it to be the duty of a judge, when a pris- oner has been convicted, to pronounce the sentence of the law. I have also understood that judges sometimes think it their duty to hear with patience and to speak with humanity; to exhort the victim of the laws, and to offer with tender benignity their opinions of the motives by which he was actuated in the crime of which he was adjudged guilty. That a judge has thought it his duty so to have done, I have no doubt; but where is the boasted freedom of your institutions, where is the vaunted impartiality, clemency and mildness of your courts of justice, if an un- fortunate prisoner, whom your policy, and not justice, is about to deliver into the hands of the executioner, is not suffered to explain his motives sincerely and truly, and to vindicate the principles by which he was actuated ? My lords, it may be a part of the system of angry justice to bow a man's mind by humiliation to the purposed ignominy of the scaf- fold; but worse to me than the purposed shame or the scaffold's terrors would be the shame of such foul and unfounded imputations as have been laid against me in this court. You, my lord, are a judge ; I am the supposed culprit. I am a man ; you are a man also. By a revolu- tion of power we might change places, though we never could change characters. If I stand at the bar of this court and dare not vindicate my character, what a farce is your justice ! If I stand at this bar and dare not vindicate my character, how dare you calumniate it ? Does the sentence of death, which your unhallowed policy inflicts on my body, condemn my tongue to silence and my reputation to reproach ? Your executioner may abridge the period of my existence, but while I exist I shall not forbear to vindicate my character and motives from your asper- sions ; and, as a man to whom fame is dearer than life, I will make the last use of that life in doing justice to that reputation which is to live after me, and which is the only legacy I can leave to those I honor and 118 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. love, and for whom I am proud to perish. As men, my lords, we must appear on the great da) r at one common tribunal, and it will then remain for the Searcher of all hearts to show a collective universe who was en- gaged in the most virtuous actions or swayed by the purest motives — my country's oppressors or — " [Here he was interrupted and told to listen to the sentence of the law.] "My lords, will a dying man be denied the legal privilege of excul- pating himself in the eyes of the community from an undeserved reproach thrown upon him during his trial, by charging him with am- bition, and attempting to cast away for a paltry consideration the liber- ties of his country? Why did your lordships insult me? or rather, why insult justice, in demanding of me why sentence of death should not be pronounced against me? I know, my lords, that form prescribes that you should ask the question. The form also presents the right of an- swering. This, no doubt, may be dispensed with, and so might the whole ceremony of the trial, since sentence was already pronounced at the Castle before the jury were empaneled. Your lordships are but the priests of the oracle, and I insist on the whole of the forms." [Here Mr. Emmet paused, and the court desired him to proceed.] • 1 am charged with being an emissary of France. An emissary of France! And for what end? It is alleged that I wished to sell the independence of my country; and for what end? Was this the object of my ambition? And is this the mode by which a tribunal of justice reconciles contradiction? No; I am no emissary, and my ambition was to hold a place among the deliverers of my country — not in power nor in profit, but in the glory of the achievement. Sell my country's independence to France! And for what? Was it a change of masters? No, but for my ambition. my country! was it personal ambition that could influence me? Had it been the soul of my actions, could I not, by my education and fortune, by the rank and consideration of my family, have placed myself amongst the proudest of your oppressors? "My Country was my Idol. To it I sacrificed every selfish, every endear- ing sentiment; and for it I now offer up myself, God ! No. my lords; I acted as an Irishman, determined on delivering my country from the yoke of a foreign and unrelenting tyranny, and the more galling yoke of THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 119 a domestic faction which is its joint partner and perpetrator in the par- ricide — from the ignominy existing with an exterior of splendor and a conscious depravity. It was the wish of my heart to extricate my coun- try from this doubly-riveted despotism. I wished to place her inde- pendence beyond the reach of any power on earth. I wished to exalt her to that proud station in the world. Connection with France was indeed intended, but only as far as mutual interest would sanction or require. Were the French to assume any authority inconsistent with the purest independence, it would be the signal for their destruction. We sought their aid — and we sought it as we had assurance we should obtain it — as auxiliaries in war and allies in peace. Were the French to come as invaders or enemies, uninvited by the wishes of the people, I should oppose them to the utmost of my strength. Tes! my country- men, I should advise you to meet them upon the beach with a sword in one hand and a torch in the other. I would meet them with all the destructive fury of war. I would animate my countrymen to immolate them in their boats before they had contaminated the soil of my country. If they succeeded in landing, and if forced to retire before superior dis- cipline, I would dispute every inch of ground, burn every blade of grass and the last intrenchment of liberty should be my grave. What I could not do myself, if I should fall, I should leave as a last charge to my countrymen to accomplish ; because I should feel conscious that life, any more than death, is unprofitable when a foreign nation holds my country in subjection. But it was not as an enemy that the succors of France were to land. I looked, indeed, for the assistance of France, but I wished to prove to France and to the world that Irishmen deserved to be assisted, that they were indignant at slavery, and ready to assert the independence and liberty of their country; I wished to procure for my country the guarantee which Washington procured for America — to pro- cure an aid which, by its example, would be as important as its valor — disciplined, gallant, pregnant with science and experience — that of a people who would perceive the good and polish the rough points of our character. They would come to us as strangers and leave us as friends, after sharing in our perils and elevating our destiny. These were my objects; not to receive new taskmasters, but to expel old tyrants. It was for these ends I sought aid from France ; because France, even as 120 THE LIFE OF DANIEL CCONNELL. an enemy, could not be more implacable than the enemy already in the oosom of my country." [Here he was interrupted by the court.] " I have been charged with that importance in the emancipation of my country as to be considered the keystone of the combination of Irishmen, or, as your lordship expressed it, ' the life and blood of the conspiracy.' You do me honor over much ; you have given to the sub- altern all the credit of a superior. There are men engaged in this con- spiracy who are not only superior to me, but even to your own concep- tions of yourself, my lord — men before the splendor of whose genius and virtues I should bow with respectful deference, and who would think themselves disgraced by shaking your blood-stained hand." [Here he was interrupted.] "What, my lord, shall you tell me, on the passage to the scaffold which that tyranny (of which you are only the intermediary executioner) has erected for my murder, that I am accountable for all the blood that has and will be shed in this struggle of the oppressed against the op- pressor — shall you toll me this, and must I be so very a slave as not to repel it ? I do not fear to approach the Omnipotent Judge to answer for the conduct of my whole life ; and am I to be appalled and falsified by a mere remnant of mortality here ? By you, too, although if it were possible to collect all the innocent blood that you have shed in your un- hallowed ministry in one great reservoir, your lordship might swim in it." [Here the judge interfered.] "Let no man dare, when I am dead, to charge me with dishonor; let no man attaint my memory by believing that I could have engaged in any cause but that of my country's liberty and independence, or that I could have become the pliant minion of power in the oppression and misery of my country. The proclamation of the Provisional Government speaks for our vieAvs ; no inference can be tortured from it to countenance barbarity or debasement at home, or subjection, humiliation or treachery from abroad. I would not have submitted to a foreign oppressor, for the same reason that I would resist the foreign and domestic oppressor. In the dignity of freedom 1 would have fought upon the threshold of my country, and its enemy should enter only by passing over my lifeless corpse. And am I, who lived but for my country, and who have sub- THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 121 jected myself to the dangers of the jealous and watchful oppressor, and the bondage of the grave, only to give my countrymen their rights, and my country her independence, — am I to be loaded with calumny and not suffered to resent it? No ; God forbid!" [Eere Norbury indulged in a long tirade. He complained of the "dreadful treasons" avowed by Emmet. He said the court wished to give him the utmost latitude, hoping he would not abuse this indulgence by vindicating criminal principles "through the dangerous medium of eloquent but perverted talents." He canted about the propriety of Em- met's making " atonement to expiate his crimes." He raved about his own right to control the prisoner's " desperate sentiments, promulgated as the effusions of a disturbed and agitated mind." After saying, "You, sir, had the honor to be a gentleman by birth," he referred to Emmet's father and to his brother, Temple Emmet, a brilliant young lawyer who had died some years previously, and who, Norbury insisted, would have given the prisoner's talents "the same virtuous direction as his own." The judicial buffoon next became scurrilous, talked of bands of midnight assassins, and abused Emmet for conspiring, for the destruction of the constitution, "with the most profligate and abandoned," and associating himself " with hostlers, bakers, butchers, and such persons whom he had invited to his councils." His lordship then indulged himself in a final dose of cant or burlesque pathos, exclaiming that Emmet "had been educated at a most virtuous and enlightened seminary of learning," and that his conduct would cause "the ingenious youth of his country" to feel " a throb of indignant sorrow, which would say, ' Had it been an open enemy, I could have borne it ; but that it should be my companion and my friend !' " After this singular jeremiad, the Irish Jeffries ended his jargon, and Emmet was allowed to conclude his address without further interruption :] " If the spirits of the illustrious dead participate in the concerns and cares of those who were dear to them in this transitory life, ever dear and venerated shade of my departed father, look down with scrutiny upon the conduct of your suffering son, and see if I have, even for a moment, deviated from those principles of morality and patriotism which it was your care to instil into my youthful mind, and for which I am now about to offer up my life. My lords, you are impatient for the sacrifice. The 122 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. blood which you seek is not congealed by the artificial terrors which sur- round your victim : it circulates warmly and unruffled through the chan- nels which God created for noble purposes, but which you are now bent to destroy for purposes so grievous that they cry to Heaven — Be yet patient ! I have but a few more words to say. I am going to my cold and silent grave — my lamp of life is nearly extinguished — my race is run — the grave opens to receive me, and I sink into its bosom. I have but one request to ask at my departure from this world : it is the charity of its silence. Let no man write my epitaph ; for as no man who knows my motives dare now vindicate them, let not prejudice or ignorance asperse them. Let them and me rest in obscurity and peace, and my tomb re- main uninscribed, and my memory in oblivion, until other times and other men can do justice to my character. When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then, and not till then, let my epi- taph be written. I have done." This noble address was Robert Emmet's last precious bequest to his country. Few dying words of martyred patriots have been so prized by their people as this testimony of Robert Emmet in behalf of Ireland's nationhood has been treasured in the heart of hearts of his countrymen. It is impossible to calculate, with even an approach to accuracy, what its effect on the minds of the Irish people has been in the past, or its possible effects in the future. In the poorest rooms in the towns and cities, in the lowliest cabins in the rural districts, it is no unusual thing to rind cheap prints of Robert Emmet and cheap copies of his speech. There are in existence more likenesses of him than of any other Irish patriot. There are more copies of his speech extant than of any other specimen of Irish oratory. Even in America the American-born children of Irish parents find extracts from it in some of the popular elocution- books. From the grave, still anxiously appealing in a voice, that rings in our ears with far more potency than the utterances of even the best and bravest of our living patriots, Robert Emmet, it may be said, yet continues to struggle against British rule, and never ceases to urge his countrymen to strike, again and yet again, for freedom. Dr. Madden tells us that Emmet delivered this speech "in so loud a tone of voice as to be distinctly heard at the outer doors of the court- house; and yet, though he spoke in a loud tone, there was nothing THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 123 boisterous in his manner ; his accents and cadence of voice, on the con- trary, were exquisitely modulated. His action was very remarkable; its greater or lesser vehemence corresponded with the rise and fall of his voice. He is described as moving about the dock, as he warmed in his address, with rapid but not ungraceful motions — now in front of the railing before the bench, then retiring, as if his body as well as his mind were swelling beyond the measure of its chains. His action was not confined to his hands ; he seemed to have acquired a swaying motion of the body when he spoke in public, which was peculiar to him, but there was no affectation in it." But few hours of life now remained for him. On the day of his trial, at ten o'clock P. M., the barbarous sentence of the law was pronounced. At midnight he was conveyed from Newgate to Kilmainham jail. He passed through Thomas street, the scene of his abortive attempt. Im- mediately after, on the same spot, workmen began to erect the gibbet for his execution. At noon the following day, September 20th, having a few hours previously heard of the death of his fond mother, he stood on the scaffold with a serene countenance and air. Next his bosom he wore a tress of a fair girl's hair. Soon his lifeless body was cut down, the neck placed on the block, and then the head was severed from the trunk. The executioner held up the bleeding head before the pale-faced, agonized crowd, exclaiming, "This is the head of a traitor!" When the guards — cavalry and infantry — were gone, and the body too removed, the people, old and young, rushed forward to dip their handkerchiefs in his blood, that they might have relics of the patriot martyr. It is said that Em- met had been told of the existence of a design to rescue him at the very moment appointed for his execution. This plan was defeated by the precautions taken by the government. Thus perished, in the twenty-sixth year of his age, Robert Emmet, one of the most pure-souled and disinterested patriots that ever appeared on the tragic stage of human history. His noble enthusiasm nerved him to sacrifice, at the call of his country and heroic duty, fair gifts of fortune, still more brilliant prospects, the promise of fame in eloquence and poesy, the delights of youth, love itself. The immortal melodies of his fellow- student, Moore, have embalmed for all time the sad story of Emmet and the ill-starred lady of his love, who, ere many years passed over, followed 124 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. him to the grave. Thomas Davis says: "The cold hand soon seized him — the tender, the young, the beautiful, the brave. Greater men died in the same struggle, but none so warmly loved, nor so passionately lamented." At the Macmanus funeral in '61, I witnessed a strange and impressive proof of the tenacity with which his countrymen cling to his memory. The multitudinous procession had to march through Thomas street and past Catherine's Church, the scene of his final and noblest sacrifice. Slowly the dense, black columns moved along. As they neared the sacred spot, spontaneously the leading riles uncovered. All followed their example ; those in the ranks, those on the footpaths, the crowds in the windows — tens of thousands were in a moment bareheaded in honor of the glorious dead. Similar honors have been paid his memory since ; and, in one of the latest insurrectionary attempts made in Ireland, a ban- ner waved over the insurgents bearing on its folds the words, "Remember Emmet!" Nor is it wonderful that to this hour, wherever over the spacious earth, whether in their own sacred isle or in regions tar away from home, Irishmen and their children are gathered together, his name is honored and his ideas have sway, for even his worst opponents have been obliged to pay unwilling homage to his worth. Even Lord Castlereagh, while he described him as "a young man of a heated and enthusiastic imagin- ation," had in the same breath to bear testimony to his disinterestedness. We have his authority for the fact that Emmet devoted the whole of the three thousand pounds which his father had bequeathed to him to his country's cause. Death on the scall'old was Emmet's reward. Castle- reagh, on the other hand, destroyed his country, and he was rewarded with wealth, power and honors. Even the harsh jailers who guarded him almost loved Emmet's gentle nature, and were softened to tears when he was led to execution. His courage, too, was of the noblest kind. Indeed, his self-possession in the face of danger was singular. His brothei-, Thomas Addis Emmet, showed the same trait of character on the day when, defending persons charged with having taken the '• United Irishmen's" oath, he coolly, in the presence of the whole court, took that oath himself, by which act he so confounded the Bench that they nut only abstained from calling him to account, but even passed light sentences on such prisoners as were convicted. THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 125 One of the Irishmen least remembered is Thomas Russell, who, about this time, gave his life for his country. It was at noon on the 21st of October, 1803, when the last scene of his life added a chapter to Ireland's history. Not less patriotic or famous than Emmet, though less known to Irish readers, he met his fate fearlessly at Downpatrick jail. Eleven regiments were in Downpatrick to overawe the people, yet the authorities were in dread of a rescue. Russell was brought pinioned to the scaffold. Steadily he gazed through the archway on the horror-stricken, white-visaged people. There, doomed to die in a few moments, stands a glorious Irish patriot-soldier, endowed with rarest gifts of mind and body — a man of majestic stature and noble, intellectual countenance, with as kind a heart as ever beat in human breast and the unaffected, graceful manners of a polished gentleman. All these gifts, of what avail are they? Once more he for- gives his persecutors. With calm bravery he meets his fate; his death is without a struggle. The patriot sleeps in the Protestant churchyard of Downpatrick. On the unadorned slab over his relics are the simple words, "The gkave of Thomas Russell!" I shall now give some of Daniel O'Connell's strictures on the men of '98 and the attempt of Robert Emmet. In the main, I differ from these criticisms ; 1 even think them somewhat narrow and partial — inaccurate in statement, inconclusive ; in short, altogether unworthy of the powerful intellect of O'Connell. Nevertheless, as this book professes to give the reader materials whereby to form a true idea of what O'Connell was, in speculation as w^ell as in action, I shall not for a moment hesitate to introduce them here. To make my picture faithful and complete, it is necessary that I should endeavor to portray what I deem the blemishes of O'Connell's mind, along with what I consider the nobler and brighter features of his character. One day in the year 1841, at O'Connell's house in Dublin, Mr. Daunt met two gentlemen from America, one of whom was a native American, the other originally from Ulster. They had come to enjoy the honor of an interview with "the Liberator." In the course of the conversation that took place, the American visitors reproached Mr. O'Connell with having condemned the insurgents of '98. He replied, "that the scheme 126 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. of rebellion was in itself an ill-digested, foolish scheme, entered upon without the means or the organization necessary to insure success. And as to the leaders, no doubt there were among them some pure, well- intentioned men; but the great mass of them were trafficking specula- tors, who cared not whom they victimized in the prosecution of their schemes of self-aggrandizement." I may remark here that the truth, purity, disinterestedness and heroic devotion of a large proportion of the '98 leaders contrast marvel- lously with the falseness, self-seeking, mean trickery, petty dodging and political depravity of the sordid crew that so often hung on the skirts of the O'Connellite agitations. The American visitors, however, returned to the charge; they praised the Northern Presbyterian insurgents; they had, at all events, a good organization. " Not they," said O'Connell. " Not one regiment ever stood to arms as such. All seemed very fine on paper, but there was little reality. Their officers used to meet at taverns, plotted together, made valiant resolutions, and saw everything couleur de rose" (^rose-colored). "The Presbyterians fought badly at Ballinahinch. They were commanded there by one Dickie, an attorney; and as scon as the fellows were checked they became furious Orangemen, and have continued so ever since." This is far from accurate, nor is the tone of it as liberal as it might be. The Presbyterians did not fight badly at Ballinahinch. If their disci- pline had borne any fair proportion to their valor, the victory would cer- tainly have remained in their hands. It was Henry Munroe who com- manded the rebels at this combat. Many of the sons of Presbyterian "United Irishmen" hold, at this very hour, the national sentiments and opinions of their sires. The Americans next said, interrogatively, " But the people had great provocation to take up anus ?" "Oh, indeed they had! In Wexford they were actually driven into insurrection by the insane cruelty of Lord Kingston, who since then has died in a strait-waistcoat. There was a sergeant of the North Cork militia, nicknamed Tom the Devil, from the unheard-of atrocities he perpetrated on the peasantry. Oh, the cruelty of the administrators. THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 127 great and small, of English power in Ireland ! Why, since the world began, there never was anything like it. I am compiling a book to illustrate this fact. I'll have it out in November next. I'll read you one or two passages, just to show you how the same horrible tyranny has been exercised at widely different times, the circumstances different, the actors different — the spirit always identical." So saying, he took up the manuscript of his "Memoir on Ireland," and read passages from the chapters on Henry the Second, Henry the Eighth, and Elizabeth. "And this system of tyranny was continued for centuries?" inquired one of the visitors. "Poh! it is continued to this hour," said O'Connell. "If they do not slaughter with the sword as they formerly did, they massacre by ex- termination. The Tory landlords, who drive the peasantry in thousands fi'om their cabins, put an end to human life by the slow, wasting process of hunger and destitution." The Ulster gentleman demanded whether the character of Eobert Emmet should not be exempted from the sweeping censure passed by O'Connell on the generality of the "United Irish" leaders. "Poor man! he meant well," said O'Connell; "but I ask whether a madder scheme was ever devised by a bedlamite ? Here was Mr. Emmet, having got together about twelve hundred pounds in money and seventy- four men ; whereupon he makes war upon King George the Third, with one hundred and fifty thousand of the best troops in Europe and the wealth of three kingdoms at his command! Why, my good sir, poor Emmet's scheme was as wild as anything in romance! No; I always saw that, divided as Ireland is and has been, physical force could never be made an available weapon to regenerate her. I saw that the best and only effective combination must be that of moral force. I have combined the peasantry in moral organization ; and on them, with their revered pastors to guide them, do I place my reliance. And I am proud of them — they are the finest people in the whole world ! They are so moral ! so intelligent ! They have flung away drunkenness ; they fre- quent the coffee-shops, where they instruct and inform their minds with a weekly newspaper. And then the good sense of the fellows ! When- ever I've asked them what part of the paper they read first, they've 128 THE LIFE OF DANIEL OCONXELL. always answered me, 'We read the prices first, sir, and then the speeches.'' " The facts and figures about Emmet's attempt, at the commencement of the foregoing observations, are singularly inaccurate. Indeed, the remarks are more a piece of ingenious burlesque than a just criticism. Successful insurrections have over and over commenced with a dashing attempt made by a small, half-armed band. "Never venture, never win," is a maxim true in love and war. Mr. O'Connell was personally a brave man even in the face of physical danger. He had also, in a high degree, the sort of boldness necessary to a successful advocate, and a fair share of the moral courage indispensable to a commanding politi- cian. But we search in vain amongst his great intellectual abilities for military qualities. He had none of that peculiar daring or spirit of enterprise requisite to form a military leader. We have already seen the grounds and expectations on which Robert Emmet based his project, and that competent military authorities approved of his plans. Not to repeat myself unnecessarily, I beg here to refer my readers to some remarks I have already made in this chapter, in pages 239 and 240, on the circumstances and conditions under which patriots should feel them- selves justified in calling on their countrymen to revolt. With regard to Mr. O'Connell's method of regenerating Ireland by moral force, at the beginning of "the Preliminary Sketch" prefixed to this work I have endeavored to show both what the "moral-force" system can effect and what it cannot effect— above all, what a useless weapon it is in any move- ment aiming at national independence or even repeal of the union; in a word, in any important international dispute. Upon the concluding sentences of Mr. O'Connell's discourse to the American visitors I do not deem it necessary to make any comment. With respect to them the reader can form what judgment he pleases. I may as well introduce here another observation regarding the "United Irishmen" made by Mr. O'Connell to Mr. Daunt on a different occasion: "I learned," he says, "from the example of the 'United Irish- men' the lesson that, in order to succeed for Ireland, it was strictly necessary to work within the limits of the law and constitution. I saw that fraternities, banded illegally, never could be safe ; that invariably some person without principle would be sure to gain admission into THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 129 such societies, and either for ordinary bribes, or else in times of danger for their own preservation, would betray their associates. Tes, the ' United Irishmen ' taught me that all work for Ireland must be done openly and aboveboard." In the present chapter I have already commented on some similar remarks of O'Connell's, having reference to the danger of betrayal by informers, incurred by those who belong to secret societies. I think I have shown how little real force there is in O'Connell's observations on this point. I have also called attention to the fact that, in spite of all his ingenuity and prudence, his vaunted "moral-force" machinery was finally inadequate to keep himself and his political associates out of the meshes of the foreigner's law; that, on the arrival of a certain crisis, any "moral-force" movement will be liable to the peril of informers just as much as secret conspiracies; in short, that O'Connell's exaggerated advocacy of his favorite "moral-force" theory is replete with fallacies. But I need not go over the same ground a second time ; the reader can easily, if he should wish, refer to the passage in question. The severest measures of repression followed the failure of Emmet's insurrection. Besides Emmet, eighteen persons were hung in Dublin. A number were arrested and thrown into prison, there to be treated with the grossest barbarity. A spy-system prevailed. Eewards on an exten- sive scale were offered for rebels. The Irish yeomanry were put on per- manent duty at the vast expense of £100,000 a month. In Cork every one quitting the country was obliged to have a passport, and householders were compelled to affix to their doors a list of the inmates of their houses. Among other strict regulations, the sovereign of Belfast ordered the in- habitants of that town to remain within their houses after eight in the evening. The magistrates of Dublin, prompted by the government, de- cided that Dublin should be divided into forty-eight sections, each section to be separated from the neighboring ones by a chevaux-de-frise, which would suffice to prevent pikemen from effecting a surprise. After the passing of martial law the prisons became crowded with hundreds of prisoners. As usual, terror and vengeance and coercion reigned in Ire- land. Suspicion, suggested by some personal foe, was enough to consign a man to imprisonment. Speaking of these dungeon horrors, which years afterwards were disclosed in the course of a parliamentary inquiry, Mr. 130 TEE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. Plowden, in his History of Ireland Since the Union, says: "Sensible that general charge and invective come not within the province of the historian, the author felt it his duty to inform the reader that at this time com- menced a new system of gradual inquisitorial torture in prison. Suffice it here to observe that there are many surviving victims of these inhuman and unwarrantable confinements, who, without having been charged with any crime or tried for any offence, have from this period undergone years of confinement and incredible afflictions and sufferings, under the full, conviction that they were inflicted from motives of personal resentment, and for the purpose of depriving them of life." Such was the spirit of administration in Ireland during Lord Hardwicke's viceroyalty. In these latter days somewhat similar scenes of cruelty and wrong and outrage and contempt of all justice have been witnessed in Ireland during the prevalence of the so-called " Fenian scare." Meanwhile, the results of the union, after three years' experience, were declining trade and commerce: absenteeism of landlords, who would leave behind them an oppressive agent to grind the peasantry; vanishing wealth; deserted country-seats ; Dublin, so recently a fine and nourishing capital, sinking from its proud metropolitan position to the humble state of a mere Large provincial town; the palaces of the nobles, like the senate-house, turned to meaner uses; Irish imports and exports, while profitless to Ireland, helping to enrich England: debts and taxes increas- ing every day. In short the truth was becoming manifest that the union was forced upon Ireland '•through intolerance of Irish prosperity." The Presbyterian clergy, who had been bribed qo1 to oppose the union by a promise of an increase in the regium donum (royal gift), a stipend first granted to them (on a small scale) by Charles the Second, now got their bribe. The regium innn was increased fivefold. In ls.">2 it amounted to £38,561. The chief instrument in accomplishing this bribery trans- action was the Reverend Dr. Black of Londonderry — a renegade "volun- teer" and patriot delegate to the Dungannon (inn cut ion. lie feathered his .,wn nest, being made agent in distributing the "gift," But event- ually he was his country's avenger on himself, for he Hung himself from the bridge of Deny into the river Foyle, and there he miserably perished. It is little wonder that it was (/Council's greatest ambition, all THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 131 through life, to be able to succeed in repealing this " accursed act of union," as he always rightly termed it. The "United Irishmen" in France still negotiated with Bonaparte in the hope of obtaining French assistance. For a while Bonaparte seemed to enter into their views. It was stipulated that a French army should be sent to help the Irish to throw off the English yoke. Augereau, who for some reason or other was a favorite with the Irish people, was appointed commander-in-chief. Arthur O'Connor, created general of division, was placed on his staff. An official paper, still in existence, proves that the French army were to land in Ireland simply as auxilia- ries — in fact, on terms precisely similar to those on which Rochambeau's army landed in America. This was Robert Emmet's view of the rela- tions that should subsist between the French and Irish. He had said to Miles Byrne (who, having effected his escape, was now in France in communication with Thomas Addis Emmet) that he was convinced that Bonaparte "would find it his interest to deal fairly by the Irish nation as the best and surest way to obtain his ends with England." A new Irish legion was also organized in the French service at Morlaix in Bretagne. At the coronation of the emperor Napoleon (May, 1804) the legion was represented by two of its officers, Captain Tennant and Cap- tain William Corbet. The emperor presented to it, as well as to the French regiments, colors and an eagle. On one side of the colors was inscribed "Napoleon I., Empereur des Frangais, a la Legion Irlandaise" ["Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, to the Irish Legion"); on the reverse was a crownless harp : the inscription was " L'independance d'Irlande" (" The independence of Ireland"). It is said that this Irish legion was the only foreign corps in the French army to which the great emperor ever entrusted an eagle. But neither Marshal Augereau nor his army, including the " Irish Legion," ever sailed for Ireland. Unfortunately for Ireland and for him- self, the emperor was induced to give up the project of invading that island. The "Legion," however, served France bravely in the wars of the empire. Many of the officers won considerable distinction. Indeed, the completeness of the failure of Emmet's insurrection for a long time discouraged and tended to prevent any fresh attempts in Ire- land at patriotic movements of a military nature. The faith of the Irish 132 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. people in the efficacy of insurrection as a means of deliverance was tem- porarily shaken. They did not sufficiently analyze the causes of the failure or draw requisite distinctions. Thus, in all probability, Emmet's failure prepared the way for the ready and general adoption of 0* Cou- ncil's "moral-force" system. If this conjecture be right, Emmet's out- break had an important bearing on O'Connell's subsequent career, and •jonsequently must be regarded as an incident that claims a conspicuous place in the biography of O'Connell. I may add, before concluding this long chapter, that, after this unfortunate insurrection, we also find the Catholic aristocracy once more coming forward with eager professions of loyalty. Indeed, the wanton murder of the good Kilwarden did terrible injury to the cause of the insurgents; many talked of the attempt as a mere lawless riot for purposes of robbery and murder. Such is the evil that must ever result even to the noblest cause, if its partisans consent to crime.* * The principal books to which the foregoing chapter is indebted are Mitchel's " Continuation ;" Musgrave's ''History of the Rebellion of '98;" Madden's "United Irishmen;" "Wolfe Tone's Journals ;" " Grattan's Life," by his son ; " Grattan's Life," by D. O. Madden ; " Curran's Life," by his son ; " Curran's Life," by Davis ; " Curran's Speeches ;" " Grattan's Speeches ;" " Shiel'a Speeches ;" " Moore's Melodies ;" " Life of Lord Edward Fitzgerald," by Moore ; " Life of Lord Edward," published at the " Irishman " office, Dublin ; " The Histories {before and after the union) of Plowden ;" Plowdeu's "Historical Collections;" " Lord Cloncurry's Memoirs;" " View of the Present State of Ireland ;" Thierry's "Norman Conquest;" Alison's "Europe;" Davis's " Essay- ;" Barry's " Songs of Ireland ;" " Sham Squire and Informers of '98," by Fitzpatrick ; Gordon's " His- tory of the Rebellion;" "Edinburgh Review," article by Sir William Napier; Lord Holland's " Memoirs of the Union ;" Edward Hayes's " Rebellion in Wexford ;" Barrington's " Memoirs of the Irish Union" and " Rise and Fall of the Irish Nation ;" Murphy's " Narrative of the Arrest of Lord Edward Fitzgerald ;" Ryan and Sirr's "Accounts;" Cornwallis's "Correspondence and Memoirs;" " Secret Service Papers ;" Goldwin Smith ; Literary columns of " New York Citizen ;" Sullivan's " Speeches from the Dock ;" O'Neill Daunt's " Financial Grievances of Ireland ;" O'Neill Daunt's "Personal Recollections of O'Connell;" "Select Speeches of Daniel O'Connell, M. P.," edited, with historical notices, by his son, John O'Connell, Esq. ; " Lord Plunket's Speeches," edited, with me- moirs and historical notices, by John Cashel Hoey ; " Memoirs of Miles Byrne ;" " Grattan's Answer to Lord Clare," etc., etc., etc. CHAPTER V. Pictures, anecdotes and incidents op O'Conneli/s caeeee at the Bar — O'Conneu travelling on circuit — o'connell in his study — o'connell in the courts — hl3 Reminiscences of Chief-Baron O'Grady, Lord Guillamore — An amusing reproof — Baron Foster's resemblance to a stuffed owl — O'Grady and the cow-stealer's witness — O'Grady in the theatre in Limerick — "Checkley be d — d!" — Jerry Keller and Judge Mayne— O'Connell's anecdotes of Jerry Keller, Norcott and Parsons the attorney-hater — Strange career of Norcott; he becomes a Mussul- man — Judge Foster and Denis Halligan — The Liberator's story of one of his clients, who wished to show his gratitude in an odd fashion — A PLACE in Glas- nevin — A pious and grateful highwayman; O'Connell's life valuable to his clients — Curious instance of O'Connell's professional penetration and quickness; a tale of a fly — Illustrations of O'Connell's rapidity of conception and prompti- tude of action. IE have seen that O'Connell made his political debut at a public meeting held in the year 1800, to protest against the thrice- accursed, as he would himself style it, act of union. This patriotic commencement of his public career was creditable to his generous nature. His speech on the occasion was manly and effective. In short, bearing in mind that it was his first appearance on the stage of public life, his success may be deemed even brilliant. Nevertheless, he took little further part or action in the political affairs of his country for a long time after. During the years immediately fol- lowing the union, he confined himself almost exclusively to a diligent and laborious pursuit of professional reputation. He had far greater difficulties to contend with than those which Protestants of equal abil- ities had at that time to encounter. Not to speak of the semi-contempt- uous manner in which Catholics were still regarded by the potent faction of the Ascendency, and their necessarily inferior influence with those attorneys who had most briefs to give, it is to be remembered that, till the year 1829, a Catholic was not eligible for the position of king's counsel. Confined, then, for such a number of years to the outer or junior bar, O'Connell lost many an opportunity of displaying his elo- quence as a leading advocate that would, as a matter of course, have 134 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. fallen to him had he belonged to the sect favored by the state. But, then, as invariably happens in the history of superior natures, diffi- culties in his path to success and fame only caused him to labor the harder to counteract them. Hence, too, he would be the more inclined to confine himself almost wholly to his professional pursuits during the earlier years of his practice. I think, then, that, before I enter fully on the political life of O'Connell, it may be as well to devote a chapter or two to a series of anecdotes and sketches giving a picture of his life as a lawyer. In these chapters I am about to give, relating to his bar-life, I do not think it necessary to be very particular in arrang- ing the stories and incidents in their exact order of time, nor do I intend to confine myself rigidly to the earlier years of his career. I shall commence by giving the celebrated Richard Lalor Shiel's most interesting and vivid sketch of O'Connell as he used to appear when travelling on circuit : " I had sat down at the inn of the little village, and had placed my- self in the window. The market was over; the people had gradually passed to their homes; the busy hum of the day was fast dying away. The sun was sinking, and threw his lingering beams into the neat but ill-furnished apartment where I was sitting. To avoid the glare of his beams, I changed my position, and this gave me a more uninterrupted view of the Long street, which threw its termination into the green fields of the country. Casting my eyes in this direction, I beheld a chariot- and-four coming toward me, enveloped in a complete cloud of dust, and the panting horses of which were urged on with tremendous rapidity. Struck with the unexpected arrival of such a vehicle in that place, I leaned out of the window to observe its destination, and beheld it still rolling hurriedly along, and sweeping around the angle of the street toward the inn with increased violence. If my reader has been much used to travelling, he will be aware that the moment a postilion comes in sight of an inn he is sure to call forth the mettle of his horses — per- haps to show off the blood of his cattle. This was the case at present, and a quick gallop brought the vehicle in thundering noise to the door, where Shenstone says is to be found 'the warmest welcome.' The ani- mals were sharply checked, the door was thing open, and the occupier hurriedly threw himself out. THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 135 " 'Bring out four horses instantly!' was the command he uttered in the loud voice of haste and authority. " The inmate of the carriage was about five feet eleven and a half inches high, and wore a portly, stout, hale and agreeable appearance. His shoulders were broad and his legs stoutly built ; and as he at that moment stood, one arm in his side pocket, the other thrust into a waist- coat, which was almost completely unbuttoned from the heat of the day, he would have made a good figure for the rapid but fine finishing touch of Harlowe. His head was covered with a light fur cap, which, partly thrown back, displayed that breadth of forehead which I have never yet seen absent from real talent. His eyes appeared to me, at that instant, to be between a light blue and a gray color. His face was pale and sallow, as if the turmoil of business, the shade of care or the study of midnight had chased away the glow of health and youth. Around his mouth played a cast of sarcasm, which, to a quick eye, at once betrayed satire ; and it appeared as if the lips could be easily resolved into risiis sardonicus [sardonic laugh). His head was somewhat larger than that which a modern doctrine denominates the 'medium size;' and it was well supported by a stout and well-foundationed pedestal, which was based on a breast full, round, prominent and capacious. The eye was shaded by a brow which I thought would be more congenial to sunshine than storm, and the nose was neither Grecian nor Eoman, but was large enough to readily admit him into the chosen band of that 'immortal rebel ' * who chose his body-guard with capacious lungs and noses, as affording greater capability of undergoing toil and hardship. Altogether, he appeared to possess strong physical powers. " He was dressed in an olive-brown surtout, black trowsers and black waistcoat. His cravat was carelessly tied — the knot almost un- done from the heat of the day; and as he stood with his hand across his bosom, and his eyes bent on the ground, he was the very picture of a public character hurrying away on some important matter, which required all of personal exertion and mental energy. Often as I have seen him since, I have never beheld him in so striking or pictorial an attitude. " 'Quick with the horses!' was his hurried ejaculation, as he recov- * Cromwell — thus called by Lord Byron. 136 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. erecl himself from his reverie and flung himself into his carriage. The whip was cracked, and away w r ent the chariot with the same cloud of dust and the same tremendous pace. " I did not see him pay any money. He did not enter the inn. He called for no refreshment, nor did he utter a word to any person around him; he seemed to be obeyed by instinct. And while I marked the chariot thundering along the street, which had all its then spectators turned on the cloud-enveloped vehicle, my curiosity was intensely ex- cited, and I instantly descended to learn the name of this extraordinary stranger. " Most mal apropos, however, were my inquiries. Unfortunately, the landlord was out, the waiter could not tell his name, and the hostler ' knew nothing whatsomdever of him, only he was in the most onconi- lnonest hurry.' A short time, however, satisfied my curiosity. The next day brought me to the capital of the county. It was the assize-time. Very fond of oratory, I went to the court-house to hear the forensic elo- quence of the 'home circuit.' I had scarcely seated myself when the same grayish eve, broad forehead, portly figure and strong tone of voice arrested my attention, lie was just on the moment of addressing the jury, and I anxiously waited to hear the speech of a man who had already so strongly interested me. After looking at the judge steadily for a moment, he began his speech exactly in the following pronuncia- tion: 'My Lurrd — gentlemen of the jury — ' " 'Who speaks?' instantly whispered I. "'Counsellor O'Connell,' was the reply." I have introduced the above extract merely to furnish the reader with a striking picture of O'Connell as lie appeared when travelling on circuit. I shall now turn to other pictures from Shiel's sketches, equally lifelike and entertaining-— -pictures of O'Connell in his study and in the courts. "If any of you, my English readers, being a stranger in Dublin, should chance, in your return on a winter's morning from one of the 'small and early' parties of that raking metropolis — that is to say, be- tween the hours of five and six o'clock — to pass along the south side of Merrion Square, you will not fail to observe that, among those splendid mansions, there is one evidently tenanted by a person whose habits THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 137" differ materially from those of his fashionable neighbors. The half- opened parlor shutter, and the light within, announce that some cne dwells there whose time is too precious to permit him to regulate his rising with the sun's. Should your curiosity tempt you to ascend the steps and, under cover of the dark, to reconnoitre the interior, you will see a tall, able-bodied man standing at a desk, and immersed in solitary occupation. Upon the wall in front of him there hangs a crucifix. From this, and from the calm attitude of the person within, and from a certain monastic rotundity about his neck and shoulders, your first im- pression will be that he must be some pious dignitary of the Church of Kome absorbed in his matin devotions. But this conjecture will be rejected almost as soon as formed. No sooner can the eye take in the other furniture of the apartment — the bookcases clogged with tomes in plain calfskin binding and blue-covered octavos that lie about on the floor, the reams of manuscript in oblong folds and begirt with crimson tape — than it becomes evident that the party meditating amidst such objects must be thinking far more of the law than of the prophets. " He is, unequivocally, a barrister, but apparently of that homely, chamber-keeping, plodding caste who labor hard to make up by assiduity what they want in wit — who are up and stirring before the bird of the morning has sounded the retreat to the wandering spectre, and are already brain-deep in the dizzying vortex of mortgages, and cross- remainders, and mergers, and remitters, while his clients, still lapped in sweet oblivion of the law's delay, are fondly dreaming that their cause is peremptorily set down for a final hearing. Having come to this conclusion, you push on for home, blessing your stars on the way that you are not a lawyer, and sincerely compassionating the sedentary drudge whom you have just detected in the performance of his cheer- less toil. But, should you happen, in the course of the same day, to stroll down to the Four Courts, you will be not a little surprised to find the object of your pity miraculously transformed from the severe recluse of the morning into one of the most bustling, important and joyous personages in that busy scene. There you will be sure to see him, his countenance braced up and glistening with health and spirits, with a huge plethoric bag, which his robust arms can scarcely contain, clasped with paternal fondness to his breast and environed by a living palisade 138 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. of clients and attorneys, with outstretched necks and mouths and ears agape to catch up any chance opinion that may be coaxed out of him in a colloquial way, or listening to what the client relishes still better— for in no event can they be slided to a bill of costs — the counsellor's bursts of jovial and familiar humor; or, when he touches on a sadder strain, his prophetic assurances that the hour of Ireland's redemption is at hand. You perceive at once that you have lighted upon a great popular advocate; and, if you take the trouble to follow his movements for a couple of hours through the several courts, you will not fail to dis- cover the qualities that have made him so — his legal competency, his business-like habits, his sanguine temperament, which renders him not merely the advocate, but the partisan, of his client — his acuteness, his fluency of thought and language, his unconquerable good-humor, and, above all, his versatility. By the hour of three, when the judges usually rise, you will have seen him go through a quantity of business, the preparation for and performance of which would be sufficient to wear down an ordinary constitution; and you naturally suppose that the re- maining portion of the day must, of necessity, be devoted to recreation or repose. But here again you will be mistaken; for should you feel disposed, as you return from the courts, to drop into any of the public meetings thai are almost daily held — for some purpose or to no purpose — in Dublin, to a certainty you will find the counsellor there before you, the presiding spirit of the scene, riding on the whirlwind and directing the storm of popular debate with a strength of lungs and a redundancy of animation, as if he had thai moment started fresh for the labors of the day. There he remains until, by dint of strength or dexterity, he has carried every point: and from thence, if you would see him to the close of the day's eventful history, you will, in all likelihood, have to follow him to a public dinner, from which, after having acted a conspic- uous part in the turbulent festivity of the evening, and thrown off half a dozen speeches in praise of Ireland, he retires at a late hour, to repair the wear and tear of the day by a short interval of repose, and is sure to be found before dawn-break next morning at bis solitary post, recom- mencing the routine of his restless existence. Now, any one who has once seen in the preceding situation the able-bodied, able-minded, act- ing, talking, multifarious person I have been just describing, has no THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 139 occasion to inquire his name — he may be assured that he is and can be no other than ' Kerry's pride and Munster's glory,' the far-famed and indefatigable Daniel O'Connell. His frame is tall, expanded and mus- cular — precisely such as befits a man of the people; for the physical classes ever look with double confidence and affection upon a leader who represents in his own person the qualities upon which they rely. In his face he has been equally fortunate — it is extremely comely. The features are at once soft and manly; the florid glow of health and a sanguine temperament are diffused over the whole countenance, which is national in the outline, and beaming with national emotion; the ex- pression is open and confiding, and inviting confidence ; there is not a trace of malignity or wile^if there were, the bright and sweet blue eyes, the most kindly and honest-looking that can be conceived, would repel the imputation. These popular gifts of nature O'Connell has not neglected to set off by his external carriage and deportment — or, per- haps, I should rather say, that the same hand which has moulded the exterior has supersaturated the inner man with a fund of restless pro- pensity, which it is quite beyond his power, as it is certainly beside his inclination, to control. A large portion of this is necessarily expended upon his legal avocations; but the labors of the most laborious of pro- fessions cannot tame him to repose ; after deducting the daily drains of the study and the courts, there remains an ample residuum of animal spirits and ardor for occupation, which go to form a distinct and, I might say, a predominant character — the political chieftain. The existence of this overweening vivacity is conspicuous in O'Connell's manners and movements; and being a popular, and more particularly a national quality, greatly recommends him to the Irish people — mobilitate viget (he flourishes by activity of movement) ; body and soul are in a state of per- manent insurrection. See him in the streets, and you perceive at once that he is a man who has sworn that his country's wrongs shall be avenged. A Dublin jury (if judiciously selected) would find his very gait and gestures to be high treason by construction, so explicitly do they enforce the national sentiment of ' Ireland her own — or the world in a blaze !' As he marches to court he shoulders his umbrella as if it were a pike. He flings out one factious foot before the other as if he had already burst his bonds, and was kicking the Protestant Ascend- 140 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. ency before him ; while ever and anon a democratic, broad-shouldered roll of the upper man is manifestly an indignant effort to shuffle off the oppression of seven hundred years. This intensely national sensibility is the prevailing peculiarity in O'Connell's character; for it is not only when abroad and in the popular gaze that Irish affairs seem to press upon his heart — the same Erin-go-bragh feeling follows him into the most technical details of his forensic occupations." Fagan, in his life of O'Connell, tells a very humorous story of a pious and grateful highwayman, to whom O'Connell's was a very valu- able life indeed. The substance of the story is as follows: O'Connell was engaged to defend this worthy for a robbery committed on the public road not very far from the city of Cork. By his clever cross-examination of the witnesses and twisting of the evidence, our hero compelled Dame Justice to loose her grasp and let slip his client The thief at once resumed his former "industrial oeeupation," to borrow a phrase from old Captain Gambier — that very wooden-headed director of English convict-prisons, whose acquaintance 1 have to thank her Britannic Majesty's government for having been enabled to make. Accordingly, the following year, on entering the court-house in Cork, O'Connell meets once more the unabashed gaze of the same determined delinquent. This time the charge is burglary, complicated with an aggravated assault that didn't stop very far sliort of murder. The ruffian again had Dan for his counsel; and again witnesses, adverse counsel, judge and jury were puzzled and confounded, law was hopelessly entangled, and the scoundrel sent hack to seek excitement and pocket-money at the expense of his countrymen. His energies did not remain long idle. He stole a collier-brig, sold (iff the cargo, bought arms and cruised along the coast, "seeking whom" (or rather what booty) "he might devour." A third time he stands in the dock of the Cork court-house — on this occa- sion for piracy — no lis\ A third time OUT wile-famed advocate defends the freebooter. O'Connell contents himself with simply showing that the crime did not come under the cognizance of the court. It had keen committed on the higli seas; it could only come under the cognizance of the admiralty court. Is it any wonder that the rescued rascal became THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 141 this time devotionally enthusiastic in the utterance of his gratitude? "Oh!" exclaimed the lucky thief, piously lifting hands and eyes to Heaven, "oh! may the Lord, in his mercy, spare your honor to me! What would become of me if anything happened to you ?" I shall now give the reader a singular instance of O'Connell's almost intuitive penetration and quickness in getting at the bottom of a wit- ness's mind. He was retained on the plaintiff's side in a will-case. His clients alleged that the document in question was a forgery. The witnesses to the will, on the other hand, swore that it had been signed by the hand of the testator, now deceased, while "life was in him." This, it appears, is a form of phraseology imported from the Irish into the English language, and common among the Irish peasantry, even in those districts where the ancient language has died out. The evidence had gone almost entirely in favor of the validity of the will and the suc- cess of the defendants, when O'Connell stood up to cross-examine one of their witnesses. He was soon struck with the odd persistency with which this witness, in answering his questions, unvaryingly clung to the phrase, "the life was in him." The truth flashed across O'Connell's mind. "On the virtue of your oath, was the man alive?" " By the virtue of my oath, the life was in him,-' 1 replied the witness, resorting to his favorite phrase once more. " Now I call on you in the presence of your Maker, who will one day pass sentence on you for this evidence : I solemnly ask — and answer me at your peril — was there not a live fly in the dead man's mouth when his hand was placed on the will ?" The terror-struck perjurer in an instant grew pale and trembled; he looked like one suddenly smitten with palsy. Completely cowed, in stammering accents he confessed that O'Connell had hit upon the truth. A live fly had been placed in the dead man's mouth, that the witnesses might be able to swear that "life was in him." (See Fagan's "Life of O'Connell.") This was one of those sudden flashes of intuition which are seldom witnessed save in the lives of men of the highest order of intellect. Analogous inspirations of talent or genius ever and anon occur to the minds of the topmost men in all the practical professions. Thus, Du- 142 THE LIFE OF DAXIEL O'CONNELL* puytren darts his lance into the brain of the man despaired of by less daring surgeons, and relieves the abscess. Thus the great Napoleon, acting on a sudden impulse, orders the Sommo-Sierra pass to be cleared by a charge of Polish lancers, and lo ! in the twinkling of an eye it is done. Such quick and decisive results can never be achieved by your mere plodding men of humdrum routine. I shall here borrow a long passage from Fagan's " Life of O'Connell," as affording further illustrations, of the most striking kind, of the ra- pidity of conception and promptitude of action so frequently displayed by O'Connell during his conflicts in the forensic arena : ""We may here," says Pagan, "be permitted to give an anecdote to exemplify O'Connell's rapidity of conception, his knowledge of law, and the tact with which he made even his broad humor tell for his client's advantage. In a ea.se at a Cork assizes, in which he was counsel on the same side with many of the most eminent men who attended circuit, he was absent in one court while some points of great importance were undergoing discussion in the other. His fellow-barristers were able law- yers, but they were severely pressed by the opposing counsel, and an unfavorable issue was threatened. The judge was about to declare a verdict; counsel were in the last extremity, and their only hope rested on O'Connell. He had been sent for once or twice, but he was then addressing a jury in behalf of a prisoner on trial for his life. He was disengaged in the nick of time; his learned and able friends were in the last stage of despair, when he entered the record court in an apparently indifferent and inattentive manner, gayly jesling as lie passed in with individuals he knew. He could not we believe, have previously known much, if anything, of the case he was hastily called to argue; but he caught, as he proceeded to his seat, the upshot of what counsel was driving at. Drawing the cord of his ample bag, he extracted quickly from its depths the particular brief he wanted, and, glancing through a sheet or two in the most superficial manner, he rose to address the court. In a few brief sentences he cleared away the difficulties by which his fellow-counsel were embarrassed. In a few more he turned the tables on the opposite party, and in one of the shortest speeches he, or any other lawyer, was ever known to make in a case of similar importance, he banished all idea of a nonsuit from the judge's mind, and succeeded in THE LIFE OP DANIEL O'CONNELL. 143 winning him over decisively in favor of his client. He disposed sum- marily of the main difficulty. He extricated his learned brethren from the slough, and, informing the court that the remainder of the argument would be carried on by one or other of the junior barristers, he con- signed his brief to its former place, closed his bag and returned to the court whence he was summoned. The case was won. 'He found,' said our informant, ' the able men with whom he acted sprawling like a parcel of children; and it was he only who set them on their legs.' The inci- dent is but another illustration of his commanding powers as a lawyer, and the facility and readiness with which Iiq could apply the acquisitions of a practical, sagacious and extraordinary intellect. "It is stated in an article in the Edinburgh Revieiv that Lord Brougham was intended to lead a libel case, but immediately before the trial it was discovered that the other counsel, a mere special pleader, was his senior, and the mistake proved irremediable. It was thus, I may remark, that the supercession of Sir Arthur Wellesley, after the battle of Vimiera, in 1808, by two senior, but far less competent, officers, arrested the course and blighted the fruits of that victory. On an occur- rence, however, in this city, not dissimilar to that of Lord J Brougham, Mr. O'Connell, with instant happiness of thought, applied the remedy which had evaded the learned peer's sagacity. Engaged in a case, the success of which mainly depended on his examination of the most ma- terial witness — a department of the profession in which he had no supe- rior — he found to his surprise, on entering the court, that his destined station and consequent task were occupied by another — the client having without communication, and wholly unconscious of the etiquette of the bar or its consequences in this instance to himself, privately retained an old friend of more moral than intellectual merit, but Mr. O'Connell's senior. The law-agent, Mr. Denham Franklin of Cork, my informant of all the particulars, naturally dissatisfied with this act of his em- ployer, and fearful of the issue in such hands, was about to abandon the cause, when Mr. O'Connell, chiding him for his despondency, directed him to ascertain the name of a gaping clown whom his searching eye had espied in the crowd. The individual was immediately called up, and, to his astonishment, presented as first evidence, by the instructed attorney, for examination to the intrusive counsel, but was dismissed as 144 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. totally incapable of a pertinent answer. Thus, however, the desired end was attained, and the leader, his part being accomplished, stood no longer in the way of Mr. O'Connell, who succeeded him, and failed not to achieve the expected result."* * The books to which I am indebted for the materials of the foregoing chapter are Shiel's "Sketches of the Irish Bar ;" Barrington's " Personal Sketches ;" O'Neill Daunt's " Personal Recol- lections of O'Connell;" Fagan's "Life of Daniel O'Connell;" "Life and Times of O'Connell," Dublin, John Mullany, 1 Parliament street, etc. CHAPTER VI. Lady Morgan's sketch of O'Connell — More of O'Connell's bar-anecdotes and otheb reminiscences — value of an ugly nose — a lesson in cow-stealing — unpremeditated oratory — O'Connell on the Scotch and English jury-systems and capital punish- ment, etc. — Queer anecdote of Sir Jonah Barrington; the pawnbroker outwitted — Escape of a robber — An Orangeman who always liked to have O'Connell as his counsel — Odd story of a physician — Anecdotes of Judges Boyd and Lefroy; O'Con- nell SAVES THE LIFE OF A CLIENT— He DEFIES BARON McCLELAND — A JUDGE STERNLY reproved — Anecdotes about Judge Day and Bully Egan — O'Connell humbugs Judge Day — His opinion on the subject of judges' wigs— Dan overhauls a client's accounts to the great advantage of the latter — He receives a challenge from an angry litigant — A high-sheriff's providential thickness of skull — O'Connell sitting for his portrait — kerry dexterity; a smart newsboy — blake's duel — Breach-of-promise case; Miss Fitzgerald versus Parson Hawkesworth — Grose the antiquary — duke o'neill's will — a witty epigram of hussey burgh on the ladies of the stratford family ; aristocratic female shoplifters — further in- STANCES of O'Connell's legal acuteness — Cases of Mr. Justice Johnson and Mr. Justice Fox — Manners and customs in Ireland at the end of the eighteenth and commencement of the nineteenth century — The Irish character — "King" Bage- nal — Election duels — "Tiger" Roche— Wild conviviality — Catholic lords — Offi- cers of the "Irish Brigade" — Prodigality and corruption — Titled tricksters — ■ One coffin for a company — Military patronage — A true gentleman — De Beau- mont on our aristocracy — Dan and Biddy Moriarty— A combative attorney. S I began the last chapter with a sketch of O'Connell from the graphic pen of that distinguished Irish orator and colleague of his in the Catholic Association, Richard Lalor Shiel, so I shall commence the present one with a sketch from another Irish writer, perhaps equally lively, the once popular and celebrated Lady Morgan. "Bacon, Shakespeare, Milton — all who have enlightened and bene- fited the world — have been no less remarkable for their labor than for their genius. Physical activity may exist without mind, but the man of talent cannot be idle even though he desire it ; he is mastered by his moral energy, and pushed into activity whether he will or not. Vitality or all-aliveness, energy, activity, are the great elements of what we call talents. . . . There is O'Connell— the head and front of all agitation, 146 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. moral, political, social and legal. When we read in the papers those eloquent and powerful speeches in which the spectres of Ireland's op- pression are called up from the depths of history, with a perfect know- ledge of all that has concerned the country from its earliest records, and in which unnumbered modern instances of misrule, in all its shades of ignorance and venality, are collected from the storehouse of his capacious memory — those speeches in which, amidst the fiery explosions of long- nurtured indignation (the petulant outpourings of constitutional impa- tience), arguments of logical conviction and facts of curious detail come forth as from an exhaustless fountain — who but would suppose that the life of the patriot, demagogue and agitator was occupied exclusively in one great and absorbing cause? It is, however, on his way home from the courts, and after legal Labors that have occupied him from the dawn of light, that he turns into the Catholic Committee; it is after having set a jury-box in a roar by his humor, made butchers weep by his pathos, driven a witness to the last shift of Irish evasion, and puzzled a judge by some point of law not dreamed of in his philosophy, that, all weary and exhausted as he must be, he mounts the rostrum of the committee, the Jupiter tonans (thundering Jure) of the Catholic senate, and by those thunderbolts of eloquence, so much more effective to hear than to read, kindles the lambent light of patriotism to its fiercest glow, and 'with fear of change' perplexes Orange lodges. Again, this boldest of demagogues, this mildest of men 'from Dan to Beersheba,' appears in the patriarchal light of a happy father of a happy family, practising all the soeial duties ami nourishing all the social affections. It is re- markable that Mr. O'Connell is not only governed by the same sense of the value of time as influenced Sir Edward Coke, but literally obeys his injunctions tor its partition which form the creed, more than the practice, of rising young lawyers. It is this intense and laborious diligence in his profession that has won him the public confidence. Where his abil- ities as a lawyer may be serviceable, party yields to self-interest; and many an inveterate Ascendency man leaves his friends, the Orange bar- risters, to hawk their empty bags through the courts, while he assigns to Catholic talent the cause which Catholic eloquence can best defend." Before this chapter comes to an end we shall see an instance strikingly confirmatory of this last statement of Lady Morgan's. 1 am THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 147 now about to present the reader with a few more of O'Connell's bar- anecdotes and other reminiscences. Here is one of his comical stories. The heroine of it is a Miss Hussey, to whom her father bequeathed an income of one hundred and fifty pounds per annum, in consideration of her having an ugly nose. "He had made a will," quoth O'Connell, "disposing of the bulk of his fortune to public charities. When he was upon his death-bed his housekeeper asked him how much he had left Miss Mary. He replied that he had left her one thousand pounds, which would do for her very well, if she made off any sort of a good husband. ' Heaven bless your honor!' cried the housekeeper; 'and what decent man would ever take her with the nose she has got?' ' Why, that is really very true,' replied the dying father ; ' I never thought of her nose ;' and he lost no time in adding a codicil that gave Miss Mary an addition of one hundred and fifty pounds a year as a set-off against her ugliness." On another occasion O'Connell told the following anecdote about a cow-stealer : "I was once counsel for a cow-stealer, who was clearly con- victed — the sentence was transportation for fourteen years. At the end of that time he returned, and happening to meet me, he began to talk about the trial. I asked him how he always had managed to steal the fat cows; to which he gravely answered: 'Why, then, I'll tell your honor the whole secret of that, sir. Whenever your honor goes to steal a cow, always go on the worst night you can, for if the weather is very bad the chances are that nobody will be up to see your honor. The way you'll always know the fat cattle in the dark is by this token — that the fat cows always stand out in the more exposed places, but the lean ones always go into the ditch for shelter.' So I got," added O'Connell, "that lesson in cow-stealing gratis from my worthy client." Mr. Daunt happening to observe to our hero "that when a speaker averred with much earnestness that his speech was unpremeditated, he never felt inclined to believe him," O'Connell laughed and said, in reply : " I remember a young barrister, named B , once came to consult me on a case in which he was retained, and begged my permission to read for me the draft of a speech he intended to deliver at the trial, which was to come on in about a fortnight. I assented , whereupon he began to read, ' Gentlemen of the jury, I pledge you my honor as a gentleman 148 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. that I did not know until this moment I should have to address you in this cause.' 'Oh! that's enough!' cried I; 'consult somebody else — that specimen is OAiite enough for me!' " At Maryborough, in the Queen's county, before they retired to bed one night, Mr. Daunt and "the liberator" had a conversation on the subject of trial by jury. Mr. Daunt asked him "if he didn't think it absurd to require unanimity in a jury? if the plan of the old Scotch criminal juries — namely, that of deciding by the majority — was not the more rational mode?" "In theoiy it is," said O'Connell in reply; "but there are great practical advantages in the plan that requires unanimity. To be sure, there is this disadvantage, that one obstinate fellow may knock up a good verdict in spite of eleven clear-headed jurors, but that does not happen once in a hundred cases. And the necessity for a unanimous" verdict may be a vast protection for a person unjustly charged with an offence. I remember a case in which eleven jurors found a man guilty of murder, while the twelfth — a gawky fellow, who had never before been on a jury — said he thought the deceased died by a fall from his horse. The dissident juror persisted; the case was accordingly held over till the next as>i/es, and in the mean time evidence came out that most clearly confirmed the surmise of the gawky juror. Here, then, if the majority of jurors had been able to return a verdict, an innocent man had suffered death." O'Connell held strong convictions against capital punishment. He fancied that his own professional experience furnished him with many valid reasons for its abolition. I do not think it necessary here to express any opinion, one way or the other, on the vexed questions bear- ing on the lawfulness or advisability of inflicting the punishment of death on criminals guilty of certain black ami enormous crimes. O'Connell "told me" says Daunt, "of an instance where an innocent life was all but lost — the prosecutrix (a woman whose house had been attacked) having erroneously sworn to the identity of a prisoner who was totally guiltless of the offence. The man was found guilty and sentenced to death on her evidence. He bore a considerable personal resemblance to the real crim- inal. The latter having been arrested and confronted with the prosecu- trix, she fainted with honor at her mistake, which had been so nearly fatal An Irish Patriot's Farewell. THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COKNKLL. 149 in its consequences. By the prompt interference of Judge Burton (then at the bar) and O'Connell, the government were induced to discharge the unoffending individual, who had the narrowest possible escape of a rope." Here is a more terrible case in O'Connell' s own words, extracted from a speech made by him at a meeting held in London : " T myself defended three brothers of the name of Cremin. They were indicted for murder. The evidence was most unsatisfactory. The judge had a leaning in favor of the Crown prosecution, and he almost compelled the jury to convict them. I sat at my window as they passed by after sentence of death had been pronounced ; there was a large mil- itary guard taking them back to jail, positively forbidden to allow any communication with the three unfortunate youths. But their mother was there ; and she, armed in the strength of her affection, broke through the guard. I saw her clasp her eldest son, who was but twenty-two years of age ; I saw her hang on the second, who was not twenty ; I saw her faint when she clung to the neck of the youngest boy, who was but eighteen ; and I ask, What recompense could be made for such agony ? They were executed, and — they were innocent!" The conduct of the judge in this case bears some resemblance to that of Judge Keogh in the case of those two unfortunate brothers, the Cor- macks, tried at Nenagh some years subsequently to the death of O'Connell. The liberator, one evening at Darrynane, defended that principle of law which protects the individual who has once been acquitted of a capital charge from being arraigned a second time for the same offence. Some one tried to show "that this principle might sanction injustice; as in a case where a murderer had been acquitted through defect of evi- dence, and where a competent witness volunteered to tender direct testi- mony against the accused in the event of a new trial." "My good sir," said O'Connell, "if the principle of repeating the trial were once admitted, the injustice on the other side would be infi- nitely greater. If the accused could be tried over again on the appear- ance of a fresh witness, pray where could you limit the danger to inno- cent persons unjustly arraigned ? At the expiration of months or years, they would again be liable to trial for their lives, if any unprincipled wit- nesses should offer themselves as being competent to give fresh evidence.'' Once, when they were travelling together from Roscrea to Dublin. 150 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. O'Connell told his friend Mr. Daunt an anecdote of the humorous and eccentric historian of the union. Sir Jonah Barrington, "which, if true, is rather more creditable to his ingenuity than to his integrity." This is the very just remark of O'Xeill Daunt. "Sir Jonah." said O'Connell, "had pledged his family plate for a large sum of money to one Stevenson, a Dublin pawnbroker, and feeling desirous to recover the plate without paying back the money, he hit upon the following device to accomplish his purpose. He invited the viceroy and several noblemen to dinner, and. then went to Stevenson, begging he might let him have the plate for the occasion. 'You see how I am circumstanced, Stevenson,' said Sir Jonah. 'I have asked all these fine folk to dine, and I must borrow back my plate for this one day. I assure you, my dear fellow, you shall have it again; and in order to secure its restoration to your hands, you shall come and make one of our party. I can ask one private friend; and you. as a member of the Common Council, are perfectly admissible. Come — there's a good fellow! and you know yon need not leave my house until you cany off the plate along with you.' Stevenson, delighted at the honor of dining at the table with the viceroy, lords and judges, fell into the trap, and went to dinner. Sir Jonah plied him well with champagne, and soon made him potently drunk. At a late hour he was sent home in a job-coach; liis wife put him to bed, and he never awoke till two o'clock next day. An hour then elapsed before his misty, muddled recollection cleared itself, lie then bethought him of the plate — he started up and drove to Barrington's. But. alas! Sir Jonah was gone, and, what was much worse, the plate was gone /<><>.' Poor Stevenson recorded a bitter vow against dining in aristocratic company for the rest of his natural life." As O'Connell and Daunt, at the close of their journey, drove along Skinner's Row, the former pointed out the ruins of the old Four Courts to his friend, and showed him where the old jail had stood. "Father Lube*," said O'Connell, "informed me of a curious escape of a robber from that jail. The rogue was rich, and gave the jailer one hundred and twenty pounds to let him out. The jailer then prepared for his pris- oner's escape in the following manner: he announced that the fellow had a spotted fever, and the rogue shammed sick so successfully that no one suspected any cheat. Meanwhile the jailer procured a fresh corpse, THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 151 and smuggled it into the prisoner's bed, while the pseudo-invalid was let out one fine dark night. The corpse, which passed for that of the robber, was decently interred, and the trick remained undiscovered till revealed by the jailer's daughter, long after his death. Father Lube told me." added O'Connell, "that the face of the corpse was dappled with paint, to imitate the discolorment of a spotted fever." Hedges Eyre, a well-known Orangeman in his day, always took care to have our hero as his counsel when he had any law-business on hand. An Orange friend of Eyre's, with more bigotry in his heart than com- mon sense in his brains, once reproached him bitterly for retaining as his counsel the great arch-Papist advocate. "You've got seven counsel without him," quoth this bigoted block- head, "and why should you give your money to that Papist rascal?" Hedges kept silent ; but the tw T o stayed in court, watching the pro- gress of the trial. The counsel opposed to Eyre pressed a point for non- suit; the judge (Johnson) seemed to incline to their view. O'Connell pro- tested against the nonsuit as a great injustice. The judge was stubborn. "Well, hear me at all events," cried O'Connell. "No, I won't," replies the judge; "I've already heard the leading counsel." "But I am conducting counsel," rejoined O'Connell, "and more inti- mately aware of the details of the case than my brethren. I entreat, therefore, you will hear me." The judge consented with a bad grace - but five minutes had hardly elapsed when O'Connell had succeeded in convincing him of the injustice of the nonsuit. "Now," said Hedges Eyre, triumphing over his brother Orangeman, "now do you see why I gave my money to that Papist rascal?" O'Connell amused his guests with a story of a medical doctor, who was detained for a number of days at the Limerick assizes, to which he had been subpoenaed as a witness. He pressed the judge to order him his ex- penses. " On what plea do you claim your expenses ?" demanded the judge. " On the plea of my heavy personal loss and inconvenience, my lord," replied the applicant, rather innocently; "I have been kept away from my patients these five days, and, if I am kept here much longer, how do I know but they 1 11 get wellV 152 THE LIFE OF DANIEL OCONNELL. On the same occasion O'Connell told his friends how, year after year, his efforts to get a post-office established at the little town of Cahir- civeen, near which the reader, no doubt, remembers he was born, were all in vain, until, by good luck, in 1809, he gained a lawsuit for Edward Lees (afterwards Sir Edward), the secretary to the General Post-Office and brother to that eccentric parson, Sir Harcourt Lees. After the suc- cessful lawsuit, Lees proved the warmth of his gratitude by procuring the establishment of a post-office at Cahirciveen. It is perfectly clear that our hero had all the qualifications requisite to enable him to play to perfection the part of an agreeable host or a pleasant travelling-companion; above all, that he was a most amusing and even admirable story-teller. "O'Connell," says his friend, the ob- servant Mr. Daunt, "never appeared to greater advantage than when presiding at his own table. Of him it may be said, as Lockhart has observed of Scott, that liis notions of hospitality included the necessity of making his intellectual stores available to the amusement of his guests. His conversation was replete with anecdote; and the narra- tives which possessed for me by far the greatest interest were those in which the narrator was personally concerned. His memory was pro- digious; and not the smallest trait of character or manner in the num- berless persons with whom, in the course of his bustling career, he had come in contact escaped the grasp of his retentive recollection." Conversing once on the subject of temperance versus intemperance, he was led to speak of Judge Boyd. This judge, he said, "was so fond of brandy that he always kept a supply of it in court upon the desk before him, in an inkstand of peculiar make. His lordship used to lean his arm upon the desk, bob down his head, and steal a hurried sip lrom time to time, through a quill that lay among the pens, which manoeuvre he nattered himself escaped observation. "One day it was sought by counsel to convict a witness of having been intoxicated at the period to which his evidence referred; Mr. Hairy Deane Grady labored hard, upon the other hand, to show that the man had been sober. " 'Come now, my good man,' said Judge Boyd, 'it is a very important consideration — tell the court truly, were you drunk or were you sober upon that occasion ?' THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 153 "' Oh ! quite sober, my lord !' broke in Grady, with a very significant look at the inkstand ; 'as sober — as a Judge V " On one occasion O'Connell had been retained to defend a prisoner, whose case (one of life and death) was considered hopeless by his attor- ney, and, indeed, by all who knew anything about the matter. In fact, the evidence against the prisoner seemed overwhelming. When the trial came on, O'Connell plainly saw that, to give his client the smallest chance of getting off, it was necessary to leave the beaten track and defend him in a style altogether unique. The judge was Sergeant Lefroy, then comparatively young. He was acting in place of the reg- ular judge, who was prevented by illness from presiding. O'Connell commenced by putting a number of utterly illegal questions to the chief witness for the prosecution. The counsel for the Crown at once objected to O'Connell's questions, and Sergeant Lefroy quickly cut him short, de- ciding in the most positive manner that he could not suffer him to proceed w T ith such an illegal line of cross-examination. This was just what O'Con- nell wanted; his opponents and the judge had alike fallen into his trap. With every appearance of uncontrollable indignation, he exclaimed, "As you refuse me permission to defend my client, I leave his fate in your hands; his blood will be on your head, if he be condemned." O'Connell then rushed impetuously out of court, and commenced walk- ing up and down outside. About half an hour goes by; O'Connell is still promenading with hurried steps, w T hen, all of a sudden, he sees his client's attorney rush- ing out of the court-house hatless and excited 'He's acquitted! he's acquitted !" cries the limb of law, full of delight and gasping for breath. O'Connell gives a comical grin. All his calculations had proved correct- He had shrewdly guessed that an unhackneyed judge, like Lefroy, would shrink back, if it were at all possible, from being in any way instru- mental in causing a capital conviction. " My only chance," said O'Con- nell, "was to throw the responsibility on the judge, who had a natural timidity of incurring a responsibility so serious." In short, Lefroy had insensibly acted as the prisoner's advocate, had cross-examined the wit- nesses brought against him, and had ended by charging the jury in his favor. We have already seen how boldly O'Connell defied the judicial inso- 154 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. Ience of Norbury. He was never afraid to beard the haughtiest and most overbearing occupants of the bench. His vehement self-assertion was more than a match for their arrogance and pride. His bitter sarcasm could cut keener than their envenomed and prejudiced malignancy. One day a discussion took place in court on a motion for a new trial. A young attorney was called on by the adverse counsel either to admit a certain statement as evidence or hand in a document he could legally withhold. O'Connell is present in the court. He rises promptly and tells the attorney "to make no admission." " Have you a brief in this case, Mr. O'Connell ?" demands Baron McCleland, in a tone of marked insolence. " I have not, my lord, but I shall have one when the case goes down to the assizes." "When /was at the bar," retorts the judge, "it was not my habit to anticipate briefs." "When you were at the bar I never chose you for a model, and now that you are on the bench, I shall not submit to your dictation." Having given the baron this bitter pill to swallow, O'Connell marches out of court along with the young solicitor. During a trial at the assizes of Cork, a question arose as to the admissibility of certain evidence. O'Connell, with great ability, urged that it was manifestly admissible. The court, however, ruled against him, and thus he was deprived of the benefit of the testimony in dispute. Next morning, before resuming the hearing of the case, which was a protracted one, the judge addressed our hero in the following terms: "I have reconsidered my decision of yesterday, and my present opinion is, that the evidence tendered by you should not have been rejected. You can therefore reproduce that evidence now." Did O'Connell then and there respond to the judge's recantation by an elaborate display of deferential gratitude? Not a bit of it. Most barristers, indeed, would have done so, but our sturdy Dan burst out impatiently — "Had your lordship known as much law yesterday morning as you do to-day, you would have spared me a vast amount of time and trouble, and my client a considerable amount of injury. Crier, call up the wit- nesses." THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 155 The judge, thoroughly abashed by this somewhat stern rebuke, preserved a complete silence. One evening toward the end of November or in the beginning of December, 1840, at Darrynane, Mr. O'Connell amused his guests with some of his forensic recollections. He talked of ex-Judge Day, who then, well stricken in years, was living in retirement, having resigned his seat on the bench quite a number of years previously. "He must now," observed O'Connell, "be at least ninety-eight, and he writes as firm a hand as ever, and preserves his intellect (such as it is) unimpaired. To be sure, he never had much to preserve in this respect; but all he ever had he has kept. He had excellent qualities of the heart ; no man would take more pains to serve a friend ; but as a judge, they could scarcely have placed a less efficient man upon the bench. Curran used to say, that Day's efforts to understand a point of law reminded him of nothing so much as the attempt to open an oyster with a rolling-pin. " He once said to me at the Cork assizes, ' Mr. O'Connell, I must not allow you to make a speech ; the fact is, I am always of opinion with the last speaker, and therefore I will not let you say one word.' " 'My lord,' said I, 'that is precisely the reason why I'll let nobody have the last word but myself, if I can help it' " I had the last word, and Day charged in favor of my client. Day was made a judge in 1798. He had been chairman of Kilmainham, with a salary of twelve hundred pounds a year. When he got on the bench, Bully Egan got the chairmanship." Somebody in the company asked O'Connell, "Was Bully Egan a good lawyer ?" " He was a successful one-. His bullying helped him through. He was a desperate duellist. One of his duels was fought with a Mr. Eeilly, who fired before the word was given. The shot did not take effect. " 'Well, at any rate, my honor's safe!' cried Eeilly. " 'Is it so?' said Egan. 'Egad, I'll take a slap at your honor, for all that.' " And Egan deliberately held his pistol pointed for full five minutes at Eeilly, whom he kept for that period in the agonies of mortal suspense." 156 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. Mr. Daunt asked O'Connell, " Did he kill him ?" "Not he!" responded O'Connell; "he couldn't hit a haystack. If courage appertained to duelling, he certainly possessed it. But in every- thing else he was the most timid man alive. Once I stated in the Court of Exchequer that I had, three days before, been in the room with a man in a fever, one hundred and twenty miles off. The instant I said so, Egan shuffled away to the opposite side of the court, through pure fear of infection. Egan used to make a vast deal of money as counsel at elections." Doubtless this was on account of his predilection for the arbitrament of the pistol. A taste for duelling was an indispensable qualification for success as an Irish electioneering counsel in those days — " For those were the days when the angry blow Supplanted the word that chides — When hearts could glow — long ago, (Not) in the days of the Barmecides" — but in the days of Bully Egan, Tiger Roche, Fighting Fitzgerald, Brian Maguire, "et hoc genus o/iuic" — the storied heroes of many a neat exchange of shots in the Fifteen Acres and elsewhere. I may as well mention, in passing, that old Judge Day died ;i few months after the date of the above conversation. It was probably after his death that (some further reference being made to the old wiseacre) O'Connell called up the following forensic reminiscence: "Ay, poor Day!'' said O'Connell; "most innocent of law was my poor friend Day! I remember once I was counsel before him for a man who had stolen some goats. The fact was proved, whereupon I produced to old Day an old act of Parliament, empowering the owners of cornfields, gardens or plantations to kill and destroy all goats trespassing thereon. I contended that this legal power of destruction clearly demonstrated that goats were not property ; and I thence inferred that the stealer of goats was not legally a thief, nor punishable as such. Poor Day charged the jury accordingly, and the prisoner was acquitted." Dogberry could hardly surpass this. As we are on the subject of judges, I shall add here a curious, 01 rather comical, instance of the absurdity of some of the attacks made by the Tory papers on O'Connell dining the palmy days of his agita- THE LIFE OF DAJNTEL O'CONNELL. 157 fcions. One of these oracles of political sagacity (Mr. Daunt, who is my authority for the statement, could not call to memory the name of thip paragon of newspapers), in grave and sober earnestness, arraigned the great agitator for having sought to bring the judicial character into dis- repute, because one of his harangues at Leeds, in Yorkshire (horrible to relate!), contained the following profane comments upon the judicial wig : "The judges of the land, who come down to preside in your courts with all their solemn gravity and harlequinade, astonish the people with their profusion of horse-hair and chalk ! For must not every one think what a formidable, terrible fellow he is, that has got twenty-nine pounds' weight of an enormous powdered wig upon his head ? This is all hum- bug of the old times, and I long to see it kicked away along with many other antiquated absurdities and abuses." Surely, it would have been in nowise wonderful if the disciples of old Mother Goose, who, under that venerable dame's inspiration, contributed so many of the lucubrations of the Tory press of those days, and the innumerable wooden-pated Deadlocks of the tribe of Tory squires, who derived their few and obsolete notions from that antiquated fountain, had become wild with alarm lest O'Connell's reckless impiety in thus blaspheming judicial horse-hair should at once loosen "the entire cohe- sion of things," and bring back the anarchy "of primeval night and chaos." Returning to O'Connell's bar-reminiscences, here is a specimen of the minute and painstaking way in which, when a rising young lawyer, he looked after his client's interests. It is easy to perceive that his suc- cess at the bar was inevitable from the first. Such a man could not do otherwise than achieve success in almost any practical walk of life. But to our illustration : During the year in which "the liberator" was lord-mayor, Mr. John O'Neill (a survivor of the volunteers of 1782) on one occasion solicited his good offices in behalf of the children of an unfortunate man, who had a short time before died in embarrassed circumstances. " Poor fellow!" said O'JSTeill, "he was a slobbering sort of manager. The Dutch say, ' that when a man becomes distressed, it is a sure sign that he has not kept his accounts with regularity.' " " The Dutch are not far from the truth," observed O'Connell. " I 158 THE LIFE OF DANIEL OCONXELL. have often seen preposterously slobbering mismanagement among men for whom I have been professionally concerned. I recollect I once had a client, an unlucky fellow, against whom a verdict had been given for a balance of eleven hundred pounds. We were trying to set aside that verdict. I was young at the bar at that time ; my senior counsel con- tented themselves with abusing the adverse witnesses, detecting flaws in their evidence and making sparkling points — in short, they made very flourishing and eloquent, but rather ineffective, speeches. Whilst they flourished away, I got our client's books, and, taking my place im- mediately under the judge's bench, I opened the accounts, and went through them all from beginning to end. I got the whole drawn out by double entry, and got numbers for ever} 7 voucher. The result plainly was, that so far from their being a just balance of eleven hundred pounds against our poor devil, there actually was a balance of seven hundred pounds in his favor, although the poor slovenly blockhead did not know- it himself! When uiy turn came, I made the facts as clear as possible to judge and jury, and the jury inquired 'if they couldn't And a verdict of seven hundred pounds for Mr. ? I just tell you the circum- stance," continued O'Connell, "to show you that I kept an eye on that important branch of my profession." Another time O'Connell told the following odd story: " I remember being counsel at a special commission in Kerry, against a Mr. S , and having occasion to press him somewhat hard in my speech, he jumped up in the court, and called me 'a purse-proud block- head.' I said to him : ' In the first place, I have got no purse to be proud of; and, secondly, if I be a blockhead, it is the better for you, as I'm counsel against you. However, just to save you the trouble of say- ing so again, I'll administer a slight rebuke;' whereupon I whacked him soundly on the back with the president's cane. Next day he sent me a challenge by William Ponsonby, of Crottoe; but very shortly after he wrote to me to state, that since he had challenged me he had discov- ered that my life was inserted in a valuable lease of his. ' Under these circumstances,' he continued, ' I cannot afford to shoot you, unless, as a precautionary measure, you first insure your life for my benefit. If you do, then hey for powder and ball! I'm your man.' Now this seems so ludicrously absurd, that it is almost incredible; yet it is literally true. THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 159 was a very timid man — yet he fought six duels ; in fact, he fought them all out of pure fear." The foregoing anecdote is certainly a very singular one. I have taken it from Mr. Daunt's "Personal Eecollections." If that gentleman were under no misconception in reporting the particulars of this occurrence, it would appear that not merely was O'Connell on this occasion grossly insulted in open court, but that, moreover, he inflicted personal chas- tisement on the offending party in open court. Making every allowance for the manners of the days of our grandfathers, anything like this seems to border on the incredible. Yet even so, in all probability, Mr. Daunt's version of O'Connell's story is a perfectly accurate narrative of what actually occurred. " Truth is often stranger than fiction," as the hackneyed proverb runs. Assuming, then, that the account which I have given of this adventure of Dan's be strictly true, it suggests the strangest idea of what the state of society in Ireland must, in certain respects, have been during the earlier portion of our hero's public life. Mr. Primrose of Hilgrove (it was at this gentleman's place that the anecdote about the squabble in the court-house was related) adverted to Judge Jackson's calumny against O'Connell (this was vented much later than the period of our hero's life with which we are dealing in this chapter), promulgated on the authority of Mr. Eobert Twiss. "Ay, Bob — poor Bob!" said O'Connell. "I remember a good hit the late Archdeacon Day made at Bob. While Bob was high-sheriff of Kerry, I dined in his company one day, in Tralee. There was a riot in the street, and Bob was desirous to interpose his authority. ' Oh, let them fight it out!' exclaimed the archdeacon. 'No, no; I'll pacify them,' answered Bob; and he accordingly rushed out into the street, and set about pacifying the people by knocking down one man on the right and another on the left, crying out all the while, ' I'm the high- sheriff! I'm the high-sheriff!' A fellow who did not care for dignitaries soon made a low sheriff of him, by bestowing a blow on his head that stunned him. Poor Bob was brought back into the house insensible ; but his head, when examined, was found not to have sustained the least fracture. When he revived, Archdeacon Day congratulated him, saying, 'How providential, Bob, that your skull was so thick V " For the sake of a little variety, I shall turn aside, for a brief space 160 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. longer, from O'Connell's exclusively forensic recollections and give one or two additional sketches of a somewhat different complexion. I shall proceed to give a sketch of "the liberator" sitting for his portrait. I must confess, that in introducing this sketch at this part of my biogra- phy I am anticipating events considerably; for the sitting, which I am about to bring before the reader's notice, took place many a long year later than the period of O'Connell's history at which we have arrived. Nevertheless, I think it may be more convenient to bring it in here than at a later stage of the work, where the continuous and absorbing interest of his political career will leave room for few digressions to topics of lighter importance. "One morning in February" (1841), Mr. Daunt tells us, "I was present when IT , the portrait-painter, called to take O'Connell's likeness, for a picture which was destined to commemorate some Reform meeting. Portrait-painters generally keep their sitters in conversation for the purpose of bringing out the expression of the face. I was amused with II 's exuberant flippancy. Mr. O'Connell was narrating an instance of his own forensic and political success at some provincial assizes, and the patchwork effect produced in his narrative by his auditors incessant exclamations was ludicrous enough. " ' I made,' said he, 'a long speech on the occasion.' " ' Yes, yes ; a long speech — excellent !' "'And I was listened to at lust with silence, but, by and by, the jury began to cheer, and the crowd in the court-house cheered.' '"To be sure, to be sure — capital !' " 'And I thought the judge looked as if he was going to eheer too.' " ' Cheer too? No doubt, no doubt ! Very good. Please turn a little to the left, sir — that's just it.' "'But on the following clay I had a still stronger proof of my success.' " 'Ay, ay; so I should suppose.' " 'A sturdy Presbyterian farmer, a fellow who had been a great leader anions: the Orangemen of the neighborhood, and a bitter hater of the Catholics, came up to the parish priest, whom he met upon the road — ' '"To the parish priest? Ha! : "'And offered to shake hands with him.' THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 1Q1 " ' Shake hands with the priest? Bless my soul !' " ' And the priest, astonished at this familiarity from such a quarter — ' " * No doubt ! He must have been amazingly surprised !' " ' Expressed his amazement good-humoredly, and asked the man, in the course of conversation, if he had been in court on the preceding day — ' "'In court? Tes, yes. Yery good. May I ask you to hold up that sheet of white paper to the left of your face ; it reflects the light upon it. There — precisely so.' " 'I was in court,' replied the man, 'and a greater change has been produced upon my mind than I could have thought possible.' "'Ha!' "'I heard Counsellor O'Connell, and till then I always thought he was a rough, blustering fellow, who wanted to carry all his ends by bullying and threats — ' " ' Ha !' " ' But, instead of that, he appealed to our reason, and not to our fears, and did so with all possible courtesy and gentleness.' " 'Precisely so,' cried H . 'With all possible courtesy and gen- tleness. Admirable! Excellent! A most intelligent fellow. Please to hold the paper somewhat higher up. I flatter myself this will be a likeness. Since you last sat to me, I have been honored with a sitting by his grace the duke of Wellington. His grace is exceedingly agree- able — has much more humor than one would suppose — kept telling anecdotes the whole time he sat, and told them right well.' " 'Tes,' said O'Connell, 'he has seen so much of life that he must have gained materials for being entertaining. He must, I suppose, abound in guard-room sort of stories. We cannot but admit he is a first-rate corporal.' " Mr. Daunt remarks "that it was scarcely possible to speak on any subject which did not elicit an anecdote from the stores of O'Connell's recollection." Here is a story of native Kerry dexterity, which "the liberator" told that gentleman with infinite glee: "One day during the war James Connor and I dined at Mr. Ma- hony's, in Dublin, and after dinner we heard the newsvenders, as usual, calling out, ' The Post ! The Dublin Evening Post ! Three packets in to-night's post!' The arrival of the packets was at that time irregular, and eagerly looked for. We all were impatient for the paper, and Ma- hony gave a five-penny piece to his servant, a Kerry lad, and told him 162 THE LIFE OF DANIEL COONNELL. to go down and buy the Post. The boy returned in a minute with a Dublin Evening Post, which, on opening, we found, to our infinite cha- grin, was a fortnight old. The roguish newsvender had pawned off an old paper on the unsuspecting Kerry tiger. Mr. Mahony stormed, Con- nor and I laughed, and Connor said, "'I wonder, gossoon, how you let the fellow cheat you? Has not your master a hundred times told you that the dry papers are always old and good for nothing, and that the new papers are always wet from the printing-office ? Here's another live-penny. Be off, now, and take care to bring us in a ivtt Post.' "'Oh, never mind the live-penny, sir,' said the boy; 'I'll get the paper without it;' and he darted out of the room, while Mahony cried out, 'Hang that young blockhead, he'll blunder the business again.' "But in less than five minutes the lad re-entered with a fresh wet newspaper. TVe were all surprised, and asked him how he had managed to get it without money. " 'Oh, the asiest way in life,' said the urchin. ' I just took the dry ould Post, and cried it down the street a bit — " Dublin Evening Post! Dublin Evening Postl" and a fool of a gentleman meets me at the corner and buys my ould dry paper. So I whips across to a newsman I sits over the way and buys this fine, fresh, wet, new Post for your honor, with the money I got for the ould one.' " I shall next present t<> the reader O'Connell's story of a Connaught duellist, named Blake. Tins gentleman had been called out to take his chance of "shivering on a daisy." All the parties concerned mel ;ii the appointed time and place, except Blake's second. Like the knights and nobles in "Lara"' waiting for the appearance of Sir Ezzelin, tiny de- layed the proceedings Mime minutes, but all in vain; Blake's second failed to put in an appearance "It is a pity," quoth Blake, "to keep you waiting any longer, gen- tlemen;" and opening his pistol-case (which had hem placed in his car- riage by the absent second), he deliberately snapped one of the pistols at his opponent. On finding that it did not go off, he began very coolly to hammer away at the flint, saying, "Fire away, sir! I'll be ready for you in no time!" THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 163 While he spoke, his second came galloping up, with many apologies for his absence ; but on seeing that the parties had already commenced hostilities, he not unnaturally expressed great astonishment, "Egad, I snapped my pistol," said Blake, upbraidingly, "and it missed fire." "Of course it did," replied the second; "you know it was not charged." "Not charged?" cried Blake; "and pray of what use is a case of pistols if they are not charged?" O'Connell used to tell of a case in which he was engaged profession- ally. It was an action instituted by a Miss Fitzgerald against a Parson Hawkesworth for a breach of promise of marriage. "Hawkesworth," said O'Connell, speaking of this affair to his agi- tating staff one day they were returning from a repeal meeting held at Drogheda, "had certainly engaged the lady's affections very much. He had acquired fame enough to engage her ambition. He was a crack preacher — had been selected to preach before the lord-lieutenant — his name occasionally got into the newspapers, which then was not often the case with private persons; and no doubt this notoriety had its weight in the lady's calculations. Things are changed in this respect, my dear Tom," continued O'Connell, turning to his "Head Pacificator," the well-known and very eccentric Tom Steele, who was one of his trav- elling companions on this occasion; "now the difficulty is for some people to keep out of the newspapers!" [What would O'Connell have said had he lived to glance his eye over some of the New York and other American journals %)ublished in this actual year of grace 1872 ? How he wotdd stare at their columns of " intervieivings" and other sensational per- sonalities, before which European journalistic gossip and sensationalism must hide their diminished heads!) "If I, for example," proceeded "the liberator," "go to see the Belleisle frigate, next morning it's all in print! and who were along with me, and how we were received on board, just as if we were princes! But to return to Hawkesworth. The corre- spondence read upon the trial was comical enough. The lady, it ap- peared, had at one period doubted his fidelity ; whereupon the parson writes to reassure her in these words : ' Don't believe any one who says I'll jilt you. They lie who say so ; and I pray that all such liars may 104 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. be condemned to an eternity of itching without the benefit of scratching.' Three thousand pounds damages were given against him. He was un- able to pay, and decamped to America upon a preaching speculation, which proved unsuccessful. He came back to Ireland, and married the prosecutrix !" During this same journey, when approaching from the village of Ash- bourne to Dublin, some objects of antiquity which Grose had illustrated recalled that antiquary to "the liberator's'' mind. "Grose," said he, "came to Ireland full of strong prejudices against the people; but they gave way beneath the influence of Irish drollery. He was very much teased, while walking through the Dublin markets, by the butchers besetting him for his custom. At last he got angry, and told them all to go about their business; when a sly, waggish butcher, deliberately surveying Grose's fat, ruddy face and corpulent person, said to him, 'Well, please your honor, I won't ax you to buy. since it puts your honor in a passion ; but I'll tell you how you'll sarve me— -just tell aU your friends thai it's I that supply you with your mate, and, never fear. I'll have custom enough." Among the professional reminiscences of O'Connell may be men- tioned the story of "Duke O'Neill's will." This will was a singular and, in spite of its downright rascality, somewhat laughable fraud, which for a time inspired a lot of gullible mortals with visionary hopes of becom- ing rich by the division of a colossal fortune. The cheat originated in this wise: A smart, unscrupulous attorney's cleric, desirous of treating himself to a pleasanl summer excursion at other people's expense, forged a document, which purported to be the last will and testament of a certain grandee of Spain, the Duke O'Neill, who had died without leaving offspring in that land of romance, after having amassed the vast sum of one million two hundred thousand pounds. This noble fortune, according to the provisions of the duke's will, was to be divided, share and share alike, between all his Hibernian cousins bearing the illustrious name of O'Neill, and within the fortieth degree of kindred! The con- coctor of this precious imposition lost no time in directing his footsteps to the province of Ulster, where, with sublime effrontery, he introduced himself at many houses with the story of the Hiberno-Spanisb grandee's magnificent bequest. The plausibility of the knave's statements c\;m \ - THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 165 where secured him a hospitable reception. In addition to getting into snug quarters, he made a pretty tidy sum by selling copies of the forged document tc every O'Neill who was green enough to present him with the moderate amount of half a crown for a neatly-engrossed duplicate. In short, the trick was, for a time, quite a success ; and presently sev- eral sturdy northern farmers, and even a Liverpool merchant, all bearing the royal name of their imaginary princely relative, made application to O'Connell for his professional advice and assistance in recovering their shares of the splendid windfall which awaited the lucky O'Neills within the' fortieth degree of cousinship to the duke. I had better let O'Connell himself describe the awakening of the poor humbugged O'Neills from their idle dreams of bags of doubloons and chateaux en Espagne (castles in Spain or in the air). "Nothing," said he, "could exceed their astonishment when I assured them the whole thing was a delusion. " ' Do you really tell us so, counsellor?' " ' Indeed I do,' said I. " ' And now we hope you wouldn't lay it on your conscience to deceive us. Do you really tell us, after all. that there's nothing at all to be got V " 'Indeed, I can assure you with a very safe conscience,' said I, 'that it is all a fabrication, and if an oath was required to confirm the fact. I could very safely give one.' "So away they went, indignant at the fraud, and lamenting that they had ever put faith in the tale of the 'ould duke.' " On one occasion, as O'Connell was passing Belan, the deserted abode of the earls of Alclborough, he repeated Hussey Burgh's epigram on the hand which in former days adorned an old finger-post near the gate. To understand the point of the epigram, it should be borne in mind that, in O'Connell's earlier days, the noble daughters of the Stratford family (Stratford is or was the family name of the Aldboroughs) were aotorious for what is now euphemistically styled kleptomania : "Great Jupiter! could I command Promethean fire to warm that hand, Give it tenacity and feeling, Then fix, thus vivified, the fist Upon my sympathetic wrist, Oh ! what a hand 'twould be for stealing 1" 166 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. Thus, then, there existed in those days a strongly -marked national character common to the universal Irish people, sprung though they were from various stocks. In spite of gradual changes of habits, this national character still survives. But as, in speaking of the external aspect of the island, I maintained that, along with the general characteristics of Irish scenery "to be found, in a greater or less degree, in most parts of the island, each province, or even each county, has peculiar features of its own; and even within these smaller tracts the variety of scenery is sometimes endless and marvellous beyond all expectation," so, in addi- tion to the general characteristics of our people, the Irishman of each district or locality has more or less peculiar features of his own, both physical and moral. In some parts the original Celtic blood is very little modified by that of the subsequent races of invaders. In some districts the Danish blood strongly asserts its presence, in some the Norman, in some the Saxon. As the degrees of admixture vary, so do the qualities of the people; and even counties almost purely Celtic differ more or less in the characteristics of their inhabitants. Remark- able indeed are the varieties to be found in the Irish character as it displays itself in the different localities of the isle. The stalwart. Roman- featured, stern to strangers, reserved but, at bottom, warm-hearted Tip- perary-man; the lithe-formed, subtle and fiery Celt of Cork and Kerry; the hardy, much-enduring, naturally courteous and hospitable Celt of Connaught, ever clinging tenaciously to the customs and traditions and language of ln-> forefathers; the man of Leinster with an admixture in bis veins of almost equal proportions of Danish and Norman and Saxon blood, the old Celtic blood, however, still preponderating; the sturdy, independent "Black Northern," with a large element of the "canny Scot" in his character, — all these varieties of the Irish race, while they have a certain broad family resemblance to each other, at the same time boast, each of them, strongly-marked individualisms. Of the changes that have gradually taken place in our manners and customs since the days when O'Connell was winning his forensic laurels, one of the most striking is the passing away of the race of "fire-eaters," as the Irish duellists were called. THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. -[Qh find with him," says O'Connell. "One is, that I never yet heard of his promoting any person in the army from mere merit, unless backed by some interest. The second fault is, that the duke has declared that the only misfortune of his life is his being an Irishman. There is a meanness, a paltriness, in this, incompatible with greatness of soul. But abstractedly from sentiment he may be right enough; for, great as his popularity and power have been in England, I have no doubt they would have been infinitely greater if he had been an Englishman. John Bull's adoration would have been even more intense and devoted if the idol had not been a Paddy." O'Connell had in his possession the original of a curious letter, written by the marquis of WeUesley, the famous duke's almost equally famous eldest brother, to a ZSI r. Mockler of Trim. It is a reply to an application made by that gentleman to the writer (then only* earl of Mornington) to procure a commission in the army for his son. The sub- sequently all-powerful statesman — at one time viceroy of India, now minister of foreign affairs, anon lord-lieutenant of Ireland — apologizes to Mr. Mockler for his utter inability to help him In the object of his THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 211 desire. His excuse is, that "commissions are so hard to be got, that Ms brother Arthurs name" (the name of the future victor of Waterloo, prince, duke, peer of Great Britain, marshal in I forget how many services) •had been two years upon the list, and he had not yet got an appointment." If Arthur had failed to get this commission, how many events in European history, but especially in English and Irish history, would have turned out quite differently ! But to return to the question of the veto. It may not be out of place to quote some remarks of the illustrious Edmund Burke which have a direct bearing on the subject and are replete with that great statesman's usual profound political wisdom. In his Letter to a Peer he says : " Never were the members of one religious sect fit to appoint pastors to another. Those who have no regard for their welfare, reputation or internal quiet will not appoint such as are proper. The seraglio of Constantinople is as equitable as we are, whether Catholics or Protestants, and, where their own sect is concerned, fully as religious ; but the sport which they make of the miserable dignities of the Greek Church, the factions of the harem to which they make them subservient, the continual sale to which they expose and re-expose the same dignity, and by which they squeeze all the inferior orders of the clergy, is nearly equal to all the other oppressions together exercised by Mussulmans over the unhappy mem- bers of the Oriental Church. It is a great deal to suppose that the present Castle would nominate bishops for the Roman Church of Ireland with a religious regard for its welfare. Perhaps they cannot, perhaps dare not, do it." Again, in a letter to Dr. Hussey, the Catholic bishop of Waterford, he says: "If you (the Catholic bishops) have not Avisdom enough to make common cause, they will cut you off one by one. I am sure that the constant meddling of your bishops and clergy with the Castle, and the Castle with them, will infallibly set them ill with their own body. All the weight which the clergy have hitherto had to keep the people quiet will be wholly lost if this once should happen. At best you will have a marked schism, and more than one kind, and I am greatly mistaken if this is not intended and diligently and systematically pursued." Some individuals of the extreme National party of Ireland have sometimes wished that the English government would get hold of the 212 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. Catholic clergy and make them a salaried body. They argue that the clergy would, in that case, lose all political influence whatsoever, and they would no longer be in a position to throw obstacles in the way of the patriots who struggle to put an end to British connection. But a fallacy pervades all these speculations. It is not quite certain that the clergy would, in the supposed case, lose their political influence; and if they did not, under such circumstances it would be exercised in a way more ruinous to the designs of Irish nationalists than ever. As things actually stand, if the Irish people were truly in earnest and went the right way to work for independence, they would encounter little opposi- tion from the clergy — in fact, they would be sure to carry them along with them. One probable cause of the lukewarmness of the clergy to our national struggles is their scepticism as to the sincerity and devotion of the leaders and followers engaged therein. In speaking of the pos- sible good or evil, that might result from the state-payment of the Cath- olic clergy of Ireland, I have omitted the consideration of the injury, that might result to the religion and morality as well of the people as of the clergy themselves. At the close of the parliamentary session of 1S08, Lord Grenville made a motion that Catholic merchants should be made eligible to the posts of governor or directors of the Bank of Ireland. Against this proposal a perfect howl of bigotry arose in the enlightened British legis- lature. Lord Westmoreland said, "that no further concessions whatever should, under present circumstances, be granted to the Catholics.'' He also gave Lord Grenville and the Whigs a smart rap. Lie said, "He was surprised to see such motions so often brought forward by those who, when they were themselves in power, employed every exertion to deprecate and prevent such discussions." Whigs out of place are the champions of Irish grievances; in office they almost invariably become what O'Connell styled them, "the base, bloody and brutal Whigs." The bigoted Redesdale, ex-Irish chancellor, fell into a state of panic at the clanger which would inevitably menace the Protestant interest, if such a monstrous innovation took place as to allow Papists to become bank directors. He said, "The more you were ready to grant them, the more power and pretensions you gave to the Catholics to come forward with fresh claims, and perhaps to insist upon them." This sage counsellor THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 213 then proceeded to abuse the Catholics in general and their priests in particular. But if the brutal insolence and bigotry of the Tories refused to the Catholics even so paltry a concession as that proposed by Lord Grenville, they had no hesitation about giving Dublin a new police bill. This bill, along with its other merits, gave scope for a little jobbing, as it created eighteen new places for police magistrates. The session of Parliament terminated on the 8th of July, 1808, having done no good for Ireland, but, on the contrary, having perpetrated against her a more than average amount of British oppression. Meanwhile the veto question still excited the general mind of Ireland and set her patriots by the ears. In the words of Mr. Mitchel, " These debates at once raised an immense controversy, both in England and in Ireland, which lasted many years, and produced innumerable books and pamphlets, discussing the limits between spiritual and temporal power, the meaning of loyalty and of the oath of supremacy, and "the liberties of the Gallican Church!" In the midst of all this turmoil, our hero grew daily both in power and in fame. In the next chapter we shall see him at length the recog- nized leader of his countrymen. His policy was not, like that of the aristocratic section of the Catholics, one of delay and of withholding petitions. On the contrary, it was aggressive, it was a policy of imme- diate and untiring effort and action. In a word, O'Connell's continual cry, from this time forward, was, "Agitate, agitate, agitate!"* * The books to which I am indebted for the materials of the foregoing chapter are : " The His- tory of Ireland from its Union with Great Britain, in January, 1801, to October 1810," by Francis Plowden, Esq. ; Wyse's "History of the Catholic Association;" Mitchel's "Continuation of McGe- oghegan ;" Father Brenan's " Ecclesiastical History of Ireland ;" " Wellington Correspondence ;" " Grattan's Speeches ;" " Works of Edmund Burke;" Barrington's "Personal Sketches;" "Select Speeches of Daniel O'Connell," by his son John; Fagan's "Life of O'Connell;" O'Neill Daunt's 'Personal Recollections;" "Life and Times of Daniel O'Connell," etc., Dublin, John Mullany, 1 Parliament street, etc. etc. etc CHAPTER IX. Orange mukders and massacres — Fight between the Kings county militia and the Orange yeomanry — The "No-Popery" government connive at the Orange atroci- ties — Insurrection acts — Assemblage of Orange delegates in 180S — Disingenuous- NESS OF THE LEADING ORANGEMEN — O'CONNELL ON THE ORANGEMEN — GOVERNMENT PAR- TIALITY — Double-dealing and hypocrisy of the duke of Richmond — His tour THROUGH MUNSTER — He OFFENDS THE BaNDON ORANGE LEGION BY HIS MOCK CONCILIA- TION of Catholics — Viceregal smooth talk and Catholic gullibility — Religious PERSECUTION OF CATHOLICS IN THE ARMY — O'CONNELL SPEAKS AGAINST TITHES IN HIS NATIVE COUNTY — REORGANIZATION OF THE CATHOLIC COMMITTEE IN 1809 — O'CoNNELL's FORESIGHT — THE VETO QUESTION AGITATED AGAIN — THE CATHOLIC PETITION REJECTED BY Parliament — Chlef-Baron Woulfe — His elaborate oration on the veto demol- ished by O'Connell; O'Connell's humorous application of an old fable — Repeal motion in the Protestant Corporation of Dublin in 1S10 — The Catholics join in THE DEMAND FOR REPEAL — GREAT MEETING IN THE EXCHANGE — O'CoNNELL's POWER- FUL SPEECH IN FAVOR OF REPEAL — JOHN KeOGH RETIRES FROM THE LEADERSHIP OF THE Catholic body, and Daniel O'Connell succeeds him — New programme — O'Connell on his own frequent repetitions — hopeless insanity of george the third — the Prince of Wales becomes prince-regent — Great hopes of emancipation — Bitter disappointment of the catholics; the regent breaks his pledges — lady hert- FORD'S EVIL INFLUENCE — WELLESLEY Pole's CIRCULAR — STATE PROSECUTIOM OF Dr. Sheridan— Spirited conduct of the Catholic Committee — Meeting in Fishamblr street Theatre. [HILE the Catholic Committee, during the years between 1803 and 1809, were thus endeavoring, with more or less energy, to awaken public feeling and sympathy in behalf of their cause, a holding meetings in Dublin on every occasion thai seemed to tgjg give them an opportunity of urging their claims — meetings at Mr. Kyan's house in Marlborough street, at Mr. McDonnell's house in Allen court, at the Coffee-House in Earl street, at the Repository in Stephen's Green, at the Exhibition room in "William street, at the Cock Tavern, Henry street, at the Star and Garter, Essex street, at the Rotunda and elsewhere — the hostile spirit of the Ascendency faction, and especially of the Orangemen, remained as inveterate as ever. During the admin- istration of the duke of Richmond several outrages of the most lawless description were perpetrated by the Orangemen against the Catholics. THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 215 At Corinshiga, a mile and a half from the town of Newry, on the evening of the 23d of June, 1808, a number of men, women and children were amusing themselves at a bonfire. Some danced around a garlanded pole. Others looked on and chatted. "While they were thus enjoying themselves, free from all anxiety, eighteen armed yeomen suddenly drew near. Their sergeant deliberately ordered them to "present and fire," which they did repeatedly, killing one of the crowd named McKeown, and wounding several. Little as the magistrates of Newry loved the Catholics, such a heartrending occurrence shocked them. They offered a reward for the miscreants who had perpetrated this ruthless deed, and also wrote to the viceroy, begging that he would take some steps to pro- tect the unarmed Catholics against the Orange brigands, the lowest of whom were allowed to possess arms. The duke's reply civilly expressed regret at the sad occurrence, but weeks passed over, and still nothing was done by government to vindicate outraged justice and humanity. One of the ruffian yeomanry concerned in the butchery was, indeed, apprehended, through the exertions of the local authorities, but he was guarded with so little vigilance that he speedily managed to escape. So secure of impunity did the Orangemen feel, that a party of the same corps, to which the assassins belonged, took occasion one day, when returning from parade, to fire a volley, in a spirit of bravado, over the house of the murdered person's father. The report of the volley threw his hapless wife into convulsions. The Catholic inhabitants in the neighborhood being in a state of terror for their lives, Mr. Waring, one of the magistrates, sent copies of the depositions of some of them to the Castle, and earnestly entreated government to issue a proclamation offering a reward for the apprehen- sion of the murderers. Mr. Secretary Traill replied that the government declined to take any steps in the matter. On the 3d of August, Mr. Waring remonstrated with the government for their strange inaction, and maintained that even yet they might do some good by a proclama- tion, if it were only in showing their strong disapproval of such outrages. This remonstrance was not even honored by a reply. Even the adver- tisement, sent by the local magistrates to the Hue and Cry, was not inserted in that police sheet. In short, the whole matter ended, and not one of the nineteen criminals was ever brought to justice. Is it any 216 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. marvel that, in many parts of Ulster, the Catholics have been wont, when the Orange anniversaries of the 1st and 12th of July would come around, either to barricade their dwellings and quench the lights or else to make defensive preparations for a nocturnal combat? A somewhat similar deed of horror occurred even in the capital, not very far from the Castle itself. Some sportive boys dressed up a foun- tain in Kevin street with green boughs and flowers. They also kin- dled a bonfire. A few Orange fanatics took offence at this display of thoughtless gaiety. They hastily procured loaded guns and fired upon the mirthful groups around the festooned fountain and the bonfire. Wild shrieks instantaneously arose. The panic-stricken groups scat- tered in haste, but not before one victim was killed outright and several others were grievously wounded. On the 12th of August, 1808, a party of fifty Kings county militia- men, who had volunteered into the line, marched without arms from Strabane to Omagh, in the county Tyrone. Three hundred Orange yeomen were already there celebrating the anniversary of the battle of Aughrim. One of these knocked off the cap of one of the militiamen because it was bound with green. This, indeed, was the regimental color; but then it was also the Croppy color, and consequently offensive to the loyalty of the "true blue." The militiaman had the spirit to strike the insulting ruffian. A general row ensued. The unarmed Kings county men retreated to the barrack before the onslaught of the three hundred armed yeomen. There procuring arms, they defended themselves successfully, and killed four of their lawless assailants. Thomas Hogan, a corporal of the Kings county men, was tried for the murder of the brigands, and, incredible as it may appear, was found guilty of manslaughter! Such was the justice accorded to Catholics in those times ! At Mountrath, in July of the same year, the Orangemen murdered the Rev. Mr. Duane, the parish priest. The year following they mur- dered a man named Kavanagh in his own house, beating his brains oul in the presence of his wife and four children. On the first day of this same July, at Balieborough, in the county Cavan, the Orangemen vio- lently attacked the dwelling of the parish priest, fired several shots at him and left him for dead. Not contented with this, they also wrecked THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 217 the chapel and wounded and insulted every Catholic they encountered that day. These atrocities, both at Mountrath and Balieborough, so far from having ever brought down just punishment on those guilty of them, seem to have hardly called forth the slightest inquiry. In truth, the government, in those days, might be said to give direct encouragement to the Orange banditti. Catholics, too, were excluded from positions to which the law now entitled them — from grand -juror- ships, for example. If a high-sheriff showed himself at all favorable to them, he was excluded from the next list. Sir Arthur Wellesley, if during his secretaryship he was not exactly a party to the Orange atro- cities, at least did little or nothing to repress them, and he was uniformly rigorous in carrying out measures against the Catholics. Of course, the peasantry were occasionally roused by their wrongs so as to lose all patience. A bailiff, an exterminating agent or an extortionate tithe- proctor might sometimes fall a victim to the vengeance of an oppressed and maddened people. Instead of dealing with these crimes under the ordinary forms of law, the government would carry through Parliament unconstitutional acts, that might, indeed, be justified if a country were actually in a state of insurrection, but in no state of things short of this. If the suspension of the habeas corpus act were not renewed, an Insur- rection Act did the work of tyranny quite as well. In fact, however the names may vary, Ireland almost invariably has coercion acts under one form or another. There is reason to believe that in September, 1808, when the Catholic bishops of Ireland assembled in a national synod to oppose the veto, the delegates of the Orange societies met in Dawson street, Dublin, to coun- teract their resolutions. The incurable bigots, J. C. Beresford, James Verner, Patrick Duigenan and delegates from seventy-two English lodges (chiefly Lancastrian) attended. It is supposed that at this meeting the Orangemen remodelled their society. Mr. Mitchel says : " It is not easy to arrive at the exact truth respecting all the secret tests and oaths and degrees of this mischievous body; the precise forms have been from time to time altered, and their ' grand masters ' and their organs of the press have boldly denied what is alleged against the society, although such allegation had been true very shortly before, and was substantially 218 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. true when denied, even if some trifling form may have been altered to justify the denial." Mr. Plowden also, writing in 1810, justly censures the disingenuousness of those Orangemen of education and fortune, who ''affect to disclaim everything objectionable in the system, and to throw it exclusively upon the incorrigible ignorance and bigotry of the rabble, who are alike in every country and of every persuasion. This was base artifice to disguise or conceal the countenance and support which the Orange societies have uniformly and unceasingly received from govern- ment. If the obligations and oaths of Orangemen were of a virtuous and beneficial tendency, why not proclaim them aloud ? If illegal and dangerous, why criminally conceal them ? "Whilst the Orange aristoc- racy thus affect to disclaim their own institute in detail, their activity in keeping the evil on foot is supereminently criminal.'' I shall here anticipate events a little and give a passage from a speech delivered by O'Connell at an aggregate meeting held in May, 1811: " From most respectable authority I have it, that Orange lodges are increasing in different parts of the country, with the knowledge of those whose duty it is to suppress them. If I have been misinformed, I would wish that what 1 now Bay may be replied to by any one able to show that 1 am wrong. 1 hold in my hand the certificate of an Orange purple- man [which he produced), who was advanced to that degree as lately as the 24th of April, 1811, in a lodge in Dublin. I have adduced this fact to show you thai this dreadful and abominable conspiracy is still in existence; and 1 am well informed, and belieye it to be the fact, that the king's ministry are well acquainted with this circumstance. I have been also assured thai the associations in the North are reorganized, and that a committee of these delegates in Belfasl have printed and distributed five hundred copies of their new constitution. This I have heard from excellent authority; and I should not be surprised if the attorney- general knows it. Yet there has been no attempt to disturb these conspirators, no attempt to visit them with magisterial authority, no attempt to rout this infamous banditti." The British government knew better than to interfere with the licen- tiousness of such useful allies as the Orange banditti in keeping down Ireland. The Convention Act and the acts against the administration THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 219 of secret oaths were always ready in the legislative armory of the foreign government to he used against patriotic assemblies of delegates or against patriotic oath-bound societies. But the Orangemen were sure of impunity in all their proceedings ; the delegates that assembled at their meeting in Dublin had no need to be under the slightest apprehen- sion of a state-prosecution for violating the Convention Act. The duke of Eichmond, however, tried to play a double-dealing game. At the same time that his government did something more than connive at these Orange atrocities, he affected to discountenance bigoted demon- strations in his own presence. This was with a view to conciliate the Catholics, so as to prevent them from "agitating" for their rights. As there were many influential Catholics in Munster, he made a conciliatory tour through that province in the year 1809, and gave orders that no exclusive or marked displays of Orangeism should be allowed to take place along his line of route. At Bandon in Cork, the southern strong- hold of the Orange society, when the loyal Bandon legion paraded on the 1st of July to celebrate the anniversary of the battle of the Boyne, their commander and grand master astonished them by a very unusual style of address: "Those Orange emblems," said he, "are calculated to keep up animosities, and his grace the lord-lieutenant does not wish anything of the sort on the 'present occasion. 11 At once they dispersed, full of indignation. On the 6th, their next parade-day, they assembled defiantly, every man wearing orange lilies. When ordered to remove those emblems, or else to ground their arms, after a few moments of hesitation, with the exception of twenty-five, all the men of the legion, which was about six hundred strong, angrily threw down both arms and accoutrements. On the 24th of July they gave their reasons for so doing. This determined conduct of the Bandon Legion made the gov- ernment for a long time afraid of opposing the "loyal" displays of the Orange society, lest they should in any degree offend and alienate that strongest " garrison " for the maintenance of English dominion in Ireland. But, in spite of the drawback to the success of his tour, occasioned by the so-called "defection of the Bandon Orangemen," the viceroy did not wholly fail in the accomplishment of the primary object of his ex- cursion. He partially succeeded in gulling the credulous Catholics of 220 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'OONNELL. Munster. Though he was notoriously and zealously carrying out the sinister policy of the "No-Popery" government, the trampled people, long accustomed to contumely, could not help listening with something like satisfaction to his speeches, full of bland and conciliatory hypocrisy. It was so pleasant and comforting to the amour propre of the Catholics, still in a condition of semi-Helotism, to hear him courteously thanking Dr. Power, the Catholic bishop of Waterford, for his aid in putting down the disturbances in that county. It was still more delightfully soothing when he assured the bishop that he had special instructions from His Majesty to make no distinction between Protestant and Catholic, and when he lamented that he had no power to deviate from the laws that imposed disabilities on the Catholies. At the dinner given to him at the Mansion House in Cork, when the toast of " The Protestant Ascend- ency of Ireland" was announced, he declared he wished to see no ascend- ency in Ireland but that of loyalty. At another dinner, given by the merchants, traders and bankers of the same city, his beautiful sentiments of toleration out-IIeroded the balmiest style of English cant. He said, "He wondered that, religion being only occupied with a great object of eternal concern, men should be excited to rancorous enmity because they sought the same end by paths somewhat different." Mr. Mitchel says: "This kind of language, which has been the common style of Irish viceroys ever since, was first brought in vogue by the No-Popery duke of Eichmond." Be this as it may, his thrice-brassy British impudence gulled the Catholics more or less, and deadened for the time the vigor of their efforts to achieve emancipation, and this although many of the Irish Catholic soldiers in the British army were at this very period undergoing an absolute religious persecution. I shall here quote Mr. Mitchel's summary of one or two of those eases: "At Enniskillen, a Lieutenant Walsh turned a soldier's coat, in order to disgrace him for refusing to attend the Protestant service; others were effectually prevented from attending the service of their own church by an order not to quit the barracks till two o'clock on the Sunday, when the Catholic service was over, as at Newry. The case which acquired the most publicity, and produced the strongest effect upon Ireland, was that of Patrick Spenee, a private in the county Dublin militia, who had been required (though known to be a Catholic) to attend the divine THE LIFE Oh DANIEL O'CONNELL. 221 service of the Established Church, and upon refusal was thrown into the Black Hole. During his imprisonment he wrote a letter to Major White, his commanding officer, urging that in obeying the paramount dictates of conscience he had in no manner broken in upon military discipline. He was shortly after brought to a court-martial, upon a charge that his letter was disrespectful and had a mutinous tendency. He was convict- ed, and sentenced to receive nine hundred and ninety-nine lashes. Upon being brought out to undergo that punishment, an offer was made to him to commute it for an engagement to enlist in a corps constantly serving abroad ; this he accepted, and was transmitted to the Isle of Wight, in order to be sent out of the kingdom. The case having been represented to the lord-lieutenant by Dr. Troy, the titular archbishop of Dublin, Mr. W. Pole wrote him a letter, which stated that the sentence had been passed upon Spence for writing the disrespectful letter — not denying, therefore admitting, that the committal to the 'Black Hole' was for the refusal to attend the Protestant church ; but that, under all the cir- cumstances, the commander-in-chief had considered the punishment excessive, and had ordered the man to be liberated and to join his regi- ment. When Spence arrived in Dublin, he was confined several days, and then discharged altogether from the army. The copy of Spence' s letter, which he vouched to be authentic, contained nothing in it either disrespectful or mutinous. The original letter was often called for, and always refused by those who had it in their possession, and might, con- sequently, by its production determine the justice of the sentence of nine hundred and ninety-nine lashes." No officer was ever punished or reprimanded for any one of the many instances of petty tyranny of this description that occurred. From this fact the reader may estimate the sincerity and practical worth of the duke's post-prandial sentiments of toleration. In the year 1809, Mr. Parnell tried, in the House of Commons, to carry a motion for inquiry into the mode of collecting tithes in Ireland. In the debate which followed, Sir John Newport accused Lord Castle- reagh of forgetting all the pledges he had made at the time of the union to promote the public welfare of Ireland. Castlereagh stated that he knew of no pledge made, either by Mr. Pitt or himself, about tithes or the Catholic question. He even audaciously denied that he had ever made 222 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. any pledge whatever as to Ireland, Mr. C. Hutchinson assailed him also ; but Castlereagh was in a position to treat with scom these isolated efforts on behalf of Irish rights. The motion was of course set aside. In or about this time we find O'Connell attending an anti-tithe meeting in his native county, Kerry. He held up the advocates of the iniquitous and oppressive tithe-system to ridicule. He showed up the greed of the Protestant parsons, who took the potatoes of the Catholic peasantry as tithe, without giving them any value in return, and jocu- larly said, that, "if they deprived the peasant of the staff of life, they should carry him on their shoulders." He succeeded in carrying the anti- tithe resolutions. Probably this was his first occasion for displaying his oratorical powers in his native county. On the 24th of May. 1809, a well-attended meeting of Catholics was held in the Assembly Rooms, William street, Dublin. The requisition calling the meeting was signed by Lord Netterville, Sir Francis Goold, Daniel O'Connell, Richard O'Gorman (father to Richard O'Gorman of New York), Edward Hay (author of the history of the Wexford Rebellion), Denis Scully, Dr. Dromgoole and other familiar names. Mr. O'Gorman proposed to petition Parliament. John Keogh opposed this. He spoke bitterly of the treachery of English statesmen toward the Catholics in the affair of the union. In the English Commons they had nothing but enemies or lukewarm friends. The present ministry came into office on the express terms of excluding the Catholic claims. Their predecessors had willingly consented to abandon a bill, only nominally in favor of the Catholics, to save their places. The Catholics wore doubly deceived at the time of the union. The proposals for their support from the union- ists and anti-unionists were hollow. Had the Catholics been then lib- erally treated by their Parliament, they would have raised a cry in its defence, and the union would have been shaken to atoms. No one had a right to suppose he wished to relinquish the Catholic claims. With his dying breath he would recommend them uever to relax in the pursuit of their rights. No man could expect success to the petition. Without that expectation he saw no probability of aught but mischievous conse- quences from the measure. He resisted it not to retard, but to forward, their claims. Mr. Keogh's resolution passed; but the meeting then organized a THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 223 new Catholic Committee, consisting of the Catholic peers, the survivors of the Catholic delegates of 1793, and certain gentlemen lately appointed by the Catholics of Dublin to prepare an address. The meeting resolved that these persons "do possess the confidence of the Catholic body.'* This committee was to consider the expediency of preparing a petition, not to the present, but to the next, session of Parliament. O'Connell, seeing clearly that this permanent general committee might, by the arti- fices of the jealous government, be made to appear as coming under the provisions of the Convention Act, introduced, with a view to guard against this legal danger, a resolution, "That the noblemen and gentlemen afore- said are not representatives of the Catholic body, or any portion thereof; nor shall they assume or pretend to be representatives of the Catholic body, or any portion thereof." O'Connell's resolution was carried unani- mously. Thus, while it was desirable that the committee should seem to speak the general sense of the Catholic body, because, whenever Grattan would present a Catholic petition in the House of Commons, he would be met invariably with the objection "that such petition did not speak the general sense of the Catholics," it was, at the same time, necessary to guard against the snares and perils of the Convention Act. But after all, in spite of O'Connell's ingenuity, a packed jury could easily be found to bring the members of the committee within the pro- visions of the Convention Act. Still, for the present, the Catholic cause seemed to acquire fresh vigor from the permanent organization of such an influential committee. The recent adhesion of a number of clever lawyers to the agitation also tended to increase its prestige. In the year 1810 the veto question came up again. The English Catholics were in favor of it. The Irish strenuously opposed it. A printed copy of a plan of emancipation, on the terms of giving the king a veto on the appointment of the Catholic bishops, while at the same time a state provision should be made for the clergy, was enclosed by Sir John Cox Hippesley, an English member of Parliament, in a letter to Dr. Troy. This was read by the secretary, Mr. Hay, to a large meeting of the Catholics of Dublin, held late in January, 1810. This project, tempting as it was, was rejected with indignation. Clergy and laity equally spurned it. A petition for unconditional emancipation was brought by Lord Fingal to London. Mr. Grattan, vexed at the opposi- 224 THE LIFE OF DANIEL OCONNELL. tion to the veto, said he presented it merely to have the claims of the Catholics put on record. He was sorry no sentiment in favor of the veto seemed to prevail. "The pope," he said, "was almost certain now to be a subject of France; and a subject of France, or French citizen, could never be permitted to nominate the spiritual magistrates of the people of Ireland." This was more like opposing the prayer of the petition than supporting it. Grattan's violent horror of " French influence" was weak and absurd, utterly unworthy of so great an Irishman. It is not surprising that the motion in favor of the Catholics was lost by a major- ity of one hundred and four. In the upper House, Lord Donoughmore presented the petition, and supported it with an advocacy more generous than Grattan's. No one, he said, was ignorant that unity under one and the same head "was the essential distinguishing characteristic of the Catholic Church, and yet they were told that the Irish Catholics were the most unreasonable of men because they would not renounce upon oath this first tenet of their religion and consent to recognize a new head of their Church in the person of a Protestant king." He alsr ridiculed the apprehensions of the bigots. The petition, however, was rejected by a majority of eighty-six. In the course of the disputes on the veto question, which ranged over several years, O'Connell was opposed by Stephen Woulfe, a man who, after distinguishing himself both at the lay college of Maynooth and in Trinity College, was now one of the most promising of the Catholic law- yers — indeed, one of the most intellectual men, Catholic or Protestant, to be found at the Irish bar. He was also known in the world of letters. Woulfe was a native of the county Clare, where he inherited a small estate. He was a man of tall stature (six feet high), with a counte- nance that bespoke his mental power. In the early period of his pro- fessional career he took so much interest in the strife of politics that his friends thought he was neglecting his own affairs for the concerns of his country. However, he was destined, years after, when emancipa- tion was achieved, to attain the exalted dignity of lord chief-baron. Sir Michael O'Loghlen, the master of the rolls, and he, were the first Catholic judges. Plunket paid homage to Woulfe's great abilities, by asking in the English House of Commons, "What could compensate the British empire for the exclusion from its public service, which the penal laws THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 225 necessitated, of such a mind as that of him who wrote the admirable treatise entitled ' The Balance of Evils ?'" It is stated by some that the famous apophthegm, " Property has its duties as well as its rights," the credit of which has been given to the Scotchman Drummond, in reality belongs to Woulfe, and that he communicated the saying in a letter to Drummond. At all events, a sentence of his — "To foster public opinion and make it racy of the soil" — was honored by being made the motto of that celebrated Irish patriotic paper, the old " Nation." "Woulfe had a shrill, piercing voice that lent a strange effect to his oratory. I have seen in the "Dublin Citizen" an odd description of its higher notes. The writer says, apparently without any intention to be funny, " Scald an eagle in melted lead, and his scream will give you some idea of the tones of Woulfe in a state of excitement." I quote this from memory. It is well that the writer didn't pun on the name of Wolfe Tone. I may add that O'Connell esteemed Woulfe highly, in spite of their difference of opinion on the question of the veto. On the morning of the 20th of January, 1843 (the repeal year), the Rev. Dr. Coll of Newcastle, county Limerick, at his own breakfast-table, after praising Chief-Baron Woulfe, then deceased, said to the liberator, " I believe, Mr. O'Connell, he was strongly opposed to you on the veto question." "Yes," answered O'Connell; "Woulfe thought that emancipation should be purchased at the expense of handing over to government the appointment of the Catholic bishops, under the name of a veto. The only occasion in which we came into public collision with each other on that subject was at a great meeting in Limerick, when he made a pow- erful speech — as powerful as could be made in a bad cause — in favor of the veto. He came forward to the front of the gallery — we were in the body of the house ; and in the delivery of his discourse there was mani- fested some little disposition to interrupt him, but I easily prevented that. When I rose in reply, I told the story of the sheep that were fat- tening under the protection of their dogs, when an address to them to get rid of their dogs was presented by the wolves. I said that the lead- ing Woulfe (pronounced wolf) came forward to the front of the gallery and persuaded the sheep to give up the dogs; they obeyed him, and were instantly devoured ; and I then expressed a hope that the Catholics 2^6 . THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. of Ireland would be warned by that example never to yield to a Woul/e again. With that pleasantly our differences ended ; for he admitted that the popular sentiment was against him, and he gave up any further agitation of the question." "I well recollect that occasion," said Dr. Coll to Mr. Daunt; "and afterward Woulfe observed : ' How useless it is to contend with O'Connell ! Here I have made an oration that I had been elaborating for three weeks previously, and this man entirely demolishes the effect of all my rhetoric by a flash of humor and a pun upon my name.' " Although this may have been O'Connell's only direct collision with Woulfe on the veto question, he had, nevertheless, other encounters with Woulfe that had reference to subjects of debate, which arose out of the divisions, among the emancipationists, on this angrily-vexed question. In the summer of the year 1810 a loud demand for the repeal of the accursed act of union was made in Dublin. It began with the Protest- ants, though subsequently the Catholics chimed in with their patriotic cry. In the corporation of Dublin, then exclusively Protestant, Mr. Hutton, pursuant to notice, made an able speech, in which he gave a vivid picture of the bankruptcy, famine, ruin and despair visible in every street of the city. The nation's debt, he said, was ninety millions sterling. Two millions, wrung from the sweat of the peasantry, were squandered abroad by absentees. Two millions and a half more went as interest on that insupportable debt. His resolutions to the effect that repeal was the cure for all these evils, in spite of the vehement opposition of Jack Giffard and his crew, were carried by a majority of thirty. Xext followed a requisition from the grand jurors of Dublin to the two high-sheriffs, Sir Edward Stanley and Sir James Riddall, to call a meeting of freemen and freeholders to consider "the necessity that exists of presenting a petition to His Majesty and the imperial Parliament for a repeal of the act of union." Stanley refused to summon the meet- ing; " it would agitate," said he, "the public mind." Riddall, however, called it, and, on the 18th of September, 1810, Protestants and Catho- lics were unanimous in ascribing the misery of their country to the ope- ration of the baneful union. On this occasion O'Connell made a powerful THE LIFE OF DANIEL OC0NNELL, 227 speech. I shall give from it several specimens of our hero's eloquence at this comparatively early period of his public life. After a lively picture of the evil consequences of the union, which blighted all the bounteous gifts showered by Providence on Ireland and her inhabitants — after showing that the act was a violation of the national and inherent rights of the Irish people — after quoting the authorities of the greatest lawyers against its legality, the orator thus proceeds: "The union was, therefore, a manifest injustice, and it con- tinues to be unjust at this day; it was a crime, and must be still crim- inal, unless it shall be ludicrously pretended that crime, like wine, improves by old age, and that time mollifies injustice into innocence. You may smile at the supposition, but in sober sadness you must be convinced that we daily suffer injustice, that every succeeding day adds only another sin to the catalogue of British vice, and that if the union continues it will only make crime hereditary and injustice perpetual. We have been robbed, my countrymen, most foully robbed, of our birth- right, of our independence. May it not be permitted to us mournfully to ask how this consummation of evil was perfected ? . . . How, then, have we become enslaved ? Alas ! England, that ought to have been to us a sister and a friend — England, whom we had loved" [Humbug of the first water! most wonderful, and sometimes deluding, Daniel!) "and fought and bled for — England, whom we have protected, and whom we do protect — England, at a period when, out of one hundred thou- sand seamen in her service, seventy thousand were Irish — England stole upon us, like a thief in the night, and robbed us of the precious gem of our liberty ; she stole from us ' that which in naught enriched her, but made us poor indeed.' " ( What does he mean by saying, " that which in naught enriched her"?) "Keflect, then, my friends, on the means employed to accomplish this disastrous measure. I do not speak of the meaner instruments of bribery and corruption — we all know that everything was put to sale — nothing profane nor sacred was omitted in the union mart — offices in the revenue, commands in the army and navy, the sacred ermine of justice and the holy altars of God, were all profaned and polluted as the rewards of union services. By a vote in favor of the union, ignorance, incapacity and profligacy obtained certain promotion; and our ill-fated but beloved country was degraded to her utmost limits 228 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. before she was transfixed in slavery. . . . Even the rebellion was an accidental and secondary cause ; the real cause of the union lay deeper, but is quite obvious. It is to be found at once in the religious dissensiovs which the enemies of Ireland have created and continued, and seek to perpetuate, amongst ourselves, by telling us of, and separating us into, wretched sections and miserable subdivisions. They separated the Protestant from the Catholic, and the Presbyterian from both; they revived every antiquated cause of domestic animosity, and they in- vented new pretexts of rancor; but above all, my countrymen, they belied and calumniated us to each other ; they falsely declared that we hated each other, and they continued to repeat the assert ion until we came to believe it; they succeeded in producing all the madness of parly and religious distinctions; and, while we were lost in the stupor of in- sanity, they plundered us of our country, and left us to recover at our leisure from the horrid delusion into which we had been so artfully conducted. "Such, then, were the means by which the union was effectuated. It has stripped us of commerce and wealth ; it lias degraded us, and deprived us not only of our station as a nation, but even of the name of our country; we are governed by foreigners; foreigners make our laws, for were the one hundred members who nominally represent Ire- land in what is called the imperial Parliament, — were they really our representatives, what influence could they, although unbought and unanimous, have over the five hundred and fifty-eight English and Scotch members? But what is the fact? Why, that oul of the one hundred, such as they are, that sit for this country, more than one-lift h know nothing of us, and are unknown to us. . . . Sir, when I talk of the utter ignorance, in Irish affairs, of the members of the imperial Parliament, I do not exaggerate or mistake — the ministers themselves are in absolute darkness with respect to this country. I undertake to demonstrate it. Sir, they have presumed to speak of the growing pros- perity of Ireland. I know them to be vile and profligate; 1 cannot be suspected of flattering them; yet, vile as they are, I do not believe they could have had the audacity to insert in the speech, supposed to be spoken by His Majesty, thai expression, had they known that, in fact, Ireland was in abject and increasing poverty. . . . When you detect the THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 229 ministers themselves in such gross ignorance as, upon such authority, to place an insulting falsehood, as it were, in the mouth of our revered sovereign, what, think you, can be the fitness of nine minor imps of legislation to make laws for Ireland ? . . . I would be glad to see the face of the man, or rather of the beast, who could dare to say he thought the union wise or good ; for the being who could say so must be devoid of all the feelings that distinguish humanity. . . . The union has con- tinued only because we despaired of its repeal. Upon this despair alone has it continued ; yet what can be more absurd than such despair ? If the Irish sentiment be but once known, if the voice of six millions be raised from Cape Clear to the Giants' Causeway, if the men most remark- able for loyalty to their king and attachment to constitutional liberty will come forward as the leaders of the public voice, the nation would, in an hour, grow too great for the chains that now shackle you, and the union must be repealed without commotion and without difficulty. Let the most timid amongst us compare the present probability of repealing the union with the prospect that, in the year 1795, existed of that meas- ure being ever brought about. Who in 1795 thought a union possible? Pitt dared to attempt it, and he succeeded ; it only requires the resolution to attempt its repeal — in fact, it requires only to entertain the hope of repealing it — to make it impossible that the union should continue. But that pleasing hope can never exist whilst the infernal dissensions on the score of religion are kept up. The Protestant alone could not expect to liberate his country ; the Roman Catholic alone could not do it ; neither could the Presbyterian ; but amalgamate the three into the Irishman, and the union is repealed. Learn discretion from your ene- mies : they have crushed your country by fomenting religious discord — serve her by abandoning it for ever. Let each man give up his share of the mischief; let each man forsake every feeling of rancor. But I say not this to barter with you, my countrymen ; I require no equivalent from you. Whatever course you shall take, my mind is fixed. I trample under foot the Catholic claims, if they can interfere with the repeal : I abandon all wish for emancipation, if it delays the repeal. Nay, were Mi Perceval to-morrow to offer me the repeal of the union upon the terms of re-enacting the entire penal code, I declare it from my heart, and in the presence of my God, that I ivould most cheerfully embrace his offer. Let 230 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. us then, my beloved countrymen, sacrifice our wicked and groundless animosities on the altar of our country ; let that spirit which, heretofore emanating from Dungannon, spread all over the island and gave light and liberty to the land, be again cherished amongst us; let us rally around the standard of old Ireland, and we shall easily procure that greatest of political blessings, an Irish king, an Irish House of Lords and an Irish House of Commons." Long-continued applause followed the close of this noble peroration. Resolutions to petition for repeal were adopted unanimously. This speech not merely produced a great effect on the audience, that listened to it with breathless attention in the hall of the Royal Exchange, but it deeply moved the entire nation. The cause of repeal, from first to last, stirred to its inmost depths the heart of O'Connell, and consequently his words on the theme of self-govern- ment always had magical effect on the minds and feelings of his coun- trymen. His appeals to the sentiment of Irish nationality never failed to find a response in eveiy true Irishman's heart, aye, to agitate the true man's whole being to its very centre. From the moment that this oration, printed on a broad sheet and surmounted with the orator's portrait, was circulated throughout the island, the Catholics looked with pride and hope and exultation to our hero as their future leader; and, in truth, before the close of that very year, O'Connell was the recognized leader of the Irish people — at least of the people of the old, unconquerable Celtic race. I shall take from Mr. Daunt's 'Personal Recollections" "the liberator's" own short nar- rative of his accession to the popular leadership : " I also spoke in support of the repeal," said O'Connell, referring to the great meeting at the Exchange, which I have just spoken of, "and thenceforth do I date my first great lift in popularity. Keogh saw that I was calculated to become a leader. He subsequently tried to impress me with his own policy respecting Catholic affairs. The course he then recommended was a sullen quiescence; he urged that the Catholics should abstain altogether from agitation, and he labored hard to bring me to adopt his views. But I saw that agitation was our only available weapon. I saw that by incessantly keeping our demands and our griev- ances before the public and the government we must sooner or later succeed. Moreover, that period, above all others, was not one at which THE LIFE OP DANIEL O'CONNELL. 231 our legitimate weapon, agitation, could have prudently been let to rust. It was during the war, and while Napoleon — that splendid madman!" (Oh, Daniel, for shame!) — "made the Catholics of Ireland so essential to the military defence of the empire, the time seemed peculiarly appro- priate to press our claims. About that period a great Catholic meeting was held. John Keogh was then old and infirm, but his presence was eagerly desired, and the meeting awaited his arrival with patient good- humor. I and another were deputed to request his attendance. John Keogh had this peculiarity — that when he was waited on about matters of business, he would talk away on all sorts of subjects, except the busi- ness which had brought his visitors. Accordingly, he talked a great deal about everything except Catholic politics for the greatest portion of our visit; and when at length we pressed him to accompany us to the meeting, the worthy old man harangued us for a quarter of an hour to demonstrate the impolicy of publicly assembling at all, and ended by coming to the meeting. He drew up a resolution, which denounced the continued agitation of the Catholic question at that time. This resolu- tion, proceeding as it did fron: a tried old leader, was carried. I then rose and proposed a counter-resolution, pledging us all to incessant, un- relaxing agitation; and such were the wiseacres with whom I had to deal, that they passed my resolution in the midst of enthusiastic accla- mations, without once dreaming that it ran directly counter to John Keogh' s! Thenceforward, I may say, I was the leader. Keogh called at my house some short time after ; he paid me many compliments, and repeated his importunities that I might alter my policy. But I was inexorable; my course was resolved upon and taken. I refused to yield. He departed in bad humor, and I never saw him afterwards. " Keogh was undoubtedly useful in his day. But he was one who would rather that the cause should fail than that anybody but himself should have the honor of carrying it." In truth, before the repeal meeting O'Connell had virtually become leader. A vote of thanks had been passed by the Catholic Committee to Keogh " for his long and faithful services to the cause of Catholic emancipation." Also a manifesto, signed "Daniel O'Connell, chairman," had been issued by the same body, urging the people to adopt a new and more combined form of political action. The continual rejection of the 232 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. Catholic petitions by the Houses of Parliament showed plainly that, to make the Catholic cause succeed, a more vigorous policy and a more energetic will were required, than had hitherto been brought forward to direct the movement. O'Connell's address proposed a plan of action somewhat similar to that adopted in all his subsequent agitations. The committee was to act as a central body in Dublin. But there were also to be permanent local boards all through the country, holding commu- nication, indeed, with the central body, but preserving a large power of independent action. Frequent local meetings were recommended, from which beneficial results to the general cause were expected ■ by the com- mittee. This system of self-agency, it was argued, would produce cohe- rence of conduct adequate to insure success. " In the exercise of the elective franchise, for instance," the address said, "what infinite good might not result from Catholic coherence! What painful examples are annually exhibited of the mischief flowing from the want of this cohe- rence!" The mode of action of the organization was to be peaceful and legal ; at the same time there was the half-uttered threat, or at least kmt, that the people, if redress of their grievances were delayed too long, might at last lose patience and seek to win their rights by violent methods. Though repeal of the union was probably dearer to O'Connell's heart (we have his own word, repeatedly uttered, that it was so), and assuredly dearer to the hearts of the majority of the Irish people, than emancipa- tion, jet, as the latter was, for obvious reasons, easier of achievement than the former (I have shown, at the commencement of the preliminary sketch, why the latter could be achieved by peaceful agitation, and why, according to my judgment, the former could not), so he deemed it the practical question to grapple with in the first instance. Emancipation once achieved, he might begin to look for repeal. In carrying on his agitations O'Connell was not ashamed of repeat- ing himself frequently in his speeches. It was impossible for a man, speaking so often on the same subjects, to avoid this repetition. Be- sides, in politics, as in religion, the broad and grand essential truths are comparatively tew in number, and tiny need constant iteration. Napo- leon and Fox believed in the efficacy of repetition to saturate the mind with conviction. When The Dublin Evening Mail sneered at O'Connell THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COjSTNELL. 233 for repeating himself, making light of the censure, he merely said that he would continue to enunciate those great truths again and again. The following remarks, made to his friend Mr. Daunt one day, immedi- ately after he had given a clever rehash of many former speeches at the Corn Exchange, are valuable, as giving his notions on the subject of repetition : "Now there are many men who shrink from repeating themselves, and who actually feel a repugnance to deliver a good sentiment or a good argument, just because they have delivered that sentiment or that argument before. This is very foolish. It is not by advancing a polit- ical truth once or twice, or even ten times, that the public will take it up and firmly adopt it. No ; incessant repetition is required to impress political truths upon the public mind. That which is but once or twice advanced may possibly strike for a moment, but will then pass away from the public recollection. You must repeat the same lesson over and over again if you hope to make a permanent impression — if, in fact, you hope to infix it on your pupil's memory. Such has always been my practice. My object was to familiarize the whole people of Ireland with important political truths, and I could never have done this if I had not incessantly repeated those truths. I have done so pretty successfully. Men, by always hearing the same things, insensibly associate them with received truisms. They find the facts at last quietly reposing in a corner of their minds, and no more think of doubting them than if they formed part of their religious belief. I have often been amused when at public meetings men have got up and delivered my old political lessons in my presence as if they were new discoveries worked out by their own inge- nuity and research. But this was the triumph of my labor. I had made the facts and sentiments so universally familiar that men took them up and gave them to the public as their own." One of the reporting staff, on constant duty at the Repeal Associa- tion, once remarked to Mr. O'Neill Daunt, " Mr. O'Connell always wears out one speech before he gives us another." In October, 1810, King George the Third became a lunatic once more, or perhaps it would be more correct to say he sank into drivelling idiotcy. From this attack he never recovered. The little stock of wits he ever possessed was now gone for ever. From this time forward, in hopeless 23tt THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. and helpless imbecility and darkness, his bodily vision darkened like his mental, the aged king dragged along the remaining years of his now wretched existence, confined to his palace, occasionally knocking his hoary head, discrowned by God's dread visitation, against the velvet- lined and carefully-padded walls of his sumptuous apartments, as he went wandering and groping about amid regal magnificence which seemed to be a bittery mockery of " This old, blind, mad, helpless, weak, poor worm." For over a decade of weary years the "once-feared" monarch survived thus miserably. While he had been at all able to exercise the functions of royalty, he had been an inveterate foe and an insuperable obstacle to the realization of Catholic emancipation, more through a perverted conscientiousness than a deliberate inclination to oppress. As he was narrow-minded to a degree, his conscience was called on to sanctify the most erroneous notions. His natural firmness then, as a matter of course, degenerated into a stupid and obstinate clinging to wrong. Thus his obstinacy in the dispute with the American colonies cost Eng- land her noblest American dependencies, millions of treasure and deluges of blood. The same obstinacy exercised its baneful influence over his European policy. But above all, the Catholics of Ireland looked on it as the source of their continued thraldom. Accordingly, the accession of his eldest son, George, prince of Wales, to the regency filled them with extravagant hopes. In fact, they believed at first that the only obstacle to their emancipation was at length re- moved. The regent had not merely made repeated professions of his good-will to the Catholics and their cause ; he was even known to have pledged himself expressly, on more than one occasion, that as soon as he should enjoy the regal authority he would do everything in his power to secure Catholic emancipation. In 1806 he had pledged himself to lliis efl'cct through the duke of Bedford, in order to induce the Catholics not to urge their claims. Chancellor Ponsonby, the same year, put forward a similar promise in the name of the prince-regent. It was stated that he had given such a pledge to Lord Kenmare at Cheltenham. But, above all, it was believed that he had given a formal pledge to Lord Fingal, in the presence of the lords Petre and Clifford, and that this pledge was taken THE LIFE OF DANIEL OCONNELL. 235 down in writing and signed by these noblemen shortly after the termi- nation of the royal interview. Whatever disputes might arise about particular cases of alleged promises on his part, there was no doubt whatever that the prince had bound himself in honor to the sustainment of the Catholic cause on more than one occasion. Nevertheless, this base and thoroughly-depraved wretch, whose whole life proves him to have been utterly destitute of faith and truth and honor, yet who has been styled, with pretty general acceptance (such is the innate flunkey- ism of the majority of mankind), "the finest gentleman of his age," no sooner found himself in possession of the regal power than he resolved, without scruple or hesitation, on violating all his pledges. In short, he retained the sanctimonious bigot Perceval as his prime minister, and surrounded himself with the bitterest enemies of the Catholic cause. It has been stated that he was influenced to this violation of his plighted faith and honor chiefly by the persuasions and fascinations of the mar- chioness of Hertford, the lady who was his mistress at the time he became prince-regent. This bewitching siren was then somewhat mo^e than fifty years of age. The taste of his royal highness generally pre- ferred lady-loves who were "fat, fair and forty" to more youthful and less full-blown charmers. On the present occasion, the royal voluptuary took delight in beauty still more ripened by time. I shall shortly have occasion to refer to this mature enchantress, Lady Hertford, and the famous "witchery" resolutions that were called forth by her anti-Cath- olic interference. The prince was not content even with breaking his promise to the Catholics. An aggressive policy towards the Catholic Committee was resolved on. An attempt to suppress it must be made. It was all very well to tolerate it while a feeble, pliable peer, a friend to the veto, too, like Lord Fingal, was the recognized head of the Catholics, but, with a bold and vigorous intellect, like O'Connell's, directing their affairs, the committee was likely to become too formidable to "the powers that be." Accordingly, on the 12th of February, 1811, Wellesley Pole, who had succeeded his brother, Sir Arthur Wellesley (the latter was now com- manding the British army in the Peninsula), as chief secretary for Ire- land, issued a confusedly- writ ten circular, addressed to the sheriffs and principal magistrates of Ireland. In this document the Catholic Com- 236 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. mittee is denounced as "an unlawful assembly sitting in Dublin." Wellesley Pole was desirous to bring the action of the members of the Catholic Committee within the sweep of the Convention Act. His cir- cular contains the following not very lucid directions to the sheriffs : "You are required, in pursuance of the provisions of an act of the 33d of the king, c. 29, to cause to be arrested and commit to prison (unless bail shall be given) all persons within your jurisdiction who shall be guilty of giving, or having given or published, any written or other notice of the election or appointment, in any manner, of such repre- sentative, delegate or manager as aforesaid; or if attending, voting or acting; or of having attended, voted or acted in any manner in the choice or appointment of such representative, delegate or manager; and you are to communicate these directions, as far as lies in your power, forthwith to the several magistrates of the same county." O'Connell, as we have seen, had exercised all his foresight to secure the committee from the snares of the Convention Act. His foresight, however, proved unavailing. The imprudence of some of his associates gave an opening to the government. Lord Fingal and others were arrested. The question, whether the provisions of the Convention Act had been violated, was submitted to a jury, in the persons of Dr. Sheri- dan and Mr. Kirwan. The state prosecution of Dr. Sheridan com- menced on the 21st of November, 1811. The question was, what did the words in the act, " under pretence of petitioning," mean ? The Crown lawyers maintained that pretence meant purpose, and that the Catholics, even when meeting for the bond fide [genuine, in good faith) purpose of petitioning, came under the prohibitions of the Convention Act. The counsel for the traverser maintained that if delegates assembled really and truly to petition Parliament, then the meeting was quite legal. The Castle was baffled. O'Connell gained great credit by this case. He was not, indeed, a leading counsel. Being kept by the Catholic disabilities from the inner bar, of course the king's counsel took precedence of him. But he was able to show his great skill in cross-examination. No man could surpass him in throwing a witness off his guard, by firsl asking him a series of apparently indifferent questions, and then, having led him into the snare, perplexing and confounding him by a rapid lire of unexpected interrogatories. Besides, it was generally believed that the THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 237 plan of defence was suggested by him. The escape of Dr. Sheridan was a great triumph, especially as the jury were Protestants. The Catholics, elated by their triumph, resolved to hold a meeting for the purpose of petitioning. They assembled in Fishamble Street Theatre a few days after the trial. Before Lord Fingal, who, it was intended, should be chairman, had arrived, a police-magistrate entered and stood beside the vacant chair. He excited no small amount of curiosity in the minds of those present. On the arrival of Lord Fingal, the combative Counsellor Hussey — he of the fiery red locks — at once stood up and moved "that the earl of Fingal do take the chair." O'Connell quietly seconded the motion. Next, Lord JSTetterville moved and Nicholas Purcell 0' Gorman, barrister, seconded the resolution, that "the Catholic petition be now read." At this stage of the proceedings the police magistrate began taking a part in the scene, and the action of the drama became interesting and lively. Police Magistrate. " My Lord Fingal, I beg to state my object in com- ing here. His Excellency the lord-lieutenant has been informed that this is a meeting of the Catholic Committee, composed of the peers, prelates, country gentlemen and persons chosen in the different parishes of Ireland. I come here by direction of the lord-lieutenant, and as a magistrate of the city of Dublin I ask you, the chairman of this meet- ing, if that be the case, and if so, what is your object ?" Lord Fingal. "Our purpose in coming here is perfectly legal and constitutional." Magistrate. " That is not an answer to my question." Lord Fingal. " What is your question ?" Magistrate. " I ask, is this a meeting of the Catholic Committee — a meeting composed of the peers, prelates, country gentlemen and others of the city of Dublin?" Lord Fingal. " I certainly do not feel myself bound to give you any other answer than that I have already given. We have met for the sole, legal and constitutional purpose of petitioning." Magistrate "My lord, I ask you, as chairman of this meeting, in what capacity are yon met?" Lord. Fingal. "We are met to petition Parliament." It is clear that Lord Fingal is determined not to let the magistrate get much out of him. 238 THE LIFE OF DANIEL CCONNELL. Magistrate. " My lord, that is not an answer to my question. I hope I have leave to speak?" Some disturbance among the people had occurred at this point of the proceedings. However, it stopped, when several voices cried out, " Hear the magistrate ! Hear the magistrate !" Magistrate. " I beg leave to ask your lordship again, is this a meet- ing of the Catholic Committee, constituted by the Catholic peers, prelates, country gentlemen and the persons appointed in the several parishes of Dublin ?" Lord Fingal. " I am not aware that I can give you any other answer than that I have already given." Magistrate. " Then, my lord, your answer is that you are a meeting of Catholics assembled for a legal and constitutional purpose ?" Here several persons cried out, "No, no; there was no answer in such terms." O'Connell. "It is a most unusual thing for any magistrate to come into a public meeting to catechise, ask questions and put his own con- structions upon the answers." Magistrate. " My lord, am I to understand that you decline telling me fully what meeting you are, and the purpose of your meeting?" Lord Fingal. "We are met for a legal and constitutional puipose.'' Magistrate. "I wish to be distinctly understood. Am I to under- stand that you will give no other answer to my question ? Do you give no other answer ?" Here some disturbance interrupted the magistrate. One person cried, "Read the petition;" another cried, "Where's Mr. Hay? Hear the magistrate!" Magistrate. " My Lord Fingal, I consider your declining to give mc an answer as an admission that this is the Committee of the Catholics of Ireland." CPConnell. "As what passes here may be given in evidence, I beg leave to say that the magistrate has received a distinct answer to his question. It is not for him to distort any answer he has received into a meaning of his own ; he is to take the words in their literal signifi- cation." Magistrate. "My lord, I consider your refusing to give any other THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 239 answer as an admission of the fact of this being the Catholic Com- mittee." O'Connell. "If you please to tell gentlemen that such is your belief, it is of no consequence to us. We are not to be bound by your opinion." Magistrate, doggedly. " Does your lordship deny that this is the Cath- olic Committee?" Counsellor Finn. " My Lord Fingal has neither given you admission nor denial." O'Connell. " We do not want the magistrate's assistance to make out meanings for us. Let him not imagine that he can bind this meeting by any assertion he thinks proper to make." Magistrate. " Then I repeat that your lordship's refusal to give me a direct answer is an admission that this meeting is the Catholic Com- mittee, and being such, it is an unlawful assembly. As such I require it to disperse. It is my wish to discharge my duty in as mild a manner as possible. I hope no resistance will be offered. I hope that I need not have recourse to the means I am intrusted with for the purpose of dispersing the meeting." Lord Fingal. " I do not intend to resist the laws, but I shall not leave this seat until I am forced to do so, that I may bring an action against the person removing me." Magistrate. " My lord, I shall remove you from the chair. My doing so will be an arrest." Taking Lord Fingal by the arm, the magistrate, with a gentle vio- lence, so to speak, pushed him out of the chair. Immediately Counsellor O'Gorman moved Lord Netterville into the chair; but this nobleman, in his turn, was expelled by the magistrate. Finally, when a third chair- man, the Hon. Mr. Barnewell, was proposed, the meeting separated at the recommendation of Sir Edward Bellew.* * The principal authorities consulted in writing the foregoing chapter are : " The History of Ireland, from its Union with Great Britain, in January, 180.1, to October, 1810," by Francis Plowden, Esq. ; MitcheFs "Continuation of McGeoghegan ;" "Life and Times of Daniel O'Connell," Dublin, J. Mullany, etc.; Fagan's "Life of O'Connell;" "Personal Recollections," by O'Neill Daunt; " The Select Speeches of Daniel O'Connell, M. P., edited, with Historical Notices, etc., by his Son, Jihn O'Connell, Esq.;" "Grattan's Speeches;" Wise's "History of the Catholic Association," etc. CHAPTER X. Aggregate meeting at Fishamble Street Theatre — Percy Bysshe Shelley declares for Catholic emancipation and repeal of the union — Suppression of the Cath- olic Committee — It is succeeded by the Catholic Board — Powerful speech of O'Connell; his onslaught on Sir Charles Saxton and Wellesley Pole — Dissen- sions BETWEEN THE ARISTOCRATIC AND POPULAR SECTIONS OF THE CATHOLIC MOVEMENT — Lord Ffrench and the "Edinburgh Review" assail the Catholic lawyers— Edmund Burke on the appointment of Irish Catholic bishops by the Crown — O'Connell rouses the Irish Catholics from the torpor of serfdom; his daring denuncia- tions of tyranny — His indulgence in personalities — Bill for exchanging the English and Irish militias; O'Connell denounces it; an address of thanks is sent to him from Dingle — Splendid speech of Grattan in favor of Catholic eman- cipation — O'Connell's generous admiration of Grattan — Lively scene in the House of Commons; Colonel Hutchinson brands the Act of Union; the House is TURNED INTO A BEAR-GARDEN — ASSASSINATION OF THE PRIME MINISTER, Mr. PERCEVAL ; O'Connell's speech on this event — The Liverpool ministry — Peel chief secretary for Ireland — Peel on O'Connell — O'Connell's style of eloquence. ^-IMMEDIATELY after the singular occurrence with which I con- eluded the last chapter, a requisition, signed by three hundred mimes, and calling on the Catholics to assemble at an aggre- gate meeting in Fishamble Street Theatre, was placarded on the walls of Dubin. The new meeting, not being an assembly of delegates, but an aggregate one, afforded the magistrates no legal pretext for dispersing it like the former. O'Connell admitted, at this meeting, that a magistrate was legally entitled to ask any assemblage of people, whether or not they were assembled for a legal purpose; but he denied that a magistrate had any authority to catechise them further. According to O'Connell, he should be prepared to act on their answer to his first question. Our hero praised the prudent conduct of the chairman of the other meeting, who had afforded no precedent for the continuation of such a practice. This prudent course of the chair- man, he said, would be henceforth a protection against the vexatious interruptions of ignorance and presumption. He denied that, in hold- ing an aggregate meeting instead of a meeting of the committee, thr THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 241 Catholics shrank from the ground on which they had stood before. It was not the Catholics, it was the government, that shrank. The Cath- olics had always contended for the right of petition ; they did not now shrink from a trial of its legality. It was the Crown lawyers who shrank from it. He threatened proceedings against the authorities. Finally, he told his audience that perseverance alone was needed — a firm and temperate determination — to make their cause in the end successful. One thing, in addition to the peculiar circumstances under which it was summoned, renders this meeting worthy of notice. It was attended by one of the most celebrated English poets of those days — the benevo- lent, but mistaken, Percy Bysshe Shelley — doomed, alas! to find, not many years later, an untimely death in the waters of the gulf of Spezzia. The tone which he adopted at this meeting was one of moderation. At this time he seems to have taken considerable interest in Irish affairs. Some observations of his remain, which — along with a certain visionary wildness and extravagance, a certain mingling of the jargon of pseudo- philanthropy and progress, so prevalent in this canting nineteenth cen- tury; a certain Utopianism, in short — show manifest signs of a heart and imagination and intellect better able to realize the peculiar features and difficulties of the Irish question, than Englishmen in general, even those of the highest intellect, or even many of our Irishmen, could boast of. At all events, he was able to see clearly that emancipation, gained by itself, would, in any sense worth speaking of, profit only "the higher orders of the Catholic persuasion;" and he also had sufficient insight to perceive that, in a consideration of Ireland's grievances and obstacles to prosperity, the paramount grievance and obstacle even in those days was the thrice-accursed union. The observations of Shelley are worth quoting here : " It is my opinion that the claims of the Catholic inhabitants of Ire- land, if gained to-morrow, would in a very small degree aggrandize their liberty or happiness. The disqualifications principally affect the higher orders of the Catholic persuasion ; these would chiefly be benefited by their removal. Power and wealth do not benefit, but injure, the cause of freedom and virtue. I am happy, however, at the near approach of this emancipation, because I am inimical to all disqualifications for 242 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. opinion. It will not add one comfort to the cottager, will snatch not one from the dark dungeon, will root out not one vice, alleviate not one pang. Tet it is a foreground of a picture, in the dimness of whose dis- tance I behold the lion he down with the lamb and the infant play with the basilisk ; for it supposes the extermination of the eyeless monster, Bigotry, whose throne has tottered for two hundred years. I hear the teeth of the palsied beldam Superstition chatter, and I see her descend- ing to the grave. Reason points to the open gates of the temple of religious freedom; Philanthropy kneels at the altar of the common God. I regard the admission of the Catholic claims and the repeal of the Union Act as blossoms of that fruit, which the summer sun of improved intel- lect and progressive virtue are destined to mature. I will not pass without reflection the legislative union between Great Britain and Ire- land; nor will I speak of it as ;i grievance so tolerable or unimportant in its nature as that of Catholic disqualification. The latter affects few, the union affects thousands; the one distpialifies the rich from power, the other impoverishes the peasant, adds beggary to the city, famine to the country, multiplies abjectness, whilst misery and crime play into each other's hands under its withering auspices. I esteem, then, the annihilation of this second grievance as something more than a mere sign of good. I esteem it to be in itself a substantial benefit. The aristocracy of Ireland (much as I disapprove of other distinctions than those of virtue and talent, I consider it useless, hasty and violent not for the present to acquiesce in their continuance) — the aristocracy of Ireland suck the veins of its inhabitants, and consume that blood in England." All these proceedings, however, ended in the suppression of the Catholic Committee. The counter-prosecution, undertaken against Lord Chief-Justice Downes for signing the warrants for the apprehension of the Catholic leaders, the illegality of which the verdict in Dr. Sheridan's case seemed to determine, failed in spite of O'Connell's vigorous efforts. In short, the government had gained its point in suppressing the Cath- olic Committee. That body was succeeded by the Catholic Board, which at first manifested an equal share of courage and energy. While the affairs of the Catholics remained in this critical position O'Connell was increasing his reputation both as ;i lawyer and a political THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 243 leader. When the attorney-general, Saurin, presumed to impute trea- sonable intents to the Catholic Committee, O'Connell, with his usual forensic boldness, told him in open court that his charge was "false and groundless." At another Catholic meeting, which took place on the 29th of February, 1812, after a vote of thanks to the general committee of the Catholics of Ireland had been moved, coupled with a request "that they would not meet until the legality of their doing so should be decided," O'Connell spoke, at considerable length, to a resolution of thanks "to our friends in Parliament, Earl Grey and Lord Grenville." In this harangue O'Connell covered with ridicule the jury, the judges and the prosecuting counsel who had taken part in Mr. Kirwan's case. He also denounced the secretary, Sir Charles Saxton, who had been guilty of shameful interference with the arrangement of the jury -list. I shall give some extracts from this speech : " The first topic that presented itself was the late trial of Mr. Kir- wan. That trial had proved only what was already well known — namely, that it was possible for the Irish administration, with all its resources, to find a single jury to take upon itself to swear that pretence means purpose, and that the man who was admitted, by his prosecutors and judges, to be innocent in act and intention, was in law and fact guilty. "It, however, proved that one such jury was possible, for those who saw that jury must admit that it was not in human nature to afford such another. Why, the administration had been so diligent in the search of originals, that they had actually found out a Mr. Donovan, who keeps or kept a crockery-ware shop on the Quays, and who, until the second day of the trial, never had heard of the subject-matter of the trial! So he declared before he was sworn on the jury. What think you of any man, not absolutely deaf, who had been for three preceding months in Dublin, and had never before heard of that prosecution ? "But a verdict obtained in the manner that had been was of no im- portance. The public mind was in nowise affected by it. It was antici- pated, from the commencement of the pieces of plain prose with which the prosecution was opened, to the morsel of brilliant hypocrisy with which it was closed. The verdict was of no estimation, even in the opinion of the very prosecutors, who felt the impossibility of obtaining another; and in that despair relinquished this extraordinary crusade 244 THE LIFE OF DAX1EL O'CONNELL. against the right of petition. To this despair alone could be traced the abandonment of the opposition to allow the Catholics the poor privilege of placing themselves in a body upon their knees. " Two traces had been left on the memory of the late state trial. The one was ludicrous — the other had in it something of a more grave nature. The first merely recalled the recollection of the farcical epi- thets applied by the solicitor-general (Bit site) to three individuals. Of the attorney-general he had said 'that he was the most learned and wisest of mankind' (a very general laugh). Mr. Justice Day he called a magnanimous judge' (much and very general laughter)] and what was still more ridiculous, he styled himself 'a friend to the Catholics of Ire- land' (shouts of laughter). The magnanimous judge had, indeed, returned the compliment, and in a speech which was, with some absurdity, called the passing of sentence on Mr. Kirwan, but which, in fact, was, what it ought to be, an eulogium on that gentleman — an eulogium in which all classes would readily join — the magnanimous judge retorted the compli- ment, and called the solicitor-general 'the friend of the Catholics.' "Good God! what a notion those men must have of our stupidity! what dupes and idiots they must take us to be! I am ready to concede 'magnanimity' to the judge; but that this barrister should be our friend — that he who commenced his political career with being, whilst yet young, the supporter of the blood-written administration of Lord Camden — that he who can look at his own children, and then doom ours to be degraded — who lias shown himself ready to embrace any servitude, in the way of his profession, and to ensure his promotion — that man may continue to persecute us — I consent — but he shall never enjoy the notion of our considering him as a 'friend ;' we know him well." He next attacks the interference of Sir Charles Saxton with the jury- list as the graver recollection left behind by Kirwan's trial : "I own I was so far deceived as to expect that all that was solemn and sanctified about the chief-justice would have been roused into the semblance of animation when he heard that the Crown solicitor and Sir Charles Saxton hunted in couples for the knowledge of the jury. I, in vain, hoped to see the spark of what I should call honest constitutional fire illumine all that was dark and delightful in the pomp of religious display; but no, alas! no; the interference, whatever it was, of the THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 245 chief secretary of the Castle respecting a jury in Dublin, passed off without arousing one slumbering emotion, and precisely as if the chief secretary were the accustomed assistant of the attorney for the prose- cution. " But this is a grave and serious subject. Of what value is property, of what value is life, if the chief secretary of the Castle, with all the power, all the wealth and all the influence of the Crown in his hands, is to take any part whatsoever respecting the management of the jury?" He next blames himself and others, who had the conduct of Mr. Kirwan's defence, for neglecting to examine Sir Charles Saxton. The solicitor-general had promised "that the counsel for the Crown would sift the transaction to the bottom." Eeferring to this false promise, O'Con- nell says : " Those were his words ; we idly believed him, when he com- pelled Sir Charles to attend. Of course we were deceived; but why, then, did we not ourselves examine the secretary? I must confess I cannot tell. It passed over, and we all felt our error. Would to God we had examined him ! "Would to God we had sifted him on his oath — where, from whom, when he got the jury-list? how it happened that the numbers were altered ? was it corruption ? was it a miracle ? . . . "Allow me to say one word more as to the late trial. The prosecu- tors insulted us by excluding every Catholic from the jury; they injured us, too, by excluding every Presbyterian. How I thank them for the compliment they paid, on this second trial, to the sterling integrity of the Irish Presbyterians — the very best class of men in any community I To all that is generous and warm in the Irish character, they add a firm- ness and a discretion which improves every manly virtue. I do greatly admire the friends of religious and civil liberty, the Presbyterians of Ireland." After these broad and generous sentiments of toleration — the like of which, I regret to say, are seldom heard among leading Irish Catholics, and scarcely ever among English Catholics, in our own day — O'Connell uttered some rather questionable sentiments on the subject of secret conspiracy and on certain schemes then afloat in Ireland among certain disaffected persons. His harangue next tore to pieces, in his most slash- ing and merciless style, a wretched speech delivered by Wellesley Pole in the British House of Commons which described the Catholics as 246 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. recently departing from their original moderate determination to confine themselves to petitioning and to avoid any breach of the Convention Act. Wellesley Pole complained that latterly the committee undertook to manage, not the Catholic petition, but Catholic affairs; that a com- mittee of grievances was appointed, which held weekly meetings ; that the forms of the House of Commons were imitated ; that this violence had alarmed the lords Fingal and Ffrench, and others of the more respect- able Catholics; that these gentlemen deemed the committee had exceeded their powers. He even asserted that the lords Fingal and Ffrench had seceded from the committee. O'Connell begins his onslaught on this speech by affecting to disbe- lieve in the genuineness of the report "contained in a paper bearing, with a constant contempt for truth, the sacred name of 'Patriot.' " He says : " I cannot bring myself to believe that any man could pronounce such a discourse. The style is of the poorest order, . . . and there are a thousand phrases in it which demonstrate that no man of common edu- cation could have composed it. But it would be absurd to waste time in censuring more of this composition; it is the absence of truth and decency which distinguishes it and entitles it to some notice amongst our calumnies. "Let me be pardoned whilst I delay you to expose its want of ve- racity. It is by calumny alone that our degradation is continued; if nothing were told of us falsely, if 'naught was set down against us in malice,' we should long since have been emancipated. My lord, I beg leave to confute these calumnies, not because they are talented or skilful, but simply to oppose the system of detraction." He takes six of Wellesley Pole's assertions and demolishes them. I shall give one or two passages: "It is also asserted, second, 'That Lord Ffrench, in consequence of the violence of the members of the com- mittee, seceded from them.' "When shall I find time to express my astonishment at this asser- tion? — an assertion directly, pointedly and positively the contrary of the fact. Mr. W. W. Pole could never have said any such thing. Why, Lord Ffrench was in the chair when Mr. Pole sent his police-justice to disperse that committee. Loi-cl Ffrench entered into a correspondence with Mr. Pole to maintain that committee. He lent his character, his THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 247 rank and his talents to support that committee ; and, in perfect defiance of Mr. W. W. Pole, he did support it. What becomes of the audacious assertion of his secession ? "I wish my noble friend— for so I am proud to call him — were allowed by his health to be here this day: how he would refute this calumny ! He never seceded or deserted the Catholic cause ; and I can assure Mr. W. W. Pole that there breathes not the man who would pre- sume to tell his lordship that he seceded from the Catholic Committee or the Catholic rights. I know the reply which such presumption would meet and merit." O'Connell also denied the assertion "that the earl of Fingal had seceded." Lord Fingal, who was present, assented to O'Connell's denial. After touching on various other points of Wellesley Pole's speech, the orator proceeds thus : "Yes, this article illustrates the active genius of the speech. Un- founded assertion, ridiculous argument, paltry self-sufficiency and ludi- crous quotation. ... I have to apologize for attaching so much import- ance to matters so insignificant. " I hasten to conclude by expressing my conviction that the emanci- pation is certain, and will be immediate. The generous, the cordial support of our Protestant brethren, in Ireland, assures us of it. The petition — which is exclusively their measure, and with respect to which every Catholic has scrupulously avoided the least interference — the Protestant petition has, at this moment, more signatures to it than were affixed to any petition of our own. It has been supported in every county by the wealth, talent and rank of our affectionate countrymen, and I am proud to see amongst us this day, at the head of so many of our Protestant friends, a noble lord (G-lentworth) whose ardent patriotism entitles him to the gratitude of every class of his fellow- subjects." . . . "We have the Protestants of Ireland in our favor; the Protestants of England — at least the rational part of them — are not opposed to us. No, in the two last discussions in Parliament, the right and justice of our claims were conceded, even by those who opposed on the ground of the time. There was but one solitary exception — a single individual, Sir John Mchol, who was sent forward as the scapegoat of English 248 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. bigotry, to revive ancient calumny and to add some fresh ones; he was installed in the enviable office of successor to Dr. Duigenan; but, good Lord ! he is quite unfit for the employment. There was about Duigenan a sturdy, robust, unblushing effrontery, that enabled him to assert any- thing, and prevented the possibility of his retreating. This poor Mchol, however, was no sooner attacked and ridiculed, at every tide, than he explained one passage, softened down another and gave up a third, until he himself abandoned, piecemeal, the web of intolerance, so that it really appears that even the fertile resource of bigoted calumny is at length exhausted. "Of the prince" (the worthless regent) "I shall say nothing — uncer- tainty as to present circumstances, reliance on the past, and the linger- ing and dutiful affection in a heart devoted to the friend of Ireland" (humbug!), "restrain me. To canvass the subject would appear to be the entertaining of a doubt. " Oh ! but there is one objection still remains to our emancipation ; it is quite novel and most important. Our enemies object to the tone which the Catholics use. This notable objection was struck out by the earl of Eosse. He disliked our tone. He might as well have quarrelled with our accent; but that would be rather a strong measure in Lord Rosse (laughter). Seriously, however, the descendant of Sir William Parsons has a hereditary right to be the enemy of the Catholics upon any pre- text, or even without one. I do not believe this lord has fallen into inconsistency. I have some faint recollection that, under the name of Sir Lawrence Parsons, he once enacted patriotism in Ireland. 1 may be mistaken, but I do not think he ever supported our claims ; and I am quite sure I wish he never may. " But our tone is disliked. Yes, my lord, they dislike the tone which men should use who are deeply anxious for the good of their country, and who have no other object. We are impressed with the sense of the perils that surround us, and of all the calamities impending on a a new source of unconquerable strength to our cause to have Protest- ant and Catholic equally ardent in the struggle in which we are engaged. His are talents which ministerial corruption could not purchase, for they are beyond all price." Mr. O'Connell next brings four of the faithless regent's pledges to the Catholics before the meeting : 1st. One made through the duke of Bedford. 2d. One made through Chancellor Ponsonby. 3d. A written one in the possession of the earl of Kenmare. He speaks thus of the fourth : " The fourth and last pledge, which, for the present, I shall mention, was that given by his royal highness to a noble lord"' (Fingal) "now- present. At the conversation I allude to, that noble lord was accom- panied by the late Lord Petre and the present Lord Clifdcn. After retiring from the presence of his royal highness, the declarations which he was so graciously pleased to make were, from a loyal and affection ale impulse of gratitude, committed to writing, and signed by the three noble lords." It is in this speech that the passage on Perceval's assassination, already quoted by me, occurs. In this speech, too, he speaks of the THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 267 once-popular Lord Moira. After saying that Perceval's death had "opened a near prospect of their emancipation," he proceeds: "At the moment I am speaking the bill for our relief would have been in its progress through the legislature ; we should have been eman- cipated this very session, unconditionally and completely emancipated, but for what ? — I speak it in no anger, but in the deepest sorrow — but for Lord Moira. • "Lord Moira is a name that I have never before pronounced without enthusiasm. I am quite aware of his high honor, his unbounded gene- rosity, his chivalrous spirit ; his heart has ever been without fear, his intentions have ever been, and will ever be, without reproach ; Ireland was justly proud of him ; where could his fellow be met with ? In the disastrous period that preceded the union — at the time that measure was in preparation ; when Foster and Clare banished Abercrombie from Ireland, because he was humane ; when murders marked the day, and the burning cottages of the peasantry illumined the darkness of the night ; when affright and desolation stalked through the land ; when it was a crime to love Ireland and death to defend her; at that awful moment, Moira, the good, the great Moira, threw himself between his country and her persecutors; he exposed their crimes; he denounced their horrors ; he proclaimed and proved their guilt ; and, although they were too powerful to be beaten down by him, he has left his country the sad consolation of beholding a perpetual record of the infamy of her oppressors. "Good God! if his advice had been taken in 1797, what innocent blood would have been spared ! how many cruel oppressors would have been punished ! and oh ! our country would still have a name and be a nation ! "Can these services be forgotten? can these virtues be unremem- bered ? No, never ; but still the truth must be told : this is Lord Moira 1 s administration. He it was that stood between some worthless minions and the people's hopes. He had to choose between them, and he has given his protection, not to Ireland or the Catholics, but to Lord Tar- mouth and his family. It is now confessed that a single word from Lord Moira would have dismissed the minions, and placed Earl Grey and Lord Grenville at the head of affairs. Why was not that fated 268 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL word pronounced ? Alas ! I know not. Full sure, however, I am, that the intention which restrained it was pure and honorable ; but I, at the same time, feel its fatal effects. We are, my lord, to continue slaves, because Lord Moira indulged some chivalrous notions of courtly romance! "It maybe said that, as Lord Moira has interfered, the Catholics may reasonably expect some relief. Let us not be deceived. From the present ministry we cannot expect anything. . . . "But, in sober sadness, in whom are we to confide? Are we to believe the word of Castlereagh ? My lord, I would not believe his oath. Already has he been deeply pledged. He was a United Irishman, and, as such, must have taken their test, ... It pledged him to Catholic emancipation and parliamentary reform. . . . But how has he redeemed those pledges ? Why, he has emancipated the Catholics by duping some of them at the union, and uniformly voting upon every question against us; and he has reformed the parliament by selling it to the British min- ister. May this Walcheren minister be suitably rewarded in the execra- tion of his country ! and may he have engraved on his tomb for an epitaph, '"Vendidit hie auro patriam' (' J3e sold his country for gold') I "No, my lord, from us Castlereagh can obtain no confidence; nor can his colleague, Lord Sidmouth, expect that (he friends of toleration can confide in his promises. Lord Sidmouth, who declared to Parlia- ment that he would prefer the re-enactment of the penal code to the extension of one other privilege to the Catholics; Lord Sidmouth, who began his absurd career <>t persecution with the dissenters in England : that Lord Sidmouth (liberal and enlightened gentleman!) has been selected for the home department He it is who is to regulate the motions of our provincial government; he it is that is to cheer the drooping spirit of persecution in this country. His natural allies ;ne embodied here — the group of 'good men,' as they fantastically designate themselves, who manage the legal adminisrtation of this country; men who have worked themselves into reputation with ancient maidens ami dei nyed matrons by gravity of deportment and church-wardening piety, but who all their lives have been discounting religion and the Deity into promotion and the pay and plunder of office — those men. together with THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 26.9 e very much abused in Ireland. This was a danger that should be guarded against; and in that case, without denying the pope to be their spirit- ual head I which was a main tenet of their religion), the correspondence between the bishops and the pope ought to be carried on in so open and undisguised a manner as not to give reasonable alarm to the state." Mi-. Tierney, in replying to Castlereagh. said, with greai readiness: "He could not imagine why an Irish bishop should not, in such a case, be dealt with like an English bishop, who would only lose his head." "On Thursday, the 5th of November, 1812, an aggregate meeting of the Catholics of the county of Dublin was held at Kilmainham, osten- sibly to petition Parliament, in reality to discuss the results of the elec- THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 279 tions just terminated, the conduct of particular persons in various localities during the struggle and the general state and prospect of the cause. William Gerald Baggott, of Castle Baggott, took the chair. The proceedings were commenced by Eandal McDonnell, Avho, after praising the conduct of the poorer classes of electors during the recent contest, introduced the resolutions that had been drawn up. Then arose, on every side, loud calls for "O'Connell! O'Connell!" The journals of the day tell us that, "after a short hesitation, the Man of the People came forward and spoke to the following effect. " But before I give a few extracts from O'Connell's oration on this oc- casion, I wish to observe, on the authority of John O'Connell, that the legal opinions delivered by his illustrious father in the Limerick speech, from which the passage, closing the last chapter, is an extract, "were all verified in the courts of law. The city of Limerick, from being a nomination borough, was, by means of legal decisions, thrown open to popular control, as Mr. O'Connell had pointed out. The expense was enormous, but was cheerfully borne by the patriotic citizens." A Mr. Edward Ryan and a Mr. Patrick Creagh subscribed, each, £500. O'Con- nell had roused the slumbering people of Limerick and pointed out the road to victory. The Verekers (the head of this family is Lord Gort) were, at the general election we are noticing, driven from the represent- ation of that city. It must be owned, however, that Thomas Spring Rice (afterwards chancellor of the exchequer and Lord Monteagle), the successful popular candidate, turned out in the long run no great acqui- sition. He was probably the first Irishman who nicknamed himself "a West Briton." But the reader and the populace are alike impatient to hear the opening of O'Connell's harangue. As a rule, you cannot measure the greatness of O'Connell by isolated extracts. The old saying, that you can judge of the strength and stature of Hercules from his foot (ex pedc Herculem), is not so often verified in O'Connell's case as in that of Grattan or Curran, etc. To see and comprehend the massiveness and might of O'Connell, you must review all his speeches, take his elo- quence in its totality. Then the giant towers aloft before your mind's eye. In the present instance, however, he commences with a noble burst of genuine Irish feeling and pathos that directly storms the heart: 280 THE LTFE OF DANIEL O' CORNELL. " I could not be an Irishman, if I did not feel grateful, if I Avas not overpowered at the manner in which you have received me. Sorry, sunk and degraded as my country is, I still glory in the title of Irish- man." {Bursts of applause.) "Even to contend for Ireland's liberties is a delightful duty to me." [Enthusiastic 'plaudits.) "And if anything is Avanting, in addition to the evidence of such humble efforts as I haA 7 e already been engaged in, for the restoration of our freedom and inde- pendence, to evince my deA'otion to the cause of my country, I do SAvear, by the kindness you have shown me now, by any I haA'e ever expe- rienced at your hands, and by all that I hold valuable or Avorthy of desire, that my life is at her service." (Applause.) "And may the heavy hand of adversity tall down upon me, and upon all that are dearest to me — the children of my heart — if ever I forsake the pure pursuit of the liberty of Ireland." (Cheering for several minutes.) "Gen- tlemen, Ave are now arrived at a period when Ave are not only struggling for the interest of our OA\n religion, but for the liberty, security and peace of our Protestant brethren, both here and in England." (Applause.) "We are arrived at an important crisis, when a serious profession has been made, on our behalf, by the English Parliament. This is die first time that a declaration such as that to which I allude Avas ever made in the senate. It is the first time that the voice of religious lib- erty was really heard in the British Parliament; the firsl time that men were allowed to judge for themselves, and to obey the divine precept, of treating others as they themselves Avould Avish to be treated." (Hear! hear!) "The period is highly important, and calls for all the watchfulness, zeal and assiduity of which Ave are capable. An administration (formed, Heaven knows how!) have given us a specimen of their acting a neu- tral part toAvards us. They have promised that they shall not interpose their authority to interrupt the good intentions of any man. Some of them haA T e even pledged theinseh'es to support the Catholic question; and probably half of them have given some earnest of their improved liberality. I will, however, give them little credit for sincerity; 1 be- lieve they would not even pretend to lay much claim to our confidence; they have too much modesty to expect to be believed by us." (Laughiw and cries of Heart hear!) "We have, I believe, without paying much THE LIFE OF BANIEL O'CONNELL. 281 attention to the professions of the cabinet, arrived at a most important crisis. It behooves every man of us to do his duty, and to take care that we shall lose none of the important acquisitions we have made. This very administration of whom I am speaking, notwithstanding all their fair promises, have been busily employed in throwing new imped- iments in our way since last session. But those impediments shall do us little injury, if we do our duty. They certainly are our natural ene- mies ; they hate liberty ; they have an inherent abhorrence of freedom ; and their hostility to us is particularly embittered by our contempt for them." [Loud applause.) "Yes, gentlemen, such are the men whom you, in your resolutions, have justly termed 'incompetent' and 'prof- ligate;' such are the men who now command the destinies of those realms, and probably the fortunes of Europe." (Hear! hear!) He next refers to a favorable change of sentiment towards the Cath- olic body on the part of the celebrated naval hero, Lord Cochrane, then one of the members for Westminster. The gallant Cochrane had been prejudiced against the Catholics on account of what he deemed the slavish doctrines of " the Eomish Church." O'Connell says : " It is some consolation, gentlemen, that there is some person who can assure ministers there is no danger in granting us emancipation — we are not too fond of liberty." (Laughter.) "But, gentlemen, see the consistency and rationality of our calumniators ! At one time they say we are agi- tating democrats, crying aloud for an unwarrantable portion of freedom ; the very next moment they turn round, and tell us that we have a marvel- lous propensity for slavery!" (Loud cries of Hear! hear!) . . . "Let Lord Cochrane recollect what the first Irishman that ever was born said at Newry." (Here the learned gentleman was interrupted for several min- utes by the acclamations of the assembly.) "I am not surprised," continued Mr. O'Connell when silence was again restored — "I am not surprised that you should feel the most ecstatic emotions of the Irish heart when I but allude to the name of John Philpot Curran." (Renewed cheering.) " It recalls to us everything that is dear or interesting in our history, it pronounces everything that we are proud to live with in this age, and everything that shall be esti- mable in the minds of posterity." (Loud applause.) "I know the name of John Philpot Curran has conducted you back involuntarily to 282 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. that most awful era in our annals when we were deprived of our independ- ence, and metamorphosed into the colony of a people who were not and who are not in the least worthy of being our masters ! But, my friends, if we are true to ourselves — if Protestants and Catholics be alive to their commonest and most intimate interests — we may, profiting, among other aids, by the assistance of this very idol of ours to whom you have just paid your affectionate tribute, — we may, I say, become a kingdom once more!" [Thunders of applause.) " I had adverted to what my most venerated friend, John Philpot Curran, said at JNewry. I would take leave to remind Lord Cochrane of it, assuming it to be the expression of Catholic feeling. The Irish Cicero there observed that Englishmen love the privilege of being gov- erned by Englishmen. I would tell my Lord Cochrane that Irishmen fully as highly value the privilege of being governed by Irishmen." [Long -continued applause.) In the next paragraph, O'Connell has occasion to say: "In the course of my professional pursuits I have been one hundred times compelled to swear that I did not think it lawful to commit murder." (A laugh.) ..." But we are told we have predilections : we do not deny the charge. As for my part, I do not value the man who has not his predilections and resentments; but at the same time, Lord Cochrane may be as much afraid of our predilections for the grand lama of Tartary as for the Pope of Rome." (Hear I hear I) "Those imputations upon our value for an oath evince only the mis- erable ignorance of our opponents, with regard to our principles and uniform conduct. They bring to my recollection again, I he words of the great Curran al Newry, and serve to convince me still more of their entire justice, when he said 'that they are unlit to rule us, making laws, like boots and shoes for exportation, to tit us as they may.' " (Long- continued applaust . | After a few sentences in praise of the gallant Cochrane, O'Connell proceeds to review the gains and losses to the Catholic cause in the elec- tions. As much of the interest of this survey was necessarily of a tem- porary nature, I shall skim over the rest of the speech rapidly. Be complains that " Christopher Hely Hutchinson has hist his election in Cork." But in various other places additional supporters of the Cath- THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 283 olic cause have been returned. He is delighted that "in Downpatrick even John Wilson Croker" (the Quarterly reviewer, the Rigby — the man for "the dirty work" — of Disraeli's novel of "Coningsby") "of the admiralty, has, to use a northern phrase, been kicked out." [Laughter and cheers.) "I remember, about six years ago, when this gentleman and I were going circuit together, his Protestantism did not keep my Popery much in the background." [Laughter and cheers.) " If, however, he were not a Protestant, I verily believe he would have been doomed to drudge all his life at the bar, though he has been, since that time, in Parliament, and is now rewarded with a situation in the admiralty. . . . In Trinity College ... we have had an accession to our strength, in that credit to Ireland, that ornament to the bar and that honor to human intelligence, William Conyngham Plunket." [Loud applause.) In Dublin, "Jack Griffard, the police magistrates and Billy McAuley" could not get a man in opposition to Mr. Shaw. " The 'felonious rabble' of the corporation, if I may use the delicate expression of one of its members, had not courage to produce one person to oppose Henry Grattan, who 'watched Ireland's independence in its cradle, and fol- lowed it to its tomb.' . . . " Such is the state of the elections ; such is the state of your cause. Is it not demonstrative, that if you had a Protestant parliament in Ireland, they would emancipate you?" The reporters describe the manner in which this sentence was re- ceived by Mr. O'Conneii's auditory as having been enthusiastic in the extreme. The shouts of applause were taken up again and again, for many minutes, with unabated, or even increasing, fervor — in fact, "it was not for a long time that he was suffered to proceed." He then took occasion to say that the Catholics of Clare (destined also to glorify them- selves in 1829, at the Clare election, the most remarkable event con- nected with O'Connell's life) had covered themselves with eternal honor. He assailed Castlereagh, who was returned by a northern constituency, with infinite gusto : "In speaking of Lord Castlereagh, I do not know how to select words to adequately express my feelings. I should become an old man in foaming out the torrent of hatred and indignation with which my bosom teems. . . . Let the man who buried thousands of our brave troops in the marshes of Walcheren, and destroyed the springs of 284 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. his country's liberty, know the feelings which are experienced by an Irishman when his name is mentioned." [Loud applause.) " To counterbalance the gloom that is thrown over the mind when the success of an enemy to the cause of Ireland is contemplated, I might exhibit the prospects that are presented by the residence of the young duke of Leinster amongst us." (Loud acclamations.) "Inheriting such a load of the virtues of his ancestry, his promises are great. Indeed, there is something in the name of Fitzgerald to cherish and console Ireland under the heaviest afflictions." (Loud applause.) . . . "As to the 'No Popery' agitators, we have leading them a Mr. Steward Cony, whoever he may be; a Mr. Owen Wynne, who is said to be a great en- couragerof fat pigs." (Much laughter.) "He is also, however, a brother to that important dignitary, the caterer-general of the Castle. Then we have a Mr. Counsellor Webber, who was an assistant-barrister" (assistant- barristers, a class of inferior judges, arc now called chairmen of counties), "or, in the words of the great Flood, who had availed himself of the 'refuge for tried incapacity.' In one county, an obscure clergyman was tin' author of a pompous string of anti-Catholic resolutions. "But the hypocritical affectation of liberality in those gentlemen was worst of all!" (Ilea/-! hear!) "Catholics were their loving brothers! everything that was sweet and delightful and sublime am affectionate!!" (Laughter.) "They love us — oh how dearly !- but they desire us to continue slaves! They desire us to fight lor them and to pay the taxes; — but they keep the rewards to themselves!" At the same time O'Connell took good care, while denouncing what he called "the disgraceful efforts" of a "disgraceful no-Popery faction" in the counties oi Sligo, Leitrim, Roscommon and Longford, to contrast with them "that formidable and imposing document, the Protestant peti- tion, signed by every one of wealth, respectability or talent that was to be found throughout the country." Alter descanting, at some length, upon the necessity of unanimity of sentiment among all classes at the awful crisis now impending (mean- ing, 1 presume, the final struggle with Napoleon the Great), O'Connell said, "It would be much wiser lor ministers, at this juncture, to enter into a treaty of amity with the Catholics of Ireland, than to lavish a subsidy of eighty thousand pounds upon Bernadotte" (the French marshal who had THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 285 been elected croivn-prince of Sweden, and who was now turning against h is old master, Napoleon, in his sinking fortunes), than to build hopes upon the insurrection in Paris, form alliances with a chieftain in South Amer- ica, or conclude arrangements with the dey of Algiers." Mr. O'Connell sat down amid loud acclamations. At this general election of 1812, John Philpot Curran stood for Newry. Many of his friends had long desired to see him in the English Parliament. They did not consider his fame firmly enough established in England. A few orations, on great occasions, in the House of Com- mons, would root it deep as an oak tree, even in that alien soil. For himself, he wished chiefly to be able to aid Grattan in pushing the Cath- olic claims. In obedience, then, to a requisition from JSTewry, he con- tested that borough with General JSTeedham, a member, I presume, of the bigoted house, which owns the neighboring earl of Kilmorey as its head, probably an Irishman by birth, though Curran calls him "a gen- tleman of another country" (perhaps meaning in feeling); at all events, distinguished for having slaughtered Irish rebels in '98. In this con- test (shameful to relate!) Curran was defeated. A miserable Catholic merchant (still more shameful to relate!) seconded General Needham. On Tuesday, the 15th of the same month, at an aggregate meeting in Fishamble Street Theatre, resolutions were passed bearing reference to the preparation and presentation of the Catholic petition to both Houses during the next session, also to the preparation of an address to Mr. Hely Hutchinson, who had lost his election at Cork, expressive of Catholic feeling towards him. In addition to these, other strongly- worded resolutions contradicted certain allegations, in recent addresses of the grand-juries of the city of Dublin and other places, containing various charges against the Catholics, especially that of aiming at the establishment of a Catholic ascendency. Next, thanks were voted to Sheriff Harty, for his conduct in office, and, according to the usual custom of Catholic meetings in those days, to the Protestants who had attended — in particular to Counsellors Finlay and Walsh for their 286 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. speeches. It was when the resolution referring to Mr. Hutchinson was put from the chair that a loud and general call for O'Connell arose. On his presenting himself to the meeting, he was saluted with enthusiastic acclamations that lasted for several minutes. Silence being restored, he spoke at considerable length on the recent exhibitions of the enemies of the Catholic cause. He held up to ridicule the insignificant John Earl of Aldborough, and lashed the mendacious London Courier. From this speech I shall only call attention to one or two passages : " But their absurdities shall not be the ground on which we shall defend ourselves. The accusation" [of seeking Catholic ascendency) "is contrary to our feelings — to our opinions; we have already expressed our disapprobation of any connection subsisting between government and the Catholic prelates ; and I am free to say, that there is no event which I should consider more fatal to the liberties of Ireland than what they have called a Catholic ascendency. Our prelates would no longer be the respectable characters in which we now revere everything that is vir- tuous or respectable; they would, at least, have more temptations to become otherwise; and whenever they should degenerate into the t<><>/s of the minister, then should I consider the doom of Ireland as sealed for ever." In this speech he also reminds his hearers of the pledges made to the Catholics by the last Parliament, and suggests the danger which might result from their violation. He says: "Let them" (tht members of the legislature) "recollect the terrible confusion that ensued when a former pledge was revoked." This refers to the pledge given by the viceroy, Lord Fitzwilliam, in 1795, which pledge was left unredeemed when Pitt recalled that nobleman. O'Connell fortifies his views with the authority of the now bigoted anti-Catholic Lord Ross, who, during his earlier career as the patriotic Sir Lawrence Parsons, had said, in 179o, in the Irish House of Commons, "that if a resistance to anything would be productive of evil consequences, it was that against the wishes oi the people, and the prospects which have been held out to them ; that if the demon of darkness should come from the infernal regions upon earth, and throw a firebrand among the people, he could not do more to promote mischief." After quoting this passage. O'Connell adds: "I hope some one will remind him of this part of his speech at the Kings county meeting, which I hear he is to attend to-morrow. He continues, THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 287 'he had never heard of a parallel to the infatuation of the minister' (he may see one now) ; ' and if he persisted, every man must have five or six dragoons in his house.' "And it was true; for in many houses it was necessary for the owners to have five or six dragoons, and the whole country was thrown into confusion. I hope and trust that no such consequences will ever again occur, though sure I am that such is the desire of the British min- ister. He wishes (to make use of the words of Christopher Hely Hutch- inson) that you should draw the sword, to afford him an opportunity of throiuing away the scabbard. Certain I am, that at this very moment there is a foul conspiracy to draw the warm-hearted, but unthinking, people of Ireland into a sham plot, to give an opportunity of wreaking vengeance on her dearest sons." He then warns them to shun all temptation to join in disturbances. The speech was frequently inter- rupted by vehement cheering. Passing by a speech delivered by O'Connell on the 13th of Febru- ary, 1813, in reference to the conduct of the English Catholics, and more particularly of one of their agents, named Charles Butler, a strenuous advocate of the veto, whose unauthorized interference in Irish Catholic affairs, hostility to the Irish Board, and desire to transfer the direction of the emancipation movement from the hands of the Irish to those of the English Catholics, who were jealous of the former, had naturally provoked our hero, I shall end this chapter with a few passages, chiefly of a humorous character, from his speech addressed, on the 8th of May, 1813, to the Catholic Board on the subject of "No Popery petitions." The petition styled that of the "freeholders, freemen and inhabitants of the city of Dublin," presented with ludicrous pomp and ceremony, contained an immense number of forged and fictitious names of the most absurd kind. O'Connell desired that this fact should be brought under the notice of the imperial Parliament. Before analyzing the fraudulent signatures, he speaks eloquently of the wrongs and calumnies suffered by the Catholics of Ireland : "It was not," says he, " in the field of battle that our liberties were cloven down." [Hear! hear!) "No! Our ancestors, when they fought, if they did not advance as victors, sur- rendered upon the faith of an honorable capitulation; but that faith was violated, and its violation was justified by calumny !" (Hear! hear! 288 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. hear!) "The Catholics were accused of entertaining opinions which the}' have ever detested — of adopting positions and principles which they have ever abhorred. Charges were brought forward and repeated against them, which could be aptly contradicted only in the broad vulgarity of Lord Ellenborough's language — ' Charges false as hell !' " But it is to the more humorous portions of this speech that I wish especially to call the reader's attention. After saying that " The Prot- estants of Ireland petitioned last year on our behalf; the wealth, the worth, the talent of the Irish Protestants — everything that was noble, and dignified, and intelligent, and independent amongst our Protestant brethren united in that petition"-*— after other remarks of the same tend- ency, he commences an enumeration of the bond fide "No-Popery" sig- natures by saying, " It was a matter, therefore, of much curiosity to discover who the two thousand eight hundred 'freemen, freeholders and inhabitants of Dublin' could possibly be." Having given an analysis of "the entire catalogue of genuine signatures," he proceeds, thus: "But there will remain near two thousand signatures to be still accounted for — near two thousand signatures will remain, for whom no owner can be found." (Hun-! Inn,-'.) " Of these there are some hun- dreds which purport to belong to individuals who have indignantly dis- claimed them. There are, in short, some hundreds of forgeries. Need we give a more striking instance than that of Mr. Stephens? lie dis- covered that his name had been forged to this petition, and immediately wmte to the mayor to inform him of the circumstance. The mayor did not condescend to give any reply, but took the known forgery to England, and presented it to the House as genuine." [Hear! hear!) "When for- gery was exhausted, mere fiction was resulted to. There was danger in giving names which, being in common use, might be disavowed by indi- viduals bearing them. The fabricators of this petition set disavowal at deliance; they produced names which no man ever bore or will bear [Hear! /tear!); they invented John Hedpath, and coupled him with John Bidpath; they attached James Hedpath to James Ridpath; they united the nohle families of the Feddlies to the illustrious race of Fid- dlies; they created the Jonneybones, and added the McCoobene to the Muldongs; to the uncleanly Rottens is annexed the musical name of Navasora; the Sours and the Soars, the Dandys and the 1'ea- THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL 289 kens : the Gilbasleys and the Werrillas ; five Ladds and five Palks ; the Leups and the Zealthams ; the Huzies and the Hozies ; the Sparlings and the Sporlings ; the Fitzgetts and the Fibgetts ; the Hoffins and the Phantons; and the Giritrows, and the Hockleys, and the Breakleys; the Enssinghams, and the Favuses, and the Sellhews, and the Mograts and Calyells — all, poor innocents, are made to combine against us, and to chime with the Pitharns and Paddams, the Chimnicks, and Rimnicks, and Clumnicks, and the Rowings and Riotters. They threw in the vulgar Bawns, and, after a multitude of fantastic denominations, they concluded with Zachariah Diamond." [Great laughter.) "In short, a more tasteless group of imaginary beings was never conjured up by the delusions of magic. To the tune of ' Jonny Arm- strong,' they gave us five-and-twenty Armstrongs, and placed eighteen Taylors on the list. It ought to have been ' four-and-twenty tailors, all in a row;' there would have been some pleasantry in it. In short, by these means, by the force of mere invention, upwards of one thousand names have been added to this petition, and one thousand children of the brain of those worthy managers of intolerance appeared in formid- able array against us at the bar of the House of Commons, covered with the mantle of the mayor for swaddling-clothes." [Laughter.) . . . " To impose upon that House" (of Commons) "is, I presume, a breach of its privileges." (Hear!) "Let us demand inquiry and investigation. Our assertion will be, that two-thirds of the signatures to this petition were forged or simply fictitious. But we will not require an assertion to be credited without proof; we will challenge inquiry; we will show five hundred names without an owner; and we will then point out the fabricators of this mean and dishonorable scheme to retard the progress of emancipation. "If we are mistaken, our enemies can easily confute us; they have only to produce the individual. Mr. Riotter may head their party. I should be glad to see the gentleman. If he does not live in the city — this Riotter — I presume he is to be found in the liberties. After him, our enemies can show off Mr. Wevilla, hand-in-hand with Mr. Navasora; and Johnny Bones, Esq., may appear with Fibgetts, Gent. ; and even Mr. Knowing can be summoned to come forward in company with Mr. Dandy." (Cheers and laughter.) 290 THE LIFE OF DAXIEL O'COXXELL. " But why should I fatigue with the ridiculous catalogue ? If those men exist — pardon ray supposition — if they exist, they live for our ene- mies ; if they do not exist, then what is to become, in public estimation, of those our enemies — of those worthy allies of the traducers of her royal highness? [Caroline, the slighted and accused wife, of the prince- regent, of tvhose cause O'Connell was a champion.) Perhaps their spirit of loyalty may save them in Parliament from punishment, but their fraud and forgery will consign them to the execration and contempt of posterity." 0"Connell concluded, amid great cheering, by moving the following resolution : "Resolved, That a sub-committee of twenty-one members be ap- pointed to take into consideration the most proper method of investi- gating and respectfully submitting to Parliament the alleged forged and fictitious signatures to the petition against the Catholic claims, presented to the Ilouse of Commons by the lord-mayor of Dublin." This resolu- tion, seconded by the wealthy Major Bryan of Jenkinstown, county Kilkenny, was agreed to unanimously. Another resolution was added : " Resolved^ That the committee be directed to request the aid of such of our Protestant brethren as may be pleased to assist in accomplishing the object of their report."* * The books to which I am indebted tor the materials of the foregoing chapter are, " The Select Speeches of Daniel O'Connell, M. P., edited, with Historical Notices, etc., by his son, John O'Con- nell, Es(|.;" "Lite and Times of Daniel O'Connell, etc., Dublin, J. Mullauy, 1 Parliament street;" "History «f Ireland," by John Mitchel ; "The Speeches of the Right Honorable John Phil pot C'urran, edited, with Memoirs and Historical Notices, b) Thomas Davis, Esq.;" " Memoirs of the Times of George the Fourth;" "Cobbett's Register;" Moore's "Memoirs of R. B. Sheridan." CHAPTER XIII. Slow progress op the cause of emancipation — Napoleon's approaching downfall— England's prosperity Ireland's bane — Grattan's bill and Canning's clauses — Failure of the bill — Its repudiation by the majority of the Irish Catholics — Vote of thanks to the Irish prelates — The aristocratic section of the Irish Catholics opposed to the vote; Counsellor Bellew and his brother Sir Edward — Corruption of the former — O'Connell "demolishes" his antagonists — Misunder- standing between O'Connell and Lord Fingal on the subject of the regent's pledge — O'Connell ridicules Lord Kenyon — Enthusiastic reception of Dr. Mil- ner's name at a Catholic meeting in Dublin — The English Catholics generally in favor of the veto — o'connell champions the cause of caroline, princess of Wales — His noble sentiments on the subject of repeal— He lashes the Orange- men — Ludicrous instance of English calumny against Ireland — Profligacy of the JURY SYSTEM — ADDRESS TO HENRY GrATTAN — O'CONNELL TRIES TO GET UP A MOVEMENT FOR THE PROMOTION OF IRISH MANUFACTURES — BRINGS FORWARD A VOTE OF THANKS TO the Presbyterian Synod — His spirit of tolerance — Lord Whitworth succeeds Richmond — Meetings and dissensions in Cork — O'Connell chaired — English insults to Dr. Milner — Death of .Lieutenant O'Connell — More of the veto question — Presentation of plate voted to O'Connell; Mr. Finlay's address — O'Connell creates a sensation by going to a Bible meeting — Baron Fletcher's charge ro the grand-jury of the county Wexford — Proposed application for sympathy to the Spanish Cortes — O'Connell's opinion of Maynooth — An American privateer off Dublin — O'Connell's great professional success — The parson and the girl who sold the curious eggs. ^WAVING told the story of O'Connell's rise to forensic fame and political leadership at considerable length, having also given a profusion of specimens of his eloquence both at public meet- ings and at the bar, I shall condense the events of his life during several years following Magee's trial — in the course of which the Catholic cause, owing to many unfavorable circumstances, made little progress — into a comparatively small compass. I shall pass over with but slight notice many powerful speeches of O'Connell, full of deep interest for the minute student of his biography and of Irish history, in which he displayed at least as much ability as he did in most of those to which the reader's attention has been already called. As I proceed in my narrative, the causes of the slow progress of Catholic emancipation will be made manifest. Perhaps not the least of these was the reviving 2V2 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. power of England. The imperial star of the great Napoleon was now fast falling from the heavens. He had lost in the year 1812 a mighty army amid the snows of Russia. In 1813 another splendid host, after the most brilliant efforts and tremendous victories, had been shattered and all but annihilated during the closing months of the campaign especially in the gigantic struggle at Leipzig. Everywhere the French eagles were being driven back on old France. The old Castilian fierce- ness against invaders was in a blaze. Already the bones of near five hun- dred thousand Frenchmen were whitening on the hills of Spain. In all quarters disaster was making dim the lustre of French renown. England was at the head of the victorious coalition of the uprisen powers of Europe. "England's difficulty is always Ireland's opportunity.'! Eng- land's prosperity and glory are invariably Ireland's ignominy and banc! It is necessary, however, that I should first give a rapid review of several other events that tilled the year 1813 besides the Btate-prosecu- tions noticed in the last chapter. Of these the most important was the ii)ti'"luction into Parliament of (I rattan's relief bill. It was a very im- perfect measure. Catholics, indeed, were to sit in Parliament, to possess corporate rights and to be eligible for civil and military offices. Cath- olics, however, were not to be eligible for the offices of lord-lieutenant or lord-chancellor. But the bill was worse than imperfect; it was insult- ing to Catholics. As a security to the Protestants, the Catholics were to swallow a new comprehensive oath abjuring the alleged power of the pope to depose or put to death monarchs, abjuring obedience lo his temporal power, the infallibility of the pope as an article of faith, and the principle that no faith should be kept with heretics. They were further to swear that they would support the Protestant succession, and the existing state of property; that they would discover all treasons within their cognizance; thai they would not attempt to injure the state or overthrow the Protestant Church ; that, unless they were con- vinced of his loyalty, they (laymen and clergy) would not nominate or elect any Catholic bishop or vicar apostolic. But even this was not the worst. In addition to the security of the oath, certain clauses, suggested by Sir John Bippesley, that inveterate stickler for the veto, were proposed by Canning and Castlereagh. These are known as "the Canning clauses." Five commissioners were to con- THE LIFE OF DANIEL O' CONN ELL. 293 stitute a board to examine into and certify to the loyalty of all candi- dates for bishoprics. The same commissioners, together with two Roman Catholic bishops, the lord-chancellor and one of the secretaries of state, were to exercise surveillance over all bulls or briefs received from Rome, with the proviso that they should not betray the secrets of the Catholic Church. When at last an amendment was proposed, striking out the clause that gave the Catholics the privilege of sitting and voting in Parliament, the bill was withdrawn and finally lost. (See, for fuller particulars, Grattan's speech, May 11, 1813.) While this bill was in progress, Grattan advocated it with his usual power. But all his eloquence failed to recommend it to his countrymen. The Irish Catholics were thrown into the greatest commotion. Clergy and people, almost unanimously, rejected emancipation on such teims. The insidious "Canning clauses," the tendency of which was to subject the Catholic hierarchy and clergy to state control, kindled especial indig- nation. The aristocratic section, indeed, of the Irish Catholics were favorable to the bill. Lord Trimleston bewailed its loss. I may also observe that "the English Catholics" (to use the words of Mr. Mitchel), "not having any national interest at stake in the matter, were quite favorable to the project, and used their utmost endeavors to have it accepted at Rome, and recommended from thence. English influence was then very strong at Rome. The pope was a prisoner in France; and it was to the coalition of European sovereigns against Bonaparte that the court of Rome looked for its re-establishment." We shall presently see a strange effect of this English influence. Meanwhile, the captivity of Pius the Seventh, apparently placing him under the control of the French emperor, was used by the vetoists as an argument in favor of the concession of "securities" to the British government. While the bill was pending, various Catholic meetings took place in Dublin, and various speeches were delivered by O'Connell, for the most part bearing reference to the bill, as being for the time the all-absorbing topic of interest. I shall briefly notice some of those meetings and harangues. On the 29th of May, 1813, our hero read in the Catholic Board the unanimous repudiation by the Irish Catholic prelates of the proposed religious "securities." He then delivered a speech of considerable 294 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. length, characterized by his usual power, in which he treated with scorn the commission contemplated by the bill. He assumed that Peel, whom he nicknamed "Orange Peel," and called ' a raw youth, squeezed out the workings of I know not what factory in England" [PeeV s father, old Sir Robert, tvas a successful cotton-spinner), and sent over to Ireland 'before he got rid of the foppery of perfumed handkerchiefs" — he assumed that Peel, Lord Manners, the chancellor, "the duke of Rich- mond's privy councillor, the Right Honorable Doctor Duigenan! . . . that religious bulldog particularly fitted for worrying Popish bishops," William Saurin and Jack Giffurd, would be the live commissioners. He ended by moving a vote of thanks to the "Catholic prelates in Ireland for their ever-vigilant and zealous attention to the interests of the Cath- olic Church in Ireland." To this Anthony Strong Hussey moved, as an amendment, that the bishops should simply be thanked for their communication. That pri- vately-pensioned aristocrat, the stiff and solemn Counsellor Bellew, sup- ported Hussey's motion in an able, but discreditable speech. His brother. Sir Edward Bellew, took the same side in a theological dis- course. O'Connell replied. He said of Bellew's oration that "it was a speech of much talent and much labor and preparation." Quoth Bel- lew, •• I spoke extempore." O'Connell retorts : "We shall see whether this extempore effort of the Learned gentleman will appear in the news- papers to-morrow in the precise words in which it was uttered this day." He next sets his audience laughing at Messrs. Hussey and Bagot. The former, being of "an economical turn of mind," is "stingy and niggard" of praise; the latter, Dan says, "told us that lie had made a speech but a fortnight ago which we did not understand, and he has now added an- other which is unintelligible; . . . and so . . . he concludes most logic- ally that the bishops were wrong, and that he and Mr. Hussey are right." Sir Edward Bellew's "learned and lengthened distinction between essen- tial and non-essential discipline" is now ridiculed. Presently he says, "And now I address myself to the learned brother of the theological baronet," Counsellor Bellew, it appears, had asked attention because he so seldom addressed the audience. " It reminds me," says O'Connell, "of the piayer of the English officer before battle: 'Croat Lord,' said he, 'during the forty years I have lived 1 never troubled you before with THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 295 a single prayer. I have, therefore, a right that you should grant me one request, and do just as I desire, for this once!' " After causing great laughter, O'Connell asks the assembly to listen to him unravelling "the spider-web" of Bellew's sophistry, on grounds different from that gentle- man's claim — namely, because he (O'Connell) constantly "attended to the varying posture of their affairs." Mr. Bellew was one of the first Catholics called to the bar after the relaxation of the penal prohibition. His aristocratic birth and connec- tions gave him great advantages. At one time he had the lion's share of the Catholic business. He was six years receiving a secret pension from government before his corruption became known. The English reformers got at the list of private pensioners ; among them O'Connell read the name of Bellew. From that moment O'Connell had only to say, " I thank God I am not a pensioner," in order to cover Bellew with confusion, silence his opposition and set the audience against him. This was the more mortifying to Counsellor Bellew on account of his punc- tilious disposition. His favorite motto was, "Touch my honor, touch my eye." It is stated, however, that this did not prevent him from accepting an additional pension of £200 per annum — perhaps the reward of his vicious speech — shortly after the meeting I have just noticed. At a meeting of the Catholic Board on the 29th of May, 1813, O'Connell spoke at considerable length on the subject of the prince- regent's pledges with respect to Catholic emancipation. O'Connell asserted that he had heard Lord Fingal state, in Fitzpatrick's shop, that the regent had made him a verbal pledge in favor of emancipation, in presence of "Lord Clifden and the late Lord Petre;" which Lord Fingal had immediately after committed to paper. O'Connell added that when Lord Fingal had made this statement "there were three or four others present, one of whom was his" (O'Connell s) "respected friend, Major Bryan," and that the statement "could not have been intended for any secresy." O'Connell concluded by moving that the earl of Fingal be requested to communicate to the Board the contents of the paper con- taining the prince's declaration. Major Bryan then bore testimony to the accuracy of O'Connell's statement. Sir Francis Goold, he said, was also present when Lord Fingal related the circumstance. Mr. Bagot expressed an opinion that " Lord Fingal would not consent to the request 296 THE LIFE OF DAXIEL O'COXXELL. that was about to be made to him — nay, he had authority for avowing the fact. Why should he, then, be placed in an invidious and disagree- able position?" Mr. Bagot also "deprecated a warfare with the first magistrate of these realms, who could do service, and might do injury. Some gentlemen seemed to consider such a warfare useful to the cause of Ireland." O'Connell replied to Mr. Bagot. He showed that, while the Cath- olics were full of " praises of the regent and full of their hopes from him, calling him their early friend, their best and proudest hope, it was then, even then, in the full tide of their warm affections, that they had been met by a state-prosecution. ... It was then that the common police- justices were sent to arrest the noble earl at their head." It was long after this prosecution that "the 'unworthy witchery' was mourned." The prince's favorites, too, "the god-like Perceval" and Lord Yarmouth, were their enemies. O'Connell then moved that the earl of Donough- in« no be requested to present their petition to the House of Lords. He next criticised severely Grattan's bill, a bill drawn up by three Protect- ant lawyers — Messrs. Wallace, Burton and Burrowes; "not a single Catholic consulted upon it." He praised Grattan's "more than human " eloquence. Grattan was himself incapable of deception, "but the very generosity and nobleness of his mind exposes him to the delusions of others." O'Connell protests strongly against the course pursued, and sneers at Canning as "a powerful framer of jests" and at Castlereagh "the speeching man." The application made by the secretary of the Board to Lord Fingal, in consequence of O'Connell's motion, produced no good effect; indeed, it only caused unpleasantness — assertions on one side and denials on the other. Lord Fingal considered "that conversations between indi- viduals, of whatever rank, were not fit subjects of public discussion. The pledge referred to was not in his possession." In short, there was a deal of unprofitable "fending and proving" — O'Connell and Major Bryan on the one part, Lords Fingal and Clifden and Sir Francis Goold on the other. At this distance of time, the dispute is not, if it ever were, a matter of great interest; still less is it a matter of importance. On the 13th of June, at an aggregate meeting in Fishamble Street Theatre, when O'Connell mentioned the name of Dr. Milner, the bishop THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 297 of Castaballa, the journals of the day tell us he was interrupted by acclamations. Every voice greeted the distinguished English prelate's name. Clapping of hands and beating of feet continued for several minutes, renewed at three successive intervals. The distinct resolution in Dr. Milner's favor, on account of his co-operation with the Prelates of Ireland in opposing the ecclesiastical regulations of G rattan's bill, when moved at a later period of the proceedings, drew down thunders of applause. The whole assembly rose, as if moved by a single soul. The men uncovered and waved their hats; "the ladies, too, came for- ward and by courtesies signified their participation in the general feel- ing." "When the burst of enthusiasm at the first announcement of Dr. Milner's name had subsided, O'Connell spoke on the position of the Catholic cause. He laughed the relief bill and the proposed " securi- ties" to scorn, insisted that Grattan was "mistaken," gave expression to the repugnance he felt towards Canning, who, he said, only affected to be their friend "because, since his conduct to his colleague, Castlereagh, he has found it difficult to obtain a niche in any administration." Canning and Castlereagh had fought a duel, in which the former had been wounded. Of Castlereagh, he asked, "Does not Grattan know that Lord Castlereagh first dyed his country in blood and then sold her?" Immedi- ately after this he observed. "Ireland, in the connection with England, has but too constantly shared the fate of the prodigal's dog — I mean no personal allusion" (a laugh) — "she has been kicked in the insolence of prosperity, and she has borne all the famine and distress of adversity." He next traces the history of the penal laws, after which he vigorously denounces "the Orange banditti," entering at large into their history and pointing out "the horrors" of their system. Lord Kenyon and Lord Yarmouth he abuses as their patrons ; "the first" he styles "an insane religionist of the Welsh jumper sect, who, bounding in the air, imagines he can lay hold of a limb of the Deity, like Macbeth snatch- ing at the air-drawn dagger of his fancy. He would be simply ridicu- lous, but for the mischievous malignity of his holy piety, which desires to convert Papists from their errors through the instrumentality of dag- gers of steel." Of Lord Yarmouth, O'Connell adds, " If I could, I would not disgust myself with the description." This speech, in which, as might be expected, he also lashes unsparingly the bigots — Nicholl, Scott, 298 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. Duigenan and Giffard — was greeted at its close with warm and general applause. At this meeting O'Connell rose to speak a second and even a third and fourth time. In his second address he complains that the Board is £3000 in debt, and proposes that a fund be raised, "to counteract the effects of Orange persecution and to meet the expenses of the petitions." It was to move the vote of thanks to Dr. Milner that he rose the third time. "That venerable prelate," said O'Connell, "has been expelled by the paltry club calling itself the ' Catholic Board of England.' " He adds that, the very same day, "they thanked the master of the Flogging and Torturing Club in Dublin, my Lord Castlereagh." The resolution in honor of the bishop of Castaballa was passed by acclamation. I have already mentioned, in the present work, that Dr. Milner was originally in favor of the veto, though subsequently he became one of its most vehement antagonists. This change of sentiment on his part won him little favor with the aristocratic section of the Irish Catholics. With the English Catholics he became absolutely unpopular. These last, indeed, were, for the most part, all along favorable to the veto. It is even said that in 1791, in their anxiety to be speedily emancipated, they had entertained some design of making themselves independent of the Holy See and styling themselves Catholic Dissenters. Mr. Plowden, the Catholic historian, writes thus: "The views of the English Catholics went far beyond those of the vetoists of Ireland — namely, to shake oil' their dependence upon the see of Rome, and establish national bishops not drawing their jurisdiction from the Christian primate; and this in accordance with the Jansenistical doctrines of [Jtrecht, and in the manner of the reformed English bishops from the time of Henry the Eighth downwards." At this meeting O'Connell also moved an address to the persecuted Caroline, the unhappy wife of the prince-regent. O'Connell made a warm speech in her favor. To the end of her life he was one of her most strenuous defenders. On the present occasion he lashed himself into a perfect state of chivalrous excitement, and declared himself ready to take the field in behalf of her daughter, the Princess Charlotte, in case the duke of York and the Orangemen should attempt to interfere with her right to the succession. "I am against the duke," says Dan, THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 299 "and for the princess." Again: "If they shall attempt to alter the succession, I will fight against the traitors and for the young princess, at your head or by your side." If this burst of knight-errantry should fail to provoke the reader to smile, at least he will not refuse the meed of laughter to the following sharp, but humorous, hit at the prince- regent and his antiquated charmer, the marchioness of Hertford : " The fashion of cutting the throats of wives is gone by. Henry the Eighth, the English apostle of the Reformation, had a speedy method of getting rid of a disagreeable wife. He it was that first discovered the errors of the Church of Rome in the fair face of a young lady.* In the present day, it is said, that the crimes of the Catholics have been detected in the bloated visage of an ancient matron. The taste of Henry was more correct, but not more laudable." A slight passing notice is enough to devote to this passage of O'Connell's life. Of course, it is quite outside the scope of this biography to pronounce any opinion whatever as to the guilt or innocence of the unfortunate princess of Wales. I may just remark that, even if she were guilty, the conduct of that worthless, faithless Sybarite, her husband, was so execrable as to deprive him of all title to public sympathy, and still leave the unhappy lady, of the two, the greater object of interest. On the 29th of June, 1813, O'Connell made a long speech, chiefly on the subject of "the repeal of the union." Some of the sentiments to which he gave expression on this occasion are worthy of record and remembrance. "Next," says he, "your enemies accuse me of a desire for the independence of Ireland. I admit the charge, and let them make the most of it. I have seen Ireland a kingdom ; I reproach myself with having lived to behold her a province. Yes, I confess it — I will ever be candid upon the subject — I have an ulterior object — the repeal of the UNION, AND THE RESTORATION TO OLD IRELAND OF HER INDEPENDENCE." Loud acclamations followed these words, which lasted for several minutes. Again he says : "I would sacrifice my existence to restore to Ireland her independent legislature ; but I do not desire to restore precisely such * The above passage reminds one of Gray the poet's gallant couplet on Henry the Eighth and Anna Boleyn : " When Love could teach a monarch to be wise, And gospel light first dawned from Boleyn's eyes." 300 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COSNELL. a parliament as she had before. No; the act of restoration necessarily implies a reformation. . . . "Desiring as 1 do the repeal of the union, I rejoice to see how our enemies promote that great object, Yes, they promote its inevitable success by their very hostility to Ireland ; they delay the liberties of the Catholic, but they compensate us most amply, because they advance the resto- ration of Ireland. By leaving one cause of agitation, they have created and they will embody and give shape and form to a public mind and a public spirit. . . . " I repeat it; the delay of emancipation I bear with pleasure, because in that delay is included the only prospect of obtaining my great, my ultimate object — the legislative independence of my native land." In this oration he again lashes the Orangemen. There is consider- able characteristic humor in the following onslaught on Lord Kenyon. This Lord Kenyon was the celebrated lawyer's son: "To descend from the nation to an individual. Can anything be more beastly stupid than the conduct of Lord Kenyon. who is now- organizing Orange lodges? Why does not the animal see that the prin- ciple of religious exclusion might have prevented him from being a lord? that he has escaped into sinecure places, property and a peerage by the accident of his father's creed? For example : if his father, who was a common writing-clerk to an attorney, if he by accident had been a Papist, the present Lord Kenyon, instead of being a peer, would, most probably, have been a private soldier or a peasant, or, at the utmost, by a timely conversion from the errors of Popery, he might have arrived at the dignity of being the first preacher and highest bouncer of some society of Welsh 'jumpers.'" [Laughter.) "Yes; my Lord Kenyon, if he bad a particle of understanding, would feel that his Orange exertions expose the upstart only to the contempt of a people whom he may oppress, but of whom he would not dare personally to insult the lowest, individual." The following gives a most amusing instance of the monstrous lies and calumnies indulged in, at the expense of Ireland, by the unprinci- pled and utterly unscrupulous press of England, especially — (though, am I right in saving especially? Save English journalists indeed learned to be one whit more veracious in their dealings with Ireland at this THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 301 hour ? What of the Saturday Revieiv, Times, Pail-Mall Gazette, etc. etc. ?) — especially, I was about to say, in the earlier portion of the present century : " The no-Popery cry commenced last year in the very centre of the cloth manufactory. It commenced with the dealers in cloth at Ponte- fract, in Yorkshire ; and I need only appeal to the Leeds newspaper for the absurd virulence with which persecution is advocated in that town. "Why, in that very paper, I read about a fortnight ago an account of a fresh rebellion in Ireland — nay, in Dublin ! ! As none of you heard of it, let me inform you that it actually took place." [Loud laughter.) " I forget the day, but that is not material. It took place in Exchequer street. The Nottingham regiment covered itself with glory ! They fought the Popish rebels for two hours ; the rebels ascended the houses, fired out of the windows, threw brickbats and large stones from the roofs! Two regiments of horse, three regiments of foot, the Flying Artillery from Island Bridge, and the regiment of artillery from Chapel- izod, all shared in the honor of the day ! and, at length, the main body of the rebels retired to the Wicklow Mountains, and the residue of them went to bed in town. Fortunately no person was killed or wounded, and tranquillity was restored by a miracle. " Do you imagine I jest with you ? No ; I solemnly assure you that the story is gravely told in the Leeds newspaper. Some of the London journals have copied it, even to the scrap of bad Latin with which Yorkshire dulness has adorned it ; and there is not a maker of woollen cloth at Leeds that would not swear to the truth of every sentence, and every word of itf Does it not seem almost incredible that human impudence, or human stupidity, or bigoted credulity, or all combined, could have concocted such a monstrous fabrication? Of a surety, if truth be oftentimes stranger than fiction, fiction sometimes does outrun truth. O'Connell towards the close of this speech gave some illustrations of "the profligacy that is induced by the present state of the law in the mode of selecting juries." He reminded his audience how Catholics were carefully excluded; how "envenomed bigots" were gathered to- gether "to pronounce a verdict of conviction by anticipation." He proposes that a second petition should be sent "to the legislature, to 3Q-2 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. take into consideration the judicial system in Ireland — the administra- tion of law amongst us." They must be prepared to prove, "in their details," the facts stated in their petitions; how all a certain bank- director wanted from government was, "that when they should have a Papist to try they should put him on the jury ! and he was put on a Papist's jury!" (here the audience cried, "Shame!" and well they might) ; how a " Mr. Warner was entitled, by the courtesy usually adopted by the" (Dublin) "corporation, to be sheriff;" how, because he would not pledge himself against the Catholics, when called on to do so by Jack Giffard, he was rejected; how Messrs. Morgan and Studdart were in- stantly appointed because of their bitter hostility to Catholics. He laments that " Castlereagh, Dr. Black and the regium donum have con- verted the Presbyterians into Orangemen." If he ever spoke slightingly of Grattan, he is prepared "to read his recantation." He adds, "Grat- tan, if he be mistaken, must ever be beloved by, and a pride to, every Irish heart." He concludes by moving a resolution respecting Irish manufactures, and also that for forwarding a second Catholic petition. On the 10th of July he supports Mr. Mahon, in his objection to some letters of Sir Francis Goold and Mr. James O'Gorman, said to contain "attacks upon individuals," being publicly read. "A person in India," says Dan, "might thus assail" any gentlemen. "The individuals thus attacked would have no opportunity of righting themselves by indicting that chastisement, which an unfounded and insolent letter might merit." This sentiment was applauded. During the same month we find him making some speeches bearing reference to an address to Hcniy Grattan, brought forward by Mr. Mc- Donnell. Of course, O'Connell, while disapproving of Grattan's bill, had the highest veneration for the illustrious patriot himself. Accord- ingly, when the address was so altered that, while being in the highest degree complimentary to Grattan, it could not be said to express the smallest approval of the "securities" of his "Relief" bill, its adoption was eagerly seconded by O'Connell. The difference of opinion on the subject of this bill was now unhappily widening fast into an absolute breach between the aristocratic and popular sections of the Board. Those especially, who had taken a prominent part in opposing the vote of thanks to the Catholic bishops, were nursing their dudgeon and sulkily THE LIFE OP DANIEL O'CONNELL. 303 keeping aloof from the meetings of the Board. In one of his speeches on the address to Grattan, O'Connell said, "Let us, then, concur in the two leading features of this address — eternal gratitude to Grattan; fidelity, unalterable fidelity, to our country." About the same time, we find O'Connell bringing forward resolutions for the encouragement of Irish manufactures : "1st. That no member be allowed to speak or vote at the Board, after the 1st of August, who shall not be clothed in Irish manufacture. " 2d. That the ladies of Ireland be entreated to encourage the wear of their native manufacture, and not to introduce any other. "3d. That a committee of seven be appointed, for the purpose of calling upon the Protestant gentlemen of the country to form ' An asso- ciation for the encouragement of consumption of Irish, manufactures? " The resolutions were all received with loud applause ; they passed by acclamation. The following gentlemen were named the committee of seven : Mr. O'Connell, Mr. Richard O'Gorman, Dr. Sheridan, E. Cox, Esq,, Counsellor O'Gorman, Counsellor Finn and R. O'Bryan, Esq. This movement, however, like many similar ones attempted since, in the end came to nothing. In truth, to attempt creating a system of Irish manufactures, while Ireland is under the hoof of England, seems to me, if I may use an old, vulgar phrase, "like putting the car before the horse." English capitalists can always, when it suits them, afford to combine and pour in goods for little or nothing to crush Irish rivals. Such branches of manufactures, indeed, as don't interfere with the English manufacturers, may possibly thrive more or less in Ireland, even in her existing state. Tet I remember, some score of years ago, even a poor match manufactory in Dublin, which one might have imagined hardly worth interfering with, deliberately and pitilessly crushed by a combination of English competitors. Two or three boxes of English matches might for a time be had in Dublin for the "ridiculously small price" of one half-penny. As soon as ever the poor Irish "greenhorns" were "victimized," English matches rose again. In short, if the Irish people want to establish Irish manufactures on any large scale, let them first win their national independence. In this same month of July, O'Connell brought forward a motion that the Board should agree to a vote of thanks to " that very important 304 THE LIFE OF DANIEL CCCONNELL. body the" [Presbyterian) "synod of Ulster, for the late vote of the mem- bers composing it in favor of religious liberty." The reporters of the Post and Freeman tell us that he prefaced his motion with a speech characterized by "his wonted eloquence." His sentiments, on this occa- sion, at all events breathed his usual spirit of religious toleration. After noticing the bigoted efforts of some of the clergy of the Established Church, he uttered words to the following effect: "He was willing to hope, notwithstanding all that could be done, their efforts, and the efforts of those who set them in motion, would prove ineffectual, that every odious distinction would be obliterated, and that every man in this country would be ambitious for one title, and one title only, that of Irishman !" Loud cheering responded to this sentiment. He concluded by saying, "Union and harmony were the great and healing balsams which he wished and hoped to see applied to the wounds of his country." On the 27th of August, 1813, the duke of Richmond left Ireland. I need not say thai he was little regretted. There is a village called Rich- mond, outside the city of Dublin, at the left side of Ballybough Bridge. During Richmond's viceroyalty the populace at public meetings, while waiting for the commencement, or during the intervals, of the proceedings, were wont to amuse themselves by proposing "Three groans for the left side of Ballybough Bridge!" This masked insult to the unpopular viceroy would invariably elicit hearty explosions of laughter. Richmond was succeeded by an astute and wily diplomatist, Lord Whitworth. This nobleman was the English ambassador with whom Napoleon had a rather violent scene shortly before the rupture of the Peace of Amiens. His aim, on becoming lord-lieutenant of Ireland, was, at least, twofold — to corrupt the Dublin pivss and break up the Catholic Board. The first part of his task was not very difficult. The sum of £10,500 purchased the souls and — much more valuable to Whitworth — the pens of the proprietors of the Gazette, Dublin Journal, Hibernian Journal, Patriot, and Correspondent. During Lord Whitworth's administration govern ment pamphleteers had "a good time of it," also. How "His Excel- lency" prospered in his machinations against the Catholic Board will be seen. Soon after he landed in Dublin, violent dissensions broke out among THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 305 the Catholics at a public meeting in Cork, on the 30th August, 1813. In the chapter on the trial of John Magee, I have already taken some notice of these disgraceful proceedings. Some of the members of the Cork board were inclined to concede the veto to the Crown ; others not. At this meeting, held on the 30th of August, at the Lancasterian school, a gentleman — John Galway of Lota — who had voted, at the General Board in Dublin, in opposition to the motion of thanks to the prelates for their resistance to the veto, was moved to the chair by Mr. James Roche, one of the opposite party, probably from motives of conciliation. But a general outcry arose against Mr. Galway. He persisted in keep- ing his place; the mass of the meeting persisted in their refusal to accept him as chairman. Some attempts were next made to appoint another chairman. As these were unsuccessful, the confusion now be- came "worse confounded." Counsellor McDonnell, Mr. Roche and other members of the board considered among themselves for some minutes, with the consent of the meeting, Mr. Roche promising, amid loud cheers, that the reasonable wishes of the people should be complied with. Mr. Barry of Barry's Lodge, one of the board, then called out in a loud voice, "Will you suffer the proceedings of the day to go on?" Some voices from the crowd exclaim, " No ; not until you have another chair- man." On this the board retire abruptly ; their secession excites vio- lent agitation and disgust. Counsellor McDonnell entreats the assembly to maintain order. While they are busy about the appointment of an- other chairman our hero appears upon the troubled scene. He is greeted with acclamations and blessings — in a word, with an uncontrollable uproar of patriotic exultation — and conducted to the chair. Presently, however — having talked the meeting into good-humor and a desire for reunion — he goes out for the purpose of seeing the board. Meanwhile, the heat and pressure in the room become insupportable. Besides, several thousands outside, who cannot get in, clamor for adjournment. Accord- ingly, by a unanimous vote, the meeting adjourns to a large open plain, adjoining the school-room. Counsellor O'Leary now takes the chair; order prevails. Several Protestant gentlemen being observed at a distance, a desire was expressed to accommodate them, when one of them, Counsellor Dennis, approached the chair, and explained, as "the mouthpiece" of 306 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. the others, that while his friends and himself felt "warm and ardent" feelings of sympathy with "the glorious and just" cause of the Cath- olics, they did not like identifying themselves with either section, while lamentable divisions prevailed among the Catholic body. "No," said Mr. Dennis; "those steady and long-tried friends to your cause — Stowell, Beamish, Crawford — will not attach themselves to any party, but go with the unanimous voice of the Irish Catholics." After some further proceedings had taken place (Counsellor McDonnell had delivered a speech explanatory of some of the causes of misunder- standing between the two sections), O'Connell returned. He proposed, in the interests of harmony, that they should at once send a deputation of ten to the seceders to "commune with them upon the present differ- ences." This was agreed to, and the Board received the deputation in a bed-chamber, whither they had retired from the hootings of the populace. Alter two hours' delay O'Connell returned. He said: "There had been an unanimous agreement come to on resolutions perfectly without qualifi- cation of any kind, and unequivocally demanding ' Simple Repeal,' as it was phrased, that is, the unconditional abrogation of the penal code." He announced also that " the Board, obedient to the manifestations of popular feeling that day witnessed, would now consider their office at an end ;" but would offer themselves " for re-election as members of a Board" to consist of sixty-eight members, double the number of the last. He in conclusion, begged them to forgive the repentant members of the Board and admit Mr. Galway to preside over the meeting. "Will you refuse forgiveness to persons repenting their errors?" "No," responded the crowd, now in a most amiable mood, "we forgive them and may heaven forgive them!" Dan thanked the assembly with great effusion, he compared Galway to the prodigal child. While O'Connell was still speaking, the seceders made their appear- ance. Mr. Galway at once addressed the meeting, congratulating them on their prospects of unanimity. Twelve resolutions had been agreed to by all. "Any beyond that number should be dealt with as mere individual suggestions open to discussion and opposition." The resolu- tions were then read. It was proposed to add the names of over thirty gentlemen to the existing Board (we find the name of O'Connell's uncle, "old Hunting-cap," among the number; Most of the resolutions were THE JLI^E ')F DANIEL O'CONNELL. 307 unopposed ; but when three, which contained expressions of gratitude and glowing thanks to the right reverend Dr. Milner, John Magee and Daniel O'Connell, were brought forward, a Mr. B. Moylan advanced to propose an amendment. This is the part of the proceedings to which I referred toward the close of the chapter about Magee' s trial. Moylan accused Dr. Milner of "tergiversation," called Mr. Magee "a convicted libeller," and expressed disapproval of O'Connell's "public conduct." One Eugene McSweeny of Mary street, Cork, played the pitiful part of his seconder. After a generous remonstrance from Mr. Dennis, the Protestant bar- rister already noticed, against Moylan's application of such unworthy epithets to Mr. Magee, coupled with an appeal to the audience to "feel as Irishmen should feel, to love in their hearts the hero who gloriously falls in a great public cause," O'Connell came forward : he warmly defended Dr. Milner, who, it may here be mentioned, on more than one occasion, in the course of this year, 1813, had been grossly insulted by the leading English Catholics on account of his successful opposition to the Veto and to Grattan's relief bill. They had disavowed his writings in his presence, had resolved that his Brief Memorial had their marked disapproval. To mortify him further, they had passed a vote of thanks to their literary champion, Charles Butler, when Dr. Milner had told them that that gentleman was one of "the false brethren," alluded to in this production. They had even gone so far as to expel him " from the private Board or select committee, appointed by the general Board of British Catholics." Against this he had protested, "as having acted," to quote the closing words of his protest, "in behalf of thirty bishops and of more than five millions of Catholics, whose religious business I am authorized to transact." Sir John Hippesly is said to have been guilty on this occasion of an atrocious insult to the learned and venera- ble prelate. Indeed the conduct of the aristocratic Englishmen present had resembled nothing so much as that of an uncouth and shameless mob. They had pursued the old man as, with calm dignity, he was retiring from the room, with outrageous hissings and hootings and shout- ings. Well might Dr. Husenbeth, the biographer of Dr. Milner, exclaim : " A. more disgraceful proceeding is hardly to be found in the history of the Church." Probably Dr. Milner' s sympathy and co-operation with 308 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. O'Connell, whom he greatly admired, and the Irish Catholics, had added bitterness to the hostile feelings of his Catholic countrymen. After their cowardly achievement, they had gone about London for several days, boasting with an insane exultation of the ignoble deed they had done. I pass over other insults perpetrated against Dr. Milner by the English Catholics, of a piece with the strange conduct I have just de- scribed, and return to O'Connell's speech. After defending Dr. Mil- ner and heaping scorn on his enemies, after sneering at those "erudite politicians" — those "modest, meek, humble and enlightened independ- ents," "those two youths," Moylan and McSweeny, who, when "the pop- ulation of Ireland declare against all vetoism, under all and every shape and form," come forward " for provisional securities " — he next expresses his hot indignation at Moylan's application of the epithet "convicted libeller" to John Magee. He tells the audience to sustain and cheer that persecuted journalist by a vote of thanks. In conclusion, In- says: "I will no ox, and the more I am maligned, the more will I be pleased, and hope for the prospect of success; nor will I ever doubt myself, until I shall hear those wretched hirelings of corruption teem forth odious praises to me! Then doubt me, but not till ///>//. "Externally and internally I will tight the enemies of us all. . . . But adopt not this exaggerated praise offered to me here to-day; it is not possible I could, or any man could, be deserving of it. 1 give up this point to Mr. Moylan; 1 make Mr. Moylan a present of this motion, and let him give us the rest." (Loud and persistent cries <>/ "No, >/<> ; we mill not, we ivill not I") "Then, beforehand, I thank you, sincerely and honestly I thank you; it encourages, it cheers me on. I here want language to express my feelings. I iv ill stand by you while I lire; f will never forsake poor L> I* Old." "When the enthusiastic acclamations that almost drowned O'Connell's closing words had. after the lapse of some minutes, ceased, James Roche seconded O'Connell's protest againsl Moylan's amendment. Major Tor- rens, a liberal and enlightened Protestant, then mad'' some excellent ob- servations. He derided the notions of those who pretended that dangers would result from the admission of Catholics to Parliament, lie dwelt on the fact that English liberty had grown up during the Catholic ages. THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 309 After Major Torrens had concluded, no less a person than Remmy Shee- han, subsequently a convert to "the Church by law established," and pro- prietor and editor of the Dublin Evening Mail, for so many years the able, but bigoted, organ of the Ascendency faction (I believe it exists still), came forward. Perhaps this was his first appearance on the stage of politics. He proclaimed himself "a member of that body which Counsellor O'Con- nell styled 'independent, because nobody would depend upon them.'" He then said he was aware of O'Connell's authority — " the unfounded assertions of the Mercantile Chronicle." At this point, he and his audi- ence beginning to get on bad terms, he told them he wouldn't be put down till morning. " I say again, the unfounded assertions of the Chron- icle.'" As this brought down on his devoted head an uproar of popular rage and clamor, he told his hearers that "he was a very young man," and that "he never before addressed a public meeting." He then repeated that the " statements in the Chronicle about the independents were un- founded and slanderous." Here a downright tempest of hooting, hissing and disapprobation of all sorts burst upon the unlucky oratorical debutant. His grim resolution not to "go home till morning" speedily evaporated ; he ingloriously cut short his harangue, merely saying, "As the meeting will not suffer me to speak, I shall retire." Exit Eemmy — at least for a season. I may as well add, however, that, some years ago, Reminy departed this life, if not in the odor of sanctity, at least, like many an- other renegade before and probably since, in the bosom of the ancient Church he had deserted "for filthy lucre." Counsellor McDonnell and James N". Mahon also addressed the meet- ing. After the latter gentleman, another remarkable man in his day, very unlike the redoubtable Remigius, however, arose to speak — the Rev. Dr. England, subsequently Roman Catholic bishop of Charleston, South Carolina. He denied indignantly some charges of exercising undue influence over the people and packing meetings, that had been made against the clergy of Cork, and himself especially. Fagan, in his life of O'Connell, asserts that "the principal mover in the whole of this democratic insurrection against aristocratic pretension in Cork was the celebrated Dr. England. He was a man of great powers of mind, amazing intellectual energy, possessing, too, a masculine eloquence, and a stern, unflinching determination, well suited to a popular leader. 310 THE LIFE OF DAXIEL O'COXXELL. He had all the qualities that contribute to the influence, and are neces- sary to the office, of an agitator. Xo literary labor was too great for him ; no opposition was too powerful. He was from the first a decided anti-vetoist. Indeed, we may affirm, he was the guiding genius of the anti-Quarantotti movement '' (tee shall hear more of Monsignor Quarantottl shortly). " He was, at the time we write of, editor of the Cork Mercan- tile Chronicle, an honest, well-conducted paper, the downfall of which is a lasting stigma on the patriotism of the South. He worked up the movement against the local Catholic Board, and at last forced the mem- bers to publish their proceedings. ... It was the prevailing opinion of that day that Dr. England was the author of the celebrated letter which, under the signature of ' One of the Populace,' was published in the Evening Post, and for whicli an action was brought against the unfortu- nate John Magee by one of the 'Protesters,* Mr. Coppinger. The action was tried in Cork, and is to this day memorable in that city, from the cutting sarcasms against the • property-the-staiulard-of-opinion ' gen- tlemen, uttered by Magee' s counsel in one of the most telling speeches ever pronounced in a court of justice. The writer was a boy at the time, but he well recollects being at the trial; and he has now in his mind's eye Harry Deane Grady, amidst the profoundest silence, giving expression to those biting sentences that arc. even to this day, repeated by the descendants of thai generation." I shall presently refer again to the letter here spoken of, which John O'Connell, differing from Pagan, attributes to his illustrious father. Re- verting, for a moment, to the meeting of the 30th of August, when the speaking terminated, Moylan's amendment to Counsellor McDonnell's three resolutions was put, with the following result, according to the calculations of the newspapers of the day: For the amendment, 0; for the votes of thanks to the Might Rev. Dr. Milner. John Magee and O'Connell, 10,000. Majority indisputable. After this, nothing would satisfy the excited assemblage but to chair our hero. A crowd of gentlemen got round him, and. in spite of Ids entreaties and resistance, forced him into a chair. He was borne, amid the loudest and most enthusiastic huzzas, on the shoulders of his devoted people, through Hanover street, part of South Main street, along Tin key street, and into the grand parade. By this time the crowd had swelled, THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 311 it is said, to about twenty thousand people. The whole city was aroused. The crowd halted at Laffan the hatter's, on the parade, where O'Connell lodged. From a window of the house he warmly thanked the admiring thousands, recommending them to attend carefully to the registrations. From all this hubbub the extent of the discord created by the angrily- vexed veto question may be estimated. Nor did the dissensions speedily cease. The clergy were abused by the vetoists. They published a reply. A large numbe? of vetoists signed a protest against the meeting of the 30th of August. They held a meeting, too, at the Bush tavern, and passed a resolution, which was, as it were, a regular firebrand in the then excited state of Irish feeling : " Kesolved, that adopting the wise prin- ciple of the constitution by which property is made the standard of opinion, we found it impossible at the late aggregate meeting, amidst the tumult of the lowest populace — ignorant by necessity and misled by design — to ascertain the sense of the Catholics of this city and county." O'Connell delivered another speech at the Cork Catholic Board on the 3d of September, in which he expressed regret at the conduct of " the Protesters." He showed how they were earning contempt and putting themselves in the position of men "fighting against their country." He hoped, however, that the seceders would return to their duty. He also advocated the use of Irish manufactures. With reference to this part of his speech, his son John remarks justly enough : " This was one of the many occasions in Mr. O'Connell's life, when he labored in the good cause of the deserving, hard- working and most skilful artisans of Ire- land. We shall have, unfortunately, to note the failure of several such efforts — as all such must fail, till the vitality of industry be restored with the money and rich consumers of the country, by the repeal of the emaciating Act of Union." I shall quote one passage from this speech of the 3d of September. " ' But,' say those who clamor for those securities, 'if the present Pope died, Bonaparte would undoubtedly raise to the papal chair his uncle, Cardinal Fesch.' Be it so. He was willing to meet them upon every fair ground. They say, if Cardinal Fesch was the Pope, he would be the creature of Bonaparte, and subject to his control ; and having the nomination of the Catholic bishops of Ireland, he would only appoint such men to that dignity as would be disaffected 312 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. to the British government, and who would best suit the views of Bona- parte. " Cardinal Fesch ! who is in disgrace with his nephew, and in exile because he opposed, and would not sanction, his marriage with his present wifeV O'Connell denied that such a man would "disgrace the papal chair" "by submitting to the will" of his nephew. How far the intrigues of the diplomatic viceroy, Lord Whitworth, contributed to all this commotion it is not easy to say. He seems at first to have so far succeeded in throwing dust even into the eyes of the conductors of the Evening Post, as to induce them, shortly after his accession to the Viceregal dignity, to compliment him on his reply to an address from Trinity College. However, the Post, directed by Denis Scully, in the main fought the battle of truth and right in those days. On the 23d of September, a respectable meeting, held at Cavan, passed a vote of thanks to Magee and O'Connell. Eneas McDonnell, earlier in the same month, had written to Dr. Milner, transmitting to him the resolutions passed in his favor by the Catholics of Cork. To this the venerable prelate had returned a gracious reply, in which he gave some interesting and curious particulars of the disgraceful insolence with which the aristocratic Catholics of England, ay, and even some mem- bers of the En;_ili>li Catholic clergy, had treated him. But the unfortunate Magee, however he may have been gratified and comforted in his sore trials by the sympathy and approval of his countrymen, was still harassed by prosecutions. The extract 1 have given from Pagan refers to the action taken against him by Mr. William Coppinger for a letter signed "One of the Populace," and attributed by some to Dr. England, by others to our hero. As the letter is amusing (it ridicules Coppinger and the resolution passed by the "Protesters," affirming that the constitution makes property "the standard of opinion"), 1 shall give a few extracts from it. "They state two things evidently false: first, that there is a prin- ciple in the constitution by which property is made the standard of opinion. Property is a good standard of contractors; but it is no more the standard of opinion than it is the standard of law or of Latin. . . . Why. whom do you think those men that declared that property is the THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 313 standard of opinion took as their second chairman ? A friend of mine, poor as I am, Mr. William Coppinger, better known by the name of 'Jamaica!' I was quite sure, sir, that they picked out the second richest man amongst them as the standard of their opinion, and as their second chairman. You cannot think how pleased I was. Now, thought I, the five pounds he owes me these three years will be paid. Off I ran to his assignees ; for, sir, I was kept out of my honest earn- ings by his being made a bankrupt. Off I ran to his assignees. ' Gen- tlemen,' said I, 'pay the five pounds that Mr. Coppinger owes me. He has got some great estate — he has certainly got a great property. ■; Prop- erty is the standard of opinion." Here it is down in the newspapers, signed "William Coppinger." My debt is a fair debt, and honestly due — and so pay it.' Tou may judge of my surprise when the assignees quietly replied that my debt was certainly a fair one, and that if I went to the expense of employing an attorney and moving it regularly, they would pay me a dividend as well as the other creditors. I asked what the dividend would be. The assignees solemnly assured me they expected in another year to be able to make a dividend of two-pence in the pound, and that I should certainly get a tenpenny bit for my five pounds. But to return. They" {the protesters) "say, secondly, that we are the lowest of the populace — 'ignorant by necessity and misled by design.' How could you say such a thing, Dan Donovan — you, who are a miller? What were you, my dear Dan? Tou were also, in your day, a liberty- and-equality boy ; and this is not the doctrine you preached to us at the mill. Indeed, indeed, Dan, it does not become you to be an aristocrat. To be sure, no great reliance can be placed on the accuracy of men who have belied the constitution ; for, I believe, there was never anything so untrue as to say that the constitution measures a man's opinion by the weight of his purse. Was there ever anything so silly printed? Why, if it were true, no rich man could be in point of fact a blockhead ; there could be no wealthy fool ! Or, I suppose a rich man who talked foolishly might be indicted before the recorder for violating a principle of the constitution. 'Tour property, sir,' the recorder would say to the convicted dunce, ' your property is made the standard of opinion, and you have, in contempt of the wisdom which belongs to property, been convicted of having talked nonsense ; and, therefore, you are to be im- 314 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. prisoned six months at hard labor, to teach you the great principle of our constitution — that property is the standard of opinion.' Dear Mr. Magee, I should like to see some of our 'protesters' tried at sessions under this statute. It is called, I believe, the statute for adjusting the standard of opinion by the exact amount of the wealth of each indi- vidual." During the autumn of this year various other Catholic meetings were held in Ireland, at which resolutions, approving of O'Connell's opposition to the veto and his conduct at the trial of Magee, were passed. At the successful storming of St. Sebastian, in Spain, on the 31st of August, O'Connell lost a near relative — the brave Lieutenant John O'Connell, of the 43d Regiment. At the siege of Badajos, this gallant young man had volunteered on the forlorn hope and been severely wounded. At St. Sebastian, he sought the post of danger, where he fell combating bravely. In November we rind the veto question still sowing dissensions among the popular party. Doubtless some of those, who first threw down this apple of discord, intended mischief. Burke understood well the machi- nations of the enemies of the Irish people. "You will have a schism," says he, "and I am greatly mistaken if this is not intended and system- atically pursued." The Board, alarmed at the progress which this veto or "securities" question -eemed to have made in England, and the ap- parent acquiescence in it of the English Catholics, had pledged them- selves not to entertain any question of the kind without the previous knowledge and approbation of the prelates. Lord Donoughmore and Grattan refused to continue in communication with the Catholic Board on this basis, that qo "securities" should lie introduced into any future bill without previous approval of the bishops. They accused the Board of a design of dictating to parliament. On the 20th of November O'Connell maintained that Lord Donoughmore and Grattan were mis- taken. He denied that the Board hail any desire to dictate. So far from that being the case, tiny had even given up the intention of sub- mitting a draft of a bill (though that, he argued, would not involve any dictation), confining themselves to nine suggestions: "AYh<>," lie asked, "spoke of dictation when Mr. Charles. Butler, last year, prepared the frame of a bill? . . . Who spoke of dictation when Mr. Grattan pro- THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 815 cured the frame of a bill to be prepared by Mr. Burrowes, by Mr. BurtoD and Mr. Wallace?" O'Connell also asks "whether it be the Irish popish touch that pollutes the deed?" Od the 27th, O'Connell carried a motion "for a committee to prepare answers to the letters of Donoughmore and Grattan." On the 1st of December we find his friends in the Board rallying round him affection- ately to defend him against the numerous attacks made on him at this time by the open enemies and the weak or false friends of Ireland. Mr. O'Gorman brought the matter forward and spoke of his " transcendent desert." Nicholas Mahon agreed with Mr. O'Gorman ; he thought it was the duty of the Catholics to repel the attacks upon O'Connell " by some lasting memorial, which he could hand down to his latest posterity." He also styled O'Connell "the best and dearest friend of his country." Mr. Plunket considered that every Catholic was bound to support the un- daunted, incorruptible and inflexible supporter of the Catholic cause. Though not a member of the Board, he came that day to declare his determination to support him at the hazard of his life and fortune. O'Connell was the first of Irishmen and the most beloved. It would be wonderful were it otherwise. He had labored to expose, at the risk of his person and fortune, the errors and corruptions of the enemies of Ireland. He had created an unconquerable spirit in the country. His object had been to rally men of all persuasions, parties and habits under one title, that of Irishmen. The Board, he (Mr. Plunket) thought, should manifest by a resolution their conviction of his merits. Mr. O'Connor (the chairman) regretted that it should be deemed necessary to delay such a measure. Mr. Scully dwelt on O'Connell's claims to the gratitude of Ireland, and the failure of all malignant efforts to injure him in his profession. O'Connell did more business than any lawyer, without a silk gown, had ever before succeeded in doing, yet he found more time, than almost any other man, to devote to the public good and for acts of private benevolence. Of course Mr. Scully approved of the notice respecting the testimonial of the feeling of the Board to him. Mr. Scully referred to the alleged secession of the aristocratic members of the Board, and. at considerable length, drew a picture of the disagreeable position, in which the individuals, who were said to have seceded, must, according to his idea, find themselves placed. 316 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COKNKLjl. O'Connell replied to these kind and flattering speeches with warm and grateful emotion : "When first he had volunteered as the advocate of his country's rights, he did conceive that he had embarked in the service of an insolvent ingratitude." This was a mistake; his reward had been great, though "all he would lay claim to was good intention." He thanked Mr. Plunket for his kind words; but, "in any personal con- troversy, he required neither aid nor seconding. ... If his professional career were stopped by any conspiracy, he should not be astonished at it." He spoke of his enemies in his usual defiant style. On the 11th of December, at the Shakespeare Gallery, Exchequei street, the Board voted a service of plate, value one thousand guineas, to O'Connell, "as a small tribute of gratitude?" for his intrepidity, ability and perseverance in asserting the rights and vindicating the "character of his Catholic fellow-countrymen." Viscount Netterville, the Lord Ffrench, N. P. O'Gorman, Owen O'Connor (the chairman of the meet- ing), George Bryan, Henry Edmond Taafe, Nicholas Mahon and Randal McDonnell, Esqs. (Edward Hay was secretary to the meeting), were appointed as a committee to carry the vote into effect. The service of plate was shortly after presented to O'Connell. At this meeting of the 11th, his friend, Counsellor Finlay, delivered an address, which, while it contained an eloquent panegyric on our hero, reflected severely on Saurin. I regret that the limited space remaining at my disposal will not suffer me to give of it mini- than the concluding sentence: "But if he, like many others, should be fated to endure the ingratitude of the country, if he should be placed in the midst of useless friends and implacable enemies, if his enemies should gratify their purposes against him — " ' Then is the stately column broke, The beaeon-light is quenched in smoke, The trumpet's silver sound is still, The warder silent on the hill.' " I think it only fair to add the remark which the late John O'Connell thought proper to append to this: "This passage, with its poetic quo- tation, was eited last in the declining days of the Repeal Association, some months after Daniel O'Connell's death, by poor, poor Tom Steele!' The effect was then most thrilling; what the effect would he if now cited in a, popular assembly, and whether the prediction it embodies THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 317 would be held to have come true, it is not for the editor of these speeches to say." It will be seen, from this extract, that John O'Connell's sen- tences cannot be praised as admirable models either of style or gram- matical structure. On the 18th of December, O'Connell eloquently thanked the Board for the new proof they had given him of their appreciation of his zeal and services. Among other things he said : " Even your applause will not, because it cannot, increase the devotion with which I have conse- crated my existence to Ireland. I have already devoted all the faculties of my soul to the pursuit of the liberties of my country, and, humble as my capabilities are, I had already given them all to my native land." Their gift is too munificent; still he is "glad that it was introduced, because it elicited those proofs of friendship ; and I am grateful to my enemies, who gave occasion for an exhibition of the feeling which is this day witnessed here. . . . The man who dedicates himself to the cause of his country must calculate on meeting the hostility and calumny of her enemies — the envy and false-heartedness even of her friends. He must reckon on the hatred and active malignity of every idolater of bigotry, of every minion of power, of every agent of corruption. But that is little ; he will have to encounter the hollow and treacherous support of pretended friends — of those interested friends respecting whom he will in vain exclaim, ' God protect me from my friends ! I can guard myself from my enemies.' . . . "You have, then, done wisely to grant that precious recompense tc one so little deserving as myself, because you have thereby held out a prospect to higher minds of what they may expect from you. Tou have fanned the flame of pure patriotism, and I trust enlisted in your service the juvenile patriots of the land with talents superior — oh ! beyond com- parison — to my pretensions." [Here O'Connell turned to Richard Lalor Shiel, then quite a young man, who sat near him.) "And he and others will be roused to serve and adorn their widowed country. Of your traducer (Saurin, no doubt) I shall say nothing. You have refuted his calumnies. . . . " I have heretofore loved my country for herself — I am now her bribed servant, and no master can possibly tempt me to neglect, forsake or betray her interests /" 318 THE LIFE OF DAXIEL O'CONNELL. This year the second war between America and England was raging. The American brig Argus was capturing numbers of English merchant- men in the Channel, even striking terror into the citizens of Dublin. At last, off Tuscar Rock, she encountered the Pelican, a British man-of- war. After a desperate fight of forty-five minutes, maintained against overwhelming odds, the Argus struck her flag. Her captain's leg was carried off by a cannon-ball. His officers and crew suffered severely. This occurrence may have recalled to O'Connell's mind, the incident of his childhood, when he saw the deserters from Paul Jones' vessel. Meanwhile O'Connell's professional career was successful beyond example. In the autumn assizes of 1813, at Limerick, O'Connell had a brief in every one of twenty-six cases that were tried in the record court, and a brief also in every case on the criminal side. At Tralee and Ennis he was equally successful. We have already seen him politi- cally triumphant in Cork this year, where the opposition between the two "wings," so to speak, of the Catholic party ran higher than in any other locality. Fagan tells us that the local Catholic Board there " con- sisted of the Catholic aristocracy and merchants of the city and neigh- borhood. Its proceedings were neither open to the public nor the press. The people were not admitted, and the Board, as a matter of course, was very genteel and very unpopular." O'Connell revolutionized all this. But his professional triumphs in "the beautiful city" were even still more splendid. His brief-bag was plethoric beyond that of any other "gentleman of the long robe." The great "counsellor" was an object of interest to curious gazers, and saluted with popular acclaim wherever he appeared. To anticipate a little, his son John, speaking in his second volume of the year 1817, has the following passage: "We have not alluded to Mr. O'Connell's professional career as yet in this f'olume, as no reports, except of the most meagre and scanty descrip- tion, are to be found of his bar speeches during the interval it embraces. His advance in the profession was great, and his income, term after term and circuit after circuit, greatly increasing, with a rapidity entirely unprecedented. Unfortunately, however, for this work, the reports of many and many a powerful law argument, and many an effective address THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 31S to juries, are so meagre and imperfect that it would be only a waste of the reader's time to give them in the present collection. Such of his forensic efforts, however, as have been recorded with any appearance of accuracy or due care, will, as heretofore, be found in our pages." John O'Connell fulfills this promise by giving only two additional " forensic efforts" in his unfinished and every way unsatisfactory collection of his father's speeches. I shall close this chapter with a slight notice of an odd case, in which our hero appeared as the champion of a poor girl against a well- to-do oppressor. On the 25th of May, 1813, he moved, in the Court of Common Pleas, for a conditional order against the Rev. William Hamil- ton for illegal and oppressive conduct as a magistrate of the county of Tipperary: "The facts of the case," said he, addressing the judges, "are really curious, and would be merely ludicrous but for the sufferings inflicted on my client. The affidavits stated that a peasant girl, named Hennessey, had a hen which laid — not golden eggs — but eggs strangely marked with red lines and figures. She, on the 21st April, 1813, brought her hen and eggs to the town of Eoscrea, near which she lived, and of which the defendant was the Protestant curate. It appeared by the result that she brought her eggs to a bad market, though at first she had some reason to think differently ; for the curiosity excited by those eggs attracted some attention to the owner — and as she was the child of parents who were miserably poor, her wardrobe was in such a state that she might almost literally be said to be clothed in nakedness. My lords, a small subscription to buy her a petticoat was suggested by the person who makes the present affidavit, himself a working weaver of the town, James Murphy — and the sum of fifteen shillings was speedily collected. It was a little fortune to the poor creature — she kissed her hen, thanked her benefactors, and with a light heart started on her return home. But diis aliter visum (to the gods it seemed otherwise fitting). At the moment two constables arrived with a warrant signed by the Reverend William Hamilton. This warrant charged her with the strange offence of a foul imposition. It would appear as if it were issued in some wretched jest arising from the sound not the sense. But it proved no joke to the girl, for she was arrested. Her hen, her eggs, and her fifteen shillings were taken into custody and carried before his 320 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. worship. He was not at leisure to try the case that day. The girl was committed to Bridewell, where she lay a close prisoner for twenty-fom hours, when his reverend worship was pleased to dispose of the matter. Without the mockery of any trial, he proceeded at once to sentence. He sentenced the girl to perpetual banishment from Koscrea. He sent her out of the town guarded by three constables, and with positive injunctions never to set foot in it again. He decapitated her hen with his own sacred hands. He broke the eggs and confiscated the fifteen shillings. When the girl returned to her home — the fowl dead, the eggs broken, and the fifteen shillings in his reverence's pocket — one would suppose justice quite satisfied. But no, his worship discovered that Murphy had collected the offending money ; he was therefore to be punished. He was, indeed, first tried— but under what law think you ? Why, literally, my lords, under the statute of good manners. Yes, under that act, wherever it is to be found, was Murphy tried, convicted and sentenced. He was committed to Bridewell, where he lay for three days. The committal states 'that he was charged on oath with having assisted in a foul imposition on public credulity — contrary to good manners.' These are the words of the committal; and he was ordered to be detained until he should give security— ' for his good behavior.' Such is the ridiculous warrant on which an humble man has been deprived of his liberty for three clays. Such are the details given of the vexatious proceedings of the reverend magistrate. It was to be hoped that those details would turn out to be imaginary ; but they are sworn to — positively sworn to, and require investigation — the more espe- cially as motives of a highly culpable nature were attributed — he (Mr. O'Connell) hoped untruly attributed — to the gentleman. He was charged on oath with having been actuated by malice toward this wretched girl because she was a Catholic. It was sworn that his object was to estab- lish some charge of superstition against her, upon no better ground than this, that one of those eggs had a mark on it nearly resembling a cross." The court granted the rule applied for; but Parson Hamilton, shamed by this terrible exposure, managed to compromise the ugly business pri- vately, making compensation to the poor girl whom he had so grossly injured. THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 321 This was not the only odd exploit by which this eccentric parson distinguished himself. On the 17th of August, 1841, our hero, return- ing to Dublin from a Repeal meeting at Drogheda, as usual, beguiled the weariness of the way with pleasant conversation. He told some divert- ing stories of queer parsons to his friend Mr. Daunt. "He laughed heartily," that gentleman, in his "Personal Recollections of O'Connell," informs us, "at the detection of the Rev. Mr. Cramp ton in the act of throwing stones at his own windows-^-the reverend gentleman having complained of attacks upon his house, and procured the attendance of a party of police to protect him from the aggressions of the Popish con- spirators. Two of the police, who were placed on this duty, detected Mr. Crampton, at night, throwing stones at the windows. The reverend gentleman's explanation was that he did so in order to test the vigilance of his guard. But if he had not been caught in the fact, we probably should never have heard a single word of this ' ingenious device.' " After laughing over the Rev. Mr. Crampton' s exploit, which may be looked on as a sort of human counterpart of some of the sly tricks of "Reynard the Fox," in the old mediaeval fable of that name, O'Connell told Mr. Daunt a still more cunning and far-fetched contrivance of that edifying parson and precious justice of the peace, the thrice reverend hen- decapitating Hamilton. "These parsons," quoth our hero, "occasionally do very curious things. Several years ago, a parson at Roscrea, named Hamilton, dressed up a figure to represent himself, and seated it at table, with a pair of candles before it, and a Bible, which the pseudo-jmrson seemed to be intently studying. He then stole out, and fired through the window at the figure. It was a famous case of Popish atrocity — a pious and exemplary clergyman, studying the sacred Word of God, brutally fired at by a Popish assassin ! He tried to get a man named Egan con- victed of the crime, but having the temerity to appear as a witness himself, it came out, upon cross-examination, that the reverend divine was entitled to the sole and undivided glory of the transaction." Mr. O'Neill Daunt refers his readers to another amusing work of his — ' Ireland and her Agitators "—to which this biography has also been indebted, for full details of this singular transaction, which, he says, were furnished to him by a member of the Egan family. It was in the same conversation about comical parsons that O'Con- 322 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. nell told Mr. Daunt the story, already given in this biography, of the action taken by a Miss Fitzgerald against a Parson Hawkesworth for breach of promise of marriage.* * The books from which 1 have drawn the materials of the foregoing chapter are, Pagan's " Life of O'Connell ;" O'Neill Daunt's " Personal Recollections of O'Connell ;" John Mitchel's "History of Ireland;" "Life and Times of Daniel O'Connell, &c, Dublin, John Mullany, 1 Par- liament street;" "The Select Speeches of Daniel O'Connell, M. P.. edited, with Historical Notices, etc.," by his son, John O'Connell, Esq. ; " Grattan's Speeches ;" ' Life of the Right Reverend JohD Miluer, D. D.," by Dr Hnsenbuth ; Plowden. CHAPTER XIV. Chequered fortunes of O'Connell and the Catholic cause in 1813 — Catholic meet- ings THROUGHOUT IRELAND — BITTERNESS AND FURY OF THE GOVERNMENT PRESS AGAINST O'CONNELL — O'CONNELL'S DAUNTLESS AND DEFIANT BEARING IN THE TEETH OF ADVERSE CIRCUMSTANCES — L/UDIOROUS ANECDOTE OF A TAILOR — PRESENTATION OF A SPLENDID SILVER CUP TO O'CONNELL BY THE MANUFACTURERS OF THE DUBLIN LIBERTIES — FALLEN CONDI- TION OF THE LIBERTIES — THE RUIN OF THE CATHOLIC BOARD COMMENCES WITH ARISTO- CRATIC secession — The breach between Henry Grattan and O'Connell grows wider — Government reporters at Catholic meetings — The " Knoceloftiness " of the earl of Donoughmore's letter — O'Connell routs a "packed" meeting of the beceders; ludicrous consternation of the aristocrats at O'Connell's sudden ap- parition AMONG THEM — THE FAMOUS RESCRIPT OF QuARANTOTTI — DlSMAY AND SUBSE- QUENT INDIGNATION AND HIGH SPIRIT OF THE CATHOLICS — BOLD ATTITUDE OF O'CONNELL AND THE CLERGY AND PEOPLE — THE POPE DISAVOWS QuARANTOTTI — UNPLEASANT AFFAIR of Major Bryan — A stage-struck agitator — Strange characters and queer duels — The vote of censure on Dr. Dromgoole — Lord Whitworth suppresses the Cath- olic Board by proclamation — Noble conduct of John Philpot Curran ^HIS year, 1813, the events of which we have been relating, was 5lM a ver y chequered one for O'Connell and the Catholic cause. We see him, as it advances, at one moment the defiant orator, the triumphant idol of the people, at another moment furiously assailed by the rancorous pens of a venal and thoroughly unprin- cipled press — the Dublin Journal, the London Courier, the Correspondent, the Hibernian Journal (this was one of the most virulent and pertina- cious of his assailants), and the Patriot (called so on the lucus a non lucendo principle), all yelling, as it were, at him and the Board, in full chorus. Already he begins to be, what he later in life so often styled himself, "the best abused man in the world." These papers encouraged the Catholic aristocracy in their unworthy secession from the Catholic Board, caused chiefly by the mischievous veto controversy. O'Connell is called a fool, is accused of delaying emancipation by his opposition to the " securities," is accused of setting the whole Protestant interest in array against the Catholic cause. Old supporters appear to be falling off or becoming lukewarm ; the breach between him and the illustrious 324 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. G-rattan becomes wider ; Lord Donoughmore, too, grows cold, is inclined to advise a policy of inaction. O'Connell is described in a burlesque style by the Hibernian Journal as "Poor O'Connell . , . this Catholic hero . . . this Irish chieftain . . lectured by the attorney-general ;" "blub- bering;" "shedding tears in the most flaghoolouyhly ludicrous abun- dance." The Board, too, is at one time spreading its influence by the exer- tions of O'Connell and his able and eloquent associates — Scully, Finlay, Charles Philips and others — over counties where it had little influence before ; at another weakened by aristocratic secession and menaced with dissolution by the government. Such was the chequered history of O'Connell and the Irish Catholic Board through the year 1813 ; and it must be admitted that the outlook at the commencement of 1814 was gloomy enough. In short, the new year advanced without any smile of promise to their cause. O'Connell, however, was not a man to be daunted. He had faith in the goodness of his cause; in his friends, who, as we have seen, had generously rallied around him to sustain him with their sympathy and approval; but, above all. he had strong faith in himself. He knew that he had within him the energy and power sooner or later to compel Vic- tory to do his bidding, as Ariel obeyed Prosper©. His spirit remained proud and high; his bearing was still defiant and aggressive. No doubt his enemies deemed all this insolent and provoking to a degree; but what could they do, pool' devils? Chafe as they might, they had finally to 'grin and bear it." The brilliant Shiel, in his animated sketch of O'Connell, tells us: "The admirers of King William have no mercy for a man who, in his seditious moods, is so provoking as to tell the world that their idol was 'a Dutch adventurer.' Then his intolerable success in a profession where man}' a staunch Protestant is condemned to starve; and his fashionable house in Merrion Square; and, a greater eve-sore still, his dashing revolutionary equipage, green carriage, green liveries, and turbulent Popish steeds prancing over a Protestant pavement, to the terror of Protestant passengers, these and other provocations of equal publicity, have exposed this learned culprit to the deep detesta- tion of a numerous class of His Majesty's hating Bubjects in Ireland; and the feeling is duly communicated to the public: the loyal press of THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL Dublin teems with the most astounding imputations upon his character and motives." Mr. Mitchel remarks amusingly on this: "The provoca- tion of the 'Popish horses prancing over a Protestant pavement' was more serious than it may now appear, for the pavement was strictly Protestant, and so were the street-lamps. No Catholic, though he might drive a coach-and-four, could be admitted upon any paving or lighting board in that sacred stronghold of the Ascendency, the corporation of Dublin." Mr. Mitchel appends an amusing story as an illustrative note to this passage : " It was at the height of the Catholic agitation that a town councillor, who was a tailor, said, at a corporation dinner : ' My lord, these Papists may get their emancipation, they may sit in Parlia- ment, they may preside upon the bench, a Papist may become lord- chancellor or privy-councillor, but never, never shall one of them set foot in the ancient and loyal Guild of Tailors.' " One of those instances of a people's love and appreciation, which are like gleams of warm sunshine amid the gloom and trials that, more or less, frown across the path of every man who devotes himself to an arduous struggle in vindication of the rights of a downtrodden people, occurred to cheer O'Connell amid the somewhat discouraging events that heralded in the year 1814. On the 14th of the January of that year, the manufacturers of the liberty of the city of Dublin pre- sented a handsome silver cup, the cunning workmanship of one Mullan of College Green, to our hero. On the obverse was an appropriate inscription; on the reverse were grouped a harp and broken chain, a scroll and a pen, a book and a lamp, a caduceus and a scale of justice. also a shield emblazoned with the armorial bearings of O'Connell. O'Connell received the deputation from the manufacturers in his study. His two boys, Maurice and Morgan, stood beside him and shook hands with the Dublin artisans. The address to our hero, signed J. Talbot and C. Dowdal, speaking of the gift and givers, contained these and other words: "It is but the widow's mite; yet they [the givers) hope not less acceptable, as it overflows with their affections." They wished him long life also. O'Connell replied with grateful warmth ; he told them that their country was " widowed, too," that the independence of '82 gave Ireland manufactures and freedom ; that independence alone could revive both. " My gratitude to the manufacturers," said he, "will 326 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. be best evinced, if I can awake the people of Ireland to hope for a repeal of the union!" TTe learn from his son that, in addition to what he said in his more formal reply, " he declared, in allusion to their sub- sisting custom of toast-giving, that no toast should ever be drunk out of it, save ' the repeal of the union.'' " John O'Connell adds truly enough, in his clumsy, long-winded style, that " It is a melancholy thing to reflect upon, that, low and poverty-stricken as was the condition of that extensive district, entitled 'The Liberty' of Dublin city, it has long since fallen much lower, and, indeed, declined into utter ruin. The time is many a year ago gone by, when such a presentation could be repeated as that which we record; and 'The Liberty' which, daring the Irish Parliament, was the focus of active and most remunerative manu- facturing employment of various descriptions, is now, and has for a long- time been known only as the focus of the last and uttermost wretched- ness and helpless destitution." The secession of the aristocracy, somewhat before this period, was the commencement of the ruin of the Catholic Board. This secession was chiefly occasioned by the misunderstandings on the vexatious ques- tion of the veto. Lords Fingal and Trimleston, and other aristocratic Catholics, were eager supporters of Grattan' 8 bill. They shared in the indignation which that great Irishman felt at the opposition which O'Connell and his followers gave to "the securities" in every shape and form. Grattan and Lord Donoughmore being on bad terms with tin- Board, the breach between the two sections of the Catholic party was sure to glow still wider. On the 8th of January, on the motion of O'Connell, the letters of Lord Donoughmore and Mr. Grattan, already referred to, were read. They did not contribute to the production of a bettor feeling. O'Connell made a nervous speech, in which he expressed something very like indignation at both letters. He was especially sore about that of Grattan. ■ AN hat securities did he [Grattan) ever speak of in the Irish Parliament?" O'Connell manfully denied that the Catholics had any natural " inferiority" to their Protestant countrymen. At the elose of this meeting, the eccentric Barney Coile pointed out to O'Con- nell a person, apart from the other reporters, taking notes of the proceed- ings. All eyes were speedily turned in the direction of the stranger, who admitted that he was employed by the police authorities, and said THE LIFE OP DANIEL O'CONNELL. 32V " that he acted solely by the command of his superiors, and sincerel} 7 hoped he should not be held to have thereby forfeited the regard of others." O'Connell said, "That was all perfectly fair," and promised to have at the next meeting a desk or table large enough to accommo- date as many as the police should think fit to send. On this conduct of our hero his son thus observes: "Thirty or forty times at least, during the course of his agitation, similar occasions have arisen for similar steps on his part — greatly to the disappointment and discomfiture of the authorities he showed such readiness to oblige." Sometimes Eng- lishmen, who would be sent over to watch the proceedings of the Catho- lics, would arrive in Ireland with the full conviction that they were doomed never to escape alive out of that turbulent land of cut-throats ; they would surely be assassinated by some members of the terrible con- federacy, over which the lightest word of the arch-rebel O'Connell was law. Gradually they would come to see that it was possible for an Englishman to preserve a whole skin in Ireland; and if they had a more than usual share of candor, they would finally confess that they had been fools. It was in this year, 1814, that O'Connell delivered that speech, in which he made the amusing use of Esop's fable of the wolves and sheep to overthrow Counsellor Stephen Woulfe's able argument in favor of the veto, that I have already referred to in Chapter the Twelfth. Mr. Daunt says (I think rightly) that this incident occurred at a meeting at Limerick ; John O'Connell states that it took place at Clare. Be this as it may, in this speech O'Connell again referred to the course pursued by Lord Donoughmore and Mr. Grattan. He says that Mr. Woulfe brings an "indictment," in which there are "four counts" against the Board. "It charges the Board, . . . Thirdly, with having made an unnecessary and virulent attack on Lord Donoughmore and Mr. Grattan ; and — " Fourthly, with having been guilty of a pun. [Laughter.) . . .This has the merit of comicality. ... A public body accused of a joke ! a public body charged with being miserably witty ! Oh, most wise, most sapient accusers ! . . . He, Mr. Lawless, talked of the ' Knockloftiness ' of the style of a certain letter." Knocklofty is the name of Lord Donoughmore's place. O'Connell adds, immediately after, that Mr. 328 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. Lawless borrowed this "'unfortunate witticism' from ' The Belfast Magazine' 1 and retailed it to the Board at second-hand." O'Connell con- cludes this speech in these words — "and in that sacred cause" (that of "unqualified emancipation") "let the watchword be unanimity for old Ireland!" The following entertaining passage from the " Keminiscences of a Silent Agitator," by Thomas Kennedy, published in the Irish Monthly Magazine, a periodical defunct many years since, gives a vivid picture of some of the proceedings of the aristocratic seceders from the Catholic Board in or about the period I am now writing of: " The time at length came when the maturing strength of the second order grew so obnoxious to the fastidious tastes of the Corinthians that a secession from the democratic conventions was resolved on ; and the Catholic aristocracy formed itself into a Praetorian band under the title of Seceders. Their secretary was Le Chevalier 'De McCarthy, brother to the count of the same name/ who derives his patent of nobility — like the knights who were slain by the princess Rusty Fusty in O'Keefe's farce — from the 'Holy Eoman Empire;' and their hall of assembly was the drawing-room in the mansion of a nobleman (Lord Trimleston) — a most appropriate place for the means and ends they possessed and entertained. Circulars were directed to those belonging to the Catholic body who were considered entitled to the private entire of Lord Trimleston's saloon; and some meetings were held by those political exclusives, where speeches were delivered and resolutions passed without subjecting the eloquent declaimers to those occasional interruptions, which in mixed assemblies are rudely offered, expressive of applause. Too polite to be personal in their allusions to the political opponents of the cause, they were also too refined in their selection of language to be either spirited or independent in their sentiments; and when they touched upon the feeling of the civil degradation which they were enduring, it was calculated more to excite compassion for their privations than applause for the indignant sense of wrong they should have displayed. The proceedings of the Seceders would have passed away like any other drawing-room amusements, commencing with politics and ending with a promenade, were it not that they took upon themselves to act for the people, and to assume a sort of dictation in THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. ' 329 their cause. This was not to be endured, and at their next meeting the uninvited O'Connell was resolved to appear — " ' In their own halls I'll brave them.' " The Seceders appointed a committee to prepare an address to the prince-regent, and also agreed on a petition to Parliament, in the spring of the year 1814; all which transactions emanated from Lord Trim- leston's drawing-room. At the latter end of March, a circular was issued by Le Chevalier Be McCarthy, their secretary of state, to those who were supposed to sanction the secession, inviting them to attend, for the purpose of ' hearing the report of the committee appointed to prepare the address to his royal highness the prince-regent, and to receive a communication from the earl of Donoughmore.' The chevalier also requested that ' you would be so good as to mention this, with my com- pliments, to those of your acquaintance who have signed the petition adopted on the 23d February.' All those who still adhered to the Cath- olic Board (the model of the association) were passed over, and the seceders imagined that, as the meeting was to take place in the man- sion of a nobleman, no tribune of the people would dare to intrude upon their privacy or present himself at the portals uninvited. Wrapped in all the confidence of security from such a visitation, the members of this Aulic Council assembled to deliberate upon their snail-pace progress and to prepare their forces for their inoffensive warfare. In the midst of their proceedings, a loud knock at the hall-door startled the slumber- ing echoes in Trimleston House and attracted the attention of its draw- ing-room convention. The noble president looked embarrassed ; the hectic of a moment passed over his cheek, but did not tarry. The knock was both loud and long, and terminated in a climax of sound : a general presentiment seemed to pervade the assembly that there was but one person who would have the audacity to demand admittance in that manner. The chevalier, more courageous than the rest, rose from his place at the table and went to reconnoitre from a position on the staircase, and returned with a hurried step to his seat, whispering to those who were immediately around him something which did not seem to relieve their suspense. The chevalier had scarcely taken his pen into his hand when the door opened and O'Connell advanced to the table. 330 THE LTFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. It would require a lengthened report to convey an idea of the debate which ensued; or perhaps the pencil of a Hogarth could best describe the effect of the scene — the expression of impatience and vexation which lowered on the brows of his auditors, contrasted with the look of scorn- ful rebuke which he cast upon them, one and all — the haughty tone with which he interrogated them, why they dared to take upon themselves to act for the Catholic people of Ireland., and to exclude from their meet- ings those belonging to that people who were their superiors in every attribute. Dismayed and humiliated, the Seceders never after ventured to assemble; and whether his royal highness received the contemplated address, or whether the earl of Donoughmore's epistle was replied to, are matters I have not been able to ascertain. As a body, they were as effectually dissolved as the Council of Five Hundred was — with this difference, that moral influence alone completed in the one case what the direction of military force achieved in the other. The next step the Seceders took was to secede from a secession, and, as the Irish watchman once said to a nocturnal disturber, 'Disperse yourself,'' each retired within the glittering shell of his title or his opulence, and, like snails, they left no memorial but the slime of their jiroceedings to record them." The writer of the foregoing lively sketch is not quite correct in say- ing that the meeting at Lord Trimleston's was the last effort on the part of the Seceders or vetoists to speak in the name of the people of Ireland. I shall, before long, have to notice a similar packed meeting of this clique, in which, it appears to me, they presumed to, or at least would fain have, put themselves forward as speaking in the name of Catholic Ireland. But, first, it is necessary to give a concise account of the celebrated rescript of Monsignor Quarantotti. It was witli an indescribable horror that O'Connell and his Catholic countrymen read in an English paper, on May the 3d, the following an- nouncement: " We have just heard from unquestionable authority thai the first act of the pope, on his re-establishment at Rome, was to pass in full consistory, with the cardinals unanimously agreeing, an arrange- ment giving to the British Crown the desired security respecting the nomination of Catholic bishops." At once the belief spread like wildfire that not merely the prelates, who had been appointed to administer ecclesiastical affairs at Koine THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 331 while the pope was a prisoner in the hands of Napoleon, had given their approval to the "securities" of Grattan's bill of the preceding year, but that Pius the Seventh himself had assented to them also. This appeared the more probable, as His Holiness was naturally grateful to the allied powers, England included, which, by turning the tide of conquest and invasion against the great emperor after his disastrous retreat from Leipzig, in 1813, had brought about the pontiff's release from captivity. All the apprehensions, however, of the Irish Catholics seemed to be fully justified, when, on the 5th of May, 1814, the copy of a letter, bearing the signature of "Monsignor Quarantotti, vice-prefect of Koine," appeared in the Dublin Evening Post. While those, who were hostile or indifferent to the freedom of the Catholic Church in Ireland from the corrupting influences of the British Crown, were satisfied, if not exulting, the real friends both of Catholic and Irish liberty were stricken with dismay; for Quarantotti' s rescript expressed entire approval, not merely of Grattan's bill, but of Canning's clauses. The Catholics, ac- cording to this precious document, ought "to receive and embrace the bill with a grateful spirit." It may be as well to give some passages from this memorable docu- ment. It was addressed to "The Right Eev. William Poynter," vicar apostolic of the London district. Of this prelate, who, so far from being an opponent to the veto, had remained pitifully silent while the learned and admirable Dr. Milner was brutally insulted in his presence by the English vetoists, O'Connell humorously said, that "he was a poor crea- ture, who should be called Spaniel, instead of Poynter." This was cer- tainly hard hitting at the English Catholic primate ; but then our un- compromising Dan was no respecter of persons, and he seldom troubled himself with measuring his words very scrupulously. Returning to the rescript, it says : "As to the desire of the government to be informed of the loyalty of those who are promoted to the dignity of bishop or dean, and to be assured that they possess those qualifications which belong to a faithful subject ; as tc the intention, also, of forming a board for the ascertain- ment of those points, by inquiring into the character of those who shall be presented, and reporting thereon to the king, according to the tenor of your lordship's letter; and, finally, as to the determination of govern- 332 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. ment to have none admitted to those dignities who either are not nat- ural-born subjects, or who have not been residents in the kingdom for four j'ears preceding, — as all these provisions regard matters that are merely political, they are entitled to all indulgence. It is better, indeed, that the prelates of our Church should be acceptable to the king, in order that they may exercise their ministry with his full concurrence, and also that there may be no doubts of their integrity, even with those who are not in the bosom of the Church; for 'it behoveth a bishop' (as the apostle teaches, 1 Tim. iii. 7) 'even to have a good witness from those who are not of the Church.' Upon these principles we, in virtue of the authority entrusted to us, grant permission that those who are elected to and proposed for bishoprics and deaneries by the clergy may be admitted or rejected by the king, according to the law proposed. When, therefore, the clergy shall have, according to the usual custom, elected those whom they shall judge most worthy in the Lord to possess those dignities, the metropolitan of the province in Ireland, or the senior vicar-apostolic of England and Scotland, shall give notice of the election, that the king's approbation or dissent may be hud thereupon. If the candidates he rejected, others shall be proposed who may he acceptable to the king; but if approved of, the metropolitan or vicar-apostolic, ;is above, shall send the documents to the Sacred Congregation here, the members whereof, having duly weighed the merits of each, shall take measures for the attainment of canonical institution from His Holiness. 1 per- ceive, also, that another duty is ass fined to the board above mentioned — namely, that they are charged to inspect all letters written by the eccle- siastical power to any of the British clergy, and examine carefully whether they contain anything which may be injurious to the govern- ment or anywise disturb the public tranquillity. Inasmuch as a com- munication on ecclesiastical or spiritual affairs with the head of the Church is not forbidden, and as the inspection of the board relates to political subjects only, this also must be submitted to. It is right that the government should not have cause to entertain any suspicion with regard to the communication between us. What we write will bear the eyes of the world, for wc intermeddle not with matters of a political nature, but arc occupied about those things which the divine and the ecclesiastical law, and the good order of the Chinch, appear to require. THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 333 Those matters only are to be kept under the seal of silence which per- tain to the jurisdiction of conscience within us ; and of this it appears to me sufficient care has been taken in the clauses of the law alluded to. We are perfectly convinced that so wise a government as that of Great Britain, while it studies to provide for the public security, does not on that account wish to compel the Catholics to desert their religion, but would rather be pleased that they should be careful observers of it ; for our holy and truly divine religion is most favorable to public authority, is the best support of thrones, and the most powerful teacher both of loyalty and patriotism." Such was the famous Rescript of Monsignor Quarantotti that created the most astounding hubbub all through Catholic Ireland. Indignation, the most furious, soon took the place of the feelings of dismay, which, on the first arrival of the news, had struck a chill to the heart of every Catholic, who was also a true Irishman. Priests and people were alike raging against " 'Mr. Forty-eight,' as the irrepressible tendency to jest- ing" {I am borrowing the words of John O'Connell), "in the Irish Catho- lic, had already christened him {Quarantotti), in allusion to a wild stoiy about the derivation of his patronymic, said to have been from the number of a lucky lottery-ticket that had made his father's fortune." He was represented, in the caricatures of the day, as bending under a huge hamper, which he was bringing into the presence of His Holiness. The hamper was crammed with the mitres of Irish bishops, huddled together confusedly; while George the Third, with covetous eye, was standing in a corner eagerly stretching forth his hands to grasp the mitres. Irish priests, who remembered having seen Quarantotti at Eome in their student days, described him as a dunce. As the English papers took care to represent him as a cardinal, the fact that he was only a prelate was dwelt on in Ireland with some satisfaction. At a later period, indeed, he received a cardinal's hat ; but in mean time the Irish were glad in any way to lower his pretensions. Nothing could equal the disgust and rage with which Irishmen, both lay and clerical, read the praises of the English government in this rescript. Thomas Kennedy, in his "Reminiscences of a Silent Agi- tator," says : " One of the proudest and most gratifying recollections of the agitators is connected with the dignified resistance which the Irish 334 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. Catholic Church gave to the interference of the papal throne." I shall give some extracts, which John O'Connell quotes from the letter of "An Irish Priest," in order to show the spirit in which Quarantotti's rescript was at once met. This letter appeared in the Dublin Evening Post the day after that document had been given. " The ferment spread like wildfire through every gradation of society, and the very lowest order of people felt its influence. Some cursed — others moaned — all complained. Early this morning my old servant- maid, without waiting for any commands of mine, accosted me abruptly with these words : ' Oh, sir ! what shall we do ? Is it — can it be true that the pope has turned Orangeman V " I must beg to correct two material mistakes of yours. . . . The document is not from His Holiness Pius the Seventh. . . . Nor is there a word to indicate any sort of consent or approbation from him or any one of his cardinals. Quarantotti refers to no authority but his own. . . . A clerk to the Congregation of the Propaganda presumes to decide on a subject of the greatest magnitude, and which would require the delibera- tion not only of the whole Congregation and of the pope himself, with his whole College of Cardinals, but of an entire (Ecumenical Council. Nay, as it appertains to local discipline, that (Ecumenical Council itself could not compel us to submit — much less an understrapper of the Propaganda." The " Irish Priest" then amuses himself with some criti- cism on the Latinity of the rescript. He also finds fault with the channel through which Quarantotti thought proper to make so important an announcement — through an English vicar apostolic, instead of, at all events, addressing it to the ancient and regularly constituted hierarchy of Ireland. He concludes by saying : " Every attempt to weaken the Catholic Church shall in the end prove fruitless ; and as long as the shamrock shall adorn our island, so long shall the faith delivered to us by St. Patrick prevail; in despite of kings, parliaments, Orangemen and Quarantottis." Meanwhile the opinion began to spread that this odious rescript had been issued by this preposterous Quarantotti solely on his own respon- sibility. It seemed possible even that the pope had been completely ignorant of the whole transaction, which it has since been stated was the result of the secret intrigues of Lord William Bentinck in Rome. THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 335 The document was dated the 16th of February, while the liberation of His Holiness from his French captivity did not take place till the 2d of April. No wonder, then, that the resentment against the presump- tuous prelate and the resistance to his audacious rescript grew stronger each day. On the 12th of May, at a meeting of the parish priests and other clergymen of the archdiocese of Dublin, held in Bridge Street Chapel, the following resolutions were adopted, as a duty the clergy present owed "to God and to their flocks :" "Resolved, that we consider the document or rescript, signed 'Quar- antotti,' as non-obligatory upon the Catholic Church in Ireland, particu- larly as it wants those authoritative marks whereby the mandates of the Holy See are known and recognized, and especially the signature of the pope. "That we consider the granting to an anti-Catholic government any power, either direct or indirect, with regard to the appointment and nom- ination of the Catholic bishops in Ireland, as at all times inexpedient. "That, circumstanced as we are in this country, we consider the granting of such a power not only inexpedient, but highly detrimental to the best and dearest interests of religion, and pregnant with incalcu- lable mischief to the cause of Catholicity in Ireland. "That such arrangements of domestic nominations can be made among the clergy of Ireland as will preclude that foreign influence against which those securities, so destructive to religion, are called for by the Parliament." The clergy then respectfully call on their "venerable archbishop," in conjunction with the other Irish prelates, to remonstrate "with His Holiness and the sacred College of Cardinals" against "this document," and to represent the evils which "the adoption of the principles laid down" in it would "inevitably" bring on the Catholic Church in Ire- land. The signatures of all the priests " at that moment in the city of Dublin," some of which (those, for instance, of Dr. Blake, subsequently bishop of Dromore, who presided over the meeting, Father Walter Myler, Father Yore, etc.) were familiar names in Dublin up to a com- paratively recent date, were appended to these resolutions. Meanwhile the columns of all the Catholic and liberal journals, with 336 TIIE L1FF 0F DANIEL O'COXXELL. (according to John O'Connell) but one exception, were flaming with the widespread and still-increasing indignation. This expression of the public fury by the newspapers was sanctioned by numerous letters from ecclesiastics, full of strong denunciations of unfortunate Quaran- totti. Dr. Coppinger, bishop of Cloyne, writing to the Dublin Evening Post of May the 14th, styles "Mr. Quarantotti's decree'" a "very mis- chievous document," and adds, "In common with every real friend to the integrity of the Catholic religion in Ireland, I read it with feelings of disgust and indignation." Dr. Barry, the then bishop of Dromore, was equally strong against it; and, a few days later, the Eight Rev. Dr. O'Shaughnessy wrote : "The result of this pernicious document, if acted upon, would be fatal to the Catholic religion ; therefore I hasten to pro- test against it, and while I have breath in my body will continue to do so." The Limerick Evening Post, on the 9th of May, argued that if Canning's clauses, -approved of at Rome," became the law of the land, Burke's observation would be fulfilled: "The influence of the Crown has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished." This Lim- erick journal asks, on the same supposition, "How stand the liberties of the Protestant, the Presbyterian, and the sectary of every description throughout Ireland? How stand the civil liberties of the Catholics themselves? Very badly, we are sure." At a meeting of the Board, held at Fitzpatrick's, in Capel street (the Board was now in debt; probably Fitzpatrick gave them the place of meeting free of charge), O'Connell called the rescript, "The attempt made by the slaves of Rome to instruct the Irish Roman Catholics upon the manner of their emancipation." He also, at this meeting, made the following bold and emphatic declaration : "I would as soon receive my politics from Constantinople as from Rome. For the head of my Church I have the highest respect, but in the present case I put the- ology — of which I know nothing, and desire to know nothing — out of my consideration wholly. It is on the ground of its danger to civil liberty that I objected to the late bill. It would have the effect, if passed into a law, of placing in the hands of the minister a new and extensive source of patronage; and, for that reason, I would rather the Catholics should remain for ever without emancipation than that they should receive it upon such tenuis!" Be disapproved of the idea of an address THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 337 to Lord Whitworth, and moved that a committee should he appointed to prepare resolutions for an aggregate meeting. This motion was carried unanimously. Accordingly, on the 19th of May, at the Farming Repository, Ste- phen's Green (an inconvenient place), this aggregate meeting of the Catholics took place. Thomas Wyse, Jun., Esq., took the chair. This gentleman was subsequently distinguished for his eloquence and for the authorship of the " History of the Catholic Association." After eman- cipation, he was for some years member for Waterford city. Finally, created Sir Thomas Wise, he became British ambassador at Athens. His sentiments on religious matters were not merely tolerant, but occasionally what some might deem a trifle too comprehensive ; at least, on one occasion, he exclaimed, at a public meeting attended by persons of various sects, "Ah ! sure we're all of the same religion." Sir Thomas had the honor of being husband to a niece of the great Napoleon. As the lady, however, had some share of the arbitrary temper of her impe- rial uncle, it may be doubted whether Sir Thomas's domestic felicity was at all proportionate to the honor he derived from so illustrious an alliance. The sentiments uttered at this meeting were exceedingly bold. "How dare Quarantotti dictate to the people of Ireland?" exclaimed O'Connell. " We disclaim his authority to interfere in making us accept of an act of Parliament. He desires us to be grateful for it. How dare he talk of gratitude to us ? By his orders we are to accept it as beggars — like aliens, with our hats in our hands and a submissive bend of the body! Never will we obey such orders; we will as much allow his right to inter- fere with the act of Parliament as we will allow the king or the king's ministers to interfere with the appointment of the prelates of the Catholic religion in Ireland." John O'Connell tells us that the speech delivered by his father on this occasion was very imperfectly reported. " It had three chief points: first, a protest against the recent steps taken in favor of the veto ; next, a vindication of the conduct of" the clergy of Dublin, and " an expression of confidence that the hierarchy would soon fulminate against it" [the veto or rescript) ; " and finally, a contemptuous and indignant comment upon some peculiarly bigoted and peculiarly absurd anti-Catholic resolutions of several countv crand-juries." Talk- 338 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. ing of those of the Deny and Wicklow grand-juries, our hero says: " Let them be treated as Lord Avonmore once treated a barrister, who had been two hours speaking for a rich man against a widow and tsvo orphans. When he had done, his lordship's reply was, ' I know you well, Moll Doyle !' Let our answer be, ' I know you well, Moll Doyle !' " (Laughter.) He then speaks of the grand -juries of Antrim, Armagh and Wexford. Apparently, the magnates of the last county had accused the Board of treason or sedition, or both. I shall give O'Connell's remarks on this charge without comment. He sneers at the inconsistency, bad grammar and ignorance of the " sweet county Wexford gentlemen," and then says : " Can any one point out an instance of treason or sedition in this country since the first formation of the Catholic Board, or a single person who was brought to trial, or even accused ? Oh ! yes, there were three. Two of the unfortunate persons were detected by the Catholic Board ; they were handed over to the government, who did not choose to prosecute. You all, no doubt, remember what I allude to — Paddy McKew's plot. The other was a man in Limerick, whom I my- self prosecuted for swearing a person to support the French on their landing in Ireland; but the grand-jury ignored the bills, and let the gentleman at large." O'Connell concluded by moving certain resolu- tions, which were carried unanimously. His son gives what he calls "the pith and marrow" of these resolutions: "Resolved, thai we deem it a duty to ourselves and to our country solemnly and distinctly to declare, that any decree, mandate, rescript or decision whatsoever of any foreign power or authority, religious or civil, ought not, and run not of right, assume any dominion or control over the political concerns of the Catholics of Ireland. "Resolved, that the venerable and venerated the Catholic pinests of the archdiocese of Dublin have deserved our most marked and cordial gratitude, as well for the uniform tenor of their sanctified lives, as in particular for the holy zeal and alacrity with which, at the present period of general alarm and consternation, they have consoled the people •>!' Ireland, by the public declaration of their sentiments respecting the, mischievous document signed B. Quarantotti, and disposed them to await with confidence the decision of our revered prelates at the approaching synod. THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'OONNELL. 339 "Resolved, that we do most earnestly and respectfully Vieseech our revered prelates to take into consideration, at the approaching synod, the propriety of for ever precluding any public danger either of ministerial or foreign influence in the appointment of our prelates." Other speakers besides O'Connell took a conspicuous part in the proceedings at this meeting. Dr. Dromgoole, though at this time the relations between him and the majority of the members of tne Board were of a somewhat unpleasant nature, rose to announce "that he had authority for stating that the sanction of their venerable archbishop, Dr. Troy, had been attached to the resolutions of their parish priests." The learned doctor's announcement was received with acclamations by the crowded assembly. Catholic respectability and Catholic talent were never better represented than at this meeting. More charming still, the presence of a number of beautiful women, full of the enthusiasm of the hour, added to the interest of the scene. What wonder if the ardor of the speakers was all aglow! The spirit and animation of the meeting were at their highest when Nicholas Purcell 0' Gorman exclaimed, "If the pope himself, with all his cardinals in full council, issued a bull to the effect of the rescript, I should not obey." Shouts of applause thun- dered from every quarter of the room. " I suppose I should thereby cease to be a Catholic," resumed O'Gorman. "No, no!" eagerly inter- rupted Dr. Dromgoole. "I am glad," O'Gorman added, "that I may resist the pope and council, and still be a member of the Catholic Church!" All was unanimity. The learned Clinche and his rival, the equally learned Dromgoole, spoke at considerable length, but this day all rivalry between them was buried, save an emulation of zeal against the pre- sumptuous rescript of Quarantotti. Besides the Catholic orators, Prot- estant advocates of the Catholic cause were listened to with applause — the able Counsellor Finlay, the more eloquent Charles Philips. But the excitement against Quarantotti did not terminate with this meeting. The Catholic bishops of Ireland agreed to the following pro- test on the 27th of May, after a conference of two days at Maynooth : "Resolved, that a congratulatory letter be addressed to His Holiness Pius the Seventh, on his happy liberation from captivity. " Resolved, that having; taken into our mature consideration the late 340 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. rescript of the vice-prefect of the Propaganda, we are fully convinced that it is not mandatory. " Resolved, that we do now open a communication with the Holy See on the subject of this document ; and that, for this purpose, two prelates be forthwith deputed to convey our unanimous and well-known senti- ments to the chief pastor, from whose wisdom, zeal and tried magna- nimity we have reason to expect such decision as will give general satisfaction. "Resolved, that the two last resolutions be respectfully communicated to the right honorable the earl of Donoughmore, and to the Eight Hon. Henry Grattan, with an earnest entreaty that, when the question of Catholic emancipation shall be discussed in Parliament, they will exert their powerful talents in excluding from the bill, intended for our relief, those clauses which we have already deprecated as severely penal to us and highly injurious to our religion." John O'Connell, after quoting these resolutions, adds, that "the unsatisfactory correspondence between the Catholic Board and Lord Donoughmore and Mr. Grattan continued in the same mixed style of compliment and remonstrance until early in June, when, without warn- ing to those who had entrusted him with the Catholic petition to the lower House, and without consultation with any one, Mr. Grattan, when presenting the petition, announced that it was not his intention to bring forward the Catholic claims that session." The Catholic Board were about to consider this unexpected event, when an occurrence still more startling, of which I shall take notice before I bring this chapter to a conclusion, stopped or prevented their deliberations. Not long after the events just related, Cardinal Gonsalvi arrived in London on a secret mission. His Eminence made the following declara- tion to the Right Rev. Dr. Moylan, bishop of Cork: "Until 1 came to England, 1 assure you, I never heard of Quarantotti's rescript I en- tirely disapprove of it, and shall use all my influence, on my return to Rome, to prevent its being sanctioned by His Holiness, should such a thing be in contemplation." Yet, at a subsequent period, O'Connell so tar distrusted this Cardinal Gonsalvi, whose "terrible superhuman" eyes, whose "rich robes and diamond buckles," whose ••line figure and THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. 341 countenance and magnificent costume," whose French phrases, worthy of a native, "epigrammatic and well-turned," are so graphically described by Lady Morgan, in her "Book of the Boudoir," as to accuse him of having "betrayed or sold" the Irish Catholic Church at Vienna for "eleven thousand guineas." In truth, for a long period after this affair of Quarantotti the majority of the Catholics of Ireland were kept in a state of continual suspense and anxiety. The aristocratic section were supposed to be constantly intriguing in favor of the veto, while the pop- ular party, assisted by the clergy and hierarchy, vigorously contended against it. Spirited declarations from the hierarchy in favor of the independence of the Church, from time to time, elicited the gratitude of the people. Dr. Murray, the coadjutor archbishop of Dublin, was sent to Rome as bearer of a strong remonstrance from the prelates. But the influence of England in the city of the pontiffs was, at the time, so strong as to prevent any regard from being paid to it, and Dr. Murray had to return without having advanced the object of his mission. At a meet- ing of the prelates the following energetic resolution, amongst others, was adopted : " Though we sincerely venerate the supreme pontiff as visible head of the Church, we do not conceive that our apprehensions for the safety of the Koman Catholic Church in Ireland can or ought to be removed by any determination of His Holiness, adopted, or intended to be adopted, not only without our concurrence, but in direct opposition to our repeated resolutions and the very energetic memorial presented on our behalf, and so ably supported by our deputy, the Most Rev. Dr. Murray, who, in that quality, was more competent to inform His Holi- ness of the real state and interests of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland than any other with whom he is said to have consultecV Mr. Mitchel tells us that "this last phrase meant the emissaries of the Eng- lish Catholics, then busy at Rome;" and he adds, that "the English Catholics have been at all times as zealous and resolute to keep Ireland subject to English dominion in all respects, as any : no-Popery' Briton or Orange grand-master could be." Bearing with him the resolutions of the prelates, Dr. Murray returned to Rome, accompanied by the bishop of Cork. Meanwhile the excitement and the spirit of resistance to all attempts to fetter the independence of the Irish national Church, no matter from what quarter they might arise, remained as strong and 342 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. stubborn as ever. All through the struggle O'Connell was the guiding spirit of the people. "I remember well," says another writer, "years after all discussion upon the veto had subsided, when I was in Paris on a visit at the house of a friend of the doctor's and my own, he suddenly dropped in, just after his arrival from Eome. I had not seen him for a considerable time, but I had scarcely asked him how he was, when he reverted to the veto. A debate was immediately opened on the subject. Some Irish gentle- men dropped casually in ; they all took their share in the argument ; the eloquence of the different disputants became inflamed. The win- dows towards the streets had been left unhappily open ; a crowd of Frenchmen collected outside, and the other inhabitants of the house gathered at the doors to hear the discussion. It was only after the doctor, who was still under the influence of vetophobia, had taken his leave, that I perceived the absurdity of the incident. A volume of ' Gil Bias' was on the tabic where we happened to have assembled, and by accident I lighted on the passage in which he describes the Irish dis- putants at Salamanca: Je rencontrois quelquefois des figures Hihemoises. II falloit nous coir disputer, etc.'* We are a strange people, and deserve our reputation at the foreign universities, where it was said of the Irish that they were ratione furentes" [raging with reason). And so the old scholastic philosopher, who, when not disturbed by the veto, was one of the mildest and best-natured of men, died far away from old Ireland, beneath "the shadow of the Vatican.'' I shall now return to the point of my narrative from which I turned back to relate the episode of Major Bryan and Dr. Dromgoole. On the 3d of June, 1814, the English government, now at length victorious over their great imperial enemy, who, reduced to a phantom royalty in the little island of Elba, seemed more an object of mockery than terror, felt themselves secure enough to strike a sudden and startling blow at the Catholic movement. It was three o'clock in the afternoon. O'Con- nell had arrived in the Board-room. Gradually members dropped in to * Here is the whole passage, translated by Smollet, I believe: "I sometimes met with some Irishmen, who loved disputing as well as myself, and we made rare work of it. Lord, what grim- aces! What gestures ! Fire sparkled in our eyes, and we always foamed at the mouth. Every one that saw us ought to have taken us rather for madmen than philosophers." THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 343 the n amber of sixteen. As the clock strikes four, a messenger rushes in in hot haste and hands our hero a viceregal proclamation. Appeal- ing to the Convention Act, this document declares the Catholic Board an unlawful assembly, though artifice had been employed to make it appear lawful. The law, indeed, was not enforced sooner " against the said assembly, in the expectation that those who had been misled by such artifice would become sensible of their error," and that the Board "would be discontinued without the necessity of legal interposition." The viceroy, being satisfied "that the further continuance of said assem- bly can only tend to serve the ends of factious and seditious persons and to the violation of the public peace," cautions "all such of His Majesty's subjects as are members of the said assembly" to abstain from any further attendance at or on it. If they defy the proclamation, they must expect to be prosecuted. When O'Connell had read aloud, in deep, unwavering tones, this tyrannical proclamation, he declared it illegal, that it outstripped the authority conferred on government by the Convention Act. If twenty- three members of the Board — the number requisite for that purpose — had assembled, he would have proceeded with the meeting. As that number failed to arrive, those present determined to hold the next meet- ing at O'Connell's house, in Merrion Square. There it was resolved to abstain, for the present, from assembling the Catholic Board, but to lose no time in summoning an aggregate meeting of Catholics. This meeting assembled on the 11th of June. Spirited resolutions were passed. The Board had advocated Catholic rights and proclaimed Catholic wrongs "with truth and eloquent earnestness." Owing to its efforts "the friends of religious freedom" had increased, "the votaries of intolerance" had been "nearly silenced;" for "general calumnies against the moral principles of the Catholics" had been "exploded." The Board had cheered and protected the people against local oppres- sions of bad magistrates and others, warned them "against the snares of insidious foes," frustrated "intrigues," baffled corruption. Freedom of discussion had "elicited the talents, upheld the virtues and advanced the fame of the country." They had placed "the great cause" of their petitions "on the firm basis of universal good — the religious freedom of all mankind." For these services the meeting " sincerely thanked the 344 THE LIFE OF DAXIEL O'COXXELL. members of the Catholic Board and recommended them to the respect and gratitude of their county." In this paragraph I have condensed the substance of the resolutions passed by the aggregate meeting. But one touching incident will render this meeting for ever interest- ing and memorable, especially to the Irish people. At the commence- ment of the proceedings, as O'Connell, standing in front of the platform, with his arms folded across his breast, was addressing the audience, an interruption at one of the small doors at the side of the altar (for the meeting was held in a chapel) caused him to turn round. For a moment there was silence. Then a cheer was heard from the people outside. But suddenly the immortal name of Cuiirax rang through the sacred edifice. Many a stout arm was extended to help the dying patriot as he feebly advanced to the front of the stage where O'Connell and the ^•ther Catholic leaders stood. Tremendous acclamations shook the build- ing as O'Connell sprang towards him, seized his hand and led him for- ward. The excitement was almost too much for his shattered frame; he sank into a chair and for a few moments covered his face with his hands. An eye-witness of the scene says: "I never shall forget the sharp, pen- etrating glance he threw over the assembly, when he seemed to rally from the transient debility which at first oppressed him, and the fixed regard he east upon O'Connell when he resumed his address." His ap- pearance among the Catholics at the moment when everything seemed to look black and menacing to their hopes, when tyrant power proscribed and denounced them, when false or lukewarm friends betrayed or fell off from them, not merely touched their hearts and gratified them, but rekindled in their souls fresh spirit and energy. Their memories went back to the dark days of '98, when, with a patriot's words of flame, the dauntless advocate of the United Irishmen, in his zeal for his lost clients, struggled against despair, never once shrinking before the face of threat - enings or the infinite perils that gathered around. "Those," says Thomas Kennedy, describing this most interesting scene, "who had heard him in the days of his power, regarded him with all the hallowed feelings which are associated with the memory of his exertions in the defence of martyred patriotism, while others like myself, with whom those events wear all the interest of times prior to our own. and whose admiration of his genius was excited by the delighted perusal of his fascinating THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 345 and faultless speeches, gazed at him with mingled feelings of homage and devotion." "When the business of the meeting drew to a close, one of the speakers arose a second time and proposed the following resolution: "Resolved, that the most cordial and grateful thanks of the Catholics of Ireland are pre-eminently due and hereby given to that incorruptible patriot, the Right Hon. John Philpot Curran, who has this day honored our meeting with his presence, and with whose uniform exertions in the cause of religious freedom we have ever seen connected the fairest and proudest recollections of Catholics and Irishmen." This resolution w T as, of course, carried, by acclamation. Curran, full of emotion, pressed his hand on his heart and bowed his acknowledgments. At this meeting, too, the eloquent — indeed, altogether too eloquent and high-flying — Charles Phillips addressed Curran. I shall give one or two sentences as a specimen of his redundant hyperbolical style. After calling Curran "that paragon of Irishmen," he said, seeing him show signs of agitation, "No, Curran, do not be afraid that I shall de- preciate you by my admiration. I cannot rise into the region where you soar ; and even if I could, the fate of Icarus forewarns me not to approach the sun whose refulgence would consume me. Contemplating such a man, to be just I must be silent. Panegyric in such a case is poverty, and to be eloquent is to be wordless." [Loud applause.) This seems to me almost frigid in its effort to be fervid. Still many of his over-ornate passages were really alive with the spirit of true eloquence. In this speech he tells a humorous story of Charles James Fox. Fox was in debt; "the Jews called on him for repayment. 'Ah, my dear friends,' says Fox, 'I admit the principle — I owe you the money; but what time is this, when I am going upon business !' Just so, our friends admit the principle ; they owe you emancipation — but war is no time. Well, the Jews departed just as you did. They returned to the charge. 'What!' cries Fox; 'is this a time, when I am engaged on an appoint- ment?' What say our friends ? ' Is this a time, when all the world are at peace?'" [Laughter.) "The Jews departed; but the end of it was, that Fox with his secretary, Mr. Hare, who was as much in debt as him- self, shut themselves up in garrison. The Jews surrounded his habita- tion, and Fox put his head out of the window, with this question : ' Gen- 346 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. tlemen, are you Fox-hunting or Hare-hunting this morning?' " (Laughter.) " His pleasantry mitigated the very Jews : ' Well, well, Fox, you have always admitted the principle, but always protested against the time ; we will give you your own time — only fix some final day for our repay- ment.' 'Ah! my clear Moses,' replied Fox, 'now this is friendly; I take you at your word ; I will fix a day, and as it's to be a final day, what would you think of the clay of judgment?' " (A laugh.) " ' That will be too busy a day with us.' 'Well, well, in order to accommodate all parties, let us settle it the day after.' (Laughter.) "Thus it is; between the war inexpediency of Bragge Bathurst and the peace inexpediency of Mr. Grattan, you may expect your emancipation bill pretty much about the time that Fox appointed for the payment of hi* creditors." (Laughter.) This was, in all probability, the last political meeting at which Curran appeared. The traces of premature decay, and the signs of death not very far off. were visibly imprinted on his countenance. The languid expression of his features, more conspicuous when he tried to smile, gave melancholy warning to the hearts of his admirers. But his dark and eloquent eye still blazed with his old fire of genius whenever one of the orators would utter a generous sentiment. All eyes followed with last glances of grief and sympathy his retreating figure, when, overcome by the heat and excitement, now too much for his shattered constitution, he rose, during the reading of a petition, and. taking the arm of a friend, went forth. Kennedy says: "I never saw him again. Soon after he went to France, and from thence to England, where he closed his earthly career." 1 must now say farewell to this incorrupt- ible patriot. He died on the 14th of October, 1817, at nine at night He had eagerly desired that his ashes should rest in his native isle, but, strangely, his executors buried him in one of the vaults of Paddington Church, where his remains were left for twenty years. Then, as Davis says, they 'were resinned by his mother earth." His second funeral was public; he now sleeps in Glasnevin Cemetery, close by Dublin.* * Authorities of foregoing chapter: "The Select Speeches of Daniel O'C 11, M. P., edited by his son;" " History of Ireland," by John Mitchel; Wyse's " History of the Catholic Associa- tion;" "Life and Times of Daniel O'Conncll, &c, Dublin, John Mullany;" "Historical Sketches of O'Connell and his Friends," by Thomas D. Magee ; "Ireland and her Agitators," by O'Neill Daunt ; " Davis's Lit'i of Curran ;" Lady Morgan's "Book of the Boudoir;" " Reminiscences of a Silent Agitator," by Thomas Kennedy; etc. CHAPTER XV. The Catholic cause languishes foe some years after the suppression of the Catholic Board — Final overthrow of Napoleon— Meanness of England in her hour op triumph— Peel and his Peelers — -He creates the class of stipendiary magistrates — Fall of the war prices, and agricultural distress in Ireland — Peel's cheap ejectment laws — He resists inquiry into the condition of Ireland, and renews Insurrection acts — Ireland scourged by famine and typhus-fever in 1817— Lord Sidmouth's "six acts" — Massacre of Peterloo, near Manchester — Orange mas- sacre of Shercock, in the county Cavan — Rapid summary of several Catholic meetings — The "Catholic Divan" — Lord Fingal refuses to take the chair at an aggregate meeting in clarendon street chapel — the catholic association of 1815 — Dr. Murray's mission to Rome — English intrigues in Rome — O'Connell and Henry Grattan — Resolute opposition of the prelates, clergy and people of Ire- land to the veto— Poverty and weakness of the Catholic Association — Divisions in the National camp — Fatal duel between O'Connell and D'Esterre — Depart- ure of Lord Whitworth from Ireland — Strange affair between O'Connell and Secretary Peel — Duel between Lidwill and Sir Charles Saxton — Collision with the vetoists — efforts at conciliation — father hayes's letter from rome — o'con- NELL CO-OPERATES WITH "THE FRIENDS OF REFORM IN PARLIAMENT" — jEnEAS McDoN- NELL FINED AND IMPRISONED — THE RhEMISH TESTAMENT — ANSWER TO THE IRISH CATH- olics from the court of rome — dinner to thomas moore — dinner to o'connell at Tralee — Catholic meetings — General D'Evereux — Death of Grattan — O'Con- nell supports young Grattan at the Dublin election. \ OR several years after the suppression of the Board the Catholic cause made little progress. Indeed, the general fortunes of Ireland became gloomier every day. England was now in her highest place of pride. In 1815, the great emperor escaped from Elba and made a descent on the coast of France, at the head of a small, but trusty, band of his old guard. His triumphant march to Paris was one of the most electrifying achievements in all history. All the armies sent against him joyfully went over to him and marched "under the wings of his victorious eagles." Paris, the provinces, all France, once more confessed his imperial sway, and prepared to sustain their chosen chief against the banded hosts of Europe. But this suc- cess was only an ephemeral gleam. At Waterloo his might went down for ever before the combined armies of England and Prussia. England now touched her highest point of greatness. Mean in the midst of her 348 THE LIFE OF DANIEL OCONNELL. triumph, she not merely insisted that the twice-restored Bourbons should suppress the Irish legion in the service of France, engage to raise no more brigades of " wild geese," but she even persecuted for a time some of the gallant exiles of '98. It was small consolation to Ireland that Castlereagh claimed the credit of having procured the revival of the Irish ecclesiastical seminary in Paris. England no longer feared the triumph of French principles in Ire- land. The second American war had come to an end. A treaty of peace with the United States had been concluded on the 24th of December, 1814. The British oligarchy, church and state, "the Orange Ascend- ency" were now so firmly enthroned that they could afford to be inso- lent and spurn the idea of anything like concession. The Catholic aristocracy, more and more every day, withdrew from all participation in Irish political affairs. O'Connell still swayed the democracy; but for long his efforts to achieve emancipation were productive of hardly any perceptible results. "The hopes of the Catholics," says Richard Lalor Shiel, "fell with the peace. Along interval elapsed in which nothing very important or deserving of record took place. A political lethargy spread itself over the gnat body of the people; the assemblies of the Catholics became more (infrequent, and their language more despondent and hopeless than it had ever been." Mr. Mitchel adds: "And never before, for half a century, had the 'Protestant interest' shown itself so aggressive and so spiteful towards the Catholic people." Mr. Secretary Peel, during the years of his administration — a period of such little hope for Ireland — signalized himself by many ingenious and malignant devices for riveting more securely upon that unhappy land the fetters of England's dominion. He reorganized and increased the constabulary, so as to render it, under the pretence of being a civil force, in reality a numerous and well-drilled military body, fully capable of playing a useful auxiliary part, in conjunction with the regular army, in suppressing any attempts on the part of the trampled Irish to regain their lost independence. At least one small party of the constabulary is stationed in every parish in Ireland. Thus a network of men, partly spies, partly soldiers, covers the island. Doubtless, if a national up- rising became general, these men. who, after all, are for the most part sons of Irish small farmers and peasants, might be absorbed in the THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 349 popular might, unless speedily concentrated by the enemy ; but, at the commencement of an insurrectionary movement, they are likely to prove of incalculable service to the British, in crushing the small bands of peasantry assembling from various points, and in intercepting them so as to prevent their junction in any great force. This unpopular corps has received from the country-people the nickname of Peelers, after the name of their founder or reorganizer. Mr. Peel also originated the class of stipendiary or police magis- trates. These self-important creatures of the Castle — generally briefless barristers or broken-down petty politicians — by making a pompous pre- tence of legal knowledge and of possessing the confidence of those high in authority, generally contrived to secure in their own hands the mis- management of the local administration of justice. They were expected above all things to guard against any outburst of independent feeling (a sort of thing not likely often to occur) on the part of those country gentlemen who were the ordinary justices of the peace. During the war comparative prosperity had reigned in Ireland. The demand for Irish agricultural produce, to supply the commissariat of armies and to provision fortresses, was very great. Large contracts for the provisioning of the navy were made in Cork. The consequent high war-prices enabled the farmers to endure the constant rise of rents ; but after the war ended, prices fell, and the peasantry began to be miser- able. The population of the island was now six millions. Land being the only source of a livelihood for the vast majority, the competition for farms became ruinous. The surplus population of Ireland began now to be spoken of. The extermination of wretched tenants-at-will com- menced. Often whole town-lands were cleared "at one fell swoop." Peel's cheap ejectment laws gave the landlords absolute power over the fate of their miserable tenants. One, passed in 1815, gave an assistant- barrister the power of decreeing, at the cost of a few shillings, the eject- ment of all tenants of holdings, the rent of which was under £20. A later act made the evidence of a landlord, or his agent, sufficient to ascertain the amount of rent due by a tenant. For a while longer the forty-shilling freeholders, who had leases and whose votes added elec- tioneering influence to their landlords, were let alone. Their time of doom, however, was yet to arrive. 350 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. The crafty Peel took good care to resist Sir John Newport's motion, in 1816, for a Parliamentary committee to inquire into the state of Ire- land. His resistance was successful. He took good care, also, to procure the renewal of the Insurrection Act in 1814; he caused it to be main- tained in force in 1815 and 1816. He who could not give a good account of himself was rammed into prison. The peasant who was caught in possession of a fowling-piece was transported. Peel had even meditated the introduction of a bill to render illegal any aggregate meetings of Cath- olics, that were not convened by a high-sheriff or certain of the magis- tracy. This would virtually place Catholic meetings under the control of Protestant functionaries. However, this project was let drop. Perhaps Peel deemed British and "Ascendency" rule in Ireland secure enough, now that the imperial-democratic might of France was down in the dust. In truth, the condition of the peasantry was lamentable beyond de- scription. The immemorial tale has to be repeated : the people of Ireland wanted bread, even potatoes. In 1817 the potato crop failed. There were famine and typhus-fever in the woe-stricken land. Also, there was a huge exportation from Ireland of grain and cattle. Poverty and suf- ferings of all sorts sometimes, and not unnaturally, produced agrarian crime. Then the magistrates would meet and demand the proclama- tion of counties. While the peasantry were devouring weeds — boiled nettles and wild kail, called in Irish jirashagh — the reign of renewed coercion acts and insurrection acts terrorized the land. What wonder if popular political movements languished in those days of oppression ? Even in England, the tyranny of the ministry crushed popular demon- strations. In 1819, Lord Sidmouth carried his famous "six acts," chiefly to put down "the seditious aspirations" of the English people. Penal- ties were imposed by these laws for the possession of arms and for what the government chose to style "blasphemous and seditious libels." On the 16th of August, 1819, a body of troops massacred a number of per- sons taking part in a perfectly peaceable meeting, at Peterloo, near Manchester. One of the "six acts" was then passed, to prohibit, under severe penalties, the assemblage of more than fifty persons at a meeting, unless it were convoked by the magistrates. Mr. Mitchel calls this state of things "the British 'Reign of Terror.'" This, however, was aristo- cratic, not popular, tyranny. THE LIFE OP DANIEL O'CONNELL. 35 ^ It was at this time that the famous D'Esterre incident began to develop. O'Connell said in a previous letter, " This letter must close our correspondence." However, D'Esterre wrote again the same day (Friday), but his letter was returned, unread, by James O'Con- nell, who observed, in his note, " My brother did not expect that your next communication would have been made in writing." On Sunday, James O'Connell received a letter from D'Esterre, con- taining disrespectful observations on himself and his brother. He sent Captain O'Mullane to D'Esterre to say that when the affair with Daniel was settled, he would call him to account for his conduct to himself spe- cially. The captain added that Counsellor O'Connell was surprised at not hearing from Mr. D'Esterre in what he conceived the •proper way. D'Esterre seems to have been urged to provoke O'Connell, by some public deed of insult, to become the challenger. Monday passed away. On this day Mr. Lidwill, one of the most redoubtable of Irish duellists, who had remained in Dublin to act as Dan's friend, went out of town. On Tuesday there was great excitement through the city, for the rumor was abroad that D'Esterre was advised to go to the Four Courts to inflict personal chastisement on O'Connell. During these days, it is said, that some of D'Esterre's friends sat in the upper windows of a draper's house, in Grafton street, hired for the pur- pose, to witness their champion flog our hero. On this Tuesday, accord- ing to most accounts, the belligerents failed to come into contact ; but Richard O'Gorman (father of Richard O'G-orman, now of New York) met Mr. D'Esterre, at about three o'clock p. m., on one of the quays, and re- monstrated with him in these terms: "You conceive that you received an offence from Mr. O'Connell ; if so, your course is to demand satisfac- tion. This, I understand, you have not as yet done, but if you are now resolved to do it, I undertake, on forfeiture of having a riddle made of my body, to have Mr. O'Connell on his ground in half an hour." Still no challenge was sent. At four, the general impression was that D'Esterre was parading the streets. O'Connell walked through the city with a couple of friends, but, according to the commonly received account, did not encounter his antagonist. At one moment the crowd around O'Connell was so dense that he had to take refuge from its pressure in 352 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. Tuthill's hotel in Dawson street, and come out through the stable-yard. Even after this, he found himself begirt by an enthusiastic multitude, among whom were at least five hundred gentlemen. " The man jf the people," thus hemmed in on all sides by his admirers, had now to take refuge in a house in Exchequer street. After a time, Judge Day entered to place O'Connell under arrest; he said, however, that he would be satisfied if he had the guarantee of O'Connell's honor that he would proceed no farther in the business. " It is not my duty as a duellist," said our hero, "to be the aggres- sor; I therefore pledge my honor that I shall not be the aggressor — further, however, I must tell you, no human consideration will induce me to go." As Judge Day was retiring, Barney Coile said : " It is very extraor- dinary, Mr. Day, that a ruffian should be allowed to parade the streets of Dublin during two days, in order to assault a worthy man who is the father of six children, and this without any hindrance or interruption from the magistrates." " I hope, sir, you are satisfied," said Judge Day, "that the laws are competent to reach all such offenders." "By my soul," replied Barney Coile, in his broad northern accent, " I am very well satisfied the laws can reach us if we transgress, but during the two days he has been seeking to effect a breach of the peace, the laws have not reached that fellow." The judge retired without making any reply. In Grafton street, where D'Esterre was in a shop surrounded by his friends, James O'Connell is said to have resented a provoking leer on the face of one of the opposite party; but the affair came to nothing. Tuesday passed over without any arrangement for a hostile meeting having been come to. But at nine o'clock on Wednesday morning, Sir Edward Stanley appeared in O'Connell's study. He commenced by seeking from our hero an explanation of D'Esterre's affair. " Sir," said O'Connell, in a decisive tone, " I will hold no conversa- tion with you on that subject. My friend is Major MacNaniara; here is his address. You must apply to him for whatever information you desire." "Oh! but, sir," cried the city knight, eagerly, "I only wish to THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 353 say a few words in explanation." O'Connell made an imperious gesture of refusal, and Sir Edward retired, evidently chagrined. At twelve o'clock Sir Edward called on that great Milesian magnate and duellist, Major MacNainara, of Doolen, in the county Clare. He expressed a hope that the matter might be adjusted by an amicable explanation. "If," said Major MacNamara, "you expect an apology or explana- tion from O'Connell, you must be disappointed ; he has given no offence to D'Esterre, he has done him no injury; therefore I must tell you it will be a waste of words and loss of time to speak further on a topic which has already, and for so long a time, engaged the public attention." " Then, sir, it is my duty to deliver you a message from Mr. D'Esterre to Mr. O'Connell," said Sir Edward, coming to the point at last. "Very well," responded the major; "it is my privilege to appoint a time and place; and I fix on this afternoon at three o'clock for the meet- ing, and Bishop's Court, in the county Kildare, as the place." Sir Edward did not seem to like this celerity of action. He first begged to have the affair postponed till two o'clock next day, then till the next morning, both which requests the major sternly refused to accede to. MacNamara was even inexorable when Stanley asked for a delay till half-past four that evening. Finally, however, he yielded just one brief half hour. So half-past three was the appointed time. Major MacNamara then observed, that as the antagonists had no personal quarrel or animosity, he presumed all "parties would be satis- fied when each gentleman had discharged one pistol." This moderation caused Sir Edward foolishly to assume something very like a tone of bravado: "No, sir," replied he, "that will not do; if they fired five-and-twenty shots each, Mr. D'Esterre will never leave the ground until Mr. O'Connell makes an apology." " Well, then, if blood be your object, blood you shall have, by G — d !" replied the terrible major. O'Connell could not have placed himself in better hands than those of the major, to guide him creditably through an adventure like the present. MacNamara was brave and cool ; moreover, well practiced in affairs of the kind. The many stories preserved of this distinguished representative of some of the highest qualities of the true Irish gentle- 354 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL man of the old school, would make a most entertaining sketch. Per- sonally he was one of the finest-looking men in Ireland — six feet in height, bearing, it was said, considerable resemblance to George the Fourth. The story is told that George once asked him (I believe a great French monarch, a century before, asked some one a similar impertinent question), "Was your mother ever at court?" To which the major responded, to all appearance quite artlessly, "No, your Majesty, but my father was!" The major's courtly manners were in full keeping with his stately presence. There was a slight fall of snow that afternoon as O'Connell and his friend passed out of Dublin city on their way to Bishop's Court. The Dublin Evening Post of the time gives us the following particulars: '• This place is about twelve miles from the city, and constitutes a por- tion of Lord Ponsonby's demesne. The hour appointed was half-past three o'clock. At three precisely — we can speak confidently, for we now speak from personal knowledge — Mr. O'Connell, attended by his second and Surgeon Macklin and a number of friends, was on the ground. About four, Mr. D'Esterre, attended only by Surgeon Peele, Sir Edward Stanley (his second), Mr. Piers and a Mr. D'Esterre of Limerick, ap- peared. There was some conversation between the seconds as to posi- tion, mode of fire, etc., which, added to other sources of delay, occupied forty minutes." Gradually, a considerable crowd of silent, anxious spectators covered the ground. Sir Edward Stanley expressed some apprehension as to the safety of himself and D'Esterre, should the duel prove fatal to O'Con- nell. He even declared himself convinced that D'Esterre could not fight in that place on that day, without danger to his friends. Here a relation of the Liberator, named Connell O'Connell, inter- posed : "This affair has been long the subject of public conversation, and your friend has been the aggressor; if you now quit the ground without fighting, I must consider you as cowards and ruffians; and as to you. Sir Edward, I shall call on you personally to make reparation for an additional insult." This put an end to Sir Edward's hesitation. Pistols were prepared and preliminaries settled. The two seconds tossed up a coin for choice of ground, which Major MacNamara won. That gentleman ably dis- THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL, charged all the offices of a skilful second. He took care to remove from O'Connell's neck a white cravat and to substitute a black one. He like- wise removed the large bunch of watch-seals which, in accordance with the fashion of the day, dangled from our hero's watch-fob. He was evidently on the alert to leave as few conspicuous objects as possible that might attract the eye and guide the aim of his friend's adversary. Sir Edward Stanley was clearly no match for Major MacNamara in cool- ness and forethought. This gave our hero a certain advantage over his antagonist. While these preliminaries were being settled, the unfortu- nate D'Esterre took occasion to say that his quarrel with Mr. O'Connell was not of a religious nature ; he had no animosity whatsoever to the Cath- olics or their leaders. Both duellists showed the utmost coolness and cour- age. The Evening Post says: "It would be injustice to Mr. D'Esterre, whatever opinion we may have of the part he espoused, or rather the party who stimulated him to this act, to deny that he seemed perfectly self-possessed." Of our hero the same journal observes: "As to Mr. O'Connell, we never saw him in better spirits or more composed ; indeed, his cheerfulness was the astonishment of every spectator." O'Connell, having recognized his tailor, Jeremiah McCarthy of Dawson street, among the spectators, saluted him gayly, and said, with an air of jocularity, "Well, Jerry, I never missed you at an aggregate meeting." The fatal moment was fast approaching. O'Connell's friends stood there in breathless anxiety. Many of them were, like himself, fine, im- posing-looking men. The great duellist George Lidwill seems to have got back to Dublin, for he is said to have been present ; he had the tall form of a Tipperary man. Counsellor Richard Nugent Bennett, of fair stature also, loaded the pistols for O'Connell. He had lent our hero these pistols for the occasion. They had on their stocks the notches of former duels; two men had been already killed with them. Subse- quently they became the property of William Sterne Hart of Fitzwilliam Square, a warm friend of O'Connell's. I may observe that Lidwell and Bennett, like MacNamara, were Protestants. The most conspicuous of O'Connell's Catholic friends present was Nicholas Purcell O'Gorman, a man of powerful frame, and equally ready to shoot a gentleman with a pistol or to drive a mob before him with a shillelah. Full of jest and gayety, these bright and stalwart men had come to the field ; they were 356 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. now, however, hushed in grim and painful suspense. Another anxious individual was waiting in a cottage nigh-hand to hear the result — a northern priest named O'Mullane. His devotion to O'Connell had caused him to follow him afar off, that, in case of the worst, he might be at hand to administer to our hero the rites of the Catholic Church. And now, at about forty minutes past four o'clock, the two antago- nists stand on the ground allotted to each. Though so many manly forms stood round, O'Connell, on that occasion, might well command the gazer's admiration. He was then, indeed, in his golden prime — forty years of age, his figure not so stout as it afterwards became. His cos- tume showed his person to advantage. He wore a broad-tailed body- coat, and his trowsers were stuffed into his hessian-boots tasselled in ■front. In short, he looked his best, though his dress was slightly soiled with mire. In crossing a ditch he had slipped and fallen, an incident which, to one of the ancjents, might have seemed of evil omen ; but he had risen in an instant, and here he now stood waiting for the moment to fire and to be fired at. If D'Esterre wanted the commanding presence of O'Connell, still (lie daring and energy stamped on his resolute face and visible in his light, active, well-knit form, marked him out as a truly formidable antagonist to be obliged to meet in mortal encounter. When it had been finally agreed to by the seconds that the oppo- nents were to take their ground with a case of pistols each, to use as they might think proper, — when in short all was ready for action, Sir Edward Stanley addressed Major MacNamara thus: "Well, sir, when each lias discharged his case of pistols, 1 hojie the affair will be considered as terminated, and that we leave the ground." "Sir," replied Major MacNamara, "you may, of course, take your friend from the ground when you please. You, sir, an; the challenger, and you may retire from the ground whenever you think proper; but I shall not enter into any such condition as you propose. However, it is probable that there may be no occasion to discharge the whole of a ca>e of pistols'' These final words were ominous, or rather prophetic. I shall give the story of the exchange of shots chiefly in the words of the Dublin Evening Post: "The friends of both parties retired, and the combatants, having a pistol in each hand, with directions to (lis- THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 357 charge them at their discretion, prepared to fire. They levelled, and before the lapse of a second both shots were heard. Mr. D'Esterre was first, and missed." His bullet struck the ground. Mechanically, or influenced by some motive hardly to be guessed at now, the moment he fired he bent his right knee and wheeled away a little, apparently ex- posing his right side or even, in some degree, his back to his opponent. " Mr. O'Connell's shot followed instantaneously, and took effect in the groin of his antagonist, about an inch below the hip. Mr. D'Esterre, of course, fell, and both the surgeons hastened to him. They found that the ball had traversed the hip, passed through the bladder, and possibly touched the spine. It could not be found. There was an immense effusion of blood. All parties prepared to move towards home, and arrived in town before eight o'clock. We were extremely glad to per- ceive that Major MacNamara and many respectable gentlemen assisted in procuring the best accommodation for the wounded man. They sym- pathized in his sufferings, and expressed themselves to Sir Edward Stanley as extremely well pleased that a transaction, which they consid- ered most uncalled for, had not terminated in the death of D'Esterre. We need not describe the emotions which burst forth along the road and through the town when it was ascertained that Mr. O'Connell was safe." AW authorities seem to agree that the conduct of both gentlemen on the ground was perfectly brave and honorable. O'Connell, too, showed his kindness of heart. To his medical attendant he had said anxiously, before taking his ground, " Should any fatality happen to my opponent, I entreat you to consider him as your patient ; treat him with all the care you would devote to me." Fagan, in his Life of O'Connell, tells us : " It was reported in Dublin that Mr. O'Connell was shot; and a party of dragoons were despatched from Dublin for the protection of Mr. D'Esterre. On their way, the officer by whom they Avere commanded met, on its return, the carriage containing Mr. O'Connell and his brother. The officer called on the postillions to stop ; whereupon Mr. James O'Connell pulled down the window. The officer, addressing him, asked if they had been present at the duel ; to which he replied in the affirmative. The officer then said. ' Is it true Mr. O'Connell has been shot?' Mr. James O'Connell replied, 'No; the reverse is the fact; Mr. D'Esterre has unfortunately fallen.' 358 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNEL^. The announcement had a visible effect upon the military; they were not prepared for the intelligence, and something like consternation was ex- hibited. The carriage was allowed to proceed, the military party being evidently not aware who were its occupants. "When D'Esterre fell, the spectators on the field could not refrain giving expression to their feelings — they actually shouted ; and a young collegian who was present, and who is now an excellent, exemplary Prot- estant clergyman, was so carried away by the general feeling as to fling up his hat in the air and shout, 'Huzza for O'Connell!' Very different was the conduct of the three occupants of O'Conncll's carriage. They displayed no exultation. The moment D'Esterre fell they went off; and though the place of meeting was near Naas, they were close to Dublin before a single word was exchanged between them." [In what folloivs we find a discrejxmcy between Fagan's statement mid that of the " Post," already given, to the effect that, on D' Estcrre 1 s fail, "both surgeons hastened to him" mid found the course of the ball.) "At last O'Connell broke the silence, sav- ing: 'I fear he is dead, he fell so suddenly. Where do you think lie was hit?' ' In the head, 1 think,' said his medical friend. 'That can- not be — 1 aimed low; the ball must have entered Dear the thigh.' This will be considered a remarkable observation, when it is recollected where, as was subsequently found, the wound was intlictcd. It shows the per- fect coolness and humanity of O'Connell. Being one of the surest shots that ever fired a pistol, he could have hit his antagonist where he pleased; but his object was merely, in self-defence, to wound him in no mortal part, and he aimed low with that intention." The oil-lamps, that dimly lit the streets of Dublin in those days, threw their dull gleams on the faces of an excited populace thai night Although a light fall of snow was on the ground, the public ways swarmed with crowds anxiously discussing the conflicting statements all through the night. The sensation that stirred the whole city was wonderful. Probably no event has moved Dublin so deej.lv since. All were interested one way or the other. At first the suspense was tortur- ing. When sure intelligence of O'Connelbs safety arrived, the trans- ports of the masses were unbounded. Still, there were vaiying accounts of different points connected with the tragedy, so that the general excite- ment showed no signs of quickly subsiding. Bonfires blazed in several THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 359 streets. It was plain that if unhappy D'Esterre, in the earlier stages of the quarrel, had succeeded in inflicting any absolute personal violence on O'Connell, the most serious disturbances would have arisen in the city. But D'Esterre was now in mortal agony. It is said that, exultant as the people were, they tried to restrain the demonstrations of their delight in pity for that unfortunate victim of his own rashness and unbridled passions. He, in the mean time, was past all hope — his life rapidly ebbing away. As it was impossible to staunch the wound, he perished on the second day after the duel from loss of blood. As he lay on his death- bed, pale and sinking, his last feebly-uttered words confessed that O'Connell was free from all blame in the unhappy transaction. "While his widow, young and beautiful, was in her first, fresh agony of grief, the bailiffs entered that abode of misery. His house, his furniture, nay, it is said, his corpse even, were seized in execution. He was hastily buried that very night by the feeble light of lanterns. Such was the melancholy fate of D'Esterre. A deceased brother of John Cornelius O'Callaghan, in a short biography of O'Connell written some time before '48, makes the following curious reflection upon his character and destiny: "His contest with O'Connell has rescued D'Esterre's name from that miserable obscurity which is the general fate of most human beings. D'Esterre was a brave man gone astray. Were Ireland a nation, like those once despicable countries which raised themselves to that state, such as the United Provinces of Holland or the United States of America — had Ireland a navy like these, had D'Esterre commanded a ship with a crew of Irish lads in that navy, we would place him alongside a ship of any other nation, far or near, and lay two to one he would soon make her strike her flag. But such was not his fate. He served with thousands of forgotten Irishmen as an officer in the English navy." - This duelling adventure of O'Connell's added immensely to his popu- larity. Indeed, it would be difficult to find a more popular man any- where than he was at this period. His success in this encounter struck a terror, also, into the numerous unscrupulous enemies whom his bold denunciations of men and abuses had raised up against him. He was now feared as a man of cool intrepidity, who was ready to back his 360 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. words with the pistol, and who moreover appeared to be an unerring shot. I shall make some further quotations from Fagan's "Life of O'Con- nell" to complete the narrative of this singular episode in our hero's life: " In some respects the accounts we have given from the papers differ from the version communicated to us, as the statement of one who had been present during the whole transaction. For instance, the papers say that the parties did not meet in the streets. The circumstances detailed to us do not justify that statement. It appears that, after the correspondence between the parties, Mr. O'Connell was attending his professional duties at the Four Courts, and was in the act of addressing the judges in some case or other, when his brother came in and inti- mated to him that Mr. D'Esterre was on the quay opposite the Courts, with a whip in his hand, waiting to meet him. Mr. O'Connell requested Lis In-other to wait until he had concluded his observations, and he then asked liim where D'Esterre was, in order that he might proceed in that direction. Having been informed, he left the court, and meeting D'Esterre, the latter lifted his whip and shook it over Mr. O'Connell's head. A collision was about to ensue, when the bystanders interfered, and Mr. D'Esterre was forced into a shop, in order to avoid the indigna- tion of the crowd. . . . "The excitement in Dublin, when the result was known, cannot be described, and, indeed, is scarcely to be credited by those who were not then in the metropolis. Over seven hundred gentlemen left their cards at Mi'. O'Connell's the day after the occurrence. Great commiseration was felt for D'Esterre's family; but it was considered that he himself lost his life foolishly. He was not called on to be the corporate cham- pion. We may add, that he was an officer in the navy and an eccentric character. He at one time played off rather a serious joke upon his friends, who resided near Cork. He wrote to them from abroad that he was sentenced to be hanged for mutiny, and implored of them to use every interest to save him Lord Shannon interested himself in the affair, and the greatest trouble was taken to obtain a pardon. But it turned out to be a hoax practised by D'Esterre when under the influence of the jolly god. Knowing his character, many even of opposite poli- THOMAS MOORE. THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 361 tics, notwithstanding the party spirit that then prevailed, regretted the issue the unfortunate gentleman provoked. " When the carriage reached O'Connell's residence in Merrion Square, he requested his brother to go immediately to Dr. Murray, the Catholic coadjutor archbishop, to communicate to his lordship the melancholy result, and say how deeply he deplored the occurrence. ' Heaven be praised !' exclaimed his lordship, thinking for the moment only of the Liberator's escape ; ' Ireland is safe ;' so highly and prophetically did he even then regard the life and future services of 0'Connell. On his return from Dr. Murray's, Mr. James O'Connell was requested by his brother to retain Mr. Richard Pennefather, now Baron Pennefather, to defend him in case of need. The precaution was, however, unnecessary, as will appear from the subjoined letter which, the day after the death of D'Esterre, Mr. O'Connell received from Sir Edward Stanley, the friend of the deceased : " ' Royal Barracks, 4th February, 1815. Sir : — Lest your professional avocations should be interrupted by an apprehension of any proceeding being in contemplation in consequence of the late melancholy event, I have the honor to inform you that there is not the most distant intention of any prosecution whatever, on the part of the family or friends of the late Mr. D'Esterre. I have the honor to be, sir, your most obedient, humble servant, Edward Stanley.' "To this Mr. O'Connell returned the following reply: '" Merrion Square, 5th February, 1815. Sir: — I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of yesterday, and I beg of you to accept my sincere thanks for your very polite and considerate attention. It is to me a mournful consolation to meet such generous sentiments from those who must be afflicted at the late unhappy event. But, believe me, my regret at that event is most sincere and unaffected ; and if I know my own heart, I can, with the strictest truth, assert that no person can feel for the loss society has sustained in the death of Mr. D'Esterre with more deep and lasting sorrow than I do. Allow me again to thank you, sir, for the courtesy of your letter — a courtesy quite consistent with the gentlemanly demeanor of your entire conduct in this melancholy transaction. I have the honor to be, sir, your most obedient, humble servant, Daniel O'Connell.' 3(52 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. " Thus terminated an affair which made afterwards so deep an im- pression on O'Connell's mind, and influenced in so decided a manner his future career. It created a lasting and universal sensation, and the details at this day will be read with the deepest interest. It is a fact known to many that O'Connell offered to secure a handsome annual provision for Mr. D'Esterre's widow. Indeed, his words were, 'to share his income with her.' But the offer was refused. He acted, however, subsequently, in the noblest manner to a daughter of Mr. D'Esterre's — a most accomplished lady, whose circumstances were not affluent. She was allowed by him an annuity to the day of his death ; and to her mother he was ever ready to afford any kindness in his power. A short time previous to an assizes at Cork, having been specially retained to go another circuit, pressing letters were written to him in order to induce him to come down to Cork. Some important cases were to be tried there, and his professional assistance was earnestly required. He declined attending, but, receiving a letter from the late Rev. T. England, P. P., Passage, stating that the plaintiff in one of those cases was the widow of Mr. D'Esterre, and that to her and her children a favorable result was of the last importance, he threw up his special briefs, his large retain- ing fees, and, proceeding to Cork, acted on her behalf and succeeded in obtaining a verdict." The old saying, " It is an ill wind that blows nobody good," was sin- gularly verified on this occasion. At the time of the duel, term was going on, and Michael 0*Loghlen (afterwards Sir Michael and master of the rolls, the first Catholic judge appointed after emancipation) was engaged in a most important case in the King's Bench with O'Connell. When it came on, the court echoed a dozen times to the cry, "Call Daniel O'Connell, Esq." But Daniel O'Connell made no reply — was nowhere to be found. O'Loghlen told the court that his senior happened to be engaged in a very unfortunate affair which prevented his ap- pearance there on that day. But the judges would not listen to his request for a postponement. He had to take O'Connell's place and proceed. Reluctantly and diffidently, he entered the lists againsl some of the ablest opponents the bar could produce. Gradually he gained courage. His modesty and youthful appearance appealed strongly to the court in his favor. The bench encouraged him. His talents sus- THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 363 tained him and astonished all present. The case lasted for several days. O'Connell was still absent. The young lawyer had the opportunity of making a reply, in which he surpassed his first effort. In short, he laid the foundation of his subsequent fortunes. "We may add, in dismissing this transaction," says Fagan, "that Mr. D'Esterre, after he left the navy, . . . lived on the Bachelors' Walk, Dublin, and on the way to the Four Courts it was necessary to pass his house. For years after the fatal encounter, it was observed that when- ever O'Connell passed the house he always lifted his hat, but not in a manner to attract public observation ; and his lips were seen to move as if in silent prayer. This continued for several years." The liberal press were furious in their attacks on Lord Whitworth, the viceroy, and his government, for their guilty connivance in the course of this tragic affair. The Evening Post taunted the authorities : " Major Sirr would have been better employed in putting Mr. D'Esterre under arrest than in singing psalms. . . . Alderman Bradley King, who is the father of a fine family, would employ himself more worthily in taking measures to prevent two fathers from meeting in mortal combat, than in exhorting a fiery spirit to forbear. . . . Upon the heads of the corporation and the magistracy the blood of Mr. D'Esterre lies, and upon them his young widow and his infant offspring must invoke the vindic- tive justice which the laws of England can so well inflict. Is this ma- lignant ? If it be, the magistrates of Dublin have the remedy in their own hands. They are forty in number. They make the juries. We defy them!" The Sentinel tries to criminate the lord-lieutenant directly in a series of bitter letters: "The two chief features in this transaction are its ex- traordinary publicity and delay. . . . Had Mr. O'Connell been assailed in the street, there was every appearance that confusion and violence would be the result. Had he been killed or wounded in the field, many duels would have been the consequence. . . . Were all the members of our system of distributive justice ignorant of that which everybody knew? . . . Shall I be told that measures were taken to restrain O'Con- nell? It is true; and that exertion still proves that our distributors of justice had knowledge of the transaction. But when they did proceed to restrain the parties, why not restrain both ? . . . My lord, the friends 364 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL, and relatives of Mr. D'Esterre told him that he had no cause of quarrel with Mr. O'Connell." The writer asks, Why was Mr. D'Esterre buried suddenly in the dead of night, without a coroner's inquest? The con- duct of a good government should not be liable to suspicion. "I was, therefore"' says the writer, "very sorry to understand that one of your household, Sir Charles Vernon, your chamberlain, placed himself in a situation in which he might see the violence promised to be inflicted by the deceased on Mr. O'Connell. . . . Sir Charles should have hurried from the scene; he should have informed your lordship that the chief Agitator was threatened with violence by a member of the corporation, that the streets were filled with crowds in a very violent state of agita- tion, and that, to the observation of any man of sense, personal or cor- poral mischief must be the result," It was in vain that the abashed faction of the government would fain have let the ugly business resl in silence. They appealed, with piteous hypocrisy, to the Catholics to spare the feelings of the living by abstaining from all further allusion to D'Esterre. Vain, however, were their appeals, for the scandal clung to them. Lord Whitworth was recalled from his viceroyalty a tew days after the death of D'Esterre. He left Ireland a more discontented land even than he found it. He returned to England to find equal discontent and greater disorders prevailing there. This year, 1815, was peculiarly trying to the patience and tempei of O'Connell. Many things, indeed, combined to irritate him. Govern- ment, while abstaining from all prosecution of himself, prosecuted the printers who published his speeches. Newspaper proprietors began to fear to give reports of what he said. The Freeman's Journal was prose- cuted for a report of a speech which he delivered in Cork, and which brought odium on the Catholic cause and shocked many of its partisans. O'Connell maintained that the Freeman's report of this invective against the government and the Orangemen was exaggerated. For this dis- avowal of the report he was denounced as "a heartless, hollow, unprin- cipled spouter." No doubt, it also vexed him to see the usual Orange disturbances and acts of insults to Catholics taking place, this year, both in Dublin and other parts of the island. One Bennett was em- ployed to assail him in a pamphlet; also, the eccentric Dr. Brennan, in THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 365 his Milesian Magazine, lampooned him in some despicable doggerel verses : " The Counsellor's tall, and he's big to be sure ; As in Kerry they'd say, he's the full of the door ; He's a Captain Rock pleader (no dodger or dadger), Who justice lugs out as a bulldog a badger." But this specimen will suffice. Brennan also compared him to Dan Donnelly the pugilist, and asserted that Donnelly was the better man. All these and other annoyances, great and small, tended to make our hero's temper more than ordinarily irritable. Besides, as I have already said, the condition of the cause was unusually depressed ; though, even after the suppression of the Board, the Catholics had retained spirit enough to show their gratitude to their Protestant supporters, by giving them a splendid banquet, which cost £3000, and at which there were seven hundred guests. At the same time the Ascendency journals were busy opening their throats in the foulest vituperation of the Catholics and their cause. O'Connell was engaged in another singular affair of honor in this same year (1815), which, however, terminated less fatally than the duel with unhappy D'Esterre. Indeed, in this second affair there is, perhaps, a considerable element of the ridiculous. It occurred in this way: The petition for Catholic emancipation, got ready by the energy of O'Connell to show that he was not vanquished by the suppression of the Board, signed by ten thousand Catholics, and presented by Sir John Parnell in the Commons, was, in spite of many votes in favor of it, rejected by a large majority. In the debate on the 30th of May, Secre- tary Peel spoke against the petition and made an attack on our hero, quoting several passages from his speeches and commenting on them severely. In the speech delivered by our hero on the 29th of August, to which I have already referred, he retaliated on Peel. After calling him the worthy champion of Orangeism, he said: "All I shall say of him, by way of parenthesis, is, that I am told he has in my absence, and in a place where he was privileged from any account, grossly traduced me. I said, at the last meeting, in the presence of the note-takers of the police, who are paid by him, that he was too prudent to attack me in 366 THE LIFE "OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. my presence. I see the same police-informers here now, and I author- ize them carefully to report these my words, that Mr. Peel would not dare, in my presence, or in any place where he was liable to persona account, use a single expression derogatory to my interest or my honor. And now I have done with the man, who is just fit to be nothing but the champion of Orangeism. I have done with him, perhaps for ever." I cannot spare space to give quite as minute an account of this somewhat confused and intricate affair between our hero and Peel as I have given of the duel between him and D'Esterre. Sir Charles Saxton, on the part of Peel, called on O'Connell for an explanation of his words. Peel apparently disavowed having said any- thing offensive to O'Connell in Parliament ; at the same time, anything he saw in the reports of his speeches he " unequivocally avowed and held himself responsible for." Sir Charles Saxton having stated this, O'Connell said : " In that case, I consider it incumbent on me to send a friend to Eobert Peel." And again: "Any friend who should advise me not to do so would disappoint my hopes and wishes." Lidwill, O'ConneU's friend, thought that it was Peel should send the message. He considered O'Connell "the aggressor," and that his send- ing a hostile message to Peel would be "an unjustifiable prodigality of his own life and a wanton aggression on that of another." He even "candidly acknowledged to Saxton that he had seen no report which could justify Mr. O'ConneU's attack on Peel." Next day Lidwill waited at his hotel for Saxton till one. The latter called after he had gone out, and left a note. On returning and reading Saxton's note, Lidwill at once wrote to O'Connell that he expected Sir Charles every minute, that he would appoint "an immediate hour" for the hostile meeting, and "the first field near Celbridge, in the county Kildare," as the place. To this O'Connell promptly replied : " Do just as you please," etc. What was O'ConneU's surprise to read in the next day's (Saturday's) Correspo?ident a letter, signed Charles Saxton, detailing the whole affair ! He at once writes a sharp letter to the Freeman, denouncing "the paltry trick" of getting "one days talking at him" by the publication on Sat- urday. He impeaches the accuracy of Saxton's statement. Uv ends his hasty letter thus: " For the rest, I leave the case to the Irish public. I have disavowed nothing. I have retracted nothing. I have refused THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 367 the gentlemen nothing. I have only to regret that they have ultimately preferred a paper war." This stung to rage the ordinarily cold nature of Peel. He lost no time in sending a hostile message to O'Connell by Colonel Brown. And now the comedy commences. Mrs. O'Connell, seeing O'Connell called from the dinner-table to a mysterious stranger, who, she found from the servant, was an official from the Castle, was seized with sudden terror for her husband's life. She privately sent to the sheriff, who came that night and took our hero into custody. Here was an interruption to the progress of the melodrama; and, to make matters worse, Lidwill, too, was put under arrest through the skilful management of his daughter. O'Connell writes a note of explanation to Colonel Brown, expressing especial vexation at the circumstance of the arrest having taken place after he had gone to bed on the night of the 4th, at the instance of Mrs. O'Connell. However, he will make arrangements for the fight as soon as possible. At two o'clock that day (the 5th), as soon as our hero had got away from the chief-justice, Richard Newton Bennett called on Colonel Brown. They drew up an agreement that, as O'Connell "was prevented by his recognizance" from giving Peel a meeting in the United Kingdom, he should meet him "at the most convenient part of Europe," and would make the time "convenient to Mr. Peel at any reasonable distance." Ostend was the place of rendezvous appointed — the parties, as they should arrive, to leave their addresses at the post-office; the parties, also, on Colonel Brown's suggestion, to be bound to secresy as far as convenient. The agreement was signed by Brown and Bennett. This day was the 5th. O'Connell and Lidwill were bound in heavy penalties to keep the peace. O'Connell's recognizance was £10,000; while Peel and Saxton were lucky enough to escape any such restriction. The sheriff stated, indeed, that he had repaired to the secretary's lodge, in the Phoenix Park, with the view to arrest Peel, but that neither that gentleman nor Saxton could be found. The object of seeking to arrest Saxton was to prevent him from righting Lidwill at Calais. On this 5th day of September, Saxton published a statement, in which he tried to prove the veracity of his published account of the interviews of him- self and his second, Mr. Dickinson, with Mr. Lidwill. That gentleman 368 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. replied in a letter "to the people of Ireland," which concluded thus: "I go to the Continent in your quarrel, for I have none of my own. I go under the heart-rending circumstance of being obliged to put to the test the fortitude of a dearly-beloved and affectionate child, in a delicate state of health, and whose only surviving parent I am, by confiding to her the truth to save the torture of doubt ; but I go on behalf of a coun- try in which I drew my first breath ; I go for a people the more endeared to me by their misfortunes, and for a cause to which my last words shall bear evidence of my fidelity. I feel no uneasiness for my character in my absence. Wherever I may be, yours shall never be tarnished in my person." This affair between two English statesmen on the one side and two Irish popular champions, who were by many suspected of being secretly rebels, on the other, arrayed in fierce hostility the roused-up feelings of the Irish, who cheered on O'Connell and Lidwill, against those of the English people and the Ascendency faction in Ireland, who sympathized with Peel and Saxton. The Irish patriotic journals endeav- ored to give the affair the dignity of a national quarrel; those of the opposite party tried to lower it to the ordinary level of a mere personal dispute. At all events, it was the subject of universal discussion and wrangling for the time. Some maintained that O'Connell would equally forfeit his bail by lighting a duel on the Continent or in the British isles. Expresses were sent by the authorities to Calais, Dieppe and Ostein!, requesting the foreign magistrates to arrest and send back to England certain British subjects, who had, it was rumored, gone over to the Con- tinent to fight duels. On the 6th, Peel, brown, Diekenson and Saxton sailed from Dublin for England. On the 18th, Bennett writes to Brown, from London, to say that O'Connell and he are getting their passports and shall proceed without delay. But the English police were on the alert. One hundred are said to have been sent to the French ports opposite the shores of England. Spe- cial despatches from the Home Ol'tice ordered all the mayors to be on the watch to seize O'Connell and Lidwill, whose persons were fully deseribed. Mr. Cuddihe, a Dublin citizen, who bore a remarkable likeness to O'Con- nell, and who also, oddly enough, carried on the provision business on Bachelors' Walk, Dublin, in the very house that had been owned by the THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 369 unfortunate D'Esterre, was arrested for Dan. In Calais, the English police burst into the apartment of another gentleman, who had a look of our hero. On Tuesday morning, the 19th of September, at four o'clock, a swarm of policemen filled the apartments of Holyland's Hotel, in the Strand, where the great Agitator was stopping, and succeeded in cap- turing him just as he was about to step into his chaise for Dover. They said that old Sir Robert Peel, the secretary's father, had promised them fifty guineas a man, if they should succeed in capturing the formidable Irish chieftain. No wonder that they were in a fierce state of delight. Exulting over their exploit, forty picked constables at once conveyed our hero in a coach to Bow Street. He was subsequently bound in recognizances in the King's Bench — himself in £5000, and two sureties in £2500 each — to appear before the court when called on. Bennett arrived at Ostend on the 22d. He at once wrote to Brown, informing him of O'Connell's arrest and asking him to make an appoint- ment. A Dublin journal of the day insists that the police-magistrates could as easily have secured Peel and Saxton, who were well known in every town through which they passed, as strangers, like Lid will and O'Con- nell, endeavoring to conceal themselves. This paper insists that it was "a regularly-organized plan to tarnish the honor of one party and ex- hibit the others as men of the most ardent courage." It was "an effort to bolster up the character of a man whom it was intended to preserve." A Mr. Becket, too, "the friend and associate and companion in office of Mr. Peel," is "the informer" who causes O'Connell to be arrested, "while he suffers his friend and colleague, Mr. Peel, to pass to France without making any affidavit to justify or obtain an arrest." Lidwill arrived in Dublin on the 28th, and O'Connell on the 29th by the Holyhead packet. A short time afterwards, a gentleman on horseback, who refused to dismount, announced to Sir Charles Saxton, at the Lodge in the Park, that his kinsman, George Lidwill, awaited him in Calais, telling Sir Charles, at the same time, that his own name was Michael Lidwill. Sir Charles began to talk in a rambling style, on irrelevant topics. "My commission," said Michael Lidwill, interrupting him, "terminates with the delivery of the message I have just commu- nicated to you." "In that case," replied Sir Charles, "I shall wait 370 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. immediately on Mr. Lidwill at Calais." The barojrft set out that very evening. George Lidwill and he met at Calais. Lidwill coolly received his fire, and then said : " Towards you, sir, I never felt any resentment — I never considered this as a quarrel of my own. Any irritation which my arrest excited in my mind has long since been obliterated. God forbid I should ever retain resentment for half the period that has elapsed since my arrest. I respect too sincerely those feelings I wit- nessed in your anxious parent — feelings which my situation enables me to understand — to raise my arm against the object of her solicitude. I think it necessary to give these reasons for my conduct, lest it might be imputed to a conviction in my own mind that I was in error in my former proceedings. Against any such conclusion I decidedly protest." Lidwill, having thus spoken, fired in the air; he then shook hands with Sir Charles, and so the affair ended. I may remark, before passing to other topics, that to the end of O'Connell's life feelings of enmity sub- sisted between him and Peel. During the three or four years that followed 1815, the Catholic cause seemed to be in a completely prostrate condition. Repression was the order of the day. Peel and his twenty-five thousand Peelers apparently had it all their own way. Still, O'Connell, from time to time, made efforts to keep the spirit of freedom alive in the people's hearts. The Association, in February, 1816, had spurned the "securities" petition got up by the Trimleston clique. In February, 1817, we find O'Connell again in collision with the vetoists. This "miserable coterie" an- nounced that they would hold a "hugger-mugger" meeting, on the 4th of that month, at 50 Eccles street, and that, while they adhered to the principle of their petition of the previous year, they would evince, by their intended measure, "a desire that the general feeling of the Roman Catholic body mag, as far as j)ossible, be attended toy This amusing dis- play of impudence on the part of the Seceders provoked O'Connell and other leaders of the popular section to attend and upset the "hole-and- corner" proceedings. In vain were they stopped in the hall by a servant boy; in vain Lord Southwell referred to a notice in the hall, confining the meeting to those who, the year before, had sent the petition to Mr. Grattan, and "hoped gentlemen would withdraw." But, "as the public advertisement had announced no such reservation, they refused to l>e THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 371 bound by this private arrangement." Nicholas Mahon opened fire on the astounded little clique, by telling them that he was there " in the assertion of his right as a Catholic, to attend to what was his individual concern, as well as that of the body at large, and therefore would remain." Neither would O'Connell withdraw. He "entirely denied the right of. any portion of the Catholic body to form themselves into a privileged class, or an Orange lodge, out of which they could exclude any other Catholic looking for emancipation." Besides, he said, he had come in a spirit of conciliation and to make propositions for union. After some consultation, a meeting was held ; but O'Connell's overtures failed to produce the desired harmony of action. His advances were rejected. He and his friends then withdrew; but, ere retiring, he told them that he had taken away "all color or shadow of excuse" from their opposition, "that they only sought for dissension and distraction," that their ultimate object was "to increase the corrupt influence of the min- istry, at the expense of the religion and liberty of Ireland." Finally, he said, "their puny efforts for a veto were poor and impotent." Nevertheless, a "conciliating committee" of Catholics was formed, which issued a circular proposing, as an arrangement that ought to sat- isfy all parties, a plan for the domestic nomination of bishops. This plan resembles the system actually prevailing in Ireland, whereby, as John O'Connell says, "the Catholic bishops of Ireland are selected by the pope out of a list or lists forwarded to him from the prelates of the province and the clergy of the vacant diocese." Dr. Kernan, bishop of Clogher, had recently been elected in this way. About this period, a letter from Rome, written by the Rev. Richard Hayes, stated that the hopes of the vetoistical party at Rome, with Cardinal Gonsalvi at their head, had been revived by the coming of "young Wyse, late of Waterford, and a Counsellor Ball;" that "these youths had repeated to the cardinal, to the pope, to Cardinal Litta and other officials that 'all the property, education and respectability of the Catholics of Ireland were favorable to the veto ; that the clergy were secretly inclined to it, but were over ruled by the mob,' etc. etc. ... It is true that Cardinal Litta now abhors the veto more, if possible, than any Catholics in Ireland ; and the pope is resolved to take no step without his advice; yet you may judge of the intrigue, when the miserable farce of these silly boys is 372 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. given the importance of a regular diplomatic mission." Father Hayes then complains of the interruption of his correspondence with Ireland in its passage through different countries. ""What a combination," he exclaims, "of misfortunes — Italian villainy, French tyranny, British corruption, vetoistical calumny, and, more than all, apparent Irish neglect" — have thrown their affairs into the utmost danger. Father Hayes concludes by asking to have Dr. Dromgoole and the Rev. Richard McAuley sent to him as coadjutors. This letter was considered at an aggregate meeting, held on March the 6th ; strong resolutions against the veto were passed. On this occasion we find Counsellor Stephen Woulfe making a very honorable retractation of his own opinions in favor of the veto, and sharply censuring the conduct of the Seceders. O'Con- nell explains away a mistake of Mr. Woulfe's: "Domestic nomination was not a new suggestion, but a return to the ancient practice of the Catholic Church." Letters were addressed to Mr. Grattan, Lord Donoughmore and Sir Henry Parnell, explaining the spirit of the resolutions. Grattan simply wrote an acknowledgment of the receipt of that sent to him; but Lord Donoughmore expressed entire "concurrence with the sentiments of the majority of the Irish nation," and "abhorrence of any arrangement" that would increase the British ministers' power of corruption. Sir Henry Parnell's reply was also satisfactory. Subsequently, a motion was made in the House of Commons to take into consideration the Cath- olic claims. In the debate that followed, the views of the Catholics with regard to the veto and its substitute, "domestic nomination," were ex- plained; but, as the war was now at an end, Irish affairs were of second- ary interest to the British legislature; and so the motion was negatived. A respectful address, forwarded by the Catholics to their bishops, was responded to with renewed pledges against the vexatious veto. I may as well briefly record the fact, that in the January of this year, 1817, O'Connell gave all the aid in his power to an abortive attempt to establish a society of "Friends of Reform in Parliament." This society was composed of Protestants and Catholics. Though its members were but few and its existence brief (a few meetings and dinners took place), John O'Connell claims for it the merit of being the first body, since the Union, in which Irishmen of different creeds "associated on something like terms of equality." THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 373 I can only glance in the most cursory manner at several other inci- dents that occurred between the year 1815 and the close of 1820. In the year 1816, iEneas McDonnell, who had been editor of the Cork Mer- cantile Chronicle, was prosecuted for an article denouncing the malad- ministration of justice. Saurin and O'Connell were again pitted against each other in this case. O'Connell triumphed so far as to procure a postponement of the trial; but finally McDonnell was fined £100 and imprisoned for six months. That bloodhound pursuer of journalists, Saurin, denounced the liberal press, particularly the Dublin Chronicle, praised the Evening Post for its estrangement from the Catholic move- ment, called the Catholic body a "dark confederacy" and raved about "the last effort of expiring Jacobinism." Norbury, too, at the special commission held in Tipperary in January, which cost the public £10,000, had been furious against the Dublin Chronicle for its just attacks on the public prosecutions. When foolish old Judge Day, in passing sentence on McDonnell, assailed him for his bold questioning of the purity of the administration of justice and his denunciation of the special commis- sion, McDonnell resolutely interrupted him and said : " There is not a particle of evidence to support your imputations. . . . Yes, my lords, you have charged me with encouraging assassination ; . . . that charge is wholly unfounded. ... I am at least as incapable of entertaining such a disposition as the individual who has imputed it to me." On the 4th of December, 1817, O'Connell moved "for a committee to draw up a disavowal of the very dangerous and uncharitable doctrines contained in certain notes to the Ehemish Testament." They should record, he said, their "abhorrence of the bigoted and intolerant doctrines promulgated in that work. . . . The notes were of English growth." He reminded the meeting that the work was denounced by Dr. Troy. The last business of the Catholics in 1817 was to forward their remon- strance to the court of Rome and to receive the report of the Rev. Richard Hayes. "In June, 1818," says John O'Connell, "an answer was at last received from the court of Rome and read at a meeting of the Catholic Board, on Saturday, the 6th of that month." This docu- ment stated the reasons why an earlier answer had not been given : 1st. " The sentiments of the court of Rome had been made known to the bishops," as "the more proper channel for the communication." 2d. 374 . THE LIFE OF DAXIEL O'CONNELL. " However sincere the assurances of respect on the part of the lay Cath- olics, there were some phrases used by them, with regard to the extent of the papal authority, which did not give satisfaction." The answer went on to state "that the intended concession to the British govern- ment was proposed in what appeared the interest of the Catholic re- ligion in these countries, as emancipation, if thereby purchased, would give relief to the suffering Catholic body, remove temptations to apos- tacy, and also impediments to conversion from the dissenting sects." The arrangement, however, was meant to be "only conditional upon the previous passing of the Emancipation Act." In conclusion, this answer justified the proceedings against the Rev. Richard Hayes, who, indeed, even while ignorant of its contents, had, with respect to "any point in which it might blame him," expressed "his entire submission and con- trition," adding that he "would supplicate pardon from His Holiness" Messrs. O'Connell, Lanigan, McDonnell, Scully, Howley (afterwards Ser- geant Howley and assistant-barrister of Tipperary) and Woulfe were appointed as a committee to consider what steps should be taken in this matter. I must notice, in passing, a grand public dinner to the Irish national bard, Thomas Moore, die immortal author of the "Melodies" and "Lalla Rookh," of which O'Connell was the chief promoter, and at which the earl of Charlemont presided. This banquet took place on the 8th of June, 1818. To the toast of "The Managing Committee," there was a general cry for O'Connell to respond. His speech was broad and lib- eral. It was refreshing to see men of every party at the banquet. There would lie more harmony "if Irishmen would recollect that there were generous, kindly, brave and good men of every party." Noble qualities 'did in fact live and reside, as in a chosen home, in the bosoms of Irishmen of every taction, sect and persuasion." (Laud cheers.) Moore lie Btyled, amid loud applause, •the sweetest poet, the best of sons and the most exquisite Irishman living." In conclusion, he would like to exert himself for the benefit of all Irishmen. "He was a party man, to be sure; but it was his misfortune, not his fault, to be so. He, how- ever, belonged to the party of the oppressed and excluded; and if he had been born in Madrid or in Constantinople, he vowed to God he would in either place be more intemperate and violent for the protection THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 375 of the persecuted Protestant in the one, and of the trampled-down Christian in the other." {Continued applause.) A dinner was given to O'Connell himself at Tralee, the chief town of his native county, Kerry, on Monday, the 24th October, 1818, at the Mail-Coach Hotel. Never was so great a concourse of gentry of all parties seen in Kerry. The whole first floor of the hotel was thrown into one. Still there was want of room for the company. About thirty had to dine in one of the parlors. When — his health having been drunk enthusiastically — O'Connell rose to respond, he was almost overpowered by strong feelings. As usual, he expressed a generous delight at seeing even a momentary union among Irishmen. "Where," he exclaimed, "are intolerance, and bigotry, and religious rancor now? . . . Would to God that the honest men in England . . . could see how kindly the Protestant cheers the Catholic advocate, and how affectionately the Catholic repays the kindness of his Protestant friends !" The applause that greeted these words was vehement and long continued. "My political creed," said our hero, "is short and simple. It consists in be- lieving that all men are entitled, as of right and justice, to religious and civil liberty. . . . Religion is debased and degraded by human inter- ference. . . . Such are my sentiments — such are yours." Some of the toasts drunk at this meeting are worth recording, such as, "Prosperity to old Ireland;" "Mr. Secretary Grant and universal toleration" {three times three; much cheering) ; " Civil and religious liberty to all mankind;" "The cause of rational liberty all over the globe." O'Con- nell proposed this one at the close of his response to his own health. He also, amid great applause, in spite of their political differences, re- sponded warmly when the health of his brother-Kerryman, old "Judge Day, as an excellent landlord, an affectionate friend and a good man," was drunk. The healths of " The Rev. Stephen Creagh Sandes and the Protestants of Kerry" and "The Right Rev. Dr. Sugrue and the Roman Catholic clergy of Kerry" were drunk heartily. The name of Stephen iieiiry Rice was coupled with "the pure and impartial administration of justice." {Three times three; great applause.) "Sir Samuel Romilly and the persecuted Protestants of France," and "The patriots of South America and a speedy and eternal extinction to the Inquisition." These two toasts were drunk with acclamations; but when "The bard .°>7G THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. of Erin, Thomas Moore," was proposed, the enthusiasm of the company was simply indescribable. I suppose, at that convivial moment, every man present would have shed the last drop of his blood on the spot for Tommy, just as Dickens tells us Mrs. Todgers's boarders, at a certain period of the night, on a memorable festive occasion, would have died to a man for that estimable lady. " The duke of Leinster and the resi- dent nobility of Ireland;" "The earl of Charlemont, the hereditary patriot of the Irish nobility;" "The glorious and immortal memory of John Philpot Curran;" "Charles Philips, coupled with the independ- ence of the Irish bar;" "The president and free people of North Amer- ica — may they be bound in the bonds of eternal unity with these countries;" "Universal benevolence;" O'Conncll's uncle, "Old Hunting- cap"; his more distinguished uncle, " Lieutenant-General Daniel Count O'Connell;" — all these and many more toasts, good, bad and indifferent, were drunk rapturously, in o'erflowing glasses, on that jovial and har- monious night. If, haply, "the mirth and fun grew fast and furious" after "the witching hour," good-fellowship prevailed to the last. On "this great night for Ireland," John Bernard of Ballynaguard, Esq., presided. The vice-president was John Stack of Ballyconry, Esq. No doubt, both fulfilled their duties worthily, not without a due share of Irish jollity. At the general elections of 1818, O'Connell exerted himself to pro- cure the return of the Right Hon. Maurice Fitzgerald, the knight of Kerry, for that county. The knight now regretted that he had voted for the ruinous and accursed Act of Union, seeing the hollowness of the promises which had been made by the ministers of the Crown to procure its enactment. "I voted for the union," says the knight, "to guard against the possible re-enactment of the penal laws, which was contemplated; to procure the extinction of mischievous political and religious distinctions among my countrymen;" also, to obtain a safer support to the Protestant Church "than the present tithe-system, more injurious to its clergy than even to the Catholic farmer." A meeting of the Catholics of the parishes of St. Andrew's, St. Anne's and St. Mark's was held, on the 27th of January, 1810, in Townsend Street Chapel, Dublin, to express their gratitude for a credit- able demonstration of the liberal Protestants of Ireland that had taken THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 377 place at the Rotunda. O'Connell, in a temperate, sensible and eloquent speech, proposed the resolutions. " He hailed in glowing language the dawn of friendship and affection which has at length broken in upon Irishmen. He gave Earl Talbot's" [Earl Talbot was now the viceroy) "administration the praise of neutrality, at least upon the present mo mentous and memorable occasion." A few weeks after (Monday, March 1, 1819), an aggregate meeting was held in the old chapel in Mary's lane, to express, in the most marked manner, Catholic gratitude to the Protestants who had come forward to petition in their behalf. The earl of Fingal was in the chair. The journals of the day tell us that it was "the largest and most respectable meeting of Catholics which ever took place in Ireland." O'Connell especially praised the duke of Leinster; "the earl of Meath, always a friend and patron of Ireland; Charlemont, whose name was music to Irish ears; Grattan, whose eloquence and virtue raised Ireland into independence and liberty — the old patriot Grattan, who had given Ireland all she had, and would have made her all she ought to be." He said that the corporation possessing " such a man as their friend Alderman McKenny at its head, could not be desti- tute of virtue." Instead of the office of lord-mayor conferring dignity on him, "the man has conferred dignity on the office. . . . Let Catholics continue to deserve, and Protestants to reward with their good wishes and confidence, and the motto of Ireland in future be 'God and ouk NATIVE LAND !' " In 1819, a General D'Evereux appeared in Dublin to raise a legion (the soldiers of this legion were called the "Patriots") to aid the re- volted colonists of South America against the Spaniards. It is not properly within the scope of my subject to do much more than slightly refer to this movement, in which O'Connell took so great an interest as to accept a commission, in a Hussar regiment of the legion, for his second son, Morgan, then quite a lad. Gayly-attended military levees were held at Morrison's Hotel, and public dinners given to celebrate this affair and compliment the movers. At these proceedings our hero took a prominent part. Nothing could exceed the popularity of this move- ment for a time. Visions of the golden realms of Peru, if not Eldorado itself, seized entire possession of the Irish imagination. Adventurous youths were eager to procure commissions in the legion from General 378 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. D'Everenx or General Gregor McGregor, who accompanied him. Dublin was on fire with military excitement. The British government showed no disposition to enforce the "Foreign Enlistment Act." Young Morgan O'Connell sailed for South America the following year (1820), under the care and attached to the personal staff of General D'Evereux. But in America disappointment and disaster awaited the Irish adventurers, already half-starved on the voyage. Some, indeed, eventually won high renown under the banner of Bolivar, and contributed nobly to the final success of the revolution. The character of D'Evereux has naturally been the subject of much controversy. Thomas Kennedy is inclined to deny that he possessed genuine credentials authorizing his proceedings in Dublin. He says the authorities acting under the provisional govern- ment of Venezuela refused to recognize his commissions; he accuses him of "dastardly flight from those who returned to call him to account for his breach of all engagements." He even asserts that "a secret communication" existed between him and Lord Liverpool; and that he was merely employed "as the vile instrument to drain this country " (Ire- lemd) "of those military spirits whose presence was regarded with feelings of apprehension by the Liverpool administration." On the other hand, O'Connell, his son Morgan, Father O'Mullane — who followed O'Connell in the duel with D'Esterre and followed his son to South America — all insisted on D'Evereux's integrity from first to last. At a tumultuous meeting of the enraged friends of "the Patriots," O'Connell braved a tempest of hisses and hootings, while maintaining that the general was a man of unsullied honor. Pagan, in his Life of O'Connell, says: "The bond fide nature of D'Evereux's commission was subsequently established beyond all doubt when, in 1823, he returned to Ireland in possession of full power and ample means to satisfy the claims of his disappointed followers." As far as a very imperfect examination of the history of this singular transaction can justify me in expressing an opinion on the merits of the case, I, too, am inclined to believe that D'Evereux, how- ever unlucky or deceived, acted all through in good faith. Lieutenant- general D'Evereux spent his latter days in Paris, highly respected. He was a native of the United States, of Irish parentage. His character was energetic; his appearance martial. In October, 1819, O'Connell wrote a letter to the Catholics of Ire- THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 379 land, in which he complimented Alderman McKenny as the first lord- mayor of Dublin who had presided at a meeting " calculated to promote cordial conciliation." On the 24th of February, 1820, he gave it as his legal opinion "that a Catholic is capable of being sub-sheriff." This year the glorious patriot, Henry Grattan, died. O'Connell, forgetting the breach that had so long severed them, magnanimously burying in oblivion many hard things said and written by Grattan against him, warmly supported, at the Royal Exchange meeting held on the 13th of June, 1820, the claims of young Grattan to the representation of the city of Dublin against those of Ellis, the Orangeman. He called the dead patriot "the greatest man Ireland ever knew. . . . 'He watched by the cradle of his country's freedom ; he followed her hearse.' His life, to the very period of his latest breath, has been spent in her service, and he died, I may even say, a martyr in her cause. Who shall now prate to me of religious animosity? To any such I will say, 'There sleeps a man, a member of the Protestant community, who died in the cause of his Catholic fellow-countrymen!' . . . Let us unite to put down bigotry; ... let us rally around that cause" [our country's), "and let our motto be, Grattan and Ireland !" It was O'Connell, too, who origin- ated the idea of the statue of Grattan, by Sir Francis Chantrey, that now stands in the hall of the Eoyal Exchange, Dublin. On the 22d of January, 1822, he took a prominent part at a meeting in the Exchange to promote its erection. He moved a resolution, which the wealthy Catholic sales- master, Billy Murphy, seconded. On the 22d of June, 1820, at the adjourned Catholic meeting held at D'Arcy's, in Essex street, O'Connell made 'some objections to the celebrated Plunket's being entrusted with their petition, on account of his extreme advocacy of the " securities." At this meeting O'Connell complained of the use by the liberal Edin- burgh Review of such expressions as the "harlot embraces" of the Cath- olic Church. While he was speaking, some one in the body of the meet- ing cried out, "Why go to them" [meaning to the English Parliament) "at all ?" Probably this was one of the war party, that ever lives, in greater or less force, in Ireland, ever hostile to Parliamentary action, ever long- ing for the day of total separation from England by force of arms. On the 14th of July, 1820, O'Connell published an address in the newspapers, offering himself as a candidate for the office of recorder 380 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. However, he never obtained that office. About the same time, at a public dinner at "D'Arcy's Great Eoom, Corn Exchange," a room famous in the history of many subsequent Irish national movements, he spoke tuuchingly of another of our glorious dead, who, " with the bayonet to his breast, Avas true to humanity and to his clients, advocating the cause of those victims he could not save." He lamented as a disgrace to Ire- land (a disgrace wiped out now, however), that there was "not a stone to mark the spot where sleeps John Philpot Curran ; and even in the country that he loved, there is nothing, as yet, to record his name!" He then gave, "The memory of John Philpot Curran."* * The books to which I am chiefly indebted for the materials of the foregoing chapter are : John Mitchel's "Continuation of McGeoghegau ;" "The Select Speeches of Daniel O'Connell, M. P., edited, with Historical Notices, etc., by his Son, John O'Connell, Esq.;" "Life and Times of Daniel O'Connell, with Sketches of his Contemporaries, Dublin, John Mullany, 1 Parliament itreet;" Fagan's "Life of O'Connell;" Shiel's "Sketches of the Irish Bar;" etc CHAPTER XVI. The Kilmainham court-house meeting; outrageous and unconstitutional proceedings OF THE SHERIFF — O'CoNNELL's AMUSING CONTROVERSY WITH RlCHARD LaLOR SHIEL — o'connell threatens to join the english radical reformers — wllliam conyng- ham plunket's relief bills — o'connell opposes them — rude interruption of o'connell at a catholic meeting — advances from the orange corporation to the Catholics — Orange breach of faith — The visit of King George the Fourth to Ireland; his enthusiastic reception by the people — The visit turns out a mockery and delusion; disappointment of catholic hopes — the irish avatar — Arrival of an Irish viceroy, the Marquis Wellesley — His conciliatory demeanor — A confused meeting — Famine in the south and west of Ireland — Coercive meas- ures — Orange display — Repeal of the union — Suicide of Lord Londonderry (Cas- tlereagh) — Bottle riot — Public indignation — Trial of the Handbidges and Gra- ham — Colonel White's election for the county Dublin ; great popular excitement —Law-cases — O'Connell visits France — An unpleasant night-adventure. N" the requisition of the government party, who were desirous of getting up an address in approval of George the Fourth's recent persecution of his wife, Queen Caroline, a meeting was held at the Kilmainham court-house, near Dublin, on the 30th of December, 1820. The sheriff, Steele, aided by a large force of police, tried shamefully to pack the meeting, forcibly excluding numbers of most respectable freeholders. The crowd, however, burst in and thronged the room, so that the sheriff, to the great amusement of the spectators, had to get able-bodied policemen to lift Lords Howth and Frankfort, and several others, in on chairs, through a back window. The conduct of the sheriff was outrageous ; he nominated a committee to prepare an address, and then declared the address adopted, in opposi- tion to the overwhelming majority of those present. He threatened to expel persons, as not being freeholders, who actually were so. He asked O'Connell, who objected to these irregular proceedings, was he a free- holder of Dublin ? To which O'Connell answered that he was, that his hereditary property was larger than the sheriff's own, and that his profes- sion gave him an income greater than that which any of those surround- ing "the chair were able to wring from the taxes." Against the wishes of those assembled, the sheriff arbitrarily declared the meeting dis- 382 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CO'XELL. solved. He threatened to commit the patriotic Lord Cloncuny to prison, when that nobleman, called to the chair by the people, said he would "obey their commands," protested against the sheriff's illegal conduct, and declared, amid boundless applause, "that in support of the law he was ready to perish in the chair, and that nothing but force should tear him from it." O'Connell said, if the prison were large enough, they would all accompany Lord Cloncuny. The sheriff then said the meeting was illegal. O'Connell vehemently declared that it was quite legal, and called on such freeholders as valued their rights to remain. The furious sheriff, who had already violently declared that "he would call in the military," now withdrew in order to fulfil his threat. Though perfect order and decorum prevailed, a side-door was thrown open with a crash ; an officer and soldiers rushed in and com- manded the freeholders to disperse. Some violence was used to individ- uals, though, upon the whole, the military showed good temper. Mr. Curran (doubtless, the late John Adye Curran or some other son of the immortal orator's) stood by Lord Cloncuny and good-humoredly thrust the soldiers' bayonets aside. That nobleman had to he forced out of the chair. The officer drew or was drawing his sword. The freeholders next assembled in vast crowds on the opposite side of the road. A chair was placed for Lord Cloncuny in the passage of a house, to evade the law, which then made open-air meetings illegal. An amended address, proposed by Mr. Burne, K. C, and seconded by our hero, was carried by acclamation. This address, referring to "the late proceed- ings in the House of Lords" against the unfortunate Caroline, expressed a sincere hope "that proceedings so dangerous and unconstitutional would never be revived in any shape." O'Connell moved that a com- mittee should be appointed to lay before the viceroy, Earl Talbot, "the outrageous and illegal conduct of the sheriff on that day." On the 2d of January, 1821, a meeting, presided over by Hamilton Rowan, who had been pardoned so early as the year 1805, was held at the Corn Exchange Rooms (then D'Arcy's tavern), "to consider the best steps to be taken as to the outrage on Saturday at Kilmainham." O'Connell spoke at length, opposed a deputation to Mr. Grant, now chief secretary for Ireland, though he respected that gentleman. He thought the matter should be brought before Parliament. In this speech he glorified Por- THE LrFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 3S3 tugal on account of her newly-won constitutional freedom, praised Lord Byron as "the poet of the age and the friend of humanity," and con- cluded with that one of his favorite quotations from Moore beginning, "The nations have fallen, but thou art still young," etc. At an ad- journed meeting, a few days after, he spoke again to the same effect. A large number of gentlemen, Protestants and others, who seldom attended public meetings, were present. There was a unanimous vote of thanks and compliment to O'Connell. But, finally, no redress was obtained by the people for the outrage at Kilmainham court-house. O'Connell now began to write his annual letters to the people of Ireland. For a time he recommended an alliance with the English rad- icals. The Catholics should try to carry reform first, emancipation after- wards. He seemed to think their petitions had no chance in an uni- formed Parliament. This proposed -change of tactics brought on an amusing controversy between him and Richard Lalor Shiel. The latter indulged in some bewildering, high-flown rhetoric, all ablaze with will- o'-the-wisp conceits and metaphorical fireworks. " If," said Shiel, "our question, simplified by plain right and obvious necessity, cannot pass through the needle's eye, will Mr. O'Connell, mounted upon a camel loaded with the union and Parliamentary reform, spur the slow and un- wieldy animal through the narrow orifice?" O'Connell's arguments were "the drowning grasp of a sophist in the agonies of conviction!" A phrase respecting Plunket was " a transparent one, and the rushlight, with its feeble and fretful fire, is seen behind. It is clear as glass ; it covers but it does not hide. . . . The patriotism of O'Connell may be as pure as amber; but even in amber we may find a straw." No doubt some of Shiel' s analogies are ingenious and happy. But his talk of "annual eruptions," "a flaming fragment of declamation accompanied with a considerable obscuration," a "shower of volatile opinion," "lava compounded out of a variety of heterogeneous materials," "casting a peacock's feather into the scale" — all this profusion of far-fetched images wearies the mind and offends a correct taste. The conclusion of Shiel's letter is a regular maze of fantastic imagery, beyond which burlesque could hardly go. "I should be loth to compare him" (O'Con- nell) "to a sort of political vane by which all the veerings of the breeze might be determined ; but it were as idle to imagine that the currents 384 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. of air on wliich the balloon is borne are regulated by the painted ma- chine that floats on them, as to suppose that a person swelled out with the very inflammable patriotism of Mr. O'Connell, and raised by the very levity of his opinions, should create the vicissitudes of passion on which he ascends. That gentleman was certainly elevated in a very gaudy vehicle, embellished with every diversity of hue. He had risen with the shout of the multitude, and after throwing out all his ballast and waving his green flag, he very skilfully adapted his course, in this aerial voyage, to all the mutations of impulse which agitated the stormy medium through which he passed ; until at last, in striving to rise into a still more lofty region, he has allowed the thin and combustible mate- rials of his buoyancy to ignite, and comes tumbling down in a volume of fiery vapor, composed of the veto, the union and Parliamentary reform." To this extraordinary specimen of Shiel's artificial style of rhetoric our hero replied in a letter full of inimitable fun, and, though severe, sufficiently good-humored. I regret that I can only quote a few scattered sentences. " I am really," says O'Connell, "at a loss to know how I have provoked the tragic wrath and noble ire of this iambic rhapsodist." This is a humorous hit at Shiel's dramatic attempts. "I would venture to wager that, like the rabid animal in the fable, Mr. Shiel is not half so mad as he pretends to be. ... He begins by calling me 'a flaming fragment,' next I am 'lava,' and thirdly 'heterogeneous materials.' "Again he denominates me 'a straw in amber," then a 'rushlight with fretful fire,' then, how terrific! 'a sophist drowning in confutation,' and, lastly — and which is quite sublime — 'a volume of fiery vapor.' " O'Con- nell insists that a decision on the momentous question in dispute is not to be "aided either by vituperation, however rancorous, or by the tawdry and tinsel decorations of melodramatic oratory. Such oratory is lit for nothing else but to gratify that species of vanity which might in a schoolboy be allowed to exclaim, 'See what a very clever little gentle- man I am! Who wants me?'" Of two topics in Shiel's letter — that he had convicted O'Connell of inconsistency on the question of the veto, and that O'Connell was 'actuated by motives of private hostility or personal resentment to Plunket" — O'Connell says: "The first of these topics is an empty boast; the second is an unfounded insinuation." Every fool can vary THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL,. 385 a man's meaning by garbling what he says. "I do not accuse Mr. Shiel of being a fool — very far indeed from it. I only point out how admirable is the candor of a rhapsodist. Pray admire that candor ! With this single observation, I take leave of Mr. Shiel' s boast. If it be not an empty boast, I consent to be called a balloon, and a vane, and a fiery vapor for the rest of my life. ... I have neither leisure nor inclination to follow Mr. Shiel through any more of the affectations, the 'peacock's feathers' and the 'volcanoes, 1 which glitter in labored and puny conceits. ... I may now dismiss Mr. Shiel in perfect cheerfulness. I may dis- miss him to the association of his fellow-laborers in the Correspondent and Dublin Journal." These were journals prone to calumniating our hero. O'Connell ends this letter, which is dated 12th January, 1821, by imploring Shiel not to direct his sneers against the "faithful, the long- suffering and very wretched people of Ireland." O'Connell's threat of uniting with the English reformers alarmed the government and legislature. Measures were adopted to divert his atten- tion from the reform movement, which was agitating Englishmen. Plunket carried a Catholic relief bill through the Commons. It was lost, however, in the House of Lords. The fact of a relief bill passing in the Commons revived the hopes of the Catholics, though the majority of them were glad that this particular measure failed to become law. O'Connell, in long and able letters to the people, pronounced Plunket's two bills, taken together (for there were two), to be "abominable," and "horribly cruel to the Catholic clergy." The first, indeed, if unaccom- panied by the second, would give relief; but the second was "more strictly, literally and emphatically a penal and persecuting bill than any or all the statutes passed in the darkest and most bigoted periods of the reign of Queen Anne, or of the first two Georges. Its title should be, An act to ' decatholicize' 1 Ireland; for that is certainly its object." On the subject of these bills there was considerable angry discussion among the Catholics. We have now arrived at the period of George the Fourth's visit to Ireland. O'Connell wished the Catholics to take the "occasion of their preparations for the king's visit" to consider the state of their affairs. But Lords Fingal, JSTetterville, Gormanstown and Killeen, with Sir John Burke, Mr. Bagot and others, published a protest against "connecting the 386 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. general question of Catholic affairs with the object of voting a congrat- ulatory address" to the king. O'Connell, to promote harmony, yielded, and adopted their requisition for a meeting, instead of his own. In order to secure for the king a good reception in Ireland, vague and deceitful promises to the Catholics heralded his coming. Even the Orange corporation of Dublin made for the time a false but specious show of good feeling to their Catholic countrymen. The Catholics met their advances in a warm and generous spirit. A sort of promise was made by the Orange mayor of Dublin, Abraham Bradley King, that the annual insult to the Catholics of dressing out King William's statue with orange ribbons should be omitted this year, as a conciliatory offer- ing. This engagement, however, was disgracefully violated on the 12th of July, on which occasion, according to the descriptions of Mr. Costelloe and other eye-witnesses, the Orange mob, with respectable and sober cit- izens among them, dressed the statue in the morning, while in the even- ing a ragged, but well-armed, infuriated, half-drunken mob groaned the chief secretary as "Popish Grant," and were abetted in their disorderly conduct by several soldiers of the 12th Lancers, brandishing their sabres and vociferating "Down with the Papists!" "To hell with the pope!" " To hell with popish defenders !" " The pope in a pillory in hell, and the devil pelting O'Connell at him!" "To hell with O'Gorman !" etc. In spite of all this, the irritation of the Catholics was apparently but of momentary duration. At two meetings they debated concerning this outrage with considerable moderation, and even gave the lord-mayor credit for sincerity, to use Lord Fingal's expression, "in his original offer of conciliation." O'Connell concurred in this view; indeed, in his speeches, he showed the most remarkable desire to be on terms of amity even with the Orange faction. George the Fourth landed at Howth on the 12th of August, 1821, and drove at once to the viceregal lodge in the Phoenix Park amid the roar of artillery and the ringing of joy-bells. His wife bad just died ; this, however, was probably a source of rejoicing to his wicked heart. He remained in seclusion for several days. On the 17th of August he made his public entry into his Irish capital. The ceremony of present- ing the keys was gone through, according to ancient forms, at the end of Sackville street. A barrier of green boughs interlaced, with a gate THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 387 in the middle, stretched across that magnificent street. After a parley, the mayor consented to open the gate and welcome the king, when asked to do so, in due form, by the Athlone pursuivant. His Majesty was completely astounded at the vision which now met his gaze, as he was borne in his chariot along Sackville street. That spacious street was packed from end to end with a dense mass of human beings that seemed innumerable. Every window was crowded; temporary balconies in front of the houses were crowded ; the roofs of the houses and public buildings were crowded. "The post-office," to quote another life of O'Connell, "even to the most perilous projection of the building, was black with human beings. The very architrave was crowded with well-dressed females; and on the summit of Nelson's monument men were perched upon the very capstan which supports the statue of the naval victor." The king had always professed a kindly feeling towards his Irish subjects. He was almost the only English sovereign who had ever come to Ireland in friendly guise. The people, too, were just then deluded into believing that they were on the point of being emancipated. Be- sides, they were excitable, and "the cherished lure of pomp" easily beguiles the imaginations of Irishmen. Is it, then, so very wonderful that for the moment they went mad ? that those myriads on the earth, on the balconies, in the windows, on the roofs, were wild with insane delight and what seemed genuine enthusiasm ? Nor is it even astonish- ing that the withered heart and worn-out feelings of the royal profligate seemed for an instant, as if he had drained some charmed cup, to show signs of reviving freshness, when he heard such glad and lusty cheering as had never rung through his ears before, when he saw the hats and handkerchiefs of innumerable devoted subjects, stalwart men and fairest women, waving " cead mille failthe" saw, in short, joy at his coming gleaming on thousands and myriads of eager faces. This was the one triumphant day of his worthless life. He was deeply moved — ay, almost to tears. That hour, in his self-delusion, he may have fancied himself almost a demigod. And, no doubt, in mere outward semblance, he was "every inch a king." Eight royally he saluted the admiring myriads, who felt a treble foolish joy and shouted like the very thunder, when they saw the huge bunch of shamrocks decorating the military hat which their sovereign lifted at short intervals with such princely grace. 388 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. Such a magnificent spectacle was never witnessed in Dublin before. Through the long narrow space kept clear in the centre of the street, with a dense wall of human beings on each side, the royal procession moved in pomp along. Behind the king followed nobles, gentry, profes- sions, corporations, trades with their gorgeous banners waving overhead, magnificent equipages, horsemen splendidly mounted. All these had gone from the Castle to the Park that morning, in order to swell the royal train, and now encircled half the city. To look back the ad- vancing files seemed endless. On Carlyle bridge the pressure was fearful. On through Westmoreland street, College Green and Dame street the king passed to the Castle. The sums lavished by the Irish during the royal visit were enormous. All were seized with the factitious enthusiasm, which lasted till the king returned to England, in September. O'Connell made as much parade of loyalty as the rest. To gratify the king's desire, conveyed before his arrival by Sir Benjamin Bloomfield, "that all differences and animosities should be laid aside," a dinner took place at Morison's, where the leaders of the Catholics and the Orange faction dined together and toasted each other with too exuberant protestations of eternal friendship. O'Connell and Orange Grand-master Ellis were quite affectionate each to the other. O'Connell gives himself immense credit for his policy in con- nection with the royal visit. He seems to think it was "most success- ful." Many will take a different view of the matter. He seems to think it was necessary to make great display of loyalty to the corrupt-hearted king. "For the first time," he says, tor two centuries were the Cath- olics received by the executive on terms of perfect equality with the Protestants. The Catholic prelates were received by the king in their ecclesiastical costume, with their golden crosses and chains. It was the first official recognition of their dignity as prelates. To the earl of Fingal, as head of the Catholic laity, the ribbon of the Order of St. Patrick was given at an installation at which the king himself presided. The rest of the Catholic laity were received and cherished precisely as the Protestants were; and, to crown all. the celebrated Sidmouth letter was issued, full of present kindness and gratitude to the Catholics and of future hope and expectation of conciliation — a conciliation which everybody knew could never be effected without legal and perfect equal- THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 389 ization of political rights." This letter was a mere " palavering" letter, written by Lord Sidmouth to the viceroy, in accordance with the king's directions, expressing his affection "to his faithful people of Ireland," recommending them to be united, and tickling them a little with "hum- bugging" praises of their "generosity and warmth of heart." O'Connell, meanwhile, remained perfectly satisfied with his own management on this occasion. He considered himself entitled to "the gratitude and confidence" of his countrymen for his triumph over "the difficulties he had to encounter," and for "the mode in which he was enabled to con- vert the king's visit to Ireland from being a source of weakness and dis- comfiture to the Catholics into a future claim for practical relief and political equalization." He also says, "His Majesty was the first monarch that ever showed a friendly feeling towards poor Ireland, and when he came among us his regal court presented Catholics and Prot- estants as they should ever be, united." Speaking of the friendly over- tures from the Ascendency corporation, he says: "Two days after the statue was dressed ! We remonstrated, and there was something about promises for the future. There were many amongst us who did not believe those promises ; I must own that I was one who put no faith in them, though I 'pretended I did. Well, I got into the den — Daniel in the lion's den ; ay, into the midst of the corporation. Some, who had more candor than I possessed at that period, did not attend the dinner." He then speaks of the baronetcy which, at the close of the royal visit, was conferred on the mayor, Abraham Bradley King, as due to the concilia- tory resolution of the corporation. Many will regard much of O'Connell's clever policy during the progress of these events, as little deserving of admiration. It was all the better for His Majesty, however. The Cath- olics, like their leader, overflowed with demonstrative loyalt}^ and were ton considerate of their sovereign's comfort to "bother" him, at such a time, with their wearisome complaints and grievances ; so that the old rake of royalty spent his unruffled time in Dublin right gayly and pleasantly. Thirty lords and Protestant bishops signed a requisition and held a meeting at the Exchange, at which it was moved by Lord Carbery and seconded by Colonel Cuffe, that a palace should be built for George in Ireland. It was modestly proposed to squeeze a million of money from the impoverished Irish for this purpose. O'Connell (it is hard to tell it 390 • THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. without ridicule) promised to contribute twenty guineas a year towards the erection of the regal pile. O'Connell, too, was one of the very few who attended the committee after the king's departure. Of course, the design was never realized. It was time to have done with the project when the committee found it impossible to make one of the judges pay the subscription of thirty guineas, which he had promised while the king was in Ireland. Human geese have since, from time to time, sug- gested the election of a royal palace in Ireland as a sure means of regen- erating the nation. Such proposals, however, invariably lead to nothing. In Dublin, however, the King's Bridge, over the Liffey, was erected to commemorate the royal visit. O'Connell took an active part in urging on this so-called national testimonial. He recommended a bridge in preference to an arch, a statue a pyramid, or a column. Bnt it was on the day of the king's departure, at half-past seven on a bright morning in September, thai O'Connell signalized himself by bis most exaggerated demonstrations of loyalty to the unclean being who then swayed the British sceptre. He presented, on bended knee, a Laurel crown to His Majesty in a tent. The king received it graciously enough, and offered the great Agitator liis hand to kiss. The anti-Irish papers <>( London ridiculed O'Connell for his servility. They described him as literally following the king into the sea, and kneeling in the water to present the wreath. O'Connell had adopted the fashion of wearing a sealskin cap with a gold hand like the king's. "Counsellor O'Connell," said a London paper, shortly after the king's departure, "is now trav- elling on circuit with a fur cap and a gold band, which, he says, is a present from the king, who certainly wore such a cap and band on his landing in Ireland.'' Our hero thought it necessary to deny the veracity of these ugly impeachments. So far was he, he maintained, from Inning been "unbecomingly servile" on the occasion of presenting the wreath, "that he did not even kiss the hand which the king held out to him for that purpose." Of course, he unequivocally denied his having ever asserted that he had got the cap from the king. His Majesty had been looking ;it some of the beautiful scenery of Wicklow on the morning of his departure from old Dunleary. Crowds, as great as those that had welcomed him to Ireland, assembled in Dun- leary to see him oil', with far more good wishes and blessings than the THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 391 old sinner merited. He seemed profoundly affected. He even sliel tears. As the royal yacht conveyed him away, the old dandy, in his blue frock-coat and white vest and sealskin cap with the gold band, was seen gazing through his telescope at the shores of Ireland. He saw thousands upon thousands of the Irish blackening the hills, while they wafted good wishes after him on the winds. The royal squadron sailed past Brayhead and the bold coast of romantic Wicklow. The king to the last kept his gaze fixed on the shores he was never to see again. The name of Dunleary was changed or degraded into Kingstown. An obelisk marks the spot where the king stood previous to his going on board. And so ended the visit of the " first gentleman" [or first scamp f) "of Europe" to his loving subjects, the Irish. That very soft-hearted people found out almost immediately after that they had been deluded by a glamourous fairy-show — a mere splendid pageant, an extravaganza with magnificent transformation scenes. The king showed no real dis- position whatever to redress the grievances of the Catholics ; though we learn from Horace Twiss's "Memoirs of Lord Eldon" that, at one moment, n he half believed himself that he was sincere, to the great con- sternation of Lord Eldon and his associates, who at once hastened the measures for his departure." "The Orange party," says John O'Connell, "who had signalized themselves by not refraining from their shibboleth of the 'glorious, pious and immortal memory,' even at the corporation dinner to the king (though, of course, not proposed till after he had left the room), laughed in their sleeves at this letter" (Sidmouth's). "The Catholics took it in earnest, and set about preparing to meet it in what they deemed a corresponding spirit, having summoned meetings and prepared the out- lines of an organization for the purpose, which was intended to include men of every class and shade of opinion. But the illusion about con- ciliation was soon over, the corporation having lost no time in dispelling it, by renewing their old Orange orgies within one month after the king's departure." The year following this unsubstantial pageant all the grim realities of famine were spreading ghastly horror over the unfortunate island. On this visit of King George the Fourth to Ireland, Lord Byron wrote 3ome verses, entitled "The Irish Avatar," characterized by a terrible THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL intensity of bitterness. Of course, he lashes the king unsparingly; but he lashes the Irish people and their great leader, O'Connell, too. I shall give a few stanzas of this poem, written as a retaliation on Moore for his attacks on the Carbonari : " But ne comes i the Messiah of royalty comes 1 Like a goodly leviathan rolled from the waves; Then receive him as best such an advent becomes — With a legion of cooks and an army of slaves. " He comes in the promise and bloom of three-score, To perform in the pageant the sovereign's part — But long live the shamrock which shadows him o'er, Could the green in his hat be transferred to his heart/ " Could that long-withered spot but be verdant again, And a new spring of noble affections arise, Then might Freedom forgive thee this dance in thy chain, And this shout of thy slavery which saddens the skies. "Is it madness or meanness which clings to thee now? Were he god, as he is but the commonest clay, With scarce fewer wrinkles than sins on his brow, Such servile devotion might shame him away. ****** " Let the poor, squalid splendor thy wreck can afford (As the bankrupt's profusion his ruin would hide) Gild over the palace. Lo ! Erin, thy lord ! Kiss his foot, with thy blessing for blessings denied! ****** " Wear, Fingal, thy trapping I O'Connell, proclaim His accomplishments! — hull! and thy country convince Half an age's contempt was an error of fame. And that ' Hal is the rascalliest, sweetest young prince !' " Will thy yard of blue ribbon, poor Fingal, recall The fetters from millions of Catholic limbs? Or has it not bound thee the fastest of all The slaves who now hail their betrayer with hymns? "Ay, 'build him a dwelling;' let each give his mite, Till, like Babel, the new royal dome hath arisen; Let thy beggars and helots their pittance unite, And a palace bestow for a poor-house and prison! "Spread, spread for Vitellius the royal repast, Till the gluttonous despot be stuffed to the gorge, And the roar of his drunkards proclaim him at last. The fourth of the fools and oppressors called ' George I' " THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 393 The noble poet then goes on to say : "Let the wine flow around the old bacchanal's throne, Like their blood which has flowed and which yet has to flow." After this he calls Castlereagh his Sejanus. He wonders that Ireland, instead of blushing for Castlereagh' s birth, seems proud now of that reptile, without one ray of her genius, without "the fancy, the manhood, the fire of her race." She might well doubt she ever produced such "a reptile." " If she did," it appears that, contrary to her proverbial boast, she can produce a "cold-blooded serpent." The welcome of tyrants has. plunged Ireland lower than even misfortune and tyranny could. This bitter poem concludes thus : "Till now I had envied thy sons and their shore: Though their virtues were hunted, their liberties fled, There was something so warm and sublime in the core Of an Irishman's heart, that I envy — thy dead. " Or, if aught in my bosom can quench for an hour My contempt for a nation so servile, though sore, Which, though trod like the worm, will not turn upon power, 'Tis the glory of Grattan and genius of Moore." On the 7th of January, 1822, at D'Arcy's, a Catholic meeting was held, for the purpose of presenting an address to the new viceroy, the marquis of Wellesley. Lord Fingal was in the chair. O'Connell pro- posed and Shiel seconded an address submitted by the latter gentleman. The arrival of the marquis had given unbounded satisfaction to the vast majority of the Irish people, both on account of his being the first Irish- man appointed for centuries to the viceregal office, and because of his shining personal qualities. The Orangemen, indeed, were furious at his appointment. O'Connell dwelt on the "classical eloquence" and "splen- did talents" of the marquis, also on the fact that "at the interesting and eventful period of 1782" the marquis "was the first person to raise a volunteer corps, in which a principle of exclusion to persons professing their creed was not acted upon, countenanced and cherished." (Much apjjlausc.) Such a man would not by his presence encourage offensive toasts. " Since the arrival," continued O'Connell, "of the noble marquis in this country, important events had taken place, which presented re- 394: THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. newed and augmented claims to their gratitude. Mr. Plunket, the eloquent and powerful advocate of their civil rights at least, was at that moment, if not actually, certainly potentially, the first officer of the law in Ireland. This was an appointment at which they had much reason to rejoice, not only because their friend had been advanced, but also because, by that appointment, Mr. Saurin ceased to be chief governor of Ireland.' 1 ' 1 Loud acclamations greeted this announcement of the rise of Plunket and fall of Saurin. O'Connell also alluded to the elevation of Solicitor- General Bushe to the dignity of chief-justice of the King's Bench. He praised his talents. He had never leagued with any party "in a system and determination to oppress his Roman Catholic country- men." If he sometimes helped to prosecute individuals, on such occa- sions in him were "always found united the talents of the orator and the feelings of the gentleman. He never left a sting of angry sentiment behind. ... It had been even said in the House of Commons by the official organ of government that, ' if the Catholics were to be persecuted, he was not the man to do it.' " The Catholic address was graciously received by the marquis of Wellesley. Perhaps it was a special object of Wellesley's policy to prevent O'Connell from forming an alliance with the English Reformers. At all events, the reception of O'Connell by the marquis, when " the Man of the People" made his first attempt to play the part of courtier at the viceregal levee, was in the highest degree flattering. It was said that he even asked "the Agitator," in a style of courtly compliment, to co- operate with him in his endeavors to tranquillize Ireland, at that time sorely tormented with distress and agitated by "Captain Hock'' and his merry men. O'Connell may have beeD lulled for the moment, as it were. by the honeyed words, but he was far too shrewd to succumb to the influ- ence of the viceregal "blarney" for any length of time. Besides, (lie Catholics were soon offended by the circumstance that John Kingston James, the "noted," or "notorious," lord-mayor of Dublin, as the Tiims called him, "who had the courage to set the king's letter at defiance" by proposing a toast insulting to the Catholics, was created a baronet of Great Britain. A clever Catholic member of the English bar, a Con- naught man named Blake, who was supposed to have great influence with Lord Wellesley, and had followed in his train from England, sue- THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 395 ceeded, indeed, in mitigating to a certain degree the displeasure of the Catholics, by taking on himself the blame of having induced his friend, the marquis, to confer a title of honor on James. O'Connell about this time published an address to the Catholics of Treland. It begins with his favorite quotation from Byron— " Hereditary bondsmen ! know ye not, Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow?" He admits that, the year before, he and others had come to the conclu- sion that it was useless to petition the British Parliament again, while ; t was so unpopularly constituted. However, subsequent events, such as the king's visit and letter, which showed "both the monarch and people in new and favorable lights,' 7 should, he says, cause them to alter their resolution. He accuses the Catholics of Dublin of "apathy or inconsistency" on the subject of the veto, "while the last bill was in discussion." He even insists — referring to a hastily got up meeting, where silence on the subject of the veto had been preserved — that " by dexterity, and a species of side-wind, the Catholics of Dublin are at this moment committed to an approval of that measure, which they often so unanimously and so loudly condemned." He then speaks of a plan de- vised by himself in order "to obviate the mischief of a vetoistical bill," which he had submitted to Mr. Plunket. This is, in point of fact, a modified plan for the concession of "securities" to the government. The recent delusive appearances of increased liberality on the part of "the powers that be," followed up by the arrival of the enlightened Wellesley and Plunket' s appointment as attorney-general, for the time being softened the sternness of O'Connell's resistance to the desire on the part of government to have some check on the appointment of the Cath- olic bishops. According to O'Connell's plan for "domestic nomination" of prelates, the candidates for vacant Irish sees should be natural-born subjects of the Crown, who had taken the oath of allegiance in one of the superior courts of Dublin, and had discharged clerical duties " for at least five years;" the electors should take "a solemn oath" not to vote for any person who had not been known to them "by the most sat- isfactory proofs to be strictly loyal and peaceable in his principles and conduct." This plan proposed, also, that, ere the successful candidate 396 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. should be consecrated, the government should have two months "foi investigating his character;" that if "a charge of disloyalty or disaffec- tion against him should be proved before the Roman Catholic arch- bishops of Ireland, the electors should proceed to a new nomination;" that all Irish Catholic bishops should take an oath not to "correspond with any pope, prince, prelate, potentate ot any other person" abroad, "upon any political subject whatever," and that, if any foreign poten- tate or other person should write to him, he should transmit to govern- ment a true copy of so much of the communication as might be "inju- rious to the rights of the Crown or government," etc. O'Connell's address and this plan are given in full in the second volume of his son's selection of his speeches, etc. Plunket in reply made some objections and suggested certain modifications, especially, that "instead of a spe- cific charge" of disaffection to the state, "to be established by specific proof," a general objection to the loyalty of a candidate should justify his being set aside. However, this plan of "domestic nomination" never produced any practical result. On Wednesday, February the 13th, an aggregate meeting of Cath- olics, the proceedings at which were confused and somewhat unintelli- gible, was held at Denmark Street Chapel. Counsellor O'Gorman read the following resolution: "Resolved, that we deem it essential to our honor and interests that as speedy a discussion as possible, in the present session, maybe obtained on the merits of our petition." When this had been moved and seconded, Mr. Hugh O'Connor, a wealthy Catholic mer- chant, engaged in the West-Indian trade, moved an amendment to the effect that their petition should be committed to Plunket and Lord Donoughmore, to be presented for discussion in Parliament, "at such period in the present session as tiny may conceive most beneficial for Catholic interests." In urging the adoption of this amendment, he talked of the necessity of prudence and moderation and patience. The word "speedy," in the original resolution, seemed to him "not decorous or well advised." He also spoke of the infamous Castlereagh as "our distin- guished friend." When O'Connell, in his turn, rose and said that the petition "called for a speedy discussion on the merits of our claims." he was. as it appears to me, most unreasonably and discourteously interrupted by Mr. Nicholas Malion, who called him to order. "The THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 397 petition had been passed and should not now be made the subject of discussion." Mr. O'Connell. "I am not out of order. I assert that that petition requires the meeting to pass my resolution." Mr. James 0' Gorman. "I call Mr. O'Connell to order; we are not now discussing the merits of the petition." Mr. O'Connell. "I call on the meeting' to call for a speedy discussion on our petition." Confusion now arose ; but the chairman, S ,- r Thomas Esmonde, con- ceived O'Connell had a right to be heard. O'Connell went on to say, he couldn't see why they "should put their reason and judgment into the pockets of two individuals." He ridiculed Mr. O'Connor's calling Lord Londonderry, or Castlereagh, "our distinguished friend;" upon which some one in the crowd cried out, " Do you come here to abuse members of Parliament?" "The marquis of Londonderry is not my friend," replied O'Connell. He added that Jack Lawless had asserted that he (O'Connell) was about to accept a silk gown as a bribe from government. " The created universe," exclaimed he, " would not induce me to accept a favor under the administration of Lord Londonderry." Here there arose boisterous interruption and disapproving murmurs, and cries of "Question, question!" and Mr. Hugh O'Connor conceived "that Mr. O'Connell was taking up the time of the meeting very unnecessarily." Upon this several groans were heard. Presently O'Connell talked of Russia "breaking up the Holy Alliance," and referred to "Greece strug- gling for freedom. Look to Spain ! look to Portugal ! In those countries we see the Inquisition and the tithe system abolished. Look to France !" Here Mr. Hugh O'Connor asked, " Does Mr. O'Connell mean to occupy the time of this meeting with such ridiculous nonsense?" (Applause.) " Whether it be ridiculous or sensible," quoth our hero, with good- humored sturdiness, " I am determined I will not be prevented from going on." This set them all a-laughing for several minutes. O'Con- nell now went on: "Can they look for foreign support against our claims ? What might have ensued in Ireland if the Catholic clergy had remained neuter?" Mr. D'Evereux here hastened to call Mr. O'Connell to order. Towards the end, after a good deal more confusion, Messrs. Hugh O'Connor, Howley and others declared they would withdraw the 398 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. amendment and let O'Connell's resolution pass, on the understanding that he would not oppose their amendment as a separate resolution. To this O'Connell assented. The original resolution was then carried amid cries of " No, no ;" after which Hugh O'Connor's amendment was also carried as a resolution. A committee was finally appointed to prepare an address from the Catholics to the king, begging him to recommend a repeal of the penal laws that still affected them. Jack Lawless, a few days after, wrote a letter disclaiming all intention of charging O'Connell with any thought of taking a bribe from government. Some writers assert that this strange attempt to worry O'Connell by unusual and unseemly interruptions resulted from the intrigues of the viceregal favorite, Mr. Blake. Whether this were the fact or not, I shall not take on me to pronounce. On the 7th of May, in the same year, we find O'Connell, at a meet- ing held in the Rotunda buildings, co-operating with a society called "The National Society" in getting up a petition to the House of Com- mons, praying for legislative aid to establish a system of "national education." His son says that, on this occasion, "the first idea of the present National Board of Education seems to have been shadowed out." O'Connell's speech is not well preserved. Among other things, he said, " They would teach children of all persuasions, but would not interfere with the religious tenets of any." There were terrible scenes of famine and distress in Ireland, chiefly in the south and west, in this year, 1822. Sir John Newport of Water- ford, in the House of Commons, described one parish in his neighbor- hood where fifteen persons had already died of hunger, twenty-eight more were past hope of recovery, one hundred and twenty prostrated by famine-fever. In another parish, upon the inhabitants of which fell famine had "scowled a baleful smile," the priest had gone round and administered extreme unction to every man, woman and child. Colonel Patricson, quartered in Galway, reports to his superior officer that "hundreds of half-famished wretches arrive almost daily from a dis- tance of fifty miles, many of them so exhausted by want of food that the means taken to restore them fail of effect, from the weakness of the digestive organs occasioned by long fasting." In the county Clare 99.639 persons subsisted on daily charity ; in Cork, 122,000. The sta- THE LIFE OF DANIEL CCONNELL. 399 tistics of the time are very defective. Alison, the Scotch historian, attributes this famine-havoc to "the contraction of the currency, and consequent fall of the prices of agricultural produce fifty per cent." All through the war, from the closing years of the last century, there had been a suspension of cash payments. Paper money had been a legal tender. In 1*819, Peel's measure for the resumption of cash pay- ments had passed. Alison, however, does not trouble himself to men- tion that the Irish grain crop of 1821, to the amount of nearly two millions of quarters, and that of 1822, to the amount of more than a million quarters, with numberless herds of cattle, sheep and pigs, had been carried over to England. The English Parliament voted out of the consolidated exchequer of the two islands £500,000 to relieve Irish dis- tress by giving the destitute employment on public works. This appro- priation, like similar grants during later Irish famines, was grossly mismanaged by English officials and w T asted on senseless and unpro- ductive works. The English press of the time talked of it as if it were mere British alms to the pauper Irish. Alison gives England any amount of glory for her generosity : " England no longer remembered the crimes of Ireland — thought only of her sorrows." More of this sort of sickly and sickening cant he drivels forth. But the Tory Scotchman takes good care not to remind us of the fact that John Mitchel takes good care to mention — viz., that this appropriation "by no means amounted to one-tenth part of the Irish money annually drained from Ireland into England, and applied to English purposes." To add to the horror of this terrible time, numbers of hapless tenants were "exterminated" by rapacious landlords and their still more unscru- pulous agents. Tenants retaliated, and now and then shot a landlord or an agent. "Nocturnal outrages" took place. Men with blackened faces, wearing white shirts, in the hours of darkness searched houses for arms, which could be used for defence or vengeance. These disturb- ances were purely agrarian, not in the least revolutionary; yet the gov- ernment considered a new "Insurrection Act" the proper remedy for such disorders. "An act for the suspension of the habeas corpus" was also passed. To carry this measure w r as almost the last public act of the infamous Castlereagh, or Londonderry. It must be admitted that the marquis of Wellesley, in using the terrible extraordinary powers for 400 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. the suppression of Irish outrage with which he was armed, showed a certain humanity towards his unfortunate countrymen, and this mod- eration was probably one of the main causes ol his daily increasing unpopularity with the Orange and Ascendency factio However, even the Ascendency corporation were not quite insensible to the distress in the south and west. A meeting on behalf of the famine-stricken sufferers was held at the Mansion House, Dawson street, on Thursday, the 16th of May. O'Connell, strange to say, received an invitation to be present at this meeting. He attended, and made them all laugh when he said, "I received an invitation to come here — an invi- tation which it is not usual for me to receive." Indeed, O'Connell, it appears to me, was always desirous to conciliate even the Orange faction, if it were at all possible ; and when, on rare occasions, brought into im- mediate contact with them, he would for the moment succeed in inspiring them with more kindly feelings towards him. Thus, at an earlier date (1814), when he had an opportunity of speaking before the corporation, they were quite taken with him. Even the inveterate Giffard remarked, after Dan had retired. "The mildness of that man's manner surprised me ; I expected something very different. His demeanor is extremely conciliating. He is eloquent; and, d — n — n to him! the fellow is so handsome!" Returning, however, to the Mansion House meeting of 1822, O'Connell also said: "There should be no rivalry in the present case, except a generous rivalry and emulation to excel each other in cheerfully contributing to the relief of their suffering fellow-country- men. '• (Cheers.) ' Neither did he on this occasion forget his favorite topic of a repeal of the union. Speaking of the causes of the existing distress, he said: "His friend, Mr. Leader, had eloquently enumerated many of the causes. It was now vain, he feared, to speak of absentee- ism. The period for that was now gone by. When the government of this country, with its peers and commoners, was transported to another country, it was idle to speak of absentees, for the great proprietors were obliged by law to be absent from their native land." (Hear, hear!) On the 13th of November, in the same year, at a Catholic charity din- ner lor the orphan school of Clondalkin, presided over by Lord Cloncuny, after thanking his noble friend, who had proposed his health, for saying "that he was honestly disposed to serve Ireland," O'Connell declared that THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 40 1 " to Alderman Nugent, as an Irishman, he felt unaffectedly grateful for his meritorious exertions in endeavoring to effect a repeal of the union. 'Twas true he differed, most widely differed, from that gentleman in pol- itics, but he would forgive any man his injuries towards himself, or his general political line of conduct, provided he redeemed them by a sin- cere and substantial service towards his country." He also spoke against "secret confederacies and private associations," and ended by proposing the health of the duke of Leinster. What he said of Alderman Nugent referred to a meeting of the Protestant guild of merchants, or " The Masters, Warden and Brethren of the Corporation of Merchants, or Guild of the Holy Trinity, Dublin," at which a committee of their body, with Henry and James Grattan, sons of the illustrious Grattan, at their head, were appointed to prepare a petition for repeal of the union. This petition dwelt on the miseries and grievances of Ireland since the union, consequent on or aggravated by that measure — fever, famine, inordinate taxation, suspended habeas corpus, insurrection acts, government by sti- pendiary magistrates and armed police, constant coercive measures, rejection of all motions for inquiry, stoppage of Ireland's progress. The petitioners said that a measure carried "by such unconstitutional means . . . must end in calamity and recoil upon the authors of so much evil." They also reminded the House that "the pressure of busi- ness upon you is too great, the inconvenience to Irish members to attend is too great, the wants of seven millions of people are too great." Such, in spite of their party prejudice, was the petition of this Orange guild. In truth, many of the Ascendency faction, while narrowly holding out for the maintenance of the exclusive rule of Protestants, would fain have seen the national legislature of Ireland restored. This very Alder- man Nugent, who so longed for repeal, apparently clung at the same time to the narrow system of intolerance which went far to make Irish independence in any form impracticable. On the 15th of January, in the same year, at a corporation dinner at Morrison's Hotel, amid loud hurrahs, and to the tune of "July the First," Sir Thomas Whelan had given the celebrated Orange toast, "To the glorious, pious and immortal memory of the great and good king William the Third." When Sir Thomas had expressed his trust "that the corporation would not be blown about like 402 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXXELL. a weathercock," Alderman Nugent had risen and proposed the health of Sir Thomas for having given that never-to-be-forgotten toast. "If," he exclaimed, "the present system" (0/ conciliation) "should be per- sisted in, His Majesty's crown would not be safe in six months." Barrington gives an amusing full-length version of this Orange toast in his "Personal Sketches." I shall give a sentence or two: "To the glorious, pious and immortal memory of the great and good king "Wil- liam, who saved us from popery, slavery, arbitrary laws, wooden shoes and brass money. May he who would not drink the toast on his bare knees be damned, crammed and rammed, with flints and sparables, into the great gun of Athlone, blown into the air and fall into the bottomless pit of hell — the key in an Orangeman's pockel !" The reader had better refer to Barrington and see the toast complete. On the 12th of August, this year, an irishman, who was all through life a worse enemy to his country than the worst Orangeman, executed justice on himself by severing his carotid artery with a knife. I allude to the suicide of the baleful and infamous Caatlereagh. In a former chapter 1 have already referred to this self-inflicted deed of retributive justice. Alison, speaking of the yell of execration with which a London crowd (probably chiefly composed of Irishmen) welcomed the destroyer of Ireland's independence to his grave in Westminster Abbey, s;iys that "savage miscreants raised a horrid shout." Mr. Michel remarks on this: "But future ages will probably pronounce, that in all the mob of London was no such dreadful miscreant as the man then borne to his grave." Even though 1 have little space to spare, I cannot refrain from giving some of Lord Byron's remarks on the death of this wretched traitor to his country: "As to lamenting his death," says the noble bard, "it will be time enough when Ireland has ceased to mourn for his birth. As a minister. I, for one of millions, looked upon him as the most despotic in intention, and the weakest in intellect, that ever tyran- nized over a country. It is the first time, indeed, since the Xorinan-v that England has been insulted by a minis/,,- (al least 1 who could not speak English, ami that Parliament permitted itself to be dictated to in the language of Mrs. Malaprop." This is one of Byron's most acute thrusts. He was a master of sarcasm, and it was strange indeed how- it was that he used Ids best talent for Irish subjects. THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL, 403 I can only make brief mention of the libel case of Wallace versus Staunton, in which 0' Conn ell defended Michael Staunton, who was ar- raigned on the 25th of May, 1821, for an alleged libel, in the Weekly Register, on Thomas Wallace, the king's counsel, afterwards master in chancery. He, it may be remembered, was one of the unfortunate John Magee's counsel. In spite of O'Connell's able speech, the close of which drew forth a burst of applause from a crowded court, a packed jury convicted Mr. Staunton, who suffered an imprisonment in Kilmainham. Mr. Staunton, through the better portion of his life, was one of the most prominent liberal journalists in Dublin and one of O'Connell's most devoted partisans. He lived to be lord-mayor of Dublin in the reformed corporation. In his latter years, through O'Connell's influence, he also became collector-general of metropolitan rates. I shall also notice, in passing, a letter written by O'Connell to the Dublin Freeman 's Journal, on the 6th of December, 1822, in reference to a point of legal etiquette. The Freeman had made an inaccurate state- ment in reference to O'Connell's connection with the case of Crowe versus Fleming, and O'Connell, in consequence, gives a brief, but lucid, expla- nation of the whole matter. " I was counsel," he writes, "for Mr. Crowe at the trial of the first cause instituted by him in the Court of Exchequer, and tried at Ennis, in the summer assizes, 1819. He was unsuccessful, and the cause was at an end. "He afterwards filed a bill against Mr. Fleming in the Court of Chan- cery. In that cause I was not counsel for either party ; Mr. Crowe had a right to leave me out, and he very properly exercised that right. " He next instituted this suit in the Court of King's Bench, and issue had been for some time joined in it before either party applied to me. Mr. Hickman, the defendant's attorney, was the first to do so. He offered me a retainer." O'Connell wanted to decline, having been "counsel for the plaintiff in the former case." Hickman insisted on "the defendant's right" that O'Connell " should accept of his retainer," and that he could not, " consistently with professional propriety, refuse." O'Connell still hesitated. Finally, the matter was referred to that cele- brated lawyer, the late Edward Pennefather, with whom, in spite of widely-different political views, O'Connell seems to have been generally on not unfriendly terms. O'Connell and Hickman went together to Mr. 404 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. Pennefather's house. On Hickman's statement, that distinguished au- thority "decided," says O'Connell, "that Itvas bound to accept the defend- ant's retainer. In that decision, of course, I acquiesced." O'Connell touches on a few other points, to which the Freeman had referred inac- curately, but I have given the only point of any particular interest in the letter. Early in the summer of 1822, our hero had sent his family to the South of France, chiefly for the benefit of Mrs. O'Connell' s health. They had sailed from Dublin to Bordeaux. From that city they had gone to the town of Pan, in the department of Basses Pyrenees, where they waited till O'Connell could join them. In the month of August he managed to leave Ireland for the purpose of doing so. He went, however, in the first instance, by Dover and Calais, to Paris, in order to visit his distinguished and venerable uncle, General Count O'Connell. The political creeds of those two remarkable O'Connells were completely at variance. But the fine old soldier did not let his unbounded veneration for royalty interfere with the warmth and kindness of the reception he gave the great popular chieftain, his nephew. In spite of his eighty years and old wounds, of which he bore the numerous scars (forty years before, at the memorable siege of Gib- raltar, the scattering fragments of a shell from the British batteries had, in a moment, wounded him in nine places; a bullet had also carried off a portion of his ear), in spite of time and toils, the brave old gen- eral was still hale and hearty. He was kind and genial, thoroughly Irish, and full of old anecdotes and recollections of the "battles, sieges, fortunes" through which he had passed "even from his boyish days." He no doubt entertained his kinsman with full many a tale " Of most disastrous chances ; Of moving accidents by flood and field ; Of hair-breadth 'scapes i' the imminent deadly breach." Our hero now left Paris for the South of France. It was on this journey, according to John O'Connell, that he had the adventure in the diligence with a good-looking French sea-captain, who, imagining him to be an Englishman, tried to provoke him by abusing England, and was equally vexed and astonished at Dan's imperturbable good-humor, till the true cause was explained to him, when he showed all the true polite- THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 405 ness of a Frenchman. I follow the authority of O'Neill Daunt (and I think rightly), in ascribing this adventure to O'Connell's visit to France in early life. The reader may call to mind the brief account of this incident, which occurs towards the commencement of the fifth chapter of this biography. During the latter part of this journey, O'Connell had to post. He encountered a somewhat unpleasant adventure, such as travellers in foreign lands are still occasionally liable to, but which, in those days when railway communication was not, they might meet at any time without any need to be much surprised. By some misconception of his orders (probably some provincial speaker of patois misunderstood O'Con- nell's excellent French), he was taken along the route to Bayonne instead of that to Pau. He did not discover this mistake till, just at the very ?lose of a most exhausting day, during the whole of which he had been sustaining himself with anticipations of the delight he would feel that night in being reunited with Mrs. O'Connell and his family, he learned, in answer to an inquiry as to the exact distance yet between him and Pau, that, instead of being near his loved ones, he was at the second or third last stage from Bayonne, and nearly forty leagues by cross-roads (probably infernal) from his real destination. One can easily imagine the miserable night-travelling he had to endure, attended, no doubt, with any amount of jolting, if not actual danger to life and limb, over the ruts and inequalities of the badly-constructed and worse-kept cross- roads (the great chcaissees, or main roads, of France, indeed, were even then magnificent). After this night of unrest, he had also to travel all through the next long, weary day, ere he could rejoin his family These amenities of travel, his son tells us, "were long most disagreeably remembered." One would expect that a fine, jovial nature, like O'Con- nell's, would speedily laugh at such misadventures. At all events, the joy of reunion with his much-loved wife and children would soon banish any unpleasant remembrances of the road. I fancy that poor creature, John O'Connell, paints rather what he would be likely to feel under such circumstances himself, than the actual feelings of his father. After sojourning for a few weeks at Pau, O'Connell brought his family to Tours, where he left them to spend the winter, and then set out on his return to his public and legal duties in Ireland. His son i06 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. Morgan, who had been back from his South American expedition for about two years, and was now on his way to join the Austrian army as a cadet in a light dragoon regiment, accompanied him as far as Paris. No doubt the gallant veteran, Count O'Connell, was especially rejoiced to see a young soldier of his ancient race. Morgan proceeded to Austria ; and our hero, having also bid farewell to the old warrior of his race, hastened to their native isle.* * Authorities for the foregoing chapter: "The Select Speeches of Daniel O'Connell, M. P., edited, with Historical Notices, etc., by his Son, John O'Connell, Esq.;" Fagan's "Life of O'Con- nell;" "Life of Dr. Doyle," by Fitzpatrick ; "Life and Times of Daniel O'Connell, with Sketches of his Contemporaries, etc., Dublin, John Mullany, 1 Parliament street ;" " The History of Ireland, from the Treaty of Limerick to the Present Time," by John Mitchel ; " History of Europe since 1815," by Sir Archibald Alison, Bart. ; "Memoir* of Lord Wellesley;" "Cobbett's Register:" Horace Twiss's " Memoirs of Lord Eldou," etc CHAPTER XVII. O'CONNELL COMMUNICATES THE PLAN OF A NEW ASSOCIATION TO ShIEL AT A FRIEND'S HOUSE in Wicklow — The real Catholic Association founded— Lord Killeen — Union of all sections of catholics — the priests become active woekees in the cause— slow peogeess of the new movement at fiest — o'connell a delightful travelling com- panion — o'connell establishes the "catholic eent " — difficulties he has to ovee- come; his peoject sneeeed at; his teemendous eneegy — his complete teiumph ; feiends and enemies surprised — the popular element strong in the catholic movement for the first time — the association a sort of national goveenment ; the multiplicity of its business; o'connell has the lion's shaee — 1824 one of THE MOST GLORIOUS YEARS OF HIS LIFE — BOLD OPINIONS OF Dr. DOYLE — "THE SORBONNE Manifesto" — The Dissenters not unfriendly to the Catholics — Clever liteeaey defendees of the catholic cause — dulness of theie opponents — insanity of slb Haecouet Lees and the Oeange faction — Establishment of the "Moening Regis- tee" — Mooee's "Captain Rock" — A year's woek in the Association — O'Connell de- nounces THE HOSTILE JOUENALS OF ENGLAND AND IeELAND — " THE BEST-ABUSED MAN IN the woeld " — o'connell's epistolaey " boees " — aeistoceatic adhesions — death ob "Old Hunting-cap" — Aggeegate meeting — -"The New Refoemation" — O'Connell aeeested for a speech on bolivae — o'connell and the catholic delegates in England — The Catholic Association suppeessed — The duke of Yoek's speech on Peel's emancipation bill — -"The wings" — Stephen Coppingee — The Mahon paety — COBBETT AND O'CONNELL — AfFAIE WITH LeYNE — FoUETEEN-DAYS' MEETINGS — O'CONNELL unconqueeable ; the new Association — O'Connell's amusing diffeeence with the peess — Elections; defeat of the Beresfords, etc. — The Order of Liberators — Foreign sympathizers — Death of Beic — Death of the duke of Yoek and Loed Liverpool — Dan and Remmy Sheehan — Buedett's bill defeated — Napoleon's niece at a Catholic meeting — Canning ministee; his death; geeat disappointment of the Catholics — Pope and Maguire — Anglesea viceroy — Monster Catholic petition ■ — Wellington prime minister — Military appearance of the peasantry — Repeal of the Test and Corporation acts. jE are now fast approaching the triumphant period of O'Con- nell's career. In the spring of 1823, at a dinner-party at Glencullen, in the county Wicklow, then the residence of T. O'Mara, Esq., O'Connell, who had been long revolving in his mind the idea of a new Catholic association, mentioned his plan to the assembled company. He stated that he intended to propose that the new body should consist of two classes of members, the one paying a pound, the other a shilling, a year each, and that the working 408 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. committee should be selected from the former class. Richard Lalor Shiel, who was present, gave expression to some doubts as to the practica- bility of the plan. He thought the time also unsuitable for such an experiment. O'Connell, however, maintained that the time to make another effort for emancipation had arrived, and that the plan would work; in short, he said he would make it work. It would not be quite accurate, then, to state, as many have done, that the first idea of the Catholic Association arose in a conversation between O'Connell and Shiel at the house of a mutual friend in Wicklow. After various preliminary meetings, at which O'Connell takes the most conspicuous part, and at one of which he tells his audience that "some persons must take the trouble of managing the affairs of the Catholics," and at another of which we find him warmly defending Wil- liam Cunningham Plunket "as a perfect martyr to his public duty," in obedience to a numerously and influentially signed requisition, Nicholas Purcell O'Gonnan summons the Catholics of Dublin to assemble in gen- eral meeting at Townsend Street Chapel. At this meeting, which took place on the 10th of May, a resolution expressive of gratitude to Plunket for his services to the Catholics was carried. O'Connell spoke at con- siderable length and touched on a variety of topics, lie dwelt ably on Ireland's capacity for a prosperous career, enumerating Juer chief re- sources. "We live," said he, "in the richest country in the universe, and amongst the poorest people." Speaking of the natural gilts of his countrymen, he exclaimed: '•Irishmen never combat to be on a level with, but always above, their competitors. There was not an army in Europe but was led by Irishmen; there is not a coiner of the world bin resounds with their achievements. When Maria Theresa founded a new- order of honor and merit, out of the first fifty officers who received the decoration, no less than forty-two were Irishmen. "And why are they not more generally celebrated in the service of their country? Let the intolerant, persecuting bigot answer. All they want, Cobbett says, is 'a clear stage and fair play.' But that clear stage they had hitherto been insultingly refused." It was in this speech that he made reference to the friendly overturesof the Orange corpora- tion on the occasion of the king's visit. lie nexl defied •"the tongue of malignity, the most shameless audacity of that compound of stupidity THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 409 and slanderous villainy (produced from the crazed brain of a reverend fox-hunter, and translated into better English by his coadjutor), The Warder," and "that reservoir of baseness and calumny, in which truth never appears but by accident, The Mail/' to say that the Catholics had, "in the slightest degree, been accessory to the failure of our gra- cious monarch's blessed work of conciliation !" He would even appeal to the "candor" of these "scribblers," if they could be supposed to have any. He then compares the "stupidity" of the English press to that of "the bird of night." The fox-hunting parson just alluded to was no doubt the notorious Sir Harcourt Lees. Presently our hero calls attention to a monstrous letter, written by ex- Attorney-General Saurin to Lord JSTorbury, which had been found accidentally. O'Connell styles it "this shameless and secret interference of a law-officer in the admin- istration of justice." In the letter Saurin begs his "dear Norbury" to "judiciously administer a little of this medicine" (certain threats that they may lose their seats) "to the King's county and other members of Parliament that may fall in his way." I may here .turn aside to remark, that this disclosure of his tampering with the independence of a judge seriously injured Saurin. Lord Norbury was more lucky. The govern- ment — Peel and Goulbourn, the Irish chief- secretary, especially — had the effrontery to defend him from the charge of incompetency, when it was brought against him, later. It was asserted that, at eighty years of age, he was quite as fit to administer justice as at any former period of his life. "That is perfectly true," said our hero, "because he was not fit to administer justice at any time." At last O'Connell presented a petition for his removal. It was entrusted to Mr. Scarlett, afterwards Lord Abinger. , He did not move on it, however, for Peel, who at bottom was ashamed of Lord Norbury, promised that he would try and induce that old judicial zany to retire voluntarily. Norbury, by shifts and evasions, put off the evil day of giving up his "racket court" as long as possible; indeed, it was not till he saw George Canning rising to the head of affairs that he felt his hour was come. Even then he contrived to be raised to an earldom before he resigned his judicial seat in favor of Plunket. O'Connell's exertions to get this bloodthirsty old buffoon removed from the bench deserved the gratitude of his countrymen. It is to a special commission of Norbury's that he alludes in his defence 410 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. of Ma gee, where he says, " Why, in one circuit, during the administra- tion of the cold-hearted and cruel Camden, there were one hundred indi- viduals tried before one judge ; of these ninety-eight were capitally con- victed, and ninety-seven hanged! One escaped, but he was a soldier, who murdered a peasant, or something of that trivial nature. Ninety- seven victims in one circuit! ! /" It is not surprising that we rind O'Connell this year, 1824, frequent in his denunciations of the unprincipled and venal journals of Dublin and London. He describes the claims of several of the newspapers on the Association as having "no just foundation." He speaks of "tin.' base Dublin press" having turned "upon him and all the honest Cath- olics for pursuing the same measures that are now approved of; but in spite of that vile press he now held up bis head too high, and enjoyed too much the confidence and consideration of the public, to be affected by their envious rancor or impotent malignity." Towards the end of the year (on the 16th of December), lie makes another onslaught on the press. Something he was alleged to have said, on this occasion, about the South American liberator, bolivar, caused the authorities to take a step to which 1 shall refer presently. On this day, too, he asserted a second time — in noticing a boasl made by the London Courier, "that polluted vehicle of falsehood and calumny," to the effect "that all the generals of the British army were Protestants'" — that "when Maria Theresa instituted the Order of the Cross of military merit in Austria. of the first fifty individuals who were promoted to that honor, forty-two were Irish Catholics." He pledged himself to procure their names, and added: "The proportion of Irishmen in the Austrian service could not, of course, have been more than as one to three hundred, and yet we find forty-two out of fifty whose merit was rewarded with a signal promotion to be Irishmen. He" {Mr. O'Connell) "had no fewer than six relatives who had attained the rank of general in foreign armies. His lather's cousin was governor of Prague and chamberlain to the emperor of Austria." This fact greatly astounded the German tourist, Prince Puckler-Muskau. "His uncle had" (befori tin- Revolution) "been a gen- eral in the French service. But such had been the good elicits even of the partial relaxation of the penal code, that of thirty-seven relatives of his, within the degree of second cousin, who. before the Revolution, had been in the French service, not one was now in any foreign army" (morels the THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 411 pity), "but many had perished in securing the triumphs and establish- ing the glory of the Wellingtons and the Packs." They deserved no better luck. It appears the meeting was foolish enough to cheer this last sentence. In a second speech, delivered by him on this occasion our hero sneers at the hypocrisy of the Northern Whig, a Belfast paper. He jests upon its management by three Presbyterian parsons, "who borrow, as far as I can understand, their best inspirations from ' moun- tain dew/ known by the vulgar appellation of 'potteen.'" [Loud laughter.) He differs from his friend Lawless about the liberality of Belfast, which, he says, "is affected." He denies that it was in Belfast that Catholics were first allowed to join volunteer corps. " I totally deny my worthy friend's" {Lawless 1 's) "history; Catholics formed the majority, and in some instances the entire, of several volunteer corps in the South, before they were allowed to join a single corps in the North. In Con- naught the distinction never existed ; and even in Dublin, at the boasted period of northern liberality, there was an entire corps of Catholics, called the Irish Brigade, under, by the way, the present illustrious head of the Irish government, the Marquis Wellesley." {Cheers.) O'Connell is, perhaps, somewhat too bitter against Belfast in this address. He will not admit that the support of Lawless' s paper, The Irishman, by that town is any "mighty proof of Belfast liberality." "Why did the liberals of Belfast let that honest Deny journal, the Ulster Recorder, perish? "Even admitting that some creditable things are to be told of the Dissenters who nourished in Belfast in the Augustan days of Ireland, does that show that its people of the present time are any better than mere pretenders to liberality?" As well might Solicitor-General Joy claim credit for liberality because his father and uncle were United Irishmen. O'Connell might have added that Henry Joy McCracken, who, in '98, commanded the rebels at the battle of Antrim, and was hung shortly after, was Joy's first cousin. In this speech our hero calls Wolfe Tone "the classic, the elegant and the ill-fated Tone." He next speaks of petitions to Parliament. A great one, with a million of names, is being prepared. He says, amid great laughter, "There will have to be a wagon hired to carry it from the Tower wharf to Parliament, for the earl of Donoughmore, in the House of Lords, and Sir Francis Burdett, in the House of Commons. They should petition, 412 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. also, against the building of Protestant churches at the expense of Cath- olics. Two or three Protestants in a parish, by applying to the Board of First-fruits, could get a sum to build a church, to be levied off the parishioners. Then they should petition, "praying to be exempted from the payment of tithes and building and repairing of churches," where there are no Protestants. Here the meeting seemed to be amused. " There will be a petition on the subject of church-wardens ; the law on that head in Ireland is a frightful anomaly — a Catholic is made to fill, but cannot vote for, the office of church-warden. " In England, the Dissenters and Jews are exempted from serving the office. None fill the office without taking an oath which the Cath- olics cannot take. The oath binds him to attend divine service, to pro- vide bread, etc., for the communion-table, and generally to see that things are kept in order at divine service; two or three Protestants, with the concurrence of the minister, may, perhaps, in spite, elect him church- warden ; his conscience will not allow him to act, yet he is held responsible. What will the English people say to this? Will they not be astonished? and will they not applaud the Association for their struggles to see justice done to a suffering people?" Here O'Connell seems for the moment strangely credulous in his ideas of British sense of justice towards the Irish people. He returns to the press. Again he lashes the Courier. He suspects that the assailant of Ireland in that journal is "some renegade Irish- man. " He cannot express his "detestation and horror" of this scrib- bler. He is a traducer of the "defenceless female" and "the virtuous priest. Wherever he went, his track could be traced by the slime of slander which he left behind him." (Cheers.) O'Connell defends the priests against the attacks of this anonymous scribe: "They did not delight, with a morbid appetite for all that was degrading and disgust- ing, to gloat over the transcendent turpitude of the mitred monster, nor over the skibbereen pastor; they did not seek, curiously, to inquire what most powerful cause could induce a parson to give up £1500 a year, but they very well knew it was not a desire to abstain from the comforts and conveniences of life" (cheers) ; "they very well knew it was not a wish to live like an anchorite. All he would say was, that there was a most potent cause for all this, but he would not pollute his lips, nor horrify THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 413 his hearers, by more than distantly alluding to that cause, and he de- sired it to be understood that the skibbereen parsons owed much to their forbearance." However, he does not think all papers as bad as the Courier. He praises the Dublin Evening Post, then edited by the late Frederick William Conway, who, at a later period, became its proprietor. Conway, though then a Protestant, had been for a time one of the sec- retaries of the Catholic Association. Some London journals, too, are commended warmly, as deserving the gratitude of the Catholic body. The British Traveller, The Morning Chronicle (he had some time pre- viously regretted the death of its former proprietor, Perry) and Tht Examiner are friendly, honest and talented. In his latter years, indeed, he retracted his good opinion of the last-named journal and denounced its editor as "the miscreant of the Examine?*." John O'Connell conjec- tures that the attacks on O'Connell and the Repeal cause, which pro- voked this retaliation on the Examiner, were caused by some censures that had been uttered by our hero "on the malpractices of a person con- nected by family with the leading writer" (Albany Fonblanque, I suppose) of that clever paper. In this sharp review of the press, as it existed in 1824, O'Connell, comparing the anti-Catholic journals of London and Dublin, observes: "Bad as the London prints are, they have, however, some taste for decency; they do not, in general, outrage every social feeling, like The Mail and Star, of Dublin." In this year, 1824, we find O'Connell announcing the co-operation of various charitable and religious societies of Dublin with the Associa- tion. Forty-eight collectors of such societies volunteered to assist in collecting the rent under the superintendence of the clergy. We find him protesting against an increased grant to the Kildare street society ; moving that Mr. Plunket should, in spite of his doubts of the utility of then doing so, be requested to urge the Catholic claims in Parliament ; taking the Irish Quakers to task for their inconsistency in petitioning "for the relief of the West India slaves," while they remained "utterly regardless of the most miserable condition of the wretched bondsmen of their own country." Some of the Irish Quakers, when pressed hard to imitate the more liberal example of their English brethren, would fain have excused their indifference by saying "they were no politicians.'" O'Connell held this plea in light account, for it was his maxim that "the 414 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. man who says he has no politics generally contrives to act in accordance with the worst." On the whole, however, O'Connell had great respect lor the Society of Friends. Indeed, my late friend, Father Kenvon, and other leaders of the Young Ireland party, condemned his latter-day pol- icy as savoring of "fat, sensual Quakerism." O'Connell also recom- mends that Lord Grey and Mr. Brougham should be made to understand that the Catholics intended their petition should pray ••for a reformation in the temporalities of the Church establishment in Ireland ; . . . for the better regulation of juries; . . . the disfranchisement of the exist- ing rotten borough corporations," as well as -for the removal of the dis- qualifications to which Catholics are now subject;" though the above- named senatorial patrons of the Catholic cause, at this time, only agreed with the last prayer (regretting that the Catholics had increased their demands), and refused to support the other parts of the petition. Our hero's attention is also occupied by recent Orange riots and murders in the county Fermanagh, and he l>usie> himself in getting up petitions for the disarming of Orangemen. Strange to say. considering the High-Tory polities of Mr. Blackburn, he approves of that celebrated lawyer's appointment by the marquis of Wellesley "to conduct the Fer- managh inquiry." He considers "thai gentleman's conduct most satis- factory to the public, serviceable to the government and creditable to himself." lie denounces the Ribbonmen, and writes an argumentative address to the people of Ireland -against Ribbonism, Whitehovism and other unlawful societies." IP' speaks with natural indignation of a "murder by the police in Meath." Various other subjects employ his energies, lie takes Goulburn, the chief secretary for Ireland, to task for his false boast that appointments, to the value of £3000 per annum, had been bestowed, under Lord Wellesley's government, upon Catholic banisters. It was true that Mr. Blake, an Irish member of the English bar and the marquis's friend, had received an appointment worth that amount, but, in the words of O'Connell's resolution, "since the Catholic barristers had become eligible to many offices, not one" [of th Irish bar) '•had been appointed by the government" Another day, pursuant to notice, our hero moves "a resolution thanking Dr. Doyle for his letter upon the union of churches." and compares that Learned prelate to the illustrious archbishop of Cambray, Fenelon. We find him properly THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 415 recommending the Association not to notice or trouble themselves with anonymous letters, pretending to narrate tales of Ca'tholic grievances in the North. He says, amusingly enough, that he "himself would be almost ruined in postage charges, by anonymous letters, if the author- ities at the post-office had not been so considerate as to take them off his hands. These letters conveyed plenty of abuse and threats of all kinds. Indeed, he had recently received no less than twelve letters, intimating to him that he might soon expect the favor of having Ms throat cut by the Orangemen." (Laughter.) Here a voice from behind our hero exclaimed, unmeaningly or oddly, "And they are the only people who would take your part." Upon which Dan cries out, "Heaven protect me from them, at any rate. I would be sorry to try them!" (Laughter.) As we are on the subject of letters, I may as well pause here to say, that O'Connell was continually bored by queer letters on the most ridic- ul msly trivial subjects. Doubtless the patience of most public characters is sorely tried by absurd correspondents. One day a letter addressed to him arrived from New York. As he did not remember having any cor- respondent in that city whose communication could be worth the postage, he was about to return the letter unopened. Curiosity, however, got the better of this wise intention. He was rewarded by finding that the trans- Atlantic epistle contained a minute description of a Queen Anne's farthing recently found by the writer, with a modest request that " Ire- land's Liberator" might negotiate the sale of said farthing in London, where, as many sage individuals had informed him, the wonderful far- thing might prove a fortune to the wise and lucky writer. Another New Yorker, a certain preposterous Peter Waldron, wrote the following whimsical letter to O'Connell : " Sir, — I have discovered an old paper, by which I find that my grandfather, Peter Waldron, left Dublin about the year 1730. You will very much oblige me by instituting an imme- diate inquiry who the said Peter Waldron was ; whether he possessed any property in Dublin or elsewhere, and to what amount ; and in case that he did, you will confer a particular favor on me by taking imme- diate steps to recover it, and, if successful, forwarding the amount to me at New York." One time a Protestant parson writes to Dan that he and his family are praying for his conversion to Protestantism. The 416 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. writer is anxious to have a bout at controversy with so renowned an antagonist. Similarly scribbles one Lacking-ton, a Methodist. A fair American begs that he will help her to get up a raffle. The fact of one of her relations having written a work in praise of Ireland will, as a matter of course, induce "Ireland's most distinguished son" to devote to her project tbe time necessary to make it a success. Letters asking patronage came, it may readily be guessed, " Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks In Vallombrosa." " Every Dody," says our hero, "writes to me about everything, and the applicants for places, without a single exception, tell me that one word of mine will infallibly get them what they want. ; One wvrdV Oh, how I am sick of that 'one word!' " Some were even impertinent enough to offer him a "hand-over" for his patronage. One of these scamps he threatened with a prosecution. When another impudent rascal promised to call for a reply. O'Connell told his servant to kick him out of doors as soon as he came to the house. Country-folks sometimes addressed him in a singularly grotesque style. One of these commenced an epistle to him with "Awful sir!" Anony- mous letters he condemned to the flames unread. "I just look to see what signature the letter boars, and if I find none, I fling it into the fire." In all the anonymous communications he ever got, he found but one valuable suggestion. 'That."' says he, "was the contrast between the Irish and British elective franchises, and an excellent hint it was. I think I've worked it pretty well, too." Returning from this digression to the business of the Association in 1824, we see O'Connell advocating an address to the Crown, praying "for the enlargement of the commission for inquiring into the state of education in Ireland." He objects to several of the commissioners. especially to Mr. John Leslie Foster, on account of his being "the pro- fessed and unyielding opponent of the rights of six millions of his coun- trymen." At the same time he admits the honorable way in which Mr. Foster discharges "his duty as a public officer." O'Connell snys also: "The great and serious disadvantage of Inning strangers upon tln'^ commission is, that they will naturally lie influenced by the deservedly CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY. THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 417 high character which Mr. Foster bears as counsel for the revenue.'' Our hero is tormented with some squabbles about giving Mr. Edward Dwyer, as assistant-secretary of the Association, a salary of £160 per annum. Some objectors desired to fix the salary at £100 per annum. John O'Connell says, in his inelegant diction : " A spirit of small economy . . . often very much calculated to impede and cripple important polit- ical moves, manifested itself ... in respect to the management of — to use the stereotyped phrase on those occasions — the people's money." He describes this sort of opposition as a cheap way of winning notoriety. Mr. Dwyer's appointment was finally carried. John O'Connell says that his father showed, "through life, a singular quickness in finding out the exact man wanted for any special purpose of the agitation," and that "events proved how well and rightly the choice had been made" when he fixed his eye without any hesitation upon Edward Dwyer. At one of its meetings, the Association busies itself about sending down Mr. Kavanagh to prosecute the offender, in the case of an Orange murder in Ballibay. O'Connell discourses upon "Orange signs," and refers to the quarrels of two bodies of English Catholics. He discusses the propriety of contributing from the funds of the Association to the establishment of a Catholic paper in London. He ridicules the assump- tion of superiority on the part of the English Catholic Association, which, compared to the Irish body, is no more "than a cock-boat to a man-of-war, or a canoe following in the wake of a seventy-four." These English Catholics can only get into "the haven of emancipation under the lee and protection of the Irish Catholic Association." Still he was glad to see "the imperious aristocracy of English Catholics" active. Shortly after we find the English bodies on good terms with each other and with the Irish Association, and O'Connell pointing out to the Eng- lish provincial associations the way to evade the act against correspond- ing societies "by forming themselves into independent societies." On this and other occasions in the same year he pronounces the most glow- ing panegyrics on Cobbett. He calls him "unpurchasable," "their gifted advocate," and talks of "his manly and transcendent intellect." "Had Cobbett," says O'Connell, "been inclined to sell his services, is it too much to say, that when the most disgusting carrion has been pur- chased in the market of corruption, what would they not have given for 418 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. a writer like Cobbett?" The Association must take Cobbetfs Register and post up "a list of his various works in their rooms." JEneas McDonnell is appointed general Parliamentary agent of the Catholic Association in London. O'Connell notices the fact that inti- macy has ceased between him and that gentleman, in order "to show that his recommendation did not proceed from personal feeling, but a conviction of Mr. McDonnell's abilities." John O'Connell says this appointment was "in a manner forced" on his father "by a party . . . prompt to thwart and counteract his views." The "pious jEneas" wanted a salary of £500 per annum; however, the Association gave him only £300. For this yearly stipend he gave them voluminous "special correspondence." attended "the House" on nights of Irish debate, and carried on "an occasional little bit of petty diplomacy with the gracious patrons of the Catholic cause among the members of the two Houses of Parliament." According to Thomas Kennedy, the "pious iEneas" knew how to draw up a nice little bill. When the Association finally wound up its affairs, a committee had to investigate certain claims of Mr. McDonnell's. In his account were such amusing items as "fifteen shillings paid fur a copy of 'Lalla Kookh'" and "picked out of my pocket in the gallery of the House of Commons five pounds." Whether or not these were recognized by the committee of investigation as legitimate expenses, I am not in a position to speak with absolute certainty. " Religious liberty for Catholics and Protestant Dissenters ; education on liberal and just principles; abolition of church-rates; diminution of tithes and to facilitate the delivery in kind; abolition of corporation abuses, monopolies and powers of levying money; the administration of justice, rejection of party sheriffs and party juries, correction of the list of magistrates and great diminution of their powers, so as to bring them as near the common law as possible;" reformation of various courts and jurisdictions; the enabling "ecclesiastical persons to make leases of lives or forty-one years;" redress of local grievances, particularly the abo- lition of the Dublin Paving Board; and "the introduction of poor-rates " — all these subjects were ably reviewed by O'Connell in the course of this year. At a public meeting, in February, he had vigorously opposed the claim of a right to lew tolls made by the corrupt Dublin corporation THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 419 Nor does he ever let slip any favorable opportunity of advocating the repeal of the union. On the subject of poor-laws his opinions under- went a change in his latter days. In fact, he was vehemently opposed to the system of poor-laws ultimately established in Ireland. In addi- tion to these topics, he notices that "the press of France had challenged the press of England to the proof, but as yet that challenge had been unaccepted. L'Etoile" [the Star) "had proved that the English Dis- senters — one-third of the population — were inadmissible by law to all offices of trust and power, while it demonstrated that in France the Dissenters from the Catholic Church, who did not amount to one-fiftieth part of the population, were not only tolerated, but admissible to all offices of trust and power — were not only admissible, but actually ad- mitted." [Cheers.) He also expresses sympathy with the struggling patriots of Greece and the heroic devotion of Missolonghi. We find him in communication with a Mr. George Parker Tevers, living in the Rue de Grenelle, who proposes to procure the insertion of articles in the French and other Continental papers. Tevers suggests "that his pro- posal should not be made public, as the advocacy of the French press, if considered spontaneous, would be more serviceable." O'Connell, how- ever, is determined "that there shall be no secrets in the Association " He takes occasion at the same time to make an onslaught on the Morning Post and "the slave of the Courier." Aristocratic adhesions (Protestant and Catholic) to the Association are numerous this year. Besides the magnates already mentioned as having speedily joined the Catholic ranks, we have Colonel Talbot, afterwards Lord Talbot de Malahide, colleague of Colonel White in the representation of Dublin county, expressing his approval of the objects and conduct of the Association, and enclosing his subscription of £10. Colonel White, the other county member, sent £5. O'Connell passed a high eulogium on each of these gentlemen. He announced that Lord Kenmare and his brother, the Honorable Captain Browne, would send in their donations. Lord Donoughmore concurs with the Association. The Hon. G. Agai Ellis writes, enclosing his own and Viscount Clifden's subscriptions of £10 each. William Villiers Stuart, afterwards Lord Stuart de Decies encloses £20. Nugent of Pallas, or Lord Eiverston, one of the Catholic lords (his peerage was one of the creations of James the Second, un- 420 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL recognized by the house of Brunswick; this branch of the house of Nugent, however, has recently inherited the earldom of Westmeath), sent in a subscription of £10. O'Connell was anxious that the king should be petitioned to restore to this gentleman his title. A Mr. Pallas commissions our hero to hand in £5, the subscription of General O'Far- rell Ambrose, and to propose that gallant veteran, who "had been thirty- nine years in the Austrian army and had seen thirty-four campaigns," as a member of the Association. In November, £10 are handed in from the good Lord Cloncurry, with a patriotic letter, in which the fol- lowing passage occurs : " The last wish I ever heard from Grattan was for the repeal of the union. If all Ireland were polled, I do not believe that out of the seven millions, one hundred votes could be against the repeal of that finishing act of Ireland's degradation. In that repeal I place my best, my almost only, hope of her regeneration."' The Catho- lic prelates, too (for example, Dr. Plunket, bishop of Meath, the oldest member of the Irish hierarchy, and Dr. Kelly, bishop of Droinore), con- tinued to give the Association the sanction of their approval. Though last not least, we have, on the 10th of December, a long Idler from O'Connell's uncle, "Old Hunting-cap," or Maurice of Darrynane, with his subscription of £10. On this occasion O'Connell's brother, James, occupied the chair. The reading of the old man's long letter drew forth enthusiastic plaudits from the crowded meeting. Mr. Dominick Rouayne, afterwards member of Parliament for Clonmel, moved, and Mr. Shiel seconded, the motion for its insertion on the minutes. Our hero said: "The venerable writer had now lived for nearly an entire century, a victim to the cruel penal code; yet his intellect was as unclouded, and his heart as warm to the adopted child of his affections, the cause of Irish liberty and Irish rights, as when his youthful indignation had first been aroused against the injustices and oppressions which had so long been the order of the day against those professing the Catholic religion. "But he" (Mr. O'Connell) "hoped that his venerable relative would at last witness the opening of a brighter day." Alas! poor old "Hunting-cap" lived not to see that brighter day. Shortly after this incident, he died, at the advanced age of ninety-six years. He left Darrynane A.bbey and landed property, said to have been worth £4000 a year, to our hero. CHAPTEK XVIII. O'CONNELL AND SHIEL GO TO ENGLAND AS A DEPUTATION FROM THE CATHOLIC ASSOCIATION— PeEL'S CRAFTY MEASURE AMUSING INCIDENT AT WOLVERHAMPTON, ETC., ETC. At the meeting of December the 16th, the Association had appointed a deputation, consisting of O'Connell, Shiel and Brie (the last-named gentleman to act as secretary), to proceed to England. On their way to London they were to visit the Catholic associations in Liverpool and such other places as they might deem fit ; they were to concert with the English Catholics the best means " of laying before the English people the sufferings and merits of the Catholics of Ireland." O'Connell an- nounced, amid immense cheering, "that they" (the deputation) "would travel at their own expense, without infringing upon the funds of the Association ;" and, though it was " a sacrifice in a professional point of view to leave town at that juncture, he was happy to have an oppor- tunity of making such a sacrifice to the interests of his country." Early in 1825, the deputation, consisting of the three just named and some others, proceeded to England. But a blow was about to be struck at the Association in the Imperial Parliament. Though Ireland was quite peaceful, the king's speech on the 3d of February described the proceedings of the Irish Catholic Association as "irreconcilable with the constitution" and calculated "to endanger the peace of society and to retard the course of national improvement." Chief-Secretary Groul- bourn succeeded in carrying through both Houses a bill for the "Suppres- sion of Unlawful Associations in Ireland." This was intended to destroy the Catholic Association, though a perfectly legal body. In vain, on the night of the 18th of February, Brougham pleaded vehemently against it, while the Irish deputation were sitting below the bar listening with delight to the rush of his mighty eloquence. We shall see presently how easily O'Connell, to use one of his own favorite phrases, "drove a 3oach-and-six through this (Algerine) act of Parliament." At the same time that the government introduced this arbitrary bill, they brought forward a meagre measure of emancipation, accompanied with two crafty provisions in the nature of "securities," which were 422 THE LIFE 0F DANIEL 0'CONNELL. called "the wings'' of the relief bill. Thus, while Catholics, both in England and Ireland, were to be admitted to Parliament and municipal corporations, on the other hand, the forty-shilling freeholders were to be disfranchised, and the Catholic clergy were to become stipendiaries of the British government. A bishop was to receive from the treasury a salary of £1000 per annum, a dean £300, a parish priest £200, a curate £60. This measure, with its accompanying safeguards of English supremacy, was the offspring of Peel's crafty brain. The regium donum had made the Presbyterian clergy, the Maynooth grant had made many professors, so subservient to British power, that they might be always counted on to exercise their influence over their Hocks and pupils against the cause of Ireland's independence. The evident intention of Peel's measure was to reduce the great body of the Catholic clergy to the same subserviency. Luckily, this bill, after passing the Commons, was de- feated on the second leading in the Lords. The heir-presumptive to the crown, the Duke of York, signalized himself by his hostility to the Cut holies on this occasion, lie solemnly declared that he would never give his consent to their claims — "never, so help him God!" Meanwhile the Catholic deputation spent a pleasant time in Eng- land. Shiel has written a most amusing sketch of their journey to London and their doings in that Babylonish metropolis, lie tells us how the party of deputies, to which he had annexed himself, travelled in a barouche of O'Connell's; how people at inns asked "Mho the gen- tlemen were?" how O'ConneH, seated on the box of his barouche, "with a large cloak folded about him, which seemed to be a revival of the famous Irish mantle," attracted tin; larger portion of the public gaze; how, on arriving at Wolverhampton, in a spirit of enthusiastic hero- worship, they went in search of Dr. Milner. He relates how hard it was to find him out; how "a damsel of thirty, with a physiognomy which was at once comely and demure, replied to us at first with a mix- ture of affected ignorance and ostentatious disdain, until Sir Thomas Esmonde, 'a marvellous proper man' in every sense of the word, ad- dressed the fair votress of Wesley with a sort of chuck- under-t he-chin manner (as Leigh Hunt would call it), and induced the fair Methodist to reply, 'If you had asked me for the popish priest instead of the Cath- olic bishop, I should have told you that he lived yonder,' pointing to a THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 423 large but desolate-looking building before us." He then relates how the learned prelate, though by no means discourteous, gave them a reception thoroughly English in its frigidity; how, indeed, the aged man totally forgot O'Connell till he told him who he was; how the decaying embers of his spirit were only kindled up by the "odium theologicum^ (theological hatred), when Shiel, with sly and malicious pleasantry, men tioned the name of the old controversialist's former antagonist, Charles Butler. These and many other entertaining particulars are to be found in Shiel' s agreeable sketch of this memorable "Journey to London."' Money is the great test of worth in England. The Catholic rent made the Association doubly respectable in the eyes of the Mammon- worshiping Englishmen. The members of the deputation were courted by the leading liberal orators, Brougham, Burdett and others. At Brougham's table. O'Connell and Shiel dined in company with four dukes, the former sitting between the dukes of Devonshire and Leinster. They were even feasted in the gorgeous banquet-halls of the great Whig lords. O'Connell, Lord Killeen, Shiel and others were invited to Norfolk House to meet an assemblage of men of the highest rank in England. Among the guests were the dukes of Sussex, Devonshire and Leinster. Lords Grey, Fitzwilliam, Shrewsbury, Donoughmore, Stourton, Clifford, Arundel, Mr. Butler of Lincoln's Inn, Mr. Abercrombie and Mr. Denman were also there. "I was dazzled," says Shiel, "with the splendor of an entertainment to which I had seen nothing to be compared. Norfolk House is one of the finest in London. It was occupied at one period by members of the royal family, and the duke mentioned that George the Third was born in the room in which we dined. I passed through a long series of magnificent apartments in crimson and gold. There was no glare of excessive light in this vast mansion. The massive lamps, suspended from the embossed and gilded ceilings, diffused a chequered illumination and left the deep distance in the dusk. The transition to the chamber, where the company were assembled, and which was glaring with light, presented a brilliant contrast. . . . The duke of Norfolk came forward to meet us, and received us in the most cordial manner." Shiel was most pleased with Lord Fitzwilliam. This venerable noble- man brightened up when Ireland was spoken of. " He reverted with a Nestorian pride to the period of his own government, and stated that ■124 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. he had preserved the addresses presented to him by the Catholics of Ireland as the best memorials of his life." His great wish seemed to be to live to see emancipation. Introduced thus into the society of the royal duke of Sussex, the dukes of Norfolk, Devonshire and other pow- erful nobles, O'Connell for a moment yielded to their insidious blandish- ments. His antagonism to "the wings" softened. He began to think that emancipation, so long delayed, could not be obtained on any terms more favorable than those now apparently within reach. The most influ- ential Catholics of England were far from being hostile to " the wings." The Whigs wished the bill to pass with "the wings," expecting that it would give them additional Parliamentary partisans. Of course, Shiel, even more easily than O'Connell, fell into this way of viewing the pros- pects of the Catholic question. A motion made by Brougham, that O'Connell and Shiel should be heard at the bar of the Commons on behalf of the Association, was de- feated. In the debate Peel, opposing the motion, committed an act of gross indiscretion, a most unusual thing with him. Referring to an address presented by the Association to the venerable "United Irish" leader, Archibald Hamilton Rowan, "he became," says Mr. Shiel, 'heated with victory, and, cheered as he was repeatedly by his multi- tudinous partisans, turned suddenly towards the part of the House where the deputies were seated, and looking triumphantly at Mr. O'Connell, with whom he forgot for a moment that he had been once engaged in a personal quarrel, shook his hand with scornful exult- ation, and asked whether the House required any better evidence than the address of the Association "to an attainted traitor." Brougham made a vehement and crushing reply to this ebullition of bad taste and bitter, bigoted feeling. He asked Peel, " How dare he speak thus of one on whom his sovereign had smiled?" alluding to George the Fourth's gracious reception of Mr. Rowan. O'Connell, though not allowed to plead against the suppression of the Association at the bar of the House of Commons, where he could easily have shown that the Catholic organization was in no respect illegal, and that, in the words of one of the Irish petitions against the hostile bill, "the 'rent' was not a tax levied on the Irish, people, but a voluntary contribution" for the purpose of educating the poor and oh- THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 425 tainmg legal redress for the peasantry, yet found an opportunity of producing a great impression on the English Catholics, by his powerful oratory, at a vast meeting held in the " Freemasons' Hall," London, over which the duke of Norfolk, England's premier duke, presided. O'Con- nell was very solicitous about the impression he should produce on this occasion. Even Charles Butler, a severe but excellent critic, was greatly struck with his eloquence ; and Butler was scarcely likely to be a judge partial to our hero. O'Connell was also examined before the House of Lords on the subject of " Pastorini's prophecies." As evidence of their disloyalty, the Catholic clergy were accused of circulating this book. O'Connell's testimony went to show that the Catholic clergy and laity had in reality discouraged its circulation. A letter of Dr. Doyle's had dis- countenanced the "prophecies" in the strongest terms. O'Connell main- tained that the.) were printed and circulated by "persons not of the Catholic persuasion." His acuteness also detected that the mention of the year 1825, as the ominous year, was a misprint for 1828. It appears that "the prophecy fixes upon a period of three hundred years" from the establishment of the Protestant persuasion — that is, from the 14th or 19th of April, 1529 — for the return of Protestants to the ancient faith. The calculation, then, was made by Pastorini from 1528. This whole monstrous humbug is a subject of little interest now. However, it is proper to make this slight reference to it, because O'Connell's replies to the interrogatories put to him created in the minds of those who lis- tened to him a large belief in the range of his mental powers. His questioners seemed to think Dr. Doyle the only Irishman who could enter into intellectual rivalry with him. On the other hand, O'Connell was far from reciprocating the complimentary feeling. He rather coin- cided with Dr. Doyle's contemptuous criticism of those " potent, grave and reverend signiors:" "Pshaw! such silly questions as they put! I think in all my life I never encountered such a parcel of old fools." This "journey to London," however, produced, at the time, no favor- able practical result. On the contrary, while the emancipation bill, even with its two " wings " — the abolition of the forty-shilling free- holders and the payment of the Catholic clergy — was defeated, the bill to suppress the Association passed. " There can be no question," says Fagan, that O'Connell was treated with great perfidy in the course of 426 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. these negotiations. He was led to believe that emancipation was cer- tain, provided it were accompanied with ' the wings.' Every one at the time in London, who was mixed in the matter, believed it. Blake, the chief remembrancer, who was then in London, and on terms of political intercourse with the leading political men of the day, has since often stated that the matter was settled. Phmket was himself deceived, and was thus the means of deceiving O'Connell and the rest of the deputa- tion. The system of deceit was earned so far as to induce O'Connell to attend the levee of the duke of York." It would appear, from a state- ment of the late Richard Barrett, proprietor of the Dublin Pilot, that, Avhile the fate of the bill was pending, O'Connell called very early one morning at Plunket's residence in London, by appointment; that Phmket rose hurriedly, came out to him, shook him heartily by the hand, and said, "O'Connell, I congratulate you ; the conference has not broken up an hour. 1 got up to tell you all is decided; Catholic eman- cipation will be granted before a fortnight, and without any of the con- ditions to which you objected." These were no doubt some of the eccle- siastical ones. Canning, Huskisson, even Lord Liverpool and Peel, had agreed to grant the measure. Unfortunately, however, Lord Eldon'e concurrence had nol been secured. O'Connell thought he might have been won over. At this time a Mr. Pendergasl was stopping in the house with Phmket. In some manner he became cognizant of the nature of the interview. He told all about it in the clubs. When Lord Eldon heard what had been resolved On, he hastened to the duke of York and inflamed his bigotry. After having delivered his furious speech againsl emancipation, the duke followed his brother, the king, U the theatre, where he was warmly received. The king and the heii- presumptive were evidently againsl the measure. Its failure was the consequence. Lord Liverpool, the premier, soon veered round and deliv- ered what was called his "ether speech," in order to remove the im- pression that he had given way on the subject of emancipation, lie was accustomed to take ether on important occasions. To the influence of an overdose were attributed sundry expressions of unusual vehemence. He stated "that the late Catholic relief bill was a heap of trash and non- sense;" "that it was a disgraceful measure;'' that it was so sent up by the Commons as to place the Lords "in a most awkward situation;" that if it THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 427 became law "the Protestant succession would not be worth five far- things," and other extravagancies in the same style. The Edinburgh Review gave high praise to the conduct of the dele- gation in London. It also contended that the debate in Parliament had clearly brought out the fact that the Association had restored and main- tained the peace of Ireland. "Of eleven counties," writes the reviewer, "half a year before proclaimed by the Curfew Act, not one now remained disturbed. Rents were peacefully paid, Captain Rock no longer trained the nightly bands of depredators," etc. The Association, acting under the legal advice of O'Connell, to satisfy the law, dissolved itself. This was in accordance with his usual tactics. Of course, immediately after- wards it was reconstituted under the name of "The New Catholic Asso- ciation." This he humorously called "driving a coach-and-six through an act of Parliament." In truth, the bill for the suppression of the Association became practically a dead letter. The Association virtually lived and pursued its triumphant career. Before their apparent disso- lution, the members published a valedictory address, in which, with a certain "honest pride," they asserted their claims to the gratitude of the country. The establishment of "the rent" alone formed a substan- tial claim to that gratitude. At this period they had more than £12,000 over their expenses lodged in bank. The weekly income of the Associ- ation had sometimes approached £2000. O'Connell's popularity was temporarily shaken by his consenting to the proposal to disfranchise "the forty-shilling freeholders." We find him engaged in epistolary controversy with Jack Lawless upon this subject. The Catholic nobles — indeed,' the Whig aristocracy of England in general — had, by their honeyed blandishments, beguiled our hero into a momentary delusion. He had begun to think that it was best to make the required sacrifices, in order to gain immediate emancipation. "There is in our country," said he, " an inexhaustible mine of intellectual and physical strength." This mine he was led to believe would be developed forthwith, if Burdett's Catholic relief bill were at once passed. The vast natural capabilities and resources of Ireland would lie no longer idle and unworked. Ireland would rival England in wealth. And then, though he confessed that he had consented to the disfranchisement of such of the forty-shilling freeholders as "held their lands at a rack-rent, or who 428 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. were tenants in common," he asserted that he had never agreed to the disfranchisement of those whose condition was at all like that of the English yeomanry. His popularity, however, was speedily re-estab- lished. When he found that it was likely to be weakened by his facility and compliance on the question of "the wings," he promptly and frankly retracted, and took his stand once more with the vast majority of his countrymen for unqualified emancipation. "It had been well, indeed," says Mr. Mitchel, "if he had firmly held his ground against both those wings to the last." His reception at Howth, on the first of June, 1825, on his return from London, was warm and flattering in the extreme. The small town and the landing-place were crowded with thousands of people, in vehi- cles of all sorts, on horseback and on foot. All these were eagerly straining their eyes — many gazing through telescopes — to catch the first glimpse of "the man of the people" on the deck of the approaching vessel. "There he is;" "Where?" "That's not he;" "It is;"— such cries arose excitedly and continuously on all sides. Rapturous shouts a lose as his tall form was seen moving from the quarter-deck and along the gangway to the shore. The shouts were redoubled, and friends thronged around him to grasp his hand, as his foot touched the shore. Seated in an open carriage with his wife and two daughters, lie drove along towards Dublin, followed by a mighty train. In Dublin the popu- lace took the horses from his carriage and drew him home to Merrion Square in triumph. On appearing in the balcony of his house he was greeted with tremendous acclamations. "I truly pity," said he, "those who cannot love such a people, and would not die for such a country as Ireland." A few clays after his arrival in Dublin he attended an aggregate meeting in Anne Street Chapel. At this meeting Stephen Coppinger, one of the most consistent and persevering champions of the Catholic cause, delivered an able speech in support of a resolution that a c - mittee be appointed to prepare petitions to both Houses of Parliament for the full and unqualified emancipation of the Catholics of Ireland." He gave some hard hits to the duke of York for his " so-help-ine-God" harangue. "It was a pity that this pious bishop of Osnaburg" (the royal duke, though a layman, was bishop of Osnaburg in his father's elec- THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 429 torate of Hanover) — "for the duke holds episcopal dignity — had not at hand his favorite clerk to respond 'Amen/ " This was a sly allusion to Mrs. Clarke, the royal bishop-commander-in-chief 's mistress, who had trafficked extensively in the sale of commissions in the British army; indeed, her profligate dealings had formed the subject of a delicate inves- tigation. "The duke," continues Mr. Coppinger, "has declared — an incredible statement — that his father's sufferings had originated in the agitation of the Catholic question. ... In alluding to his royal father, the pious duke had burst into tears. His filial affection was not so warm when he required to be paid so prodigious a sum as £10,000 a year for visiting his blind hoary father once a month." Coppinger also attacked the marquis of Anglesea for his apparent readiness to suppress Catholic emancipation with the sword. But for the generous manner in which Catholic blood flowed for his defence at "Waterloo, the marquis, said Mr. Coppinger, " would not be alive to display his military eloquence in the House of Lords." Mr. Coppinger was a great enthusiast about Napoleon. He was fond of making allusions in his speeches to the imperial eagle ; also to the "stars and stripes" of the American republic. The broadness of his southern accent somewhat marred the effect of his speeches. He was a pale, thin man. In his student-days his circumstances were straitened. O'Connell once said, referring to something mysterious, " It is as hard to find out as Stephen Coppinger's lodgings." Coppinger had occasional differences of opinion with our hero. They squabbled on the question of Catholic burial-grounds, Coppinger objecting to some points insisted on by O'Connell. The great man at once retaliated in a style half humorous, half savage : " Boys," said he, addressing an audi- ence in which his pretorian guard of coal-porters was fully represented — " boys, did you ever see such an ugly or a more hungry-looking fellow? Stingy Stephen refuses to give us the light of his countenance — oh wir- rastlirueV Dan afterwards nicknamed Coppinger "the knight of the rueful countenance." Coppinger used to tell himself that, immediately after the achieve- ment of emancipation, O'Connell met him and exclaimed, " Well, Cop- pinger, you see I have emancipated you." "Rather," replied Coppinger, half in joke and half in earnest, "rather say that, notwithstanding all 430 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. your efforts to the contrary, we succeeded in obtaining the blessings of emancipation." Mr. Coppinger is said to have been full of anecdotes of his contemporaries "of an exclusive character." At this meeting Lawless proposed a resolution, which was intended as a thrust at O'Connell, to the effect that the Catholics of Ireland had not authorized their assent to be given to "the wings." He was re- ceived, we learn from the Evening Post, with hisses. There were also cries of "Off! off!" and " He wants to disunite us." Lawless tried to get a hearing. He said, " I am to-day the friend of unanimity, and, far from dissenting from Mr. O'Connell, I congratulate him on his return to those principles which he formerly advocated, and a departure from which was to me a cause of distress and pain." Still he blamed the London delegation. He earnestly denounced "the wings." But his voice was drowned in mingled disapprobation and applause. Charles Teeling seconded the resolution, many others pressing forward to do so. The clamor and confusion waxed louder. Finally, Lawless withdrew his resolution. Atbr several other speakers had been heard, O'Connell rose to ad- dress the meeting amidst the most vehement acclamations. He looked gay, bold, confident and genial. He was dressed in what was styled the uniform of the Association — "a blue frock adorned witli black silk buttons, a black velvet collar and a gilt button on the shoulder; the vest yellow and the trowsers white. Soon he carried the meeting along with him. He was humorous and eloquent as usual. He laughed at the prospect of the Kildare Street Society losing the management of £22,000 a year. "Oh, how sleek and how slim the saints will look, with their eyes turned up and their hands in their empty breeches pockets!" His droll mimicry of tin 1 saints set the whole meeting in a roar. He called on them "to rally and unite around the standard of liberty. I have promised in England that there shall be a new Catholic Association." He happily ridiculed Lord Liverpool's promise to Lord Lonsdale, possessor of eight rotten boroughs and nineteen seats in the House of Commons, with which -'he traffics as cattle are sold in Smith- field market," to put down the Catholic question. It was "alive and merry," notwithstanding. He artfully passed over "the wings'! without any notice, in spite of Lawless's provocations. Cheers arose when he THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 431 ' said, " 'Tis true we have been defeated, but we are not dismayed ; we have been betrayed, but are unconquered still." He also referred to the extraordinary conversion of Mr. Brownlow, the head of the Orange party in Ireland, to the Catholic cause, as a hopeful symptom. Speak- ing of that gentleman's victory over his own prejudices, our hero said, "Mr. Brownlow was too honorable, too honest, not to retract his error openly, generously and nobly, when he discovered it." At this meeting Shiel proposed a census of the Catholics of Ireland to show their strength ; he also suggested aggregate meetings in all the parish chapels throughout Ireland, and petitions from all the parishes. O'Con- nell's horses were taken from his carriage on this day also. The bill which suppressed the Catholic Association prohibited any society for the redress of political grievances or the defence of causes in courts of justice from holding meetings beyond fourteen days. To evade this, it was declared that the Association should not act under the pre- tence or for the purpose of procuring redress of grievances in Church and State or of carrying on civil or criminal causes. Its professed objects were — 1st, the promotion of peace and concord ; 2d, encourage- ment of liberal and religious education ; 3d, to ascertain the population, and the number of persons belonging to each persuasion ; 4th, to build churches and establish Catholic burial-grounds ; 5th, to promote improve- ments in science and agriculture in Ireland, and to encourage Irish man- ufactures and commerce ; 6th, to support an enlightened press, circulate works advocating just principles, and vindicate Catholic principles against slanderous attacks; 7th, to prepare full statements and au- thentic refutations of the various charges made against Catholics in recent hostile petitions to Parliament. Every person paying £1 as an admission fee, before a certain day, was to be enrolled as a member. After that day, any one desirous to become one, in addition to that pay- ment, should be proposed and seconded by a member. The new Asso- ciation embraced men of all sects. O'Connell caused Counsellor Bel- lew's name to be omitted from the committee of twenty-one prominent Catholics appointed to frame this society, boldly casting in his teeth his pensions from government for unknown services. Bellew had provoked O'Connell by volunteering an opinion that Goulbourn's bill could not be evaded. " The undergrovvl of poor Jack Lawless," writes our hero in 482 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. a letter to the Catholics, " and his few and foolish partisans may be, as it has been, a mere source of laughter and ridicule; but My. "William Bellew stands in a very different situation. . . . Mr. William Bellew deserves none of your confidence. ... He certainly has two, and I firmly believe three, pensions. . . . Who paid his fee ? Who called on him, a Catholic, to publish an opinion hostile certainly to Catholic rights? . . . ' Hie niger est ; hunc tu Romane caveto.' " [He is black-hearted; do yon, Roman, beware of him.) The committee of twenty-one sat fifteen days and issued a report, which was adopted by the Catholics of Ireland. It suggested the fourteen days' meetings, which I shall notice immediately. Meanwhile a clique, or party, that had sprung up in Dublin, called the Mahon party, from one of its leaders, Nicholas Mahon the merchant, continued for some time to censure O'Connell severely for the course he had pursued in London respecting "the wings." At a meeting in Bridge Street Chapel, in July, 1825, from which this clique (nicknamed by our hero "the Bridge street gang") wanted to exclude all persons not inhabitants of St, Audeon's parish, O'Connell suddenly appears in the gallery while the discussion is going on. John Reynolds — after- wards a loud Dublin demagogue, one year lord-mayor of that city, and during one Parliament its representative in the House of Commons — makes his political debut on this occasion as a backer of O'Connell. A vote of thanks, proposed by Mr. Forde and seconded by Mr. McLoughlin, gave our hero an opportunity of speaking in vindication of his public conduct. He boasts of his opposition to the union and his great sacri- fices. He briskly engages Nicholas Mahon and Richard O'Gonnan. The latter, he says, he has "detected in a mistake of £20." Here Nicholas Mahon interrupts him. Nicholas will not "listen to such reflections upon one of the most respectable of the parishioners. I ask," says he, "Does Mr. O'Connell come here to abuse and insult us?" "I disclaim," says O'Connell, "any such intention. It is proverbial that those who serve their country are invariably repaid with ingrati- tude and injustice. They always find some calumniators prepared and anxious to destroy their fame and injure their honor." Here Richard THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL 403 takes his turn at interruption; he cannot digest the word "calumni- ators." The flow of O'Connell's speech is hardly checked for a moment. His conduct with regard to the forty-shilling freeholders he almost admits to be blameworthy. He tells the meeting that the report of the com- mittee of twenty-one is just ready, and that it condemns the introduc- tion of the measure of disfranchisement. At the aggregate meeting of Catholics which took place in Clarendon Street Chapel a few days after this scene, O'Connell skilfully evaded the snares of Goulbourn's act in a cautious speech. Shiel, on the other hand, uttered a harangue as violent as it was eloquent. Against the duke of York especially he hurled such fierce words as the following : " He has inherited his father's understanding; may he never inherit his throne." The duke's brothers, George the Fourth and William the Fourth, never forgot or forgave this bitter invective of Shiel's. It pre- vented, in the latter king's reign, the fiery-tongued little orator's ap- pointment to the office of solicitor-general, which would necessarily have led to his elevation to the bench ; and this in spite of some pathetic rhetorical repentance spoken at the time of the duke of York^s death. About this period we have the exciting spectacle of a curious and somewhat comical war between O'Connell and Cobbett. The latter assails our hero virulently about " the wings." He says it is too bad that Mr. O'Connell, after having confessed himself a dupe, should be suffered "to roam about the country, boasting of his long services and great sacrifices, and carrying in appearance all the brains and all the virtues of Ireland about in his pocket." Again Cobbett charges him with corruption, and then retracts the charge. Also he says, " I impute to him inordinate vanity — vanity greater than my pen can paint." O'Connell, in reply, says that in a former letter he had styled Cobbett " a comical miscreant. I now withdraw the appellation. Cobbett is comical only when he means to be serious; when he intends to be jocose he is truly doleful ; but, serious or jocose, he is at all times a miscreant. In lieu of the name I thus retract, I will of my bounty bestow on him another denomination, which, although conferred by me as a matter of courtesy, he has most richly earned — I will call him in future ' a vile vagabond.' ... He is malignant, he is treacherous, he is false. . . . He has outlived his intellect. It cannot be said of him that his ' wine 434 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. of life is on the lees,' because wine is too generous a liquor to enter into the comparison ; but 'his gin of existence is on the dregs,' and that fluid, which, while it flowed copiously and clearly, was pungent and intoxi- cating almost to madness, is now but a muddy residuum, productive of sickness and nausea and incapable of giving one exhilarating sensation." He accuses Cobbett of inventing a conversation about the Bridge-street meeting. " Do not shuffle, Cobbett." After pointing out some apparent contradictions in his adversary's statements, and what he calls " the un- blushing effrontery of this my vile vagabond," he says, " He shall be a comical miscreant again — so he shall." In spite of the fun on both sides, this quarrel between the mettlesome popular chieftain of the Irish and the equally combative leader of the English radicals was greatly to be regretted. O'Connell used to defend his unsparing, if not unscrupu- lous, use of invective oddly enough : " If I did not use the sledge- hammer to smash opponents, I never could have succeeded." He is stated to have said, in conversation with a friend of one of his biogra- phers (Fagan), that it was not always irritation, that it was often calcvr lotion, which made him indulge in unmeasured vituperation. At all events, it should be ever remembered, in palliation of his excess of irri- tability and virulence, that no man was ever more frequently provoked by inhuman and unfounded slanders than he was. But neither Cobbett's attacks, nor those of his other enemies, in the slightest degree impaired our hero's popularity — at least permanently. This year, outside his own circuit, he visited Antrim, Newry, Calwav and Wexford. Wherever he went he moved along in triumph. His entries into various towns and cities resembled those of a conqueror re- turning home from some great battle. In Galway the horses were taken from his carriage. In Cork his reception was flattering. In Mallow he had to implore the people to let the carriage pass on quietly, in consider- ation of the delicate health of Mrs. O'Connell. who was with him. Ap- proaching Wexford, he was met at "the Pass" by a flotilla of boats on the Slaney. lie had to go on hoard a barge manned by lirst-rate rowers, dressed in green and gold, and having a green Hag hearing on its folds a crowmless harp, in the stern. Joyous crowds lined the river-banks and shouted enthusiastically as he was rowed along. Wexford town was all alive and astir. Thousands stood on the quay and bridge to THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 435 welcome him. The same evening he was entertained at a public dinner. I barely notice an unpleasant affair that occurred at the close of the year 1825. O'Connell was reported to have said, when speaking at one of the Catholic meetings of the attempts at proselytism of the Hibernian Society in Kerry, that Mr. Leyne, a barrister and brother of that Captain Leyne who was afterwards made a stipendiary magistrate by our hero's influence, had renounced Popery in order to inflict pain on an aged father. Mr. Leyne sent a message to O'Connell, who, full of remorse on account of D'Esterre's death, had by this time "registered a vow in heaven," to use his own singular phrase, against duelling. O'Connell could not now be goaded to fight in the face of his scruples of conscience. In vain Leyne tried to offer him personal insult, and called him a liar, a slanderer and a coward. O'Connell lodged informations, and had Leyne bound over in large securities to keep the peace. Maurice O'Con- nell, our hero's eldest hope, was willing to answer any claim Leyne might have on his father. Leyne, having no quarrel with Maurice, beg- ged to decline availing himself of his handsome offer. Then Maurice and his brother Morgan waited near the Four Courts to meet and chas- tise Leyne for his abuse of their father. They withdrew, however, on being recognized by the people. As soon as O'Connell heard of the intention of his sons, he lodged informations against them and his son- in-law, Mr. Fitzsimon. Mr. Morgan O'Connell was arrested in the theatre, Mr. Fitzsimon in our hero's own house ; Mr. Maurice O'Connell had left Dublin, but shortly after was taken in Tralee. All three had to find bail. The enactment prohibiting any society for the redress of grievances from holding its meetings beyond fourteen days was intended to cripple the power of the Catholic movement. Its actual result was to add im- mensely to the strength and influence of the agitation. When, on the 16th of January, 1826, one of these fourteen-day meetings commenced its sittings in the Catholic Rooms, on Burgh quay, Dublin, those who were indignant at seeing the Association in its former shape, imitating the deliberations of the legislature, were now vexed and mortified to see a much more formidable assembly debating upon all the national griev- ances. In addition to the members accustomed to meet at the weekly 436 'f HE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. meetings of the Catholic body, leading men, lay and clerical, flocked up to Dublin from all parts of the island and took an active part in the discussions. The authority of a national convention was virtually added to the Catholic assembly. It was plain that O'Connell had skilfully accomplished the remarkable feat of "driving his coach-and-six through the act of Parliament." It was a vain imagination on the part of min- isters to think of suppressing Ireland's complaints. With violent nervous gestures, and shrill voice, and vehement eloquence, Shiel descanted on the Catholic's position of inferiority in the land of his fathers. At this fourteen-day gathering of Catholic might, O'Connell set himself right on the subject of "the wings," by a resolution, that their "petition shall embrace the principle of unqualified emancipation to its fullest extent," and that they deprecated " any measure tending to restrict the elective franchise or interfering with the discipline or independence of the Catholic Church." This great fourteen-day meeting was followed by formidable provin- cial meetings. The Catholics invited their Protestant friends to partici- pate in these. All over the country the different ranks of society were brought together. Mutual confidence waxed stronger. All were taught to stand "shoulder to shoulder for liberty." The eloquence of the more educated kindled the wrath of the masses — alike the peasantry and the working-men of the towns. The deliberations on these occasions most frequently lasted two days. On the third a dinner took place, at which Catholics and Protestants sat side by side. The liist of these provincial meetings was the Limerick one — a tremendous gathering, presided over by Thomas Wyse. Other immense meetings succeeded — at Waterford, at Cork and elsewhere. These meetings were looked upon as important events in the country, and produced far greater and more durable effects in their respective localities than any similar assemblies could do in Dulilin. O'Connell missed none of them. He seemed ubiquitous, and was now more than ever the soul of the entire Catholic movement It was idle even to dream for a moment of putting him down. After the Dublin fourteen-days' meeting, O'Connell had a funny squabble with the press. He complained that the reports of his speeches were inaccurate. The Morning Register "took up the cudgels" against him on behalf of the reporters: "We admit thai the reports" THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 437 (of Ms speeches) " did not in length go much beyond seventy eolamns." Thev did not give all he said, for "that would require Mr. Thwaites's broad sheet. Any one who measures by a stop-watch will find that Mr. O'Connell pours out about two hundred words in one minute." It is only seven or eight minutes' trouble to him "to fill a column of small print." What are any number of minutes' speaking to him f " In a five hours' sitting he will contrive sometimes to be three hours on his legs ; and in three hours he will positively pour out twenty-two columns and a quarter of oratory!" The Freeman's Journal was still more crusty with our somewhat unreasonable orator. This year, 1826, was signalized by several remarkable electioneering triumphs of the Association. The representation of several counties was wrested from great Ascendency families that had hitherto controlled the elections of those districts with absolute sway. The machinery of the Association, spread like a network over the country, was admirably adapted for achieving conquests of this description. The great house of Beresford was totally defeated in Waterford. Mr. Villiers Stuart, in addressing the electors of that county, called on the Catholics to judge for themselves as to their own interests. This course was deemed by the insolent partisans of the Beresfords "highly ungentlemanlike "- — "a daring encroachment on the rights of private property." That the Catholic voters should dream of refusing to vote for the nominees of the Ascend- ency magnates amounted to "a palpable insurrection." What were the forty-shilling freeholders created for but to vote at the beck of their masters, the landocrats? The agents of Mr. Stuart's opponent, Lord George Beresford, abused the Association, the priests and the people, calling the latter superstitious slaves, and yet expecting them to vote for Beresford. But the people, while they manifested their zeal for Stuart by kindling bonfires on every height and crowding into towns and villages to hear the harangues of his agents, naturally turned aside indignantly from his rival. John Claudius Beresford, who had come down to assist his kinsmen, to his own infinite mortification and that of his friends, passed without a cheer through such a crowd in Portlaw. O'Connell came down as counsel for Mr. Stuart, receiving a fee of six hundred guineas. He prevented the voters belonging to the duke of Devonshire's estates from going on board a steamboat, which had been 438 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. Bent up the Blackwater to Lismore to convey them to Waterford city. He nicknamed the vessel "the tea-kettle," and terrified the country-people, especially their female relatives, with an exaggerated picture of the dan- gers incident to steamboat voyages. At the hustings, the rage and horror of Lord George Beresford and his followers rose to the highest pitch when O'Connell himself was proposed as a "fit and proper person to represent the county." For the first time since the penal laws were established, a Catholic candidate for Parliamentary honors was brought forward. This was an ingenious device to enable O'Connell to deliver his opinions at huge at the hustings. Saving spoken with unusual ability for two hours, he withdrew his claims in favor of Mr. Stuart. The Beresfords were deserted by sonic of their most strenuous supporters. They were even put to shame by men whom they had bribed, and who now held up the purchase-money in open court. Lord George Beresford, feeling himself disgracefully beaten, retired from the contest on the tilth day, and Villiers Stuart was declared duly elected by an immense majority. The Waterford people were delighted at the humiliation of the insolent and bigoted house of Beresford. The head of that house, the marquis of Waterford. was then in a dying State. He is said to have expended £100,000 on this election. He bore the defection of his dependants comparatively well, until even Manton, his favorite huntsman, famous for wakening the echoes with his horn, deserted him. The old lord sent for this attached follower of his youthful days. " Manton,'" said he, feebly, "have you too abandoned me?" The faithful old huntsman blessed 'his honor." and wished "long life" to him, and then paused, with tears in his eyes, both were for a moment silent ; then Lord Waterford repeated his question. " I'd go to the world's end to sarve your honor,*' replied the huntsman, "hut — but, please your lordship, I cannot vote against nay counthry and my religion." This rebuff was too much for the haughty old nobleman. In a few days more he caused himself to lie carried on board the packet Dunmore, bound for Caermar- then, in Wales, and there, far from his lordly domain of Curraghmore, in a common inn, he breathed his last. It is painful to he obliged to add that, according to statements I have read, he was mean enough, before he died, to dismiss Manton, despoiling him of his farm, and tinn- ing his wife and children out on the wide world. THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 439 The two great Ascendency aristocrats of the county Lowth — the earl of Eoden, head of the family of Jocelyn, and Lord Oriel, head of the Fosters — were likewise humbled. The liberal candidate for Lowth, Mr. Alexander Dawson, a retired barrister, was at the head of the poll ; the second member was Mr. Foster. Mr. Fortescue, Lord Baden's nom- inee, was totally defeated. It was somewhat amusing to see how the scornful confidence felt by Mr. Foster, at the commencement; of the con- test, paled into nervous anxiety when he saw the thousands of stout peasantry who, bearing green banners and shouting and leaping exult- ingly, as they flung their hats in the air and caught them again, followed the friend of the Catholics as he drove into Dundalk in his old gig. Foster, during the progress of this Lowth election, would constantly rush into the sheriff's booth and cry out, "Soldiers, Mr. High-Sheriff! I call upon you to bring out troops to protect me and my supporters. My life is in peril; my brother has been just assailed; we shall be massacred, if you persevere in excluding troops from the town." Shiel, however, who was counsel for Dawson, was able to prevent the sheriff from yield- ing to the suggestions of Mr. Foster's unreasonable alarm. In Monaghan the success of the people was still more spontaneous and striking. The bigoted Colonel Leslie was defeated by Colonel Westenra. Mr. Brie was the liberal candidate's counsel. The thanks of the Association were voted to O'Connell, Shiel and Brie. After the close of the Waterford election, O'Connell hastened to Kilmainham to take part in the county Dublin election. If he w r as vexed to find the Dublin electors less de- voted and independent than those of Waterford, still the return of White and Talbot, the liberal candidates, was finally secured. In short, the machinery of the Association, "the rent," and the self-sacrifice of the forty-shilling freeholders, applied and directed by the skill and energy of O'Connell, had so triumphed during this general election of 1826, that it was now plain to the world that, with most Irish constituencies, candidates, who refused to pledge themselves to vote for emancipation, had little chance of being returned. As for the bigots, they were in consternation. It was all a diabolical plot, at the bottom of which were the pope and the Jesuits. Sir Harcourt Lees demanded, Would Parlia- ment at length give ear to his prognostications, "put down" Popery and send the arch-disturber, O'Connell, to the Tower ? 440 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. At a Catholic meeting, held in Dublin before the close of the elec- tions, O'Connell said "he came to read his recantation on the subject of the forty-shilling freeholders. . . . They had burst the bonds and fetters which had previously held them in slavery." He thanked them for their "boundless patriotism." His "delusion" was "gone for ever." The error was his; the merit theirs. He moved, "that we deem it our duty, publicly and solemnly, to declare that we will not accept of emanci- pation accompanied by any infringement whatsoever of the forty-shilling franchise." Nicholas Purcell O'Gorman, who, on this occasion, wore a green coat and an orange cravat, would allow no one to second the motion, in favor of "the heroic and magnanimous forty-shilling free-* holders," but himself. This was the only subject on which "he had ever differed with his friend O'Connell," who, "by the proposition of this resolution," had achieved one of his noblest victories. Shiel then elo- quently described how these degraded serfs, "driven to the hustings as the beasts that perish to the shambles," had suddenly thrown off "their debasement " and risen "up to the great Level of full and independent citizenship." O'Connell, speaking a second time, praised the nobility '.vith which a poor man in Waterford, named Casey, had spurned a bribe of seventy sovereigns — riches to him. Of three thousand voters in that county, the Beresfords had eight hundred registered votes "on their own domains." As soon as the elections had terminated, O'Connell took steps to protect the gallant "forties" from the inveterate landlord persecution to which they were sure to be exposed on account of the election victories, mainly won through their devoted patriotism. This was necessary; for already had the bigoted Evening Mail begun to sound the ominous note of woe to the peasantry. The Order of Liberators was established, con- sisting of three grades — "The Liberators," "The Knights Grand Cross," "The Knights Companions." Two acts of good service to Ireland enti- tled a man to be a Knight Companion, three acts a Knight Grand Cross. O'Connell's iirst claim was having served Ireland for twenty- seven years; his second, having originated the Association of 1823; his third, the establishment of the Catholic rent. He now established, in addition to the old rent, a fund for the protection of the freeholders, and the increase of their strength, called "the new Catholic rent." Our THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 441 hero signed his letter to the people of Ireland on this new rent, " Daniel O'Connell, of the Order of the Liberators." In this address he proposed to " advance loans to all those against whom the vengeance of the land- lords shall be directed." In another part he says: "Already the perse- cution rages. In Westmeath, the tenants on the estate of that unre- lenting enemy of ours, Lord Castlemaine, are distrained for the May rent." "The Liberator's" call was responded to. Lord Cloncurry was grand-master of the new Order; it was also intended that it should have a chancellor and a prelate. Pretty much about this time, Mr. Dominick Eonayne of Cork tried to induce O'Connell to go in heartily with the English radicals for the destruction of the borough influence of the aristocracy. Eonayne de- nounced the sinecures, grants, pensions and other monopolies of the oligarchic system that prevailed. He demanded, How would emancipa- tion "diminish the burden of the overbearing Church Establishment or redress the evils arising from absenteeism ? . . . Fling, then, away your vain pursuit of an exclusive measure, and join those who will give you the real emancipation and the true equality of the law." The blan- dishments of Earl Fitzwilliam, who took the chair at a Catholic meeting in Waterford, and of other members of the alarmed aristocracy, pre- vented O'Connell, who always had a hankering after the great old fam- ilies, from giving a favorable hearing to these views of Mr. Eonayne, though, some years before, he had himself declared,, at a meeting held in Harold's Cross, Dublin, "that the only, remedy for Irish calamities was radical reform and universal suffrage." About this period great sympathy towards Ireland began to be felt in foreign lands. The Irish struggle against England was compared to the struggle of the Greeks against the Turks. The self-glorifying Eng- lish on the Continent were sneered at and reproached for their cruel oppression of Ireland. LEtoih, one of the organs of the French gov- ernment, took up the cause of Ireland in a series of brilliant articles. French tourists in Ireland, on their return to Paris, spread abroad the tale of Ireland's wrongs. But friends to the Association were springing up not- merely in France, but in Spain, Italy, various German states, even British India. Correspondence from all these countries occupied a large portion of the time of the Association. The world saw with 442 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. pleasure O'Connell and his powerful agitation shaking the British em- pire. His sagacity and energy were in all foreign lands the theme of praise. Translations of his speeches, and those of Shiel, were con- stantly published in foreign journals. All this galled the proud heart of England, but at the same time taught her the impossibility of delay- ing emancipation much longer. But of all the foreign nations that about this time showed interest in the Catholic struggle, perhaps the most sympathetic was the great American republic. Ties of consanguinity accounted for the friendly feelings of myriads of American citizens towards Ireland. The love of justice and indignation against oppression and wrong caused myriads more to become advocates of that outraged land. So early as 182."). at a meeting in New York, Judge Swanton in the chair, resolutions and addresses, written by Dr. McNevin, the "United Irish" exile, and ex- pressive of sympathy with Ireland and indignation against England, were voted. An association with a 'rout,'' to co-operate with the Cath- olic organization in Ireland and modelled on its plan, was established. The State government seems to have countenanced this movement. A guarded expression of gratitude was sent out to the American body from the Association in Dublin. Opinions on the bold sentiments of the American address were carefully avoided. Other meetings were subsequently held in the chief cities of the Onion. Other friendly ad- dresses to the Irish Catholics were voted. Indeed, associations, with numerous offshoots, sprang up all over the States with great rapidity. " Rent" was collected everywhere, and correspondence opened up by all the American bodies with the model society in Dublin. Returning to occurrences in Ireland — in defiance of the increasing power of the Catholic body, and in defiance of their petition against ii, the Church-rates bill, which enabled Protestants to tax Catholics for the building and repair of their churches, was carried this year. The Ascendency was not quite prostrated yet, Still, O'Connell's fame and might grew daily. When he arrived with his family at Ncnagh, on the 12th of July, on his way to Darrynane, the people took the horses from his carriage and drew him through the town. Quarter sessions were going on in Nenagh at the time. But when they heard the huzzas out- side, nearly all the people in the court rushed out to see "the Liberator," THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 443 leaving the assistant-barrister almost "alone in his glory." Towards the end of this year O'Connell was saddened by a very painful occurrence. His very promising and rising young friend, Counsellor Brie, one evening got into an idle altercation with a Mr. Hayes, who had just stepped off the Cork mail-coach, about the merits of Mr. Callaghan, one of the candidates at the Cork election, who was Mr. Hayes's relation. This gentleman had overheard Mr. Brie call Callaghan "a rascal." Hot words ensued. Cards were exchanged. They met, next morning, in a field near Glasnevin. Mr. Brie fell at the first tire, mortally wounded. "God forgive me!" cried Mr. Hayes, flinging down the fatal weapon and rushing distractedly from the field. "My God!" says Brie faintly, "I believe I am shot." In eight minutes he was a corpse. The death of this talented and be- nevolent young man occasioned widespread grief in Dublin city. An immense crowd of all religions followed his remains to the grave. He was one of those clever barristers whom the Association was wont to send down to the country, especially the North, to protect the Cath- olics against the shameless partiality and misconduct of Ascendency magistrates. If a reporter accompanied the barrister sent on such a mission, the magistrate would be inspired with a still more salutary fear of public opinion. In one of his speeches to the Association, in 1821, we find O'Connell announcing that, "at the least possible fee that could be given to professional gentlemen," Counsellor Brie and Mr. Corcoran, the attorney, would attend an inquiry at New Ross, in the county Wex- ford, to assist the people in bringing their wrongs "fairly before the magistrate." On the 5th of January, 1827, that royal opponent of the Catholic claims, the duke of York, expired, after a long and painful illness. Though a very imperfect character, still this prince was a more generous and, indeed, in almost every way a better man, than the king, his brother, which, after all, is not saying much for him. Shiel and O'Connell had incurred a good deal of odium by the fierce invectives which they had uttered against him after his " so-help-me-God " harangue. O'Connell had openly declared, " It is a mockery to tell me that the people of Ire- land have not an interest in his ceasing to live ;" and speaking of the contingency of his death, he had added, amidst laughter and cheers, "I am perfectly resigned to the will of God, and shall abide the result 4i4 THE LIFE OF DANIEL OCOXXELL. with the most Christian resignation." Now, however, when the duke had actually ceased to exist, both Shiel and O'Connell expressed a gen- erous sorrow for his death and a keen regret for the bitter words they had spoken in anger. "The Catholics of Ireland," said O'Connell, "exult not at the death of the duke of York. We war not with the dying or the grave. Our enmities are buried there. They expired with the individual who caused them. We feel nothing but regret at seeing a fellow-creature called from this earthly scene to render the great account to his Maker. Whatever his royal highness may have said against us, we forgive. No man ever acted with more impartiality at the head of an army. He never made a distinction between a Catholic and a Prot- estant." O'Connell then tells an interesting anecdote of the duke's generous treatment of a Catholic officer of his acquaintance, who had served in the Irish Brigade of France, and in the armies of Germany and Holland. This gentleman had applied for a commission in the British army. A letter came to him, asking "What his religion was?" He replied, that, having never been asked that question before, "he scarcely recollected his religion; but that now, as it was put to him, he was a Catholic." lie expected to hear no more from the duke, "but by return of post he received a commission with lull pay in the British service." Moore, also, in immortal verse, lamented the duke's death, while referring bitterly to his hostility to emancipation. This year, too, the dull prime minister, the earl of Liverpool, another bitter opponenl of the Catholic claims, was incapacitated by an apoplectic seizure from taking any further part in public affairs. lie did not survive this attack many months. This timorous and narrow bigot's removal from the helm of government was a source of rejoicing to the Catholics of Ireland. I shall slightly notice an odd outrage which, one day in January, L827, our hero met with at the hands of the notorious Remigius, Or Remus, or Remmy Sheehan, one of the proprietors of the Dublin Evening Mm'/. O'Connell had given this worthy more than once "a taste of the quality" of the rough side of his tongue — he had called him "an apos- tate." "Wrathful at such arraignment foul," the vengeful Remmy met Dan in Nassau street, near Morrison's Hotel, valorously struck him across the aim with an umbrella, and then, consulting "the better part of valor," ran away as fast as his legs could carry him. A police-office THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 445 scene ensued. Dan required that Sheehan should be bound over to keep the peace, for the protection of himself and family. " I even wish it for the protection of Mr. Sheehan himself." " I want none of your protection," roared Sheehan, with redoubled rage; "I am able to protect myself." When O'Connell spoke of his resolution never to fight another duel, Remmy cried out, perhaps not altogether unreasonably, "Bah! bah! If a man makes such a resolu- tion, he should at the same time make another, not to wound the feel- ings of any man." The magistrate had to curb more than once Rem- my's tendency to discursiveness. Remmy professed a lofty scorn of the idea of "reconciliation" with Dan. Our hero had slandered his brother and himself. His brother was "no renegade; he never was a Roman Catholic." Remmy himself, "for the last twenty years, had been a staunch Protestant," and wouldn't have anything to do with a paper "unless it was conducted as a pure Protestant paper." With regard to the assault, he added: "Well, then, I did assault him, and I did it ad- visedly, and with all my heart and soul ; and if the same provocation were given, I should do so again." O'Connell was bound under a pen- alty of £20 to prosecute Remmy before the recorder. Remmy was con- demned to "durance vile" for three months. O'Connell magnificently memorials government to release his prostrate foe. Remmy heroically petitions "the powers that be" not to let him out, especially if O'Con- nell were to have any hand in his release. Enough of this grotesque passage of our hero's strangely diversified biography. I pass by another fourteen-days' meeting held in Dublin in the same month, during which our hero displayed his usual untiring energy. On the 6th of March Sir Francis Burdett's resolution, "That this House" (of Commons) "is impressed with the expediency of taking into consid- eration the laws imposing disabilities" on His Majesty's Roman Cath- olic subjects, "with a view to their relief," was lost by a majority of four. O'Connell deemed this a most serious defeat. Troops were poured into Ireland; five million rounds of ball-cartridges distributed through the garrisons. On the 12th of March a Catholic meeting was held in the Corn Exchange. Sir Thomas Esmonde, the chairman, supported by Nicholas Mahon, wanted to cushion a bold letter of O'ConnelFs calling on the people to address the king, to renew their petitions for emanci- 446 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. pation, and also to petition for the repeal of the union. Jack Lawless, however, succeeded, after considerable altercation, in forcing the chart - man to have O'Connell's letter read to the meeting by Mr. Dwyer. The Catholics soon rallied from their state of depression. Their hopes even rose higher and brighter than ever. The impassioned, the eloquent, the brilliant George Canning, of Irish parentage both by father and mother, had been entrusted by the king with the task of forming a min- istry. As he was known to have become a warm friend to emancipation, Wellington, Peel, Eldon and other Tory members of the Liverpool cabinet refused to take office under him. Some of the aristocrats were galled to see a man without great family connections at the head of affairs. Peel, while he was prepared to veer round to the cause of emancipation, was determined, if possible, to have the credit of carrying the measure him- self. Tims the new premier had jealousies and rancorous opposition both from some of his old associates and from a section of his old polit- ical opponents — in short, heart-breaking difficulties to encounter 1,'om the outset of his administration. However, he succeeded in forming a cabinet which was, upon the whole, favorable to emancipation. A huge portion of the Whig party gave him their support. The marquis of Anglesea, a gallant cavalry general, succeeded the Marquis Wellesley as viceroy of Ireland. His chief secretary was Lord Francis Leveson Grower, afterwards nicknamed the ••shave-beggar" by our hero. The masses of the Irish people, who had been well trained by O'Conneil and the Association to understand the Catholic question and its pros- pects, were now naturally in a state of the highest exultation. A greal aggregate meeting of the Catholics was held in Clarendon Street Chapel, at which the beautiful Mrs. Wise, Lucien Bonaparte's daughter and the great Napoleon's niece, was one of the ladies present. O'Conneil, N. P. O'Gorman and other orators expressed their satisfaction at the prom- ising aspect of affairs. It was on this occasion that Shiel's voice, ring- ing shrilly and triumphantly, exclaimed: "Peel is nut: Bathursl is out; Westmoreland is out; Wellington, the bad Irishman, is out; and, thanks be to God! the hoary champion of every abuse, the venerable supporter of corruption in all its forms, the pious antagonist of every generous sentiment, Eldon, procrastinating, canting, griping, whining, weeping, ejaculating, protesting, money-getting and money-keeping Eldon, is out THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 447 . . . We have got rid of the jailer" (Earl Bathurst) "who presided over the captivity of Napoleon, and who was so well qualified to design what Sir Hudson Lowe was so eminently calculated to execute. . . . And better than all — better than the presumption of Wellington, the narrow-heart- edness of Bathurst, the arrogance of Westmoreland, the ostentatious manliness and elaborate honesty of Mr. Peel — we have got rid of Lord Bldon's tears !" Everything seemed to promise well. As the 12th of July approached, Lord Anglesea forbade by proclamation the customary Orange procession in Dublin and the dressing of King William's statue in College Green. In Ulster, indeed, the Orangemen insolently paraded with purple and orange sashes, fired shots over the houses of Catholics and played " The Protestant Boys" and "Croppies, Lie Down." O'Connell lauded Can- ning and called on the Kilkenny people to return to Parliament Mr. Dogherty (afterwards chief-justice of the Common Pleas), who was repre- sented to be a friend of the prime-minister's. O'Connell did not then foresee his subsequent altercations with Dogherty. But all these bright expectations that Canning, as he had vaunted "of having given freedom to the Catholics of South America," when, to use his own eloquent words, "he called in the New World to redress the balance of the Old," would now enfranchise the Catholics of Ireland and Great Britain, were destined to be rudely dashed to the earth by the premature and melancholy death of that great and generous statesman. From the commencement of his administration he was baited and circumvented by an unholy combination of jealous rivals. The aristo- cratic section of the Whigs, headed by Earl Gray, who is said not to have forgotten or forgiven some satirical sallies of Canning's wicked wit, that had caused him to smart years before, combined against the new minister with the more inveterate portion of the Tory party. That Pecksniffian statesman, Peel, however, had the chief share in the venom- ous work of "hounding him to death." This is the phrase of Lord George Bentinck, who, years later, avenged him by helping to overthrow Peel's power. Meanwhile, Sir Robert assailed the great orator for going over to the Catholic side, while he was even then fully resolved to do the same thing himself, whenever an opportunity to advance his views of ambition by such a change of tactics should arise. This was a favorite 448 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. policy with Sir Eobert Peel through life — to oppose certain measures vehemently, when out of office, and then, having once attained power, to bring forward the same measures, thereby obliging his adversaries to swell his majorities with their votes. The duke of Wellington's oppo- sition to Canning, if fully vindictive as Peel's, was at least more honest. Between them all, though he continued to the last to face the hatred that surrounded and raged against him, night after night, with the un- shrinking courage and defiance of a lion at bay, Canning's sensitive heart was broken. He died in August, 1827. "They have killed him," said the duke of Clarence, afterwards King William the Fourth; "I knew they would kill him." His death occasioned deep sorrow in Ire- land. O'Connell pronounced an eloquent panegyric on the deceased statesman. Referring to the helping hand which he had extended to Greece and South America struggling for freedom, he said : " There is in struggling Greece many a gallant spirit that will long to demonstrate the sincerity of his grief for Canning's departure by sacrificing at his tomb whole hecatombs of the enemies of Christianity. In South " (Spanish?) ''America, too — in Mexico, in Peru, in Chili and in La Plata, and, more than all, in Colombia — will his death be followed by mourn- ing. The great, the immortal Bolivar will shed tears of bitter anguish; the sounds of sorrow will ascend to the summits of the Andes; and throughout all the nations of the earth the name of Canning will be consecrated in the grief of every worthy breast." I shall briefly notice the religious controversy that this year kept Dublin in a state of ferment for several days. In the Rotundo, Mr. Pope, a practiced controversialist, and the famous Father Tom Maguire, a Leitrim parish-priest, who now for the first time became known as an able logician, a powerful wielder of syllogistic sledge-hammers, met in wordy strife — the former as champion of the creed of the Protestants, the latter in defence of that of the Roman Catholics. The reverend disputants wrangled together with commendable courtesy. Though many were entertained with the ingenious oratory of the learned theo- logians, nobody on either side was converted or profited in the least by it. Both parties claimed the victory. On the first day of the debate O'Connell took the chair. Other inflammatory discussions, like this one, took place in Ireland about the same time. This whole movement seems THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 449 to have been a spasmodic attempt on the part of the Ascendency bigots to revive the "new reformation" business, in order to stem the tide which was running fast in favor of "a compromise with Jezebel,' - or "Popery." However, Dr. Doyle and other Catholic prelates very properly discountenanced such unedifying encounters. As for Fathei Tom, a certain Miss Anne McGaraghan shortly after accused him of seducing her. An action was taken by her father, a farmer and publican, in the Dublin courts of law. The jury brought in a verdict for Fathei Tom. The whole affair wore the ugly appearance of a conspiracy got up to ruin his moral reputation. O'Connell was Father Tom's leading counsel, and the speech delivered by him on this occasion was one of his ablest forensic efforts. The year 1828 opened with a novel and extraordinary display of Catholic might. In accordance with a suggestion of Shiel's, on the same day, the 13th of January, and the same hour, the whole Catholic people of Ireland met in their several parishes all through the island. When the session of Parliament opened the Association had a petition ready, signed by eight hundred thousand Catholics, praying not for their own relief, but for repeal of the Test Act and the Corporation Act, which had excluded Protestant Dissenters from office for a century and a half. This petition, which had been suggested by O'Connell, was written by Father L' Estrange. "This," says Mr. Mitchel, "was an incident well calculated to produce a fine dramatic effect — the proscribed and op- pressed Catholics petitioning for the rights of the much less proscribed and oppressed nonconformists." On the other hand, there were many petitions from Protestants in favor of Catholics; though, unhappily, too, numbers of influential Protestant petitions — from the British universi- ties, for example, from various corporations of towns and cities, espe- cially that of Dublin — deprecated all concessions to Catholics. Anglesea remained viceroy under the feeble and short-lived ministry of Lord Goderich, and also when the duke of Wellington became prime minister, on the 22d of January, 1828. Contrary to the hopes of the bigots, Anglesea became a favorite with the good-natured, credulous Irish people. He played the role of a conciliatory viceroy. In spite of his perverse politics at a later period, he seems to have been a well- intentioned man, frank and manly. O'Connell afterwards said of him ■ 450 THE LIFE OF DANIEL CCONXELL. ' Poor Anglesea ! the unfortunate man was not wicked, but misguided." It appears that Anglesea said to 0' Gorman precisely the same thing of Dan : " That unfortunate O'Connell means well, but he is misguided.'* Anglesea foolishly said that O'Connell had no influence in Ireland. Peel was home secretary, Goulbourne chancellor of the exchequer. That time-server, Palmerston, had a seat in the cabinet. It also contained, to use O'Connell's ludicrous nicknames, "Booby Bexley, Doodle Dudley, Squeaky Wynne and Mawworm Grant." Wellington's elevation to power, so far from daunting them, inspired O'Connell and the Catholics with an unprecedented spirit of unanimity and energy. In February, they resolved, at an aggregate meeting in Dublin, "That we will consider any member an enemy to the peace of Ireland who shall support any administration not making emancipation a cabinet measure." This year O'Connell also established Catholic churchwardens, to forward to the Association reports about "the rent," the census, amount of tithes and church-cess, kildare Place schools and proselytisni. Continental governments began to watch the progress of affairs in Ireland. The due de Montebello, the marquis de Dalmatic, M. Duver- gier, and other French travellers visited the island; their reports of what they saw made a deep impression on the mind of France. Sym- pathy for Ireland prevailed on the Continent. This year a great meet- ing at Cloninel lasted three days. Fifty thousand peasants, wearing green cockades and green uniforms made of calico, gave the assembly the appearance of a patriotic host. The military spirit of the nation was kindling fast. This year, too, a measure for Catholic relief passed the Commons by a majority of six; but it was defeated by a majority of forty-four in the Lords. However, Lord John Russell's bill for the repeal of the Test and Corporation acts became law. Peel gave it only a faint opposition. This was a sign of the times. The day of Catholic emancipation was coining fast. After struggling for twenty-eight years, O'Connell at length had victory in his grasp ! * * Authorities: Mitchel's "History;" "Life of O'Connell," published by Mullany; Daunt'a "Recollections;" McNeviu's" Life and Speeches of Shiel ;" Shiel's "Sketches;" Kennedy's "Remi- niscences;" Wise's "Association;" Fagan; "Irish Quarterly Review;" "Annual Register;" Twiss'fl " Life of Eldon ;" Prince Puckler Muskau's "Travels in Ireland;" "O'Counell's Speeches," edited b-» b*» son ; Fitzpatrick's " Life of Dr. Doyle ;" Alison's " Europe ;" >itc CHAPTER XIX. Preparations for the Clare election — O'Connell offers himself to the electors as a candidate for parliamentary honors — sets out for clare ; his triumphal progress — Exciting canvass in Clare — Steel, O'Gorman Mahon, Shiel, Father Murphy, Father Tom Maguire, Jack Lawless all canvassing for O'Connell — Indignation of the landlords — The election — Sheriff Malony and O'Gorman Mahon — Sir Edward O'Brien's tears — Speeches of the two candidates, Vesey Fitzgerald and O'Connell — Exciting scenes — The humors of an Irish election forty-three years ago — "The first man in the county" — A bill of indictment against a priest's physiognomy — Colonel Vandeleur deserted by his voters — "The wolf is on the walk" — Devotion of the peasantry — Defeat of the cabinet min- ister AND THE ARISTOCRACY — GENEROUS FEELING OF O'CONNELL ; MAGNANIMITY OF VESEY Fitzgerald — "The man of the people" the member for Clare — He is chaired in Ennis; his triumphal progress to Dwblin — Lawless at Ballibay — Revolutionary measures proposed in the association — aristocratic meeting at the rotunda in favor of emancipation — " derry dawson's " speech — "brunswick clubs " — the VICEROY, ANGLESEA, FAVORABLE TO EMANCIPATION — He IS RECALLED; VAST CROWDS ATTEND HIM TO KlNGSTOWN — THE IRISH SOLDIERY IN FAVOR OF O'CONNELL — EMANCIPA- TION BROUGHT FORWARD IN PARLIAMENT BY WELLINGTON AND PeEL — THE ASSOCIATION is dissolved — Bigoted opposition to the relief measure — The kiit" 'TBuggles AGAINST IT — It PASSES BOTH HOUSES — GEORGE THE FOURTH RELUCTANTLY aiGNS THE bill — Its provisions — Disfranchisement of the forty-shilling freeholders — O'Con- nell AT THE BAR OF THE COMMONS ; HE IS MEANLY REFUSED HIS SEAT — HlS ENTHUSI- ASTIC RECEPTION IN IRELAND — IRISH GRATITUDE — ODD SQUABBLES — O'CONNELL IS RE- ELECTED for" clare — Reflections on the great Catholic victory. HE proximate cause of Catholic emancipation was the cele- brated Clare election. That extraordinary event came to pass- in this way. Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald, having been advanced to a seat in the "Wellington cabinet as president of the Board of Trade, was obliged to vacate his seat in Parliament for the county Clare As he had always been favorable to emancipation ; as he possessed great influence in Clare with all classes from his personal merits, his liberal distribution of government patronage and his family connections ; as his father, Priine-Sergeant Fitzgerald, had gained the love of the people by voting against the union at the sacrifice of his office, there seemed to be no doubt that Vesey Fitzgerald would be immediately re-elected. Lord John Russell, pleading that the duke of Wellington had acted so nobh 452 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. in the case of the repeal of the Test and Corporation acts as to entitle him to the gratitude of "the liberals," begged O'Connell by letter to procure the reversal of the resolution, passed by the Association, that they should strive to prevent the return of every candidate not pledged to oppose the duke's administration. O'Connell was at first weakly inclined to comply with this request, in the interest of the Whigs, but his proposal to suspend the resolution met with a stormy opposition, which showed the strong dislike felt by Irish Catholics towards Wel- lington and Peel. The resolution remained in force; and soon O'Connell had good reason to rejoice that his compliance was of no avail. When the Association came to the determination of contesting Clare, they first thought of putting forward as their candidate the popular Major McNamara. As, however, several days passed over without wringing any response to their call from the major, they began to doubt :hat he would come forward. Doubts, also, were entertained as to the zeal of the Clare priests, especially of the influential Dean O'Shaugh- nessy of Ennis, who was a distant relative of Mr. Fitzgerald. Nor, when the dean, glancing around with "his bright authoritative eye," unexpectedly entered the room where the Association sat in council, was there much in his ambiguous discourse to restore confidence. Still, the members present, far from being downcast, decided that £5000 of the Catholic rent should be appropriated to the expenses of the election, with a view to smooth any difficulties that pecuniary considerations might place in the way of the major's acceptance of the offered candi- dature. At the same time Mr. O'Gorman Mahon and Mr. Steele, two Clare gentlemen of considerable property, who, on the appearance of signs of panic, had insisted that the people of Clare might be roused and that the priests were not lukewarm, were sent post to Clare to learn the real feelings of the people and to see the major. In two days O'Gor- jaan came back with the major's refusal; his family were under such obli- gations to Mr. Fitzgerald that he could not honorably oppose him. All seemed lost. Not merely the Ascendency party, but the liberal Prot- estants, were already hard at work for Fitzgerald. The former, indeed, vaunted that no Clare gentleman would stoop so low as to accept the pa- tronage of the Association. Pride, however, was doomed to get a speedy fall Just when every one was settling down into the belief that further THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 453 opposition to the cabinet minister was hopeless, universal Ireland — not to say the whole British empire — was electrified by the appearance, in the Dublin Evening Post, of an address to the electors of Clare, solicit- ing their votes, from O'Connell himself. How did this come about ? / Tory friend of our hero, Sir David Roose, meeting "Vincent Fitzpatrh X (the son of Hugh the publisher) in Nassau street, said to him, " O'Con- nell ought to offer himself as a candidate for Clare." Fitzpatrick Avas staggered at the remark, but in a moment he exclaimed, "You are right." He at once called to mind that John Keogh of Mount Jerome had observed to him. when a boy, that the English would never concede emancipation until a Catholic was returned to Parliament; that the English middle classes, in spite of their stupid prejudices against the Irish Catholics, would look on the exclusion from his seat of a member duly elected as an outrageous violation of the constitutional privileges of the subject. Fitzpatrick flew to O'Connell. Our hero heard him coldly at first, but finally adopted his suggestion with warmth. He went with him to the office of the Post without delay. A coolness had arisen between our hero and Conway, the successor of Magee. O'Con- nell, advancing with his "smile of witchery" and proffered hand, said to Conway, "Let us be friends." The coolness vanished in a moment. Our hero, in the public office (noise was no disturbance to him, so he refused to go into the quiet inner room), dashed off his address. "Mod- ify it as you please," said he ; but Conway could see nothing in it that required change. It was printed at once. While stating his claims to their suffrages, in this document he declares that he will never take the oath that the mass is idolatrous, "for the authority which created those oaths can abrogate them ; and I entertain a confident hope that, if you elect me, the most bigoted of our enemies will see the necessity of remov- ing from the chosen representative of the people an obstacle which would prevent him from doing his duty to his king and to his country." In truth, he had at last found out the true way to wrest emancipation from the enemy's grasp. As our hero was at this time pressed by pecuniary embarrassments (he always lived extravagantly), he sent Vincent Fitzpatrick to see if the wealthy Catholics woidd supply funds for the contest. Andrew Ennis, Cornelius McLoughlin and John Power put their own names down for 454 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. £100 each and solicited others to subscribe. In one day the} 7 obtained £1600. Within a week the country contributed £14,000. In addition to this sum, Cork alone subscribed £1000, of which Jeremiah Murphy gave £300. In truth, the excitement was at the highest throughout the island. James Power, afterwards member for "Waterford, said to Fitzpatrick, "I never was so excited in my life as on reading that address." He promised that himself and his father would subscribe tt the election fund. Before O'Connell set out for Clare, several gentlemen were sent from the Association to excite the minds of the people and to prepare the way for his coming. The priests, too, were to be stirred up to use their influence with the tenantry. The aristocracy — the O'Briens, McNamaras, Fitzgeralds, Vandeleurs and others — never dreamt that their "serf-freeholders would dare to vote contrary to their mandates. It was then a principle amongst the Irish gentry that, if any gentleman canvassed the tenants of another with a view to induce them to vote contrary to the will of their landlord, such interference was to be looked on as a personal insult. Hence the magnates were no doubt startled and furious, when Mr. Thomas Steele amiably declared his perfect read- iness to fight any landlord who should think himself aggrieved by inter- ference with his tenants, and then, assisted by his friend, Mr. O'Gorman Mahon, commenced operations by setting to work and canvassing the county. These two gentlemen were probably the most active of all the emissaries of the Association. They traversed Clare incessantly, vehe- mently appealing to the people on the hill-side, in the market-places, at the altars after mass. The people, excitable and imaginative, were soon roused to such a pitch of patriotic and religious enthusiasm that they were even prepared to brave the power and vengeance of their landlords in vindicating what they deemed the cause of their country. The gentry were almost stupefied with amazement. Tom Steele was, no doubt, almost as much in his element during this Clare election as he had been when, during Riego's revolution, like a generous knight-errant as he was, he combated for Spanish constitutional liberty against the invading host of the French Bourbons. In addition to his vehement, but grotesque and exaggerated, declamations and the harangues of the somewhat fantastic and self-confident, but gallant THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 455 dashing and handsome O'Gorman Mahon, oratorical stimulants were now administered profusely to the peasantry by other noted characters. Jack Lawless, with his shaggy brow, aquiline nose, fiercely-glaring eye, erect attitude, deep voice, fluent diction and honesty of purpose, together with the famous Father Tom Maguire, with his shrewd homely face, his plain, vigorous, trenchant rhetoric and dexterously-used syllogisms, took an active part in the campaign. The latter gave a somewhat religious character to the contest. His chief exploit was the overthrow of Mr. Augustine Butler, an extensive landed proprietor in Clare and the lineal descendant of the celebrated Catholic lawyer, Sir Toby Butler, of whom some notice is taken in the chapter on the penal laws. Mr. Butler boldly encountered Father Tom in the chapel where his freeholders were assembled. But " Father Tom," says Shiel, " appealed to the memory of his celebrated Catholic ancestor, of whom Mr. Butler is justly proud. . . . What Sir Toby Butler had been, Mr. O'Connell was; and he ad- jured him " not to oppose one "whom he was bound to sustain by a sort of hereditary obligation." Father Tom triumphed, and secured one hundred and fifty votes for O'Connell. Counsellor Dominick Eonayne's mastery of the Irish language helped to achieve this signal success. "Throwing an educated mind into the powerful idiom of the country," Mr. Ronayne deeply stirred the passions of the people. Shiel, who was employed as O'Connell's counsel before the assessor, having arrived in Clare the day before the election, proceeded at once to the mountain village of Corofin. In the parish of that name Sir Edward O'Brien (Smith O'Brien's father), the most opulent resident landlord of the county, had three hundred voters. Sir Edward resolved to antici- pate the agitator, and set out in his splendid equipage, drawn by four horses, for the mountains. On his way he met his tenantry, who had descended from their rocky homes, marching along "in large bands, waving green boughs and preceded by fifes and pipers." For the first time, probably, in all his life, the popular landlord was passed by his heretofore devoted tenantry in sullen and ominous silence. But when they met the brilliant orator of the Association, their enthusiasm knew no bounds. Sir Edward's resolution gave way at sight of this mortify- ing contrast. Instead of going to the Catholic chapel, he went to f.hc church of the Establishment, leaving his carriage just opposite the 456 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. ihapel door, a circumstance which reminded the people of the Protest- antism of this Milesian magnate. As Shiel approached with the mul- titude, the tall, slender, emaciated form of the parish priest, Father Murphy, his face pale and sunken, but "illuminated with eyes blazing with all the fire of genius and the enthusiasm of religion," his eyebrows black, his long, lank hair of the same hue, appeared at the door of the rude chapel. Mr. Shiel says that an artist would have found in bin rather a study for the fervid Macbriar, the Covenanting preacher in "Old Mortality," than "a realization of the familiar notions of a clergy- man of the Church of Rome." The brilliant sun rendered more con- spicuous this strange figure, with which the wild, desolate, craggy, ver- dureless scenery around was in harmony. With "voice of subterraneous thunder," the priest imposed silence on the people. Having welcomed Shiel to the good work, he proceeded to the wooden altar, rude and clumsy as the chapel itself, where he recited mass to the "deeply atten- tive people," most of whom "had prayer-books in their hands," with "just emphasis," and with "fervency, simplicity and unaffected piety," going through all the forms with " propriety and grace." After mass, combining the politician with the priest, Father Murphy spoke to his flock in Irish. " His actions and attitudes" were worthy of " an accom- plished actor," his intonations, now soft, now denunciatory, varied with the varying passions of his discourse. Generally he was " impassioned and solemn," but at times "the finest spirit of sarcasm gleamed over his features, and shouts of laughter attended his description of a miser- able, recreant Catholic," who should sacrifice his country to his landlord. Towards the close of his harangue, inflamed by his emotions, his eyes blazing, thick drops falling down his face, raising himself to his full height, "he laid one hand on the altar and shook the other in the spirit of almost prophetic admonition." His appeal to the people, "to vote for O'Connell in the name of their country and of their religion," was irresistible. That hour it was easy to foresee that Father Murphy would march into Funis at the head of Sir Edward's tenantry, "and poll them to a man in favor of Daniel O'Connell." With the exception of Dean O'Shaughnessy, Fitzgerald's kinsman, and Father Coffey, whose congregation deserted him, tin' priests were all on the side of O'Conneil. The day our hero made his entry into Funis, THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 457 you might meet a priest in every street who would pledge himself that the battle should be won. Thirty thousand people, crowded into the streets of Ennis, welcomed "the man of the people" with incessant acclamations. Banners hung from every window. "Women," says Shiel, "of great beauty were everywhere seen waving handkerchiefs, with the figure of the patriot stamped upon them. Processions of free- holders, with their parish priests at their head, marched like troops to different quarters of the city." No one was intoxicated ; vintners re- fused money offered for drink ; order prevailed ; the occupation of the police was gone. Such organization was the sure herald of victory. Similar enthusiasm had welcomed O'Connell in JNTenagh, Limerick, and the other towns through which he had passed on his way to Clare. On the day of his departure from Dublin, too, when he left the Court of Exchequer to get into his carriage, which waited for him in the east yard of the Four Courts, the news having got abroad that he was about to start for Clare, barristers in wigs and gowns, flocking from all the courts, surrounded him in the hall. A multitude filled the yard likewise. He, N. P. 0' Gorman and two other gentlemen, who accompanied him, could hardly get through the crowd to the carriage. At last, however, they drove off, our hero uncovering his head and bowing in acknowledgment of the enthusiastic cheers and blessings, warm from the heart, that followed him on his way. While O'Connell's supporters were thus eager in his cause, some of Fitzgerald's friends backed up their candidate with a zeal worthy of a better cause. To aid in defraying his election expenses, £4000 were subscribed by five of the aristocracy. One of Fitzgerald's partisans, named Hickman, who had been an old acquaintance of our hero's, said to him angrily one day, in the streets of Ennis, "Hallo! O'Connell, mark my words; if you canvass one of my tenants, I'll shoot you." O'Connell, smiling, replied, "I'll canvass every one of them." And it appears he really did so. The scene in the Ennis court-house, at the opening of this memorable election, was novel and striking. On the left side of Mr. Malony, the high-sheriff, stood the cabinet minister surrounded by the aristocracy of Clare. An expression of wounded pride, bitterness and rage was stamped on the faces of these lords of the soil. The small Protestant proprietors, 458 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONXELL. indeed, swelling themselves into gentry upon the credit of voting for the minister, affected to look big. On the right of the sheriff stood O'Con- nell, with scarcely a gentleman by his side. Most even of the Catholic proprietors opposed him. His strength was in the devoted peasantry who, with a sprinkling of priests, filled the body of the hall. A whim- sical incident occurred before the proceedings commenced. The sheriff, a solemn, dingy-faced, prim-looking individual, who had spent most of his life at Canton, in the service of the East India Company, and had appar- ently acquired his chief notions of magisterial demeanor and authority from the contemplation of mandarins, — this strange functionary, look- ing up at the gallery, saw a fantastically attired gentleman perched in a singular and even perilous position. " Instead of sitting on one of the seats in the gallery, he had leaped over it, and, suspending himself above the crowd" on a ledge, astonished the whole assembly. If his position was outlandish, his costume was unique. A coat of Irish tabinet, trow- sers of the same material, no vest, a blue shirt, lined with streaks of white, open at the neck, a broad green sash, with a medal of "the Order of Liberators" at the end of it, hanging over his breast — such was the costume of "the aerial gentleman," whose "handsome and expressive countenance" boasted bushy whiskers and was shadowed by "a pro- fusion of black curls curiously festooned about his temples." "Who, sir, are you?" demanded the sheriff, imperiously. This great function- ary, it may be remarked, pronounced his English on the model of the monosyllabic Chinese, "imparting the cadences of Wesley to the accent- uation of Confucius." The fantastic-looking gentleman at once replied, with an agreeable air of assurance, "My name is O'Gorman Mahon." "I tell that gentleman," said the mighty Malony, "to take off that badge." There was a moment's pause, when the "chivalrous dandy" "slowly and articulately," answered: "This gentleman" [laying his hind on his breast) "tells that gentleman" [printing with the oth< r to the sheriff), "that if that gentleman presumes to touch this gentleman, that this gentleman will defend himself against that gentleman or any other gentleman, while he has got the arm of a gentleman to protect him." At the close of this singular address, a burst of applause shook the court-house. The pompous sheriff looked aghast, and, after a pause of irresolution, sat down quite discomfited. O'Gorman Malum pressed the THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 459 medal to his heart. O'Connell looked admiringly at his lieutenant. As Shiel says, "the first blow was struck." Sir Edward O'Brien proposed Mr. Fitzgerald "as a fit and proper person to serve in Parliament." Some doubted the sincerity of his zeal for Mr. Fitzgerald, as a feud had on former occasions existed between them, and a pitched battle even had once been fought between the ten- antry of their. two houses. Besides, Sir Edward's second son, William Smith O'Brien, then member for Ennis, destined to be the leader of the Young Ireland attempt at insurrection in '48 for which he received sen- tence of death, "was a member of the Catholic Association, and had recently made a vigorous speech in Parliament in defence of that body." But the mortification of his feudal pride, caused by the defection of his vassals, irritated Sir Edward against the opponents of Fitzgerald. The " squat, bluff, impassioned," good-natured, though choleric, old Milesian magnate, ever full of recollections of his royal ancestor, Briain Boi- roimhe, wept (he once produced a great effect in the House of Commons by bursting into tears while describing the misery of the Clare people) as "he complained that he had been deserted by his tenants, although he had deserved well at their hands, and exclaimed that the country was not one fit for a gentleman to reside in, when property lost all its influence and things were brought to such a pass." Sir A. Fitzgerald seconded Mr. Fitzgerald in a few words. Mr. Gore, an extensive landed proprietor, supposed by the people to be the descendant of a Cromwell- ian nailor, also spoke in favor of the cabinet minister. Then 0' Gorman Mahon, a Catholic, proposed, and Tom Steele, a Protestant, seconded, Daniel O'Connell. The rival candidates had now to address the assembly. Mr. Fitz- gerald, a man of the most prepossessing appearance, a graceful, amiable, self-possessed, accomplished gentleman, and an equally accomplished speaker, "delivered," says Shiel, "one of the most effective and dexterous speeches which it has ever been my good fortune to hear." His face showed pain and fear and the marks of anxious vigils. He retrained, however, from all exasperating expressions. "He spoke at first with a graceful melancholy." Had not the Association displayed a rigorous policy in throwing overboard one who, through his whole political life, had been a warm advocate of their cause ? He referred to his various 460 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. services to the Catholics. He became impassioned when he referred tc his father, who, at that moment, was supposed to be at the point of death. " Efforts had been made to conceal from the old man the contest in which his son was involved." The speaker's grief was genuine. All sympathized with him when he turned aside to wipe away the tears that gushed into his eyes. Though the majority of those present were his opponents and O'Connell's enthusiastic partisans, yet, when he ceased to speak, "a loud and unanimous burst of acclamation" shook the court-house. All, who understood the workings of O'Connell's face, saw, as he rose to reply, that he was collecting all his might for a great effort to do away with the impression produced by the rival candidate. He bore Mr. Fitzgerald not the slightest ill-will, but he resolved, in a struggle where such vital interests were at stake, not to spare even the tenderest feel- ings of his antagonist, and to employ against him without scruple his boundless powers of vituperation. In fact, as Shiel says, it was "requi- site to render him for the moment odious." It was no case for delicate fencing. First he roused the popular passions by attacking Fitzgerald's allies. Without direct reference to the tradition that Mr. Gore's ancestor was a Puritan nailor, "O'Connell," says Shiel, "used a set of metaphors, such as 'striking the nail on the head,' 'putting a nail into a coffin,' which at once recalled the associations" attached to his name; "and roars of laughter assailed that gentleman on every side." Gore was said to be as stingy as he was rich. Extreme prudence in money-matters is un- popular in Ireland. O'Connell covered him with such derision on this point and on his assumed ancestry that in a few minutes he was com- pletely crushed. O'Connell followed up his first success I » v at once making a savage onslaught on Mr. Fitzgerald himself. Having drawn an odious picture of the murdered prime-minister Perceval, lie tinned round fiercely and asked his opponent with what face could he call him- self I heir friend, when the first act of his public life was to enlist under the banner of "the bloody Perceval." The furious vehemence of voice and gesture with which he sent this epithet home to the hearts of the people turned the tide of feeling against Mr. Fitzgerald. "This, too," said O'Connell, "is the friend of Peel — the bloody Perceval and t lie candid and manly Mr. Peel; and he is our friend! and he is everybody's THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 461 friend ! The friend of the Catholic was the friend of the bloody Perceval, and is the friend of the candid and manly Mr. Peel!" This terrible speech galled Mr. Fitzgerald to the core. Often he would mutter, "Is this fair?" Above all, he felt stung to the quick when O'Connell, in ruthless mockery of his allusion to the almost hope- less illness of his aged father, said, "I never shed tears in public." On the second day the polling commenced. On that day the votes were nearly equal, owing to the sharp tactics of Fitzgerald's committee. In strict law, Catholics could not vote at elections without making a dec- laration on oath regarding their religious opinions, and getting a magis- trate's certificate of their having done so. This oath was usually dispensed with by consent of both candidates. Now Fitzgerald's committee insisted on its being administered, thereby completely taking O'Connell's by sur- prise. Next day, however, batches of freeholders were sworn at once. They were brought into a yard bounded by four walls. Twenty-five were placed against each wall. Twenty-five at a time were sworn. If this process of wholesale swearing made a mockery of the solemnity of oaths, the British legislature which imposed on Catholics the obli- gation of taking this absurd oath, chiefly relating "to the Pretender," deserved all the odium due to those who force people "to take the name of God in vain." Soon it became clear that Mr. Fitzgerald had not the slightest chance of being returned. That gentleman would fain have withdrawn from the contest, but his friends insisted on polling to their last man. The humors of this strange election were many and diverting. The high- sheriff, who was always in solemn tones of unconscious burlesque an- nouncing that he was "the first man in the county," became the butt of the lawyers. Playing on this lunatic's fantastic vanity, they would preface every legal argument with the words, "I feel that I address myself to the first man in the county." Blind to their ill-concealed mockery, the official noodle would smile and bow with what Shiel styles "an air of Malvolio condescension." Then some noise would be heard in the adjoining booths, on which he would start up in wrath and cry, " I declare, I do not think that I am treated with proper respect. Verily, I'll go forth and quell this tumult ; I'll show them I am the first man in the county, and I'll commit somebody." Soon, however, Dogberry would 462 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'COXNELL. return with a good-humored expression of face, saying, "It was only Mr. O'Connell; and I must say, when I remonstrated with him, he paid me proper respect. He is quite a different person from what I had heard. But let nobody imagine that I was afraid of him ; I'd commit him, or Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald, if I was not treated with proper respect, for, by virtue of my office, I am the first man in the county." A young gentleman, named Whyte, one of O'Connell's agents, made good and diverting use of his talent for mimicry. More than once he frightened and confounded a deputy- sheriff, hostile to O'Connell, when about to commit some partisan of our hero's, by exclaiming, "in a death- bell voice," like the high-sheriff's, "Silence, Mr. Deputy; you are exceed- ingly disorderly. Silence !" Sometimes charges of undue influence were brought forward. Father Murphy of Corofin was called before the sheriff. "With a smile of ghastly derision," he asked, What was the charge against him? "You were looking at my voters," cries the accusing attorney. "But I said nothing; and I suppose that I am to be permit- ted to look at my parishioners." "Not with such a face as that," cries Dogherty, one of Fitzgerald's counsel. There was a roar of laughter at this sally, for terrible, in truth, was the solemn and spectral aspect of Father Murphy. "Let us see," says Shiel, O'Connell's counsel, "if there be an act of Parliament which prescribes that a Jesuit shall wear a mask." At this instant, one of O'Connell's agents rushes in excitedly. "Mr. Sheriff," he cries, "we have no fair play. Mr. Singleton is fright- ening his tenants; he caught hold of one of them just now, and threat- ened vengeance against him." This was apropos. "What !" cries Shiel; "is this to be endured? Do we live in a tree country, and under a con- stitution? Is a landlord to commit a battery with impunity, and is a priest to be indicted for his physiognomy and to be found guilty of a look?" After a long wrangle, the assessor decided that either priest or landlord actually interrupting the poll should be committed, but he "thought the present a case only for admonition." Shortly after, Mr. Vandeleur arrives from Kilrush, followed by a hundred of his tenants. He stands behind a carriage, with his hat off, vehemently addressing his serfs, lie stamps, waves his hat, shakes his clenched hands. Thousands of voices from the crowd through which they pass shout aloud, "Vote for your country, boys! Vote for the old THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 463 religion ! Three cheers for liberty ! Down with Vesey, and hurrah foi O'Connell!" At length they reach the house where O'Connell lodges. Through the window of his apartment he rushes out on the temporary platform, canopied over with boughs, that had been erected in front of the house. He raises aloft his stalwart arm. A tremendous shout soars heavenward. The serfs become independent voters. Vandeleur is de- serted. That one wave of O'Connell's arm deprives him of all his fol- lowing. On this platform twenty or thirty can stand together. Here Lawless, Father Maguire, Father Sheehan from TVaterford, who had helped to overthrow the Beresfords, Dr. Kenny, a Waterford surgeon, the whole troop of orators in short, in turn performed their parts. Here the people are entertained with declamation, good stories, mimicry and fun. The habits and costume of Father Coffey, who had given his sup- port to Fitzgerald, are derided. Obvious puns on his name convulse the people with laughter. " The scorn and detestation," says Richard Lalor Shiel, "with which he was treated by the mob, clearly proved that a priest has no influence over them when he attempts to run counter to their political passions." Shiel heard a priest on this platform say some- thing to the populace in Irish. In a moment ten thousand peasants knelt and prayed. It was for the repose of the soul of a bribed voter of Fitzgerald's, who had just died. He had taken the bribery oath. Thus the day passed. At night, in a small room of a mean tavern, all the leading patriots and "divers interloping partakers of electioneer- ing hospitalities" would assemble to refresh exhausted nature. Huge piles of food were strewed on the deal boards and hungrily devoured. Then toasts were drunk, and exulting "hip, hip, hurras" followed. Whyte would mimic the high-slieriff riding on an elephant in Calcutta. The tears of Sir Edward O'Brien and the blank looks of Hickman, Fitz- gerald's conducting agent, gave food for endless mockery and mirth. But now Father Murphy's sepulchral voice would startle the revellers: "The wolf, the wolf is on the walk! Shepherds of the people, what do you here? Is it meet that you should sit in joyance while the free- holders remain unprovided, and temptation, in the shape of famine, is amongst them? Arise, I say, arise; the wolf is on the walk." Shiel tells us that "Nothing was comparable to the aspect of Father Murphy upon these occasions, except the physiognomy of Mr. Lawless. . . . The 464 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. look of despair with which he surveyed this unrelenting foe to convivial- ity was almost as ghastly as that of his merciless disturber." Mean- while, below stairs the priests were employed in giving the peasant- voters, who lived too far from Ennis to return home, orders to victuallers and tavern-keepers to furnish the bearers with meat and beer. The use of whisky was sternly interdicted. Nothing could exceed the assiduity of the priests in the performance of this duty, which sometimes lasted far into the morning, save the patience with which the peasants, some of whom had not tasted food for twenty-four hours, waited each for his turn to speak to "his reverence." In truth, the self-denial of the Clare peas- antry, their spurning the temptation of bribes, above all their devotion and moral courage in braving the vengeance of their offended landlords, at whose mercy most of them lay so completely, appealed forcibly to every generous heart. The soldiery began to feel the deepest sympathy with them. The British empire was in manifest danger. In truth, the Clare election was a tremendous event. The day it ended Catholic emancipation was virtually won! And at length the poll did close. For O'Connell, there were two thousand and fifty-seven votes; for Fitzgerald, one thousand and seventy- five. It was argued before the assessor, Mr. Keatinge, that a Catholic could not be legally returned. But the objection was overruled, as it rested with the House of Commons itself to exclude a representative, if he refused the oath tendered to him. "Wherefore O'Connell was declared duly elected. Our hero seems to have arrived at the conclusion that, though a Catholic was legally excluded from the Irish Parliament and from the English Parliament, no law existed to prevent him from taking his scat in the Imperial Parliament. On the final day of the election the court-house was once more crowded. Mr. Fitzgerald appeared at the head of the baffled and beaten aristocracy of Clare. He made no effort to hide the pain lie tell, but he gained the respect alike of friends and foes by the high-bred calmness with which he bore his overthrow. O'Connell made a speech full of generous feeling and admirable taste; he begged Mr. Fitzgerald to forgive him for any offence he might have given him the first day. Mr. Fitzgerald unaffectedly assured him that whatever was said should be forgotten. "He was again hailed," says Shiel, "with universal ac- THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 465 clamation, and delivered a speech which could not surpass in good judg- ment and persuasiveness that with which he had opened the contest, but was not inferior to it." Mr. Shiel also tells us that during the con- test Mr. Fitzgerald could not conceal his astonishment and gloomy fore- bodings. At moments he would wholly forget himself and seem lost in melancholy reflections on the possibility of terrible events to come. "Where is all this to end?" was a question frequently put in his pres- ence, from replying to which he seemed to shrink. At the close of the poll, Mr. Shiel himself delivered an eloquent, generous and wise speech. Such was the memorable Clare election — perhaps the most important one in the entire history of English, Irish and Scotch elections. Two elections only can for a moment stand in comparison with it — the Mid- dlesex election in the last century, in which the demagogue Jack Wilkes is the prominent figure, and that Tipperary election which returned O'Donovan (Rossa), an Irish rebel suffering penal servitude under the treason-felony act, to the British House of Commons. The Clare elec- tion is certainly far more historically noteworthy than that of Middlesex. But should Ireland ever shake off the dominion of Great Britain, it will hardly be considered a more momentous event than the Tipperary elec- tion of 1869. However, at the time it occurred, the Clare election was pronounced in England "the most extraordinary event that had ever occurred under a system of popular representation." It was also said that, by this stroke, O'Connell had effected more in one day for the lib- eration of Ireland "than had been done in forty years by all other men." Of course, the infuriated aristocracy hated him now more inveterately than ever. When the election was over, O'Connell was chaired through Ennis. Sixty thousand men (probably this is exaggeration) are said to have surrounded and followed him, bearing green boughs. Houses, great and small, were decorated with evergreens or other boughs. In Limerick he was received enthusiastically. His whole progress to Dublin was a triumphal march. Vast crowds of horsemen (the numbers stated are hardly credible) formed his escort on the way. Numbers of persons got him to frank letters for them. These letters demonstrated everywhere that "the man of the people" was the member for Clare. It is impos- sible to give any adequate idea of the intensity of the joy and triumph 466 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. with which the nation's heart beat high. In one week the rent reached a sum not much less than £3000. Much about the same time Jack Lawless was on his way to the North, attended, in every district he passed through, by a vast escort of peasantry. When he was approaching Ballibay in Monaghan, an immense force of Orangemen assembled there to attack him and his followers. These last were in no way desirous of avoiding the encounter. Indeed, it required the exertions of the clergy and the friendly remon- strances of the military commandant of the district, General Thornton, to prevent a collision. Lawless, to the chagrin and anger of his nume- rous followers, who wanted to advance, left his carriage, took horse and turned back. He does not seem to have merited the reproach which this retreat brought on his head. His conduct arose not from any lack of courage, but from a humane disinclination to countenance useless bloodshed. It was on this occasion that the Orange partisan, Sam Gray, so notorious for years in Ireland, first signalized himself and won the nickname of General Gray. The Association was becoming more formidable than ever. Thomas Wyse of Waterford planned a new arrangement. ''Liberal clubs" were established all over the island. The Association was the principal club. In every county and again in every parish similar clubs, under its con- trol, were established. To be able to read was a necessary condition of admission to the palish club. The subscription was trifling. The parish club elected its own president, secretary and treasurer. The secretary of the county club directed it. Later this year (in November) a solicitor, named Forde, proposed, with the sanction of O'Connell, a system of ex- clusive dealing; that the people should not ''deal with notorious Orange- men; and further, that a preference in dealing should be given by Roman Catholics to those who dissent from them in religion, but who may have proved by their acts that they are friendly to civil and religious liberty." Lord Cloncurry argued against this. N. P. O'Gorman, too, opposed it. It was finally negatived. Forde's resolution was to have been followed up by a run on the banks. Wyse says it would, if carried, have disor- ganized Irish society speedily, "and reduced the minister to the alterna- tive of a war of extermination or a hurried and reluctant concession of Catholic claims." In truth, it was the mere menace of these revolution- THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 467 ary measures which, in all probability, caused that emancipation meet- ing in the Rotunda which was presided over by the duke of Leinster, and based on a declaration in favor of emancipation, signed by two dukes, twenty-seven earls, two counts, eleven viscounts, twenty-two barons and the same number of baronets. Certainly, this meeting greatly tended to make Wellington and Peel see the necessity of conced- ing the relief bill of April, 1829. O'Connell is said to have given that meeting the credit of being the immediate cause of the concession to the demands of the Catholics. Shortly after the Clare election another occurrence took place, which was regarded by many as an infallible sign that emancipation was fast approaching. This was the speech delivered at Deny by " Derry Daw- son," as he was styled, Peel's brother-in-law and a member of the gov- ernment. The Orangemen of Derry were furious when they heard this trusted Orange leader admitting at once the vast power of the Catholic Association and the necessity of disarming it by settling the Catholic question. He repudiated any return to the penal-law system. The bigots, who listened to him, tried his temper by interruptions of every kind. His novel sentiments of toleration made them frantic. They hissed and hooted when he regretted "the degraded state of his Catholic countrymen." Nothing would content them but the violent suppression of the Association. Dawson was, at length, goaded to say, " I cannot express too strongly the contempt I feel for the persons who thus attempt to put me down." He would not "condescend to ask their votes though their suffrages would secure his return." Dawson lost his seat in Par- liament, in consequence of this oration. The Orange party never forgave his backslidings, his compromise with "Jezebel." It was believed at the time by many that his speech was made to order ; that his crafty brother-in-law had desired him to make it as "a feeler," thereby to test the spirit in which ministerial concessions to the Catholics would be received by the Ascendency faction. Much about the same time, at Manchester, Peel evaded speaking to the toast of "Protestant ascend- ency." The bigots made a last desperate rally. "Brunswick clubs" were established in numerous localities. At Ennis a meeting, called by the high-sheriff, assembled to form one. O'Gorman Mahon went to Ennis 468 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. to oppose it, but he was refused admittance to the meeting. The sheriff and magistrates, fearing that their proceedings might cause disturbance, had summoned to Ennis a detachment of troops from Clare Castle. O'Gorman Malum expressed his opinions pretty freely to the officer in command. Wellington was indignant with Lord Anglesea for not dis- missing from the magistracy O'Gorman Mahon, for this conversation with the officer, and Tom Steele for adjuring his auditors, on one occa- sion, " by their alk'Connell lor his glorious achievement was boundless. He was now indeed their " liheratoi " ami idolized hero. As a grand testimonial of the nation's gratitude a sum of not less, it is said, than 0), melancholy national drama of repeal reaches its ignominious close. This biography, then, only professes to give a detailed history of the triumphant pen "1 of "the Liberator's" career. A very slight sketch, however, of his latter days is due to the curiosity of the reader. Let us first, however, glance at him in his moments of relaxation, at Darrynane Abbey, after the glorious fatigues of his last emancipation campaign. There by the wild sea-shore, sheltered by mountains. in his quaint old house, buiit piecemeal at different times, without any regard to uniformity of plan, but quite capable of accommodating the numerous guests his warm-hearted hospitality gathers around him, he is as happy and beloved in the bosom of his family and people as any patriarchal chieftain of the old days. Nothing could equal the love he bore his children and grandchildren save their affection for him. Once Peter Hussey said to him, " Dan, you should not bring in your children after dinner; it is a heavy tax upon the admiration of the company." "Never mind, Peter," said O'Connell, gayly; "I admire them so much myself, that I don't require any one to help me." His eldest daughter playfully said she was afraid he should spoil her Mary. His reply was, "I don't think I shall ; I know I did my best to spoil you, my love, and I could not succeed." In a speech at Belfast, in January, 1841, from which I have quoted already, he talks of his "angel daughters," always "dutiful and kind" to him, whose "affection soothes every harsher moment of Sis life." He also calls thern "attendant angels waiting about him." In the same speech hi" THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 483 speaks of "the chirping of his darling granddaughters sounding sweetly m his ears," and says that whenever they appeal to him, right or wrong, he decides in their favor. Nothing can be more en- gaging than the picture of O'Connell's home-life at Darrynane. His children and grandchildren were merry and happy as the day was long. All his dependants were enthusiastically attached to him. It was glorious to see him hare-hunting in the mountains even before breakfast, using his leap- ingpole with a young man's activity, joyously drinking in the full cry of the shaggy Irish beagles and the enlivening shouts of men and boys, sent back by the myriad echoes of the hills. The huntsmen, in their gay red jackets, were not more alive and merry than O'Connell himself. There he was, now eagerly bounding along from rock to rock to keep the chase in view, anon pouring forth a stream of anecdote and jest, or laughing, as he quizzed some London guests, unaccustomed to mountain-life, for their lack of agility. Then after the chase, with appetites sharpened by the *port and the mountain air, the whole company would breakfast on a fragment of rock, in a shel- tered nook, a glorious sky overhead, wildly-magnificent scenery around. The delight which O'Connell took in the natural beauties of his native Kerry is well described by himself in an elo- quent letter written in October, 1838, to Walter Savage Landor, the poet, in which he says that the man "so often called a ferocious demagogue is, in truth, a gentle lover of nature." O'Connell's domestic chaplain said mass every morning at nine o'clock. The ordinary breal' fast took place at ten. O'Connell sat at table in his dressing-gown and tasselled cap reading hi letters and the papers. At dinner there was generally a numerous company. No sectarian topics marred the harmony of that festive board. Men of all shades of religious and political opinion were welcome to Darrynane. Though O'Connell was zealous about his religion, even fond of con- troversy — as shown by his encounters with the Kildare-street people and with Noel and Gordon, already described, and, on another occasion, by his stout refutation of certain attacks on the evi- dences of Christianity, made in his presence by Count Maceroni, a scientific Neapolitan, who had been aide-de-camp to King Joachim Murat, and had published something about experiments he had made in the art of flying — in spite of this occasional interest in controversial subjects, O'Connell was not in the least a bigot. In fact, the extent of his liberality would displease some of the nar- row zealots of the present day. When a bigoted Catholic said that it was impossible any Protr estant could have the plea of " invincible ignorance," O'Connell remarked, " The fellow has no right to judge his neighbor's conscience ; he does not know what goes to constitute invincible ignor- ance." O'Connell was unwilling that his eldest son's wife, a Protestant lady, should conform to Catholicity unless she really believed in the Catholic doctrines. He was shocked when his friend, Mr. Daunt, seemed to doubt the efficacy of a deathbed repentance. He was very fond of Quakers, and, on the other hand, some of the most eminent members of that persuasion had the highest respect for him, as had also the celebrated Scotch Presbyterian divine, Dr. Chalmers, who, in spit* of their very different religious and political creeds, said of him, " He is a noble fellow, with the gallant and kindly, as well as the wily, genius of Ireland." In Darrynane he enjoyed himself more than anywhere else. In his garden, picturesquely sit- uated amongst rocks, with its fine old hollies, he had a favorite walk. There was a circular turret, too, perched high on an ivy-festooned rock in the middle of the shrubbery, which commanded a wide prospect of the ocean and the neighboring hills, to which he oft retired to meditate in solitude upon his political schemes. In Darrynane he was comparatively free from various classes of bores that were wont to pester him elsewhere. Among these were gossiping visitors, who seemed to think his time their property ; rapturous and patriotic admirers belonging to that sex, which in his gallant moods he used to call " the fairer and better " one (" How I hate to have those women pelting in upon me I" he once exclaimed on the exit of a talkative dame of this class); male savans, like him who 48-4 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. interrupted him on one of his most busy days with a long and elaborate disquisition upon an ancient Egyptian festival ; loquacious chairmen at meetings and banquets ; persons who bored him to sit for his portrait or to give his autograph. Wilkie and Du Val fouud it very hard to get him to give formal sittings. Of autographs he was liberal enough till age made writing an irksome task. Shortly before his death he asked Mr. Daunt if he wished for any. Mr. Daunt said, he did. Upon which O'Conuell said, laughing, "Very well, I'll desire my secretary to write as many as you want." To the despot of Russia, Nicholas, he sternly refused to give his autograph. He was more complaisant to Louis, the poetical king of Bavaria, who himself wrote a letter in English to Mr. O'Meara, in which he says, "I request you to say my thanks especially to Mr. D. O'Connell. for his kindness in fulfilling my desire in such an obliging way." To conclude this brief accouut of our hero's "bores:" a modest priest, who was in difficult circumstances, on the strength of having been once introduced to him on the deck of a steamer, begged O'Conuell to allow himself and his two sisters " to make Darryuaue their home until more prosperous times." He trusted to '"the Liberator's' well-known benevolence." O'Connell said he had not the honor of his acquaint- ance. His reverence then reminded him of their introduction. At Darryuane, on days when he did not hunt, he spent two hours after breakfast at newspapers and letters. Then he would stroll for a while on the beach or in the garden, or retire to his turret. Mr. Daunt tells us O'Connell sometimes took a lively interest in pointing out to him with minute- ness, among the surrounding rocks, the course of some hunt, the various turns of the hare and the exploits of the dogs. On returning to the house, he would remain in his study till dinner, at which meal he was generally talkative and jocular. He would sit for about au hour after dinner, and then return to the study, nor leave it till bed-time. In this study Mr. Daunt ouce found him read- ing Gerald Griffin's "Collegians," which was his favorite work of fiction. He had been counsel for Scan Ian, the man from whom the Hardress Cregarj of the novel was drawn, and had " knocked up " the principal witness against him. " But all would not do; there were proofs enough besides to convict him." O'Connell was very fond of novels. Dickens was a great favorite with him. He followed the fortunes of little Nell, in "The Curiosity Shop," with intense interest. On coming to her death, however, he angrily threw away the book and exclaimed, "I'll never read another line that Boz writes! The fellow hadn't talent enough to keep up Nell's adventures with interest and bring them to a happy issue, so he kdls her to get rid of the difficulty." Scott he seems to have thought the best of novelists, but also a great bigot. He praises Bulwer's "Night and Morning," but his acuteness detects that author's legal blunder in supposing that Philip Beaufort, the hero, bad "no mode of establishing his own legitimacy except by producing the certificate, or the registry, of his parent's marriage. . . . Philip's mother would have been a sufficient witness in her sou's behalf. Philip need only have levied distress on the estate for his rents. . . . This comes of men writing of matters they know nothing about. Sir Walter Scott was a lawyer, and always avoided such errors." He also says, "This is the only one of Bulwer's novels in which a w does not figure as one of the leading characters." O'Connell sometimes ingeniously sustained the erroneous opinion that Burke was the writer of " Junius' s Letters." Byron was a great favorite with him, and he was a passionate admirer of Moore's Melodies. One evening during the repeal agitation, ai the Victoria Hotel, Killarney, he had Gansy, the famous piper, playing Scotch and Irish airs for his party. When one of Moore's Melodies would be played, O'Connell, at the conclusion, would repeat Moore's words. He also greatly liked Father Prout's ballad, "The Bells of Bhandon," which he got off by heart, declaring it (a slight exaggeration) to be the best ballad ever written. At Darrynane, O'Connell astonished a visitor, a " rough Northern lawyer," by his power of attend- ing to two or three intricate subjects at the same time; his memory, too. was something extraor- dinary. THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 485 Shortly after emancipation we find O'Connell again in active political strife. In a letter " to th* people of Ireland " about that time he says : " I do not remember any period of my life in which bo much and such varied pains were taken to calumniate me, and I really think there never was a period in which the pretext for abusing me was so trivial. There seems to be a common accord among the enemies of Ireland to run me down if they can." His enemies were wrathful at seeing that, instead of sitting down content with emancipation and seeking office, he was determined still to struggle on for Ireland's rights. Accordingly, we hear of the Times hurling three hundred of its thunderbolts, in the shape of scurrilous articles, against him. Bravely he struggles against all foes. From Darrynane he is suddenly called to Cork, where he successfully defends the so-called Done- raile conspirators, tells Solicitor-General Dogherty that what he says is not law, and mocks his dan- dified accent to his face. In Parliament, his audacity and power force a hostile audience to admit his merit. He is applauded at meetings of English radicals. Like Napoleon before a campaign, he announces his designs — the numerous reforms he intends to seek. He has stirring times ; quarrels with friends and foes; has misunderstandings with O'Gorman Mahon and Major McNamara; en- counters in the House with Dogherty and Lord Leveson Gower, the latter of whom he calls " the shave-beggar." The stout soldier, Sir Henry Hardinge, he stings by calling him "the chance child of fortune and of war." If he had accepted the challenges of all those anxious to fight, he should have had at least a dozen lives. He denounces Anglesea's policy. In spite of the sup- pression of one society by government and the Leinster House declaration of the aristocracy against repeal, he founds another society called " Volunteers for the Repeal of the Union." Their break- fasts are suppressed and he is arrested, but the Algerine Act, under which the arrest tabes place, expires. In 1831 he helps the Whigs to carry the Reform Bill. In 1833, ten Irish bishoprics and church rates are abolished. He defends the tithe conspirators in the days of the tithe war; denounces and combats, inch by inch, "Scorpion" Stanley's coercion bill. He is great all through life at nick- names ; for example, " Spinning Jenny Peel," " Surface Peel," " Lord Mountgoose " {Spring Bice, Lord Monteagle). "Peter Piggery Purcell," the patron of agricultural shows. Wellington he called "a stunted corporal," Burdett, "a foolish and fading gentleman." " How stoutly," says a stranger to Mr. Daunt, "Dan fights it out among these English !" He calls the Dublin reporters, when they band against him, "a parcel of nibbling mice." "Do you call me a mouse?" demands the rene- gade Elrington. "No," retorts Dan, "if I called you anything, I should call you a rat." He even brings the London reporters, who garble his speeches, to reason, by moving their expulsion from the gallery of the House. In 1834 he is forced prematurely to bring the question of repeal before the House. Shiel and eccentric, half-mad Fergus O'Connor, afterwards leader of the English Chartists, support him. Peel, Spring Rice, Emmerson Tennant and others oppose him. Of course, repeal is defeated by a large majority. In 1835 he makes an engagement with the Whigs under Lord Melbourne and Lord John Russell, known in history as " the Litchfield House compact." Those Irish members, led by O'Connell, are nicknamed his "tail." He has great influence now in the disposal of Irish patronage. This is the period of the popular viceroyalty of Earl Mulgrave. The Whigs promise justice to Ireland, but the Lords defeat bills favorable to Ireland. O'Connell denounces them in the towns of England and Scotland ; calls Lord Alvanley a "bloated buffoon." Alvanley sends a message to Dan, who does not deign to notice him. Morgan O'Connell, however, obliges Alvanley by taking up his father's quarrel. The duellists exchange three shots without a hit. Benjamin Disraeli (not long since prime minister of England) next assailed Dan most wantonly, at Taunton; but Dan speedily gave him far more than he bargained for. He not merely calls Benjamin "a miscreant," whose life is "a living lie," "a disgrace to his species," but he insists that he is the de- fendant of "the impenitent thief," whose "qualities he possesses." Dan concludes his speed , amid 486 THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. great laughter, with these words : " And with the impression that lie i», I now forgive the heir-at-law of the blasphemous thief who died upon the cross !" Is it any wonder that luckless Disraeli was almost frenzied '? He challenged Morgan O'Connell, who declined meeting him, to fight, and raved about "the inextinguishable hatred with which he should pursue O'Conuell's existence." Subsequently another Jew in race, named Raphael, gave O'Connell's agents £2000 for the ex- penses of his return for Carlow county. His election was declared illegal. He became clamoroua about his money. O'Connell, who was declared blameless in the matter by a committee of the Com- mons, felt himself constrained to denounce Raphael as "the most incomprehensible of all imagin- able vagabonds." 'Twere long to tell all the curious quarrels, both with enemies and old associates, and t ;'ier inci- dents of O'Connell's life during the years between emancipation and the last repeal agitation. In 1836, his beloved wife (beloved as few wives are loved) died at Darrynane. In 1838 he was hooted from a meeting and threatened with assassination for opposing the trades' unions and their exclusive apprentice laws. He was also reprimanded by the Commons, on the motion of Lord Maidstone, for having said at the Crown and Anchor Tavern, amid great cheering, "and reiterated in the House of Commons," that Ireland was nol safe from the perjury of English and Scotch members. O'Oouuell made no real retractation ; in the end he had far the best of this affair with the House. In 1838 the tithe-commutation bill passed. O'Connell opposed the Poor-Law 15111 this year. O'Connell frequently wavered on the subject of repeal ; he often said he would be content if Ireland were put on a footing of equality with England. The Tories, while calling Catholic law- yers of far inferior talent to the inner bar, had meanly refused him his silk gown. But the Whigs had subsequently made him a king's counsel with a patent of precedence. However, he was always proof against the temptations of office. He refused this year the great position of lord chief baron. After his long trial of the Whigs, he founds the " Precursor Society." The Whigs, alarmed, pass the Irish corporate reform bill ; but ()'( lonnell is now determined to go on with the repeal agitation. In '41 he becomes lord-mayor of Dublin, acts with great impartiality in that office, ami in '42 revises the burgess roll. In this year he publishes his " Memoir of Inland" and his "Letter to the Earl of Shrewsbury,'' which the late Frederick Lucas considered his ablest literary effort Father Mathews tee-total movement had now been in existence for some time; O'Connell admired it and deemed it ancillary to repeal. In 184.'! the famous debate on repeal took place in the Dublin corporation. O'Connell, on this occasion, delivered one of his greatest orations. Isaac Butt, now the leader of the "home-rule movement," feebly opposed him. This was the great repeal year, Soon multitudinous repeal meetings took place all over the country; these were tin- "monster meet- ings," of which that at Tara and the one at Mullaghmast, where Hogan the sculptor crowned O'Con- nell, were the greatest. O'Connell sternly refused the contributions of American slaveholders. At Mallow he defied the government, who were now fast pouring troops into the island. But still he discountenanced French sympathizers. He also set bis face against the Chartists. The Nation newspaper was now tiring the youth of the country with eloquent articles and noble war-ballads. Its writer- also preached down pernicious sectarianism. Davis, Duffy, Dillon, Doheny, McNevin and others had formed "the Young Ireland party." Later, John Mitchel became the most conspictt- ous member of it. Father Kenyon and James Fintan Lalor also became prominent at a period later than '43. When, at length, O'Connell was cast into prison (the government, frightened at the vast meetings, their semi-warlike aspect, O'Connell's arbitration courts and the martial literature of "Young Ireland," had proclaimed the Clontarf meeting and arrested O'Connell and several others), at this crisis Smith O'Brien chivalrously joined the movement and became the leader of the " Young Ireland" section. O'Connell is now found guilty of conspiracy and .sentenced to a year's imprison- THE LIFE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 487 rnent, but he is let out on a writ of error in three months. This is in '44. The '82 Club is shortly after established ; nothing, however, comes of it. All along, too, the Convention Act has stood in the way of his favorite project of summoning a national council of three hundred. In '45 the generous and enlightened Davis, the thinker of the " Young Ireland party," dies prematurely. O'Connell is deeply grieved, though from the first he has mistrusted and feared the warlike tend- encies of that party. Now come misunderstandings on the education question between "Old" and " Young Ireland." The latter party are for mixed education ; finally the split takes place on the abstract principle mentioned at the commencement of this biography. Divisions have at length rent asunder the imposing might of the repeal cause. Narrow, sordid, poor-souled John O'Connell is the evil genius of his sire, who is now fast breaking down in mind and body. But in this fatal year, 1846, a dread national calamity is at hand. The potato crop fails a second time. Famine and pestilence are at the people's doors. O'Connell's jests and familiar speech are at an end for ever. Never again will he make his countrymen laugh by saying " Na- bocklish;" "Moryah;" "Thank you for nothing, says the gallipot;" "Stick a wisp of hay in that calf's mouth ;" " They accuse me of having promised the repeal in six months ; I did, and here I am again to promise it in six months more;" " This is a great day for Ireland," etc. The most jovial of men now at length bowed his head in Conciliation Hall and wept. He was powerless iu Dublin. He was powerless in London. His people died in thousands and in myriads, and numbers were buried without coffins. "The uncrowned king" becomes weak in body and his buoyant spirits desert him for ever. In 1847 he is ordered to a warmer climate. His old antagonist, Disraeli, in his life of Lord George Bentiuck, gives a touching picture of " the Liberator's " last appearance in the House of Commons — his feebleness of frame and voice as, for the last time, he besought aid for his hapless countrymen. As he passed through Paris, on his way to the city of the pontiff, he received the visits of the illustrious advocate Berryer and Count Montalembert. To the former he said, on welcoming him, "I cannot refuse myself the pleasure of pressing your hand." But he was unable to converse. To a Catholic society headed by the latter he said, in French, " Sickness and emotion close my lips. I should require the eloquence of your president to express to you all my gratitude." Mr. J. P. Leonard, who was continually with him during his stay in Paris, has recently sent me, from that city, a short but most interesting sketch, entitled " O'Connell in Paris," which I regret I did not receive earlier, so that I might have reserved space for its insertion in this biography. He says that even then, in the expression of O'Connell's "gray eyes, there was a power that dazzled, attracted and awed — a something that once seen could never be forgotten " Like most great men in a dying state, he disliked to confess weakness. His drive from the railway terminus had fatigued him. A "young priest brought cushions to prop him up and make him more com- fortable, but he declined the offer rather roughly, saying, ' I have no need of those things, I assure you.' He still wore the repeal cap and button, and a long green coat with pockets cut at each side. He looked thoughtful and sad." Mr. Leonard also says that there " was no apparent cause for his speedy dissolution ; medical skill could discern no organic affection." The state of his mind was preying on his existence. " He left Paris with a sad heart, hopeless of the future." To his admirers there the news of his death could bring no surprise. In Lyons, Professor Bonnet thought congestion of the brain had set in. " The illustrious patient's mind was clear, but not active, and it was a continual prey to sad reflections." His figure had so shrunk that he said, " I am but the shadow of what I was, and I can scarcely recognize myself." He had now a presenti- ment of fast-coming death. His right hand trembled ; his left hand and left foot were cold. His step was faltering. Masses were said for him in all the churches of Lyons. Anxious inquirers besieged his hotel. Everywhere the deepest veneration was shown for "the great liberator of Ire- land." As he passed from the hotel to the steamboat, crowds in the streets of Lyons uncovered 488 THE LIFE OF DANIEL CCONNELL. and bowed before him. But he took no notice of them. He no longer felt any interest in earthly honors. He had already said to one who tried to cheer him, "Do not deceive yourself; I may not live three days." The fatal disease was softening of the brain. On his voyage down the river Shone he seemed for a moment to revive under the genial warmth of the southern sun. News that he was recovering reached Dublin. But the hopes thus raised were illusory and fleeting. The last scene took place in "Genoa the Proud." On the 15th of May, 1847, at three in the afternoon, he called his valet and thanked him for his faithful services. That evening he breathed his last, in his seventy-second year. He had vaiuly desired to live till he could reach Koine and receive the pontiff's blessing. Not long before he expired, after being motionless for hours, he had sat up and said, in a hollow voice, "I shall have the appearance of death before life is really departed. You must take care not to bury me until quite sure that I am dead." His friends looked on awestruck. His youngest son, Daniel, and Father Miley, who were with him when he died, in compliance with his request, brought his heart to Rome. Pius the Ninth embraced his sou: "Since," said His Holiness, "the pleasure of seeing and embracing the hero of Catholicity was not reserved for me, let me have the consolation of embracing his son." Grand funeral solemnities were observed in Genoa and Rome. In Ireland his funeral was a vast and imposing spectacle. His poor son John refused to allow the "Young Irelanders" to take part in it. Funeral orations were delivered in his praise by the greatest preachers of Italy and France — Fathers Ventura and Lacordaire. Father Miley preached his funeral sermon in Dublin. A round tower has been erected t« his memory in Glasnevin Cemetery, near that city. Such were the life and death of Daniel O'Connell — a man of majestic form, large of heart, and of colossal intellect. His character, like the grand scenery of his native mountains, was irregular and full of startling contrasts. He was good-natured, yet irritable; now courteous and compliment- ary, now vituperative to excess. Generous, even at times forgiving and magnanimous, he was yet capable of nursing vindictive passions. While he doated ou his wife and children, he is said to have not unfrequently forgotten his marriage vows. He sought after money eagerly, yet his "liberal hand and open heart" scattered it again profusely. He had the moral courage of a statesman and was personally brave in the face of physical danger, but he lacked the peculiar enterprise of the mil- itary character. He was defiant, yet capable of submission. He removed badges of ignominy from the Irish race, but the results of his policy were in many respects injurious to their fortunes. He longed for the independence of Ireland, yet in the end drew aside the national efforts into wrong paths. He inspired the people with courage to face their enemies, yet, if we are to believe some generally sound thinkers, he taught them to like political dodging. When he died, the masses of his people were most miserable. In the long run, however, good will certainly accrue from his career. He was one of the greatest popular orators that ever lived, but also one of the most unfinished. His voice was in the highest degree seductive, in spite of the broadest Kerry brogue. His inimitable humor and fun sometimes degenerated into arrant buffoonery. He found it hard to keep his exuberant animal spirits within reasonable bounds. He was, at times, frank, outspoken, imprudent even to rashness, but more frequently cautious. A man of impulse, yet proue to deliberate. A sincere believer in revelation, yet hardly pious. Grand of soul, but occa- fcio lally descending to littlenesses. In fine, Irish to the heart's core, and, with all his faults, th« greatest of Irish political leaders.* * Mr. Pumell was not a factor in Irish Politics at the time when this sketch was written ; as a matter of fact he was then an infant. — It. F. W. Preliminary Sketch of Irish History. Preliminary Sketch of Irish History. Relations of Ireland to England the source of Irish misery — Independence neces- sary to Ireland's happiness — Aims of O'Connell's life — How far he succeeded — Where he failed, and why — Exaggeration of his theory of moral force — Ire- land's capabilities — Rapid survey of Irish history down to the year 1775. ! T is now more than seven hundred years since the day on which English invaders first set foot upon the soil of Ireland. Ever since that fatal event Ireland has been more or less subject to the yoke of England, and more or less miserable. At times, indeed, she has been regarded, equally by friend and foe, as the most unfortunate island of the sea, though, from the gifts lavished alike on her soil and people by the bounteous hand of Nature, she might be reasonably expected to prove the most fortunate. And wretched her destiny must ever remain while her connection with England lasts. There are many who ask, Why must this be so ? Does she not share the benefits of the glorious and envied constitution of Britain ? Is she not represented in the British legislature ? Are not the Irish people, in short, now part and parcel of the great British nation — participators in all the blessings of British law and British justice ? Most Englishmen, and Irishmen of the "West-British stamp, would fain answer these ques- tions in the affirmative ; but the views of all such on " the Irish ques- tion " are entirely fallacious. If, indeed, the Irish were really one people with the English — similar in race, feeling, character, traditions and interests — the present connection with England would ensure their hap- piness. With or without members in the British legislature, Ireland would, in this case, see her interests cared for, would be virtually repre- 492 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. sented. The representatives of Shropshire and Sussex would be as solici- tous about the honor and interests of Tyrone and Tipperary as about those of Durham and Dorset, or even their own. But the two nations — not being homogeneous ; on the contrary, differing widely in race, feel- ing, character, traditions and interests — are altogether incapable of amalgamation. The representation of the weaker in the united legisla- ture must ever be a delusion and a sham. Even if Ireland had an equal number of representatives with England (and this she could not reasonably claim), England, being wealthier and more powerful, would have the advantage in various ways. But Ireland having, as a matter of course, only a small minority in the united legislature, it necessarily follows that, whenever a conflict of interests takes place between the two countries, her representatives must be swamped and her interests must go the wall. This would be inevitable if Irish members of Parliament were all as incorruptible as Aristides. But it is hardly necessary to point out the facilities England possesses for corrupting Irish members of Parliament; and her desire to corrupt equals her ability. Some, indeed, there are who argue that if a democratic republic were proclaimed in tin.' British islands, it would no longer be necessary for the Irish people to seek even the restoration of their separate Legislature. The representatives of tin' English democracy would at length give tardy justice to Ireland. No more thorough fallacy than this was ever uttered. A democratic government and Legislature may be just ami beneficent to their own people, but to a subject nation, or to a population whose interests differ from those of their own immediate countrymen, they are sure to be unjust and tyrannical. If the principle be true that men are seldom or never just judges in their own case, a democracy or sovereign people will always trample under foot whatever interests come in collision with its own. An odd indivividual may judge justly in his own cause aggregates of men can hardly ever do so. Indeed, political philosophers have maintained that the rule of an absolute monarch may be more likely to render justice to a subject province than that of ;i democratic government. If the despot be a tyrant, he will, at least, tyrannize impar- tiali. 3ver all lands under his sway. If, on the other hand, he should chance, like Trajan and a few others, to be a father of his people, the blessings of his paternal rule will shine on all his provinces alike; tor PRELIMINARY SKETCH OE IRISH HISTORY. 493 his interest and glory are augmented by the prosperity of every part of his empire. In truth, Ireland, being a distinct nation, can never be happy or pros- perous while her connection with England subsists. No matter what the form of government common to the two countries may be — whether monarchical, aristocratical or democratic — Ireland, bound to England, must always be miserable and inglorious ; living "from hand to mouth by temporary shifts and expedients ; the beggar of nations ; the scorn of the civilized world. To enjoy the full advantage of her teeming re- sources, the riches of her soil and the various gifts of her people, Ireland must cast her connection with England to the winds and once more take her place among the free nations of the earth. Through the whole of his long career, Daniel O'Connell, the marvel- ous and instructive story of whose active and varied life I am about to narrate, was manifestly actuated by a strong conviction of the truth of the principles which I have been endeavoring to enunciate. Setting aside for the present all his lesser aims, this illustrious Irishman, from the be- ginning to the end of his public life, kept three grand objects constantly in view: 1st. He desired to emancipate his co-religionists of the Catholic faith, and also the dissenting Protestants, from the civil dis- abilities that oppressed and degraded them ; in other words, he sought to win religious liberty for the vast majority of the Irish people and even for the minority of the English and Scotch. 2d. He aimed at uniting Irishmen of all races and religions into one strong nation. But, 3d, His greatest and noblest ambition was to regain the legislative independence of his country — to make Ireland a free nation once again. He succeeded in accomplishing the first of these objects. The method by which he conquered was original. Instead of resorting to arms and overthrowing his opponents in the field, he assembled his countrymen in vast public meetings, and brought an immense pressure of public opinion to bear on the hostile government and legislature. But let us bear in mind that ever and anon, behind this peaceful array of popular might, was heard the half-uttered menace of war. If, by a delay of redress of grievances, the patience of the oppressed were at length worn out. why then the people could and would strike. Amid all 494 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. O'Connell's pacific protestations and professions of loyalty, ominous words of this sort continually startled his opponents — so much so that when finally yielding to the demands of the great agitator, the duke irf Wellington frankly admitted that he only conceded emancipation to avoid the inevitable alternative of civil war. When I come to relate the story of emancipation in detail, I may suggest to the reader some doubts, at least, as to whether it were not, after all, a misfortune for Ireland that the British government yielded emancipation quietly. In truth, if the Irish people had been obliged to fight for it, some evil con- sequences, that have resulted from the way in which emancipation was achieved, might have been avoided, and the benefits springing from the national victory would in all probability have been fax wider in their scope, more ennobling and more durable. O'Connell met with only partial success in his endeavors to unite all the various jarring elements of the Irish nation. But in his efforts to achieve the third and noblest object of his ambition he failed com- pletely. After a vast and imposing display, continuing for months, of multitudinous popular masses and of the marvelous dominion, which his transcendent abilities had given him over the popular mind, the seeming might of the repeal movement gradually dwindled away, and, at last, the whole organization dissolved into thin air "like the baseless fabric of a vision;'* while the aged chieftain, broken alike in health and heart and power, retired to a foreign land to die. And this failure could not be otherwise, seeing the means adopted by O'Connell to achieve his end. His early triumphs, which were won by agitation, caused him to push his theory of "moral tout'" (to use his own term) to the utmost pitch of exaggeration. If England conceded emancipation peacefully, it was because it really took no power from her; it simply brought the Catholics within the pale of the Constitu- tion; perhaps, in certain ways, it rather increased England's power. Besides, a rich and influential portion of the English people participated in the struggle. In the reform agitation the majority of the people of England, Scotland and Ireland united in demanding a reform bill from the government. But the ease of repeal was altogether different This was an international question. England was asked to surrender her dominion over Ireland. Power is seldom or never yielded save to force. PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IKISH HISTORY. 495 And what force, adequate to the task of wresting the legislative inde- pendence of Ireland from England, could be found in the mere expres- sion of the public opinion of trampled Ireland ? No portion of the Eng- lish people would help to strengthen this array of Irish public opinion so as to bring the requisite pressure on the hostile majority in parlia- ment. The English populace, supposing they had possessed the power would have served themselves at the expense of Ireland, and, perhaps, trampled on her rights even more readily than the English aristocracy or middle classes. Besides, toward the close of the agitation for repeal, O'Connell brought forward an abstract proposition which, acted on in good faith, should necessarily deprive the " agitation " system of the only force it ever had — that of the threat held in reserve. The proposition was to the effect, "that, under no circumstances, would an oppressed nation be justified in resorting to arms against the oppressor unless first attacked." In short, the Irish people, naturally one of the most martial upon God's earth, were called upon to swallow the monstrous and even laughable delusion that England could be induced by mere force of reason and persuasion to give up her hold on Ireland. If the Irish people could possibly have come to believe and act on this princi- ple, Hie British government need only avoid attacking and they might continue oppressing the Irish to the end of time. His determination to act on this exaggerated theory of "moral force" blighted the closing scenes of O'Connell's career and ruined the cause of Ireland for the time — so much so that we must hesitate whether, upon the whole, we should deem the life of this most illustrious of all Irish political leaders a success or a failure. In truth, in the history of this "moral-force" delu- sion are to be found the saddest, but not the least instructive, lessons of his extraordinary life ; the chief moral to be derived from which is, that Ireland, to be happy, must be independent, and that to be inde- pendent she must place her sole trust in the God of battles and her own manhood marshaled in the field ! Nor can any one reasonably doubt or deny that Ireland has all the elements requisite to form an important independent state. Indeed, few countries are more richly endowed by nature than Ireland with the ele- ments of prosperity and even greatness. She boasts, in the first place, the excellence of her geographical position, so admirably fitted for com- 496 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. mercial purposes. Indeed, if it be true that nothing in creation exists without design, this position of Ireland would seem to indicate that future generations of Irishmen are destined to a career of commercial activity and greatness. Her situation, placed as she is between the Old World and the New, is one which, like that of Egypt, must remain, for all coming time, in the highest degree adapted for commerce. Ireland is not, in this respect, at the mercy of circumstances, like Venice, whose maritime greatness declined after the discovery of the passage by the Cape of Good Hope. Surely this fortunate position was not given to us in vain. Perhaps, if we duly consider the peculiarity of her geographical position, we may be enabled to see why greatness has hitherto been denied to Ireland. Had Ireland become great prior to the discovery and colonization of America, and the subsequent growth of the numerous transatlantic States to maturity, she could have derived no especial profit or advantage from her geographical position, and thus her great- ness would have been imperfect. The case to-day is very different. The western world is now full of civilized and powerful States. Ireland might now reap the full advan- tages of her geographical position. But Ireland has numerous other advantages. She boasts her splen- did harbors, unequaled by those of most other lands ; her noble rivers ; a favorable climate ; a fertile soil ; scenery of the most varied loveliness ; a vast amount of unemployed resources ; but, above all, she boasts the possession of a hardy population, naturally brave, generous, adven- turous and energetic, gifted with an intelligence of no common order. Indeed, it is impossible for an unprejudiced person to have much inter- course with the Irish, and not to perceive that they are a people singu- larly gifted by nature. The variety and rapid succession of their ideas, their apparent fertility of resources, their readiness of wit, their genial humor, their vivacity of imagination and their facility of expression can- not but strike the most superficial observer. It is no exaggeration to say that the most educated mind might occasionally derive valuable hints and suggestions from the conversation of an Irish peasant, prompted only by his shrewd native intelligence or mother-wit, Viewing this happy combination of natural advantages with which Ireland is blessed, PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 497 it is hardly rash to infer that a just Providence has destined her, come when it will, for a career of unexampled glory and good fortune ; though, up to the present, all her blessings have been turned to no account, and the contrast between the brilliant gifts of Ireland and her people and the misery of their fate be one of the most singular and unaccountable in all history. I shall not waste much time in endeavoring to refute the opinion of those who think, or pretend to think, that Ireland would, under no cir cumstances, be able to win her independence. The question, Whethei Ireland be able to throw off the yoke of England ? has been discussed over and over usque ad nauseam. From the days of Tone and Emmet to those of Davis and O'Brien, and even to the present time, numbers o* Irish patriotic writers of the greatest ability have shown conclusive!'' that the idea of regaining our independence, so far from being chimeri- cal, is in reality the only practical idea for Irishmen to entertain, if they wish to make their country what she ought to be — prosperous, happy and renowned. In connection with this subject I shall only make three additional observations : 1st. Ireland is still, after all the drain of emigration (such is the recuperative power of the Irish race), relatively one of the most popu- lous countries in the world. Absolutely, she is still more populous than the following independent states of Europe — Belgium, Holland, Den- mark, Greece, including the Ionian isles, Portugal, Switzerland, and Sweden and Norway taken together. I omit mentioning some European countries not independent; also many barbarous or semi-barbarous states in Asia and Africa. As in population, so in superficial extent, Ireland exceeds all the states I have mentioned, save the kingdoms of Sweden and Norway, and perhaps Portugal. She is even nearly a fourth larger than Holland and Belgium taken together. 2d. I shall shortly observe that, even to the most careless and super- ficial of historical students, from numerous examples of past history, the broad general principle must be manifest, that nations of less extent than Ireland, or less populous, or both, when fired by patriotic enthu- siasm, can resist the might of colossal empires and wrest from them, not merely privileges and rights more or less important, but even inde- pendence itself. 498 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 3d. It is hardly necessary to add that, if Ireland once succeeded in achieving her independence, she could have no difficulty in maintaining it permanently. When Prussia, in the last century, under Frederick the Great, bore up, for the most part single-handed, against all continental Europe, and not merely maintained her independence, but held fast her conquests in an iron gripe, her population and resources were as nothing compared to what an independent Ireland would have ; and the configu- ration of Prussia, so far from being, like that of Ireland, favorable for defensive purposes, is precisely the reverse. In order to enable the reader to grasp the full significance of his career, I deem it necessary, before I commence the biography of Daniel O'Connell, to take a rapid survey of some of the principal features of Irish history from the earliest period, but more especially from the Eng- lish invasion, in the twelfth century, to the year 1775 — the year when O'Connell was born. Once, however, I commence the biography prop- erly so called, reflection and disquisition must give way to narrative As far as it may be practicable, I shall make O'Connell tell his own tale, and, for the most part, leave the reader to draw from the story his own moral. Nearly all writers agree that the great curse of Ireland, in every age, has been her disunion. Long before the Anglo-Norman invasion, even before the Danish invasions, while Ireland was yet untrodden by the foot of hostile stranger, her people were rent asunder and weakened by intestine strife. The ard-righ (supreme monarch) was generally at war with one or more of his rebellious tributary chieftains. The chieftains, when not in rebellion against the ard-righ, were fighting with each other and devastating each other's lands. The history of Ireland for centuries is a history of endless predatory incursions of tribe against tribe, continual aggressions and continual retaliations. The ard-righ so far from laboring, on all occasions, to suppress this internecine strife, was himself frequently the chief promoter of discord. So hopelessly unsettled was the state of society, so devoid were the chiefs and people of just notions of subordination and government, of obedience in ex- change for protection, of the necessity, for the general weal, of uniformly supporting the ruler out of the national resources, that it is possible the supreme monarchs came, at length, to view it as a matter of interest. PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 499 and even absolute necessity, to wring, by the strong hand, whatever they could from their insolent and lawless tributaries. Indeed, it is hard to explain the reigns of many of these mdnarchs on any rational principle. A king succeeds to the throne by murdering his predecessor. Issuing from Meath (or whichever territory may be his immediate patri- mony), he successively invades all the other provinces; plunders and ravages Ulster, Munster, Leinster and Connaught impartially ; fights a number of battles ruinous to the interests of the whole country, and, from every rational point of view, utterly inglorious. He occasionally gives a little variety to a career of slaughter by robbing and burning a few churches. His death is in keeping with his life. He is either knocked on the head in battle, or is else assassinated by the prince destined to succeed him, who is the son of his murdered predecessor and the representative of the second branch of the royal race. This prince, in his turn, goes through a similar career of slaughter and sacrilege, to meet a similar fate. This picture can hardly be called an overcharged one. Long periods of the history of Ireland, prior to the English inva- lior., present little more than a monotonous and dreary repetition of this tale of murder, battle and wholesale plunder. Sometimes it requires a considerable effort of the imagination to understand how any rational being could consent to assume the unquiet, thankless, fatal office of ard- righ of Ireland. But, after all, man seeks, at any cost, even the shadow of supreme dignity ; and, once he becomes familiarized with them, he is easily reconciled to almost any circumstances or condition of life; he even manages to find himself at home and indifferent in prison or amid pestilence. Perhaps our ancient princes came gradually to view a vio- lent death as the natural close of an Irish king's career. Be this as it may, few of them died in their beds. When not murdered or killed in battle, these peculiarly unlucky sovereigns were almost sure to be drowned or to meet their deaths in some other accidental way. It is perhaps somewhat touching to read that, among the small minority who escaped violent deaths, a few, wearied out by their violent lives, sought, in their latter days, quiet, and rest, and reconciliation with theii God in the seclusion of the cloister. In truth, even to a very recent period the Irish people have seldom or never been able to grasp in their minds the large idea of a united 500 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. Irish nation. The want of this broad and comprehensive idea is at the root of all their misfortunes, both of ancient and modern date. Though the patriarchal clan system of our forefathers was more or less suitable to a primitive age ; though, looking at its poetic side, the life and manners it developed were more or less genial and picturesque ; though many of the kings and clan chieftains, however tierce and rugged, were, at least, genuine men, fit for their time, stout, manly and true, — yet, in spite of these bright and attractive features, it had, among many other serious defects, the ruinous one of a perpetual tendency to break up the nation into smaller and smaller fragments. It was generally easy enough for one of the younger scions of a chieftain's house, if aspiring and energetic, to gather around him a portion of the clan and set up on his own account a chieftaincy more or less independent. Thus all cohesion was nearly at an end. Nor did even the presence of a common enemy on their soil suffice to band the Irish people in a common strug- gle for freedom, either when the Danes or the Anglo-Normans invaded their country. Properly speaking, indeed, one can scarcely say that an Irish people existed in the days we speak of, for each clan hardly looked beyond the narrow compass of what it deemed its own immediate inter- ests. Hence the tribes hardly ever scrupled to form alliances with the stranger against their own countrymen, if only they fancied they could profit themselves by so doing. They seemed to regard the foreigners merely in the light of an additional clan with which they might, from time to time, have to join battle or strike up a league. Occasionally we find even the supreme monarch joining, without any apparent hesita- tion, in an alliance with the Danes against his tributary chieftains and their clans. No doubt the histoiy of various other countries, in many periods, has been disfigured by the frequent occurrence of scenes of internal discord ; but. nevertheless, it maybe doubted if, anywhere, disunion and domestic strife occurred incessantly as in Ireland. One is tempted to regret that the Romans, in their ages of victory and conquest, did not come to Innisfail and subdue it like the rest of Europe. A conquest by the Romans, consolidated in their usual fashion, would, at least, have abol- ished the independent jurisdiction of the chiefs and the almost separate existence of the clans. Even if the Danes had succeeded in completely PRELIMINAEY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 501 subjugating the island and establishing a Danish dynasty on the Irish throne, a similar unification would have been brought about, and the fortunes of Ireland might have turned out better. Lord Lyttleton, in his history of Henry II., suggests that in this case Ireland might have proved a formidable commercial rival to England. Doubtless the effects of such a conquest would, at the worst, have been far less disastrous than those which have resulted from the Anglo-Norman yoke. As the conquerors, or their immediate posterity, at all events, would inevitably have ceased to own allegiance to the distant realms of Scandinavia, Ireland would at least have enjoyed a separate existence. Lest I may be thought by some to have exaggerated in these general statements the extent of the disunion that prevailed among our forefathers, I shall here give, as concisely as I can, a few in- stances in support of my assertions, which will be found to apply equally to the semi-mythical as to the authentic portions of our history. To begin with the more ancient and dubious periods-, we may read in one place of eight successive kings, each gaining the throne by the murder of his predecessor, and, a little after, of thirteen monarchs in succession meeting violent deaths. Coming down to Ugony the Great, we find that after a long and victorious reign of forty years he was slain by Badblihchadh. He, in turn, was immediately slain by Laeghaire Lore, the son of Ugony. Again, Laeghaire Lore was slain two years after, at Wexford, by Cobthach Cael Breagh. The reign of this latter prince was long, but finally he was defeated and killed near Leighlin bridge, on the west bank of the Barrow. His conqueror, Labraidh Loingseach, a celebrated hero of tradition, succeeded, but he, too, was slain ; and the fate of his five immediate successors was similar. The next king, Connla the Comely, was peculiarly lucky, for he man- aged to die in his bed, in the old seat of Milesian royalty, Tara, after ruigning twenty years. He did not, however, transmit his luck to his four immediate successors, who all met violent deaths. Another fortu- nate prince succeeded, Aengus by name, who reigned long and died quietly in Tara. His four successors also were slain. Then Eory the Great reigned long and died a natural death. But his six successors perished by the sword ! Passing over a long period, during which the throne is generally won 502 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. by some deed of violence, and during which few kings die in their beds — passing over the strange story of a revolution which is said for a time to have given the mastery of the island to a serf- race, called the Atta- cotti, and in the course of which the Milesian nobility are said to have been almost exterminated — passing over, too, the great hero of legendary tradition, Conn of the hundred battles, who had the usual fate of an Irish king, having been treacherously slain, and a long line of his suc- cessors, who, if they did not lose their lives in battle, by poison, drown- ing, a stroke of lightning (this was the fate of Dathy in the Alps) or some other accidental death, fell by the hand of treachery, like himself — hurrying over the scenes and events of the remoter ages, — we arrive at the era of Christianity, after which Irish history gradually becomes more authentic. The life of St. Patrick extends over the latter part of the fourth cen- tury and the greater portion of the fifth. His apostleship in Ireland commenced about the year of our Lord 432, in the reign of King Leagh- aire, and lie died toward the end of the fifth century, at an extreme old age. His lite was one of singular sanctity and of extraordinary labors for the conversion of the Irish people, nearly all of which were crowned with success the most complete and glorious. There is one peculiarity about the religious revolution winch this saint brought about. Strange to say, considering the tierce and stormy scenes and events of our secu- lar history, from beginning to end it was altogether peaceful in its prog- ress. Singular contrast ! but so it was. In the early stages of the saint's mission, when his followers were but few, the pagans made no attempt to persecute the scanty band of Christians. Nor, when the Christians triumphed and in their turn rose to power, did they make the least attempt to root out the remnant of the pagans by violence, but trusted for their eventual conversion to mildness and persuasion. Ire- land, indeed, is one of the few countries (1 had almost said the only one;) that received Christianity peacefully. An unique glory this! Wha1 a wonderful contrast between the introduction of Christianity into pagan Ireland and its early struggles in pagan Koine, where not merely em- perors, who were human monsters, like Nero, but good rulers, like Tra- jan and wise ones, like Diocletian, tried the Church with no less than ten fiery persecutions. This absence of burnings, tortures, massacres, PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 503 on the part either of the pagans or Christians, during the conversion of the Irish, reflects equal honor on saint and people. The whole aspect of the revolution and its results show clearly what mildness, amiability, temper, tact, judgment, persuasive power and goodness of every kind St. Patrick must have possessed, otherwise he could never have prevailed over so many fierce and haughty princes and their warlike people so easily. Doubtless the old Druidical paganism must have been well- nigh worn out. Doubtless, too, the patriarchal chiefs once won over, their clansmen or children would be likely to follow their example. Still the difficulties were great; and these difficulties were vastly en- hanced by the fact that the Irish were a peculiar and primitive people, totally ignorant of the Eoman customs, language and letters, to which St. Patrick and his followers were used from their birth. The calm nature of the revolution proves also that, however unfortunate circum- stances came to render the history of Ireland a long series of scenes of turbulence and disorder, too often red with the blood of mutually- destroying kinsmen, still the character of the Irish people was at bot- tom amiable and good-hearted. The late Count de Montalembert, in the very interesting life of our countryman, Saint Columbanus, the great restorer of religious purity in France, given in his admirable work, " The Monks of the West," dwells with the warmest praise on the purity im- planted in the Irish character by the teachings of the venerable Gaulish apostle. He calls it a purity unparalleled in other nations. He dwells on the fact that this primitive purity of manners, so deeply rooted in tbe souls of the Irish, has, along with their incomparable faith, been preserved unstained from the time of St. Patrick to the present day, aad this through the most terrible trials of fire and sword. How deeply im- planted must have been the saint's teachings ! Is it any marvel that his name and memory are still as freshly cherished as ever in the heart and on the lips of the Irish people ? The simple, straightforward, earnest men of the early ages are the heroes that live longest in the popular mind of nations. Even mythical beings of the hoary traditions of eld are loved as real men, for they, at least, represent earnest and heroic ideas, and even deeds. When the names of numberless highly- vaunted heroes of the more artificial periods, of whose lives volumes of minute detail have been written, sound in men's ears only as faint and 504 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. far-off echoes of a forgotten past, the name of St. Patrick, of whose life few details in comparison are known, will still exercise over the Irish race the potent influences of a spell. Count de Montalembert dwells also on the missionary impulse given to the Irish by St. Patrick's teachings — an impulse which remained in full vigor for more than a century. In truth, during this time Ireland was the abode of learning and the most famous school of learned mis- sionaries. One would expect to find the whole history of the people assuming a milder aspect, but the facts disappoint all such expectation. Unhappily, the old strife and disorder continue in spite of advancing arts and learning. And it is curious that the learning and the arts were able to exist and struggle on in spite of the strife and the disorder. During the life of St. Patrick, King Oilioll Molt, the son of Dathy and successor of Leaghaire, was slain at the battle of Olha, in Meath, by Lughaidh, the son of Leaghaire, who then mounted the throne. II was in the fifteenth year of the reign of Lughaidh that the saint died. Like Dathy, this prince was killed by a flash of lightning. The next prince was burned to death, and several successive monarchs also per- ished by violent deaths. Such was the uniform aspect of the history of Ireland in the years that followed the introduction of Christianity, in spite of its humanizing influences, and such our history continued down to the ninth century. Two or three kings may have died in their beds. Nial Frosach dies a monk in Iona. Flaithbheartach also wearies of the rough career of king, and seeks the quiet of monastic life at Armagh. But nearly all are slain. Of course we have any amount of internecine raids and combats. We hear of O'Neills ravaging Leinstcr five limes in one year. Ard-righ Congall makes a raid, on a large scale, on his tributaries of Leinstcr, and paternally exacts tribute and spoil from them; he also defeats his liegeman of Cinel Eoghain. Ard-righ Aedh Allan vanquishes the Ulidians and kills their prince at Faughard, in Louth. He crushes Leinstcr in the great battle of Ballyshannon, not far from Kilcullen, in Kildare county. His forces kill, they say. 9000 Leinstcr men ; he himself slays in single combat the son of bis tributary, the king of Leinstcr. Finally, Aedh Allan loses life and crown in a battle at Kells. Another paternal ard-righ, Donchad, the son of Domhnall, ravages Leinstcr and Minister, one after the other, PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY 505 with fire and sword, and also favors the midland and northern districts with predatory incursions. This fortunate prince contrives, however, to reign twenty-seven years, and to die, at the sufficiently ripe age of sixty- four, in the odor of sanctity. Such were events till the close of the eighth or beginning of the ninth century. By this time hordes of Scan- dinavian pirates had begun to visit our shores, and of course matters grew infinitely worse, for the Danes, wherever they came, ravaged with- out mercy, sparing neither sex nor age, and the Irish, weakened and worn-out by domestic strife and disorders, were hardly in a condition to repel invaders. During the calamitous period of the Danish invasions learning and the arts, as was only natural, began to decline. The pictures presented by our annals grow blacker at every page. The Danes make sudden descents, and plunder monasteries, shrines, churches. They commit wanton massacres without ruth. Tet Irish chiefs, for selfish ends, repeatedly join with them against their countrymen, and sometimes e\ en rival them in pillaging churches. Such a one was Cineadh, lord of Cianachta-Breagh. He, aided by these sea-rovers, rose against King Malachy, in 848, and robbed the churches and ravaged the lands of the Hy-Mall from the Shannon to the sea. Next year, however, he met with fitting poetic justice, for he was drowned in the Nanny, a small river of Meath that flowed through his own land, by the followers of the king. We find even supreme monarchs, during this gloomy time, instead of trying to band their people against the stranger, still warring against and wasting their tributaries. Thus, in 804, King Aedh Oir- nidhe devastates Leinster twice in one month. In 815 he overran Meath and Ulidia, and again invaded Leinster. It may be here remarked that not till this prince's reign were Irish ecclesiastics exempted from miltary service in these predatory hostings. Flan Sinna, another ard-righ, and apparently a prince not without high and gener- ous qualities, was not even content with plundering his tributaries ; he went so far as to join the foreigners in ravaging expeditions against Munster and the North. Battles, massacres, burnings, maraudings and sacrilege fill the picture of the times. Learning, indeed, though declin- ing fast, sometimes tried to rally. It was in the year 908 that Corinac Mac Cuileannan, the learned and good though rash king and bishop 500 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. of Minister, unfortunately perished in one of those miserable scenes of internecine strife. Doubtless the supreme kings were not always to blame for these attacks on their tributaries. They were often provoked by insubordina- tion. And, at all events, it should not be forgotten that several princes endeavored to do their duty in these dark times more or less success- fully. The Danes were wholly unable to effect a thorough or permanent conquest of the island. The names of Malachy, in the ninth century, and, above all, of the magnanimous Muircheartach Mac Neill, prince of Aileach and heir-elect to the ard-righ Donchad, in the tenth, deserve to be held in honorable recollection. The former regained or saved the independence of the country ; the latter endeavored to subdue the North- men and their provincial allies. He seemed to have some idea of an Ireland presenting a united front to the foreigner. He also gave an example of subordination (the thing most wanted in Ireland) by being loyal to the weak ard-righ Donchad. Unfortunately, the virtues of this generous, gallant and large-souled prince brought him no superior for- tune, for on the 20th of March, 943, he was slain at Ardee, by Blacaire, son of Godfrey, king of the invaders. But we now arrive at the age of another Malachy, great-grandson of Flan, and his great contemporary and rival, Brian Boroihme. Both these princes were able and patriotic — the latter, indeed, a man of energy and talents of the highest order. We find Malachy sometimes like former kings, attacking his tributaries, but we see him more fre- quently in arms against the Danes. For a while we find him in alliance with Brian against these foreigners; this alliance, however, is of short duration; jealousy rises between the two.- But the star of Brian becomes the lord of the ascendant ; after a struggle for a time of vary- ing fortune, Brian compels Aedh O'Neill, heir-apparent to the throne, to confess his supremacy and Malachy to yield hi::i the crown of Ireland. Brian Boroihme seems to have made a near< v approach to the con- solidation of the monarchy than any former king. The petty princes were reduced to subordination. Many wise and good regulations were made. The tributes necessary to sustain his power were exacted, but, on the other hand, obedience was conciliated by profuse hospitality and PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 5 Of liberal gifts. Brian's death, at an advanced age, was worthy alike of a king and a patriot. He fell, victorious over the foes of his country, at Clontarf, on Good Friday, the 23d of April, 1014. On this day of tri- umph and of grief for Ireland, which witnessed such a glorious termina- tion of Brian's reign and life, the power of the Danes in Ireland and their hopes of conquest were broken for ever. A few of their settle- ments on the coasts remained, but they were no longer menacing, and no successful, or even very formidable, Danish invasion occurred after Clontarf. Indeed, long before the close of the century the Danes had altogether ceased to pursue the career of sea-rovers. No other permanent good result, however, followed from the vigorous reign of Brian. Indeed, Dr. Petrie, Moore and others appear even to think that his usurpation, or at least assumption, of the dignity of ard- righ went far to destroy the last feeble bond of union or cohesion that existed in the political system of Ireland, inasmuch as it interrupted, or rather put an end to, the regular succession of the two branches of the royal dynasty. Brian was, indeed, worthy of the position he won ; and if he had succeeded, during his lifetime, in a thorough unification of Ire- land, and had established the succession in his family, and if his pos- terity had possessed anything like his own vigor of character, his so- called usurpation would have been a blessing to Ireland for genera- tions, perhaps for ever. But, unfortunately, he established no dynasty. On his death his rival Malachy, apparently with general approval, resumed the title of supreme monarch. He reigned for eight years after the battle of Clontarf, displaying great valor and energy in his combats, both with his Irish tributaries and the Danish settlers, distinguishing himself also by deeds of charity, showing clearly that he was one of those who could profit by adversity. This venerable monarch died in his seventy-fourth year, on the 2d of September, 1022. But after the death of Malachy it became perfectly plain that the regular succession was at an end for ever. Indeed, there were scarcely any more supreme monarchs. We read of an interregnum occurring more than once between the death of Malachy and the English invasion ; and when, during this period, princes did assume the title of ard-righ, their right to the supreme authority appears, in most instances, not to have been universally acknowledged. They are generally styled nomi- 508 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. nal or resisted kings. For seventy years, at least, this state of things lasted, nor during this period was the Feis or national assembly called together. The mutual jealousies of the chiefs all through the island were more inveterate than ever. In short, the old story is repeated in a worse form. Teigue, son of Brian, is slain through the perfidious prompting of his brother Donchadh. This last prince, after a life of selfish ambition and rapine, retires to a monastery in Rome. We read of a Diarrnid Mac Mael-na-mbo, king of Leinster, called by some a supreme monarch ; a Turlough O'Brien, king of Minister, also claiming the title of monarch of Ireland ; later we read of Muircheartach O'Brian and his powerful rival Domhnall O'Lochlinn, two princes who, along with the fierceness characteristic of the times, possessed many fine and manly qualities. Immediately after these the most stirring chaiacter in Ireland is Turlough O'Connor, king of Connaught, All these princes arrogated to themselves, with more or less recognition throughout the island, the dignity of ard-righ, and they all, like the earlier kings, pursued a course of internecine strife and rapine. Roderick O'Connor suc- ceeded his father, Turlough, as king of Connaught. After a long con- test for the supreme power with Muircheartach O'Lochlainn. king of Ulster, who had been acknowledged ard-righ, Roderick finally suc- ceeded in attaining the height of his ambition. Muircheartach. who had qualities deserving of a better fate, was slain in battle, and Rod- crick became undisputed monarch of Ireland. He was our last ard- righ. xVll these disorders necessarily reduced Ireland to an extreme degree of weakness. It is manifest, then, that few permanent advantages flowed from the reign of Brian Boiroihme, or the great crowning victory of his life at Clontarf. It may not be much out of place to notice here that a whimsical, though clever, English writer of the present day, the Reverend Dr. Kingsley, people's man and court-chaplain, pretends, in his novel of "Hereward," or in a note to a passage of that work, to doubt, or even denies, that any such victory over the Danes was ever achieved by the Irish. Wha1 his authority for this denial may be I know not. Possibly his blindness to facts is caused by his dislike of the Irish name, which, to judge from many passages in his voluminous writings, is rabid and rancorous. This reverend gentleman has been PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 509 styled the Christian Socialist from some absurd speculations in his novel of "Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet," one of the most silly and repulsive stories ever written. But returning from this digression con- cerning the reverend courtier and socialist's historical doubts, it is quite plain that the condition of Ireland, when Eoderick began to reign, was one of such weakness and exhaustion as left her little strength to repel any fresh invasion that might occur. Agriculture must have been grow- ing less and less every day. A pastoral state of society alone was com- patible with such confusion and strife. Hence, too, the population, if it did not actually dwindle, would remain stationary. Indeed, the whole state of society in Ireland had retrograded greatly since the first incur- sions of the Danes. Letters and the arts had, of course, upon the whole, declined, though, occasionally, learning would seem to rally and even flourish in the monasteries. Students still came to the schools of Ire- land from other lands, and Ireland could yet boast bards and chroni- clers and sainted sages like St. Malaehy, the friend of St. Bernard. It has ever been a trait in the Irish character deserving of unqualified praise that, even in an unsettled state of society, and amid civil discord and disturbances of all sorts, the Irish are inclined to respect and pro- tect men devoted to the pursuit of learning. It is not, then, very surprising that when, in 1169 and the following year, the treason of Diarmaid Mac Murchadha to his native country brought over Strongbow, Fitzstephen and Raymond le Gros, with the first bands of Anglo-Norman adventurers, those well-disciplined war- riors, acting in concert, skillfully led, in every respect well appointed — the knights and men-at-arms in complete steel of proof; the archers unerring marksmen, — it is not, I say, surprising that those well-trained warriors encountered at first but slight resistance from the disunited clans of Ireland, all armed with indifferent offensive weapons, wanting defensive armor, ill-disciplined and unskillfully led. English writers tell us of Irish hosts defeated by the valor of mere handfuls of the in- vaders, but, in reality, those Irish armies were little better than mobs in our own time ; and considering how small the population of Ireland must have been at that date, the conclusion is inevitable that their numbers have been absurdly exaggerated. To crown the misfortunes of Ireland, she had no patriot leader to whom the whole island could 510 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. look with confidence. The character of King Koderick seems to have been feeble and vacillating ; he was, at all events, wholly unequal to the crisis. When, in 1171, Henry II. of England landed in person with a large force, Koderick made no resistance whatever, but tamely sub- mitted and acknowledged the English king as his lord-paramount. But almost from the fatal day of this disgraceful submission down to the present horn" the history of Ireland and the Irish race has been a history of revolts against the dominion of England. Shortly after the first surprise and panic, Irish valor began to rally and rebel. The country was disputed with the invading race inch by inch. The Nor- man barons, too, from time to time rose in rebellion against the king of England ; but for a long period these barons sought, in their revolts, mere selfish, not national, objects. In truth, the English kings were, if possible, less the enemies of the original Irish than the early Norman chieftains of Ireland. In course of time, however, things changed, and many of the Norman families intermarried with the old race, and, adopt- ing tLeir language and customs, are said to have gradually become "more Irish than the Irish themselves." At least, numbers of them struck, century after century, against the English rule as vigorously as the fie ^est of the Celts. English power began to reel and give ground before zhese incessant rebellions. Donald O'Brien was one of the ear- liest chiefs who curbed the invaders. He is the most prominent figure among the Irish chieftains in the history of the twelfth century. In the thirteenth century we find O'Neills, O'Connors O'Briens, O'Donnells and other Irish chieftains repeatedly combating the English, some- times victorious, sometimes vanquished; but, unhappily, we also find them repeatedly fighting with each other, and even frequently in alli- ance with the English. In the fourteenth century the English authority in Ireland was far more seriously menaced. In the first half of the century, Robert Bruce, king of Scotland, flushed with his glorious victory of Ban- nockburn, by which he had delivered his country from the same cruel yoke against which the Irish were for ever struggling, listened favorably to the entreaties of the northern Irish chieftains, who proposed, if he would lend them assistance against their oppressors, to confer the crown of Ireland upon his brother, Edward Bruce. On the 20th of May, 1315, the latter prince landed on the coast of Antrim with a force amountiug PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 511 to about 6000 men. The northern Irish rallied round him. Ulster was won. He was proclaimed king of Ireland, and afterward solemnly crowned at Dundalk. His brother, King Robert, came to his aid. For a while everything seemed to promise fairly for Ireland's independence, but fortune turned. The good king Robert was compelled to return to Scotland, and, finally, his gallant and adventurous brother was defeated and slain on the 14th of October, 1318, at the disastrous battle of Fau- ghard, near Dundalk ; and thus what appeared a grand opport unity for regaining Ireland's independence came to nothing. In the latter part of this century another formidable enem) of Eng- lish power arose. I allude to the celebrated Art Macmorough. From 1377, when he succeeded his father as prince of Leinster, to 1417, when he died, not without some suspicion of poison, this indomitable chieftain held his own against the common enemies of himself and his country. Art seems to have possessed the noblest and most generous qualities, but though far superior to any Irish leader whom the English had yet encountered, he never, any more than his predecessors or contempo- raries, grasped in his mind the broad idea of an united Irish nation. He strove, indeed, with unconquerable energy and skilful policy, and not without merited success, to guard the independence of his an- cestral principality, and no doubt he felt the keen, fierce delight of a patriot warrior in again and again discomfiting the forces of the hated stranger, but we have few or no grounds for thinking that he ever meditated or hoped to achieve a thorough overthrow of the English dominion in Ireland. Perhaps, indeed, such a design was at the time impracticable, considering the probably diminished numbers of the old race, their increasing misery and disorder, above all, their constant divisions and narrow jealousies. In all these wars only fractions of the Irish people strove against the enemy, and the enemy was generally assisted by other sections of the suffering nation. Through the remainder of the fifteenth and early half of the six- teenth centuries similar struggles and similar divisions continue, Irish chieftains battling fiercely against the hated Saxon, Irish chieftain» making base alliances with the Saxon ; worse still, members of the same sept arrayed against each other. But a somewhat compensating feature begins to manifest itself. A large proportion of the descendants of the 512 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. early and even later Anglo-Norman settlers have become thoroughly Irish, or, as some say, "ipsis Hibernicis Hiberniores " ("more Irish than the Irish themselves"). They have almost wholly abandoned the habits of their forefathers, and adopted, instead, the garb and customs, lan- guage and ideas of the Celts. They adopt fosterage and gossipred; give their children to Irish nurses, and become godfathers to the off- spring of their retainers. In defiance of Saxon law they take to their bosoms Irish wives. They patronize bard and brehon. But, above all, they begin to hate and defy the English foreigner, and take every oppor- tunity to rebel against his authority. We have Lord Thomas Fitzgerald, better remembered as "Silken Thomas," in hot rebellion against Henry VIII. We have the earls of Desmond, the chiefs of the Minister Fitz- geralds, at one time secretly negotiating for an invasion of Ireland with Francis I. of France, at a later period carrying on protracted wars against the sovereigns of England. We have Geraldines of Desmond and Geraldines of Kildare losing their heads on the scaffold. We have, of course, frequent instances of English perfidy. But during the fifteenth century even the lords of the pale (as the territory round Dublin that held the English colony was styled) begin to show some occasional signs of disaffection to England. When Sir Rich- ard Edgecomb came to Ireland as king's commissioner in 1488, he pre- sumed to remonstrate, in a menacing tone, with certain refractory lords of the pale, upon which they made the spirited answer that, rather than yield to any arbitrary proposals or restraints, they would take part with the native Irish against their king. Singular to say, London itself was filled with rude alarms by an Irishman during the disturbed reign of Henry VI. Shakespeare has given, in the second part of Heniy VI., a wonderfully vivid picture of the revolt, headed by Jack Cade, which for a brief season terrified the citizens of London. As might be expected, Shakespeare's scenes are not merely true as the old chronicles to the whimsical characters and incidents of Cade's insurrection, but they are an image, more or less faithful, of all mob tumults. In Ireland, English power was in those days rapidly dwindling into complete insignificance. In 1123 the Ulster chieftains totally defeated the lord deputy and the English forces. When peace was subsequently made, it was only on the condition that the English should bind themselves to pay a tribute. PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 513 called " Black Kent," to the victors. Some time about the year 1471 the English settlers were in so precarious a state, and felt their hold on Irish soil so insecure, that they thought it necessary to form a defensive military brotherhood — styled the "Brothers of St. George" — consisting of fourteen loyal men of rank, selected from the four counties of the pale, Dublin, Kildare, Meath and Louth. For a time the captain of the fra- ternity had under his command a standing power of 200 men. But at a later period, from lack of means, it was reduced to 120 troopers, and for the support of even this small band the English settlers were obliged to look for aid to England. Indeed, the English pale about 1534, or near four centuries from the so-called conquest, had grown so "fine by degrees and beautifully less" that it could no longer be said to comprehend within its limits even the four counties around Dublin. There is reason to believe that, at this time, English laws, government, organization, language and usages hardly prevailed in any direction beyond twenty miles from Dublin. Nor did the partisans of English rule feel that their hold upon even this limited territory was a bit too secure. They complained that English lords took Irish tenants, and that the " Black Eent " was paid to certain Irish chiefs. Upon the whole, even in the sixteenth century, the old Celtic form of society still held sway in Ireland. Many of the Norman lords, as I have already intimated, spoke the Irish language, adopted Irish habits, and even went so far as to assume Celtic prefixes to their names (thus the De Burghos called themselves Mac "Williams) and to be- come veritable chiefs of clans. All attempts to introduce the English innovations, however backed by penal laws or the sword, failed to van- quish the stubbornness with which the people of the ancient race and the Anglo-Norman Irish, whom they from time to time absorbed, clung to their primitive and unique form of civilization. This Celtic civilization, with its peculiar manners, traditions, literature, music and other arts, bearing little or no resemblance to those of any other country, the old Irish, in the course of long and hoary ages, had with great originality of mind succeeded in working out for themselves, with scarcely any in- debtedness to ancient Greece or Rome, the fountains whence the other nations of Europe had drawn their nascent civilization. Hence the Irish loved and clung to their own customs with a peculiar fondness. It 514 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. is indeed curious, and illustrative of the Celt's tenacious adherence to old usages, to observe how those forms and features of an antique society and civilization still hold dominion, more or less, over the hearts and lives of our people. A new and terrible element of confusion was introduced into Ireland, as into other countries, in the sixteenth century. I allude to what is styled "The Eeformation," and to the religious discord it produced. If the country and its inhabitants had been torn asunder by animosities and strife before, society in Ireland now and henceforward became a per- fect chaos of contending evil passions. No one can hope to understand thoroughly O'Connell's career, the struggles that rilled his lifetime, or those that agitate Irishmen in our own day, without first comprehending the history of past Irish dissensions, and above all our religious dissen- sions. From these dissensions of the past nearly all the questions that have been vexed, and nearly all the events that have taken place in Ire- land during the present century, derive their origin; so that, if we want to find out their fitting solution or true significance, we can only do so by I >earing in mind and learning to interpret properly our dark and blood- stained past. Henry VIII., having succeeded in establishing in England, by acts the most violent and arbitrary, his own supremacy on the overthrow of the papal authority, was impatient to accomplish the same result in Ireland. Accordingly, severe penal enactments were passed by the so-called Irish Parliament (in reality the Parliament of the pale, and wholly subservient to the king's government) against the Catholic religion. All the penal- ties of premunire — confiscation and imprisonment during the pleasure of the sovereign — menaced those who should dare to defend the authority of the Roman pontiff. Laws were also passed for the suppression of Irish monasteries. Some of these were plundered and desolated ; sacred im- ages were profaned. The inmates of the religious houses were perse- cuted and driven into exile, sometimes massacred. At a later period, any one guilty of persistent refusal to acknowledge the religious su- premacy of the king was liable to the penalties of high treason. Those who refused to attend the novel worship were liable to fines and cen- sures. Numbers were enriched by the confiscation and plunder of church property But, in the teeth of every threat and danger, the vast major- PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 515 ity of the Irish people clung to the ancient faith of their fathers. In- deed, the perils to which their fidelity exposed them only made their re- ligion dearer to their hearts. It was quite natural, then, that when they beheld the shrines which they were accustomed to venerate desecrated under the sanction of English laws by the profane hand of the spoiler, rifled of their sacred vessels and ornaments, and when, in addition, they beheld their holiest men persecuted and banished, if not murdered, while they knew that they were not safe themselves from the same tyr- anny,— it was only natural that their hatred of the foreign race and rule that imposed those tyrannous laws upon their country should be intens- ified day after day. It is in no way wonderful that, about this period, the secret negotiations of the Irish chiefs with foreign potentates should become frequent and dangerous to English rule in Ireland. In the reigns of these sovereigns of the house of Tudor we find the Irish at one time negotiating with the emperor Charles Y., the kings of France and Scot- land and the Holy Father, on other occasions negotiating with one or other of these monarchs separately. We find them, in their contests with England, occasionally inviting and getting the aid of Scotch auxil- iaries, and still more frequently receiving assistance from Spanish troops. Unfortunately, these last seldom arrived at the proper time or came in sufficient force to be of any real service. Not long before the commencement of the Geraldine war (which I shall notice presently), in Queen Elizabeth's reign, we find Sir James Fitzmaurice, one of the gallant Geraldines of Munster, obtaining a bull from Pope Gregory XIII. , in which the Irish were stimulated to fight for their national freedom and faith. Those who should fight in the good cause were promised the same indulgences and spiritual priv- ileges which had been accorded to the Crusaders fighting for the deliver- ance of the Holy Sepulchre. Nor did the pontiff's sympathy with the cause of Ireland end here. Six hundred Italians, intended to co-operate with the Irish, were equipped by him, and placed under the command of an English soldier of fortune, named Thomas Stukely, on whom he conferred many high-sounding but somewhat inane Irish titles. Fitz- maurice also sought and expected help from King Philip of Spain. But his plans were upset; for the erratic adventurer, Stukely, seduced by Dom Sebastian of Portugal's more magnificent project of invading Morocco, 51(3 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. without the least scrapie broke his Irish engagements, and, flinging away his expectations of Irish marquisates for Moorish principalities in the air, accompanied the Portuguese expedition to Africa. There, in the fierce fight at Alcacarquiver, he perished along with King Sebastian and his host and all their visionary conquests, dignities and spoils. What is wonderful in the Catholic Irish of those days is that, unlike all the other nations of that age, although persecuted sorely themselves, they did not in their day of power retaliate on the members of the hos- tile sect. During Queen Mary's reign, while in England the frequent fires of bigotry blazed in Smithtield, and Protestants were burned at the stake by scores, persecution was unknown in Ireland. Some Protestant families, even, that had been obliged to tiy from England, found both toleration and shelter in Ireland. But all this humanity failed to serine even moderate treatment for the Catholic Irish when the accession of Elizabeth restored religious sway to the partisans of the Reformation. Mr. Mitehel, in one of the introductory chapters of his admirable " Life of Hugh O'Neill, " brings together, in one paragraph, an accumulation of horrid facts, giving a vivid picture of the ferocious cruelties and tyranny that, born of the bigotry of the age, then disgraced nearly every country in Europe. In this paragraph he specifies several of the san- guinary aets of religious persecution perpetrated in Ireland by the officials of Elizabeth: "How Patrick O'llely. l>i:shop of Mayo, and Cor- nelius O'Rorke, a pious priest, were by order of Drury placed on the rack, their hands and feet broken with hammers, needles thrust under their nails: how they were at last hanged ; how Dermot O'Hurley, arch- bishop of Cashel, was arrested by order of Adam Loftus (chancellor of the pale and queen's archbishop of Dublin); how he was loaded with irons until the Holy Thursday of the following year, dragged before the chancellor and treasurer, questioned, tortured, and finally hanged out- side the city walls before break of day; how John Stephens, a priest, having been duly convicted 'for that he said mass to Teague Mac Hugh,' was hanged and quartered." Mr. Mitehel adds that "all this and much raoie may be found in the martyrologists of the time.*' Indeed, the never-ending scenes of horror, the deeds of unsparing tyranny, some- times on religious and sometimes on civil grounds, ••that till the spa- cious times of great Elizabeth," in Ireland at least, form, taken as a PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 517 whole, one of the "bloodiest pictures of the book of time." It is in no way astonishing that, during the entire course of Elizabeth's long reign, the fires of Irish rebellion were never wholly extinguished. If they occa- sionally indeed smouldered for a brief time, on the other hand they were generally ablaze over the greater portion of the island. The most formidable opponent of Queen Elizabeth in the earlier years of her reign was Shane O'Neill, surnamed Shane the Proud. This fierce chieftain boasted that he had never on any occasion sued to the queen for peace, that she had always been obliged to make the first overtures to him. For a time, in spite of occasional checks from the O'Donnells, his power was dreaded and obeyed by nearly all the tribes of Ulster. But his character and career were fierce and turbulent. He made bitter and implacable enemies all around him by his lawlessness. He captured the chief of the O'Donnells and robbed him of his fair wife. He crushed and despoiled his neighbors, the O'Reillys, Maguires and Antrim Scots. For long he defied the English and baffled their treach- ery, entertained Sir Henry Sydney, acting as royal deputy, with princely hospitality, but spurned the English titles offered in the queen's name by the earl of Sussex. At the same time he visited the queen in Lon- don, astonishing both court and city with his "gallant train of guards bare-headed, with curled hair hanging down their shoulders, armed with battle-axes and arrayed in their saffron doublets;" but out of this visit eventually came his ruin. He made an alliance with the queen (who secretly swore "by God's death" to destroy him) against the kindred Scotch tribes of Antrim, Mac Donnells and Mac Neills. For a while he waged cruel w r ar against them, slaying and carrying into captivity some of their leading men. At last, too late, he saw what a fatal snare the alliance with England had been. Finding that, on one false pretence or other, the English were encroaching on his territory, he attacked them at Deny, dislodged their garrison from Armagh, burning both church and town. He next invaded the pale, ravaging the lands and razing the castles of the English settlers, but his star of prosperous fortune began to set rapidly. The whole power of the English was turned to his destruction. Maguire and other chiefs, whom his pride and fierceness had rendered hostile, joined in a league against him with the new chief of the O'Donnells, Hugh, brother and successor of Calvagh, the prince 518 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. whom Shane had so deeply injured. O'Donnell's forces routed him on the 8th of May, 1567, not far from Letterkenny, driving him back on the river Swilly, where numbers of his men perished in the waves and by the sword. Totally beaten, and deserted by nearly all his followers, his ruin was now complete. He took, however, the bold resolution of seeking refuge among his former enemies, the Antrim Scotch. At first they seemed inclined to give him hospitality and protection, but one Piers, an English agent, was there to rouse the revengeful feelings of the Mac Donnells. In a brawl, apparently preconcerted, the tierce but gal- lant Shane — a chief great alike "in battle and carouse" — was per- fidiously slaughtered with his small hand of followers. The miscreant Piers sent his head "pickled in a pipkin" to the lord-deputy, receiving in exchange blood-money to the tunc of one thousand marks. The lord- deputy basely caused the chieftain's ghastly head to be "gibbeted high on a pole," where it "long grinned over the towers of Dublin Castle." The reigns of all these Tudor sovereigns are disgraced by repeated instances of the blackest cruelty and treachery on the part of the Eng- lish authorities in Ireland. In the reign of Edward VI. we have, on one occasion, in Dublin, the execution of thirteen of the Fitzgeralds or their partisans. In the reign of Queen Mary, which, like her brother's, was short, we have abundance of .slaughter and desolation, and sore oppres- sion of numerous clans, under the administration of Thomas Radcliffe earl of Sussex, and Sir Henry Sydney; but in the long reign of Eli/a beth we might, as Mr. Mitchel says, "sup full of horrors." In this place it may be as well to notice briefly a few instances of the treachery which characterized English rule at this period. Walter Devereux, earl of Essex, president of Ulster and earl-marshal of Ireland, arrived in that island in L573 to try and carry out a scheme of confiscation and English colonization in the northern province. The scheme appears to lane been a sort of anticipation of the plantation of lister that subsequently took effect in James I.'s reign. This "undertaker," finding that the O'Neills of Claneboy and other Irish chiefs were nol inclined to submit to the robbery of their patrimony quite so easily as the interests of British sway demanded — in short, finding himself in a somewhat diffi- cult position — thought a little treachery might help him in his civilizing mission. Accordingly, he perfidiously seized his ally, Con O'Donnell, PKELIMINAKY SKETCH OF JLRISH HISTORY. 519 and sent him prisoner to Dublin ; but this was a mere nothing com- pared to another exploit of his. Brian O'Neill and the earl, after being at variance, came to a friendly understanding. Brian, apparently desirous of celebrating the establishment of peace between them in a hospitable Irish fashion, invited Essex to be his guest. The English- man, taking an infamous advantage of the absence of distrust and relaxation of all vigilance and precaution on Brian's part in such a festal time, seized his host and hostess, also Brian's brother, and at the same time caused the attendants, matrons, young men and maidens, to be brutally butchered in their unfortunate master's presence. Then Brian and his wife and brother were brought to Dublin, and there ruth- lessly cut up in quarters. This savage act filled the Irish with horror and the keenest desire of vengeance. Even this inhuman act of treachery was, if possible, surpassed by a deed of horror perpetrated in 1577 by the enlightened and politic or crafty Sir Henry Sydney, whom I have already referred to, the father (alas!) of the graceful, the accomplished, the generous, chivalrous and humane Sir Philip Sydney, who later in the sixteenth century died so nobly on the field of Zutphen. Sir Henry was one of the ablest men who ever managed English business in Ireland — an admirable ruler, at all events, from the English point of view, but things look quite different viewed from the Irish point. Doubtless, Sir Henry, like the JSTormanbys and Carlisles and Spencers and Gladstones of our own century, knew full well how to play the part of conciliating the Irish ; he could even, on occasion, abolish oppressive taxes. He was great in the interests of peace and order. His greatest exploit, however, in furtherance of the noble cause of English law and order and civilization was performed in the year 1577 at Mullaghmast, near Athy, the scene, in our own times, of one of O'Connell's grandest monster meetings for "Repeal" — the one at which the celebrated sculptor, John Hogan, crowned him. The prin- cipal men of Offaly and Leix (now the King's and Queen's counties) were invited by the wily and unscrupulous lord-justice, Sir Henry, to come together at the great rath of Mullaghmast for an amicable confer- ence. Confiding in the honor and good faith of this knightly Sydney, about 400 came, free from doubt or misgiving or fear of any sort, but they paid dearly for their trust. Caught in the toils and quickly encir- 520 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. cled by a triple line of the royal troops, they were suddenly assailed : the pitiless steel of the English soldiery drank their blood. Hardly one escaped to tell the tale. This reminds one of the fate of the entire body of the nobles of the gallant Bashkir nation, in Asia, in the reign of Catherine II., who were too successfully lured to destruction by the Rus- sian governor of Ufa's treacherous invitation to a banquet, All these tales of English treachery and massacre are horrible, but it is still more horrible to read that chiefs of Irish race were sometimes found to help their foreign masters in this bloody work of treachery against their own countrymen. Mac Giolla Patrick, baron of Upper Ossory (for this base minion of English power preferred a Saxon coronet to the Celtic wand of chieftaincy), on the 30th of June, 1578, assassinated the valiant out- law, Rory Oge O'More, who had stoutly and gallantly maintained his independence of English power for eighteen years. Of all the many rebellions that occurred in the reign of Queen Eliza- beth, in all probability the one attended with the greatest amount of hu- man suffering was that called the Ceraldine war. 1 have already spoken of the eflbrtsof Sir .lames Fit/inaurice to enlist the sympathies of foreign potentates in the cause of Ireland, and to raise an auxiliary force of Italians or Spaniards; we saw how Stukely played him false and aban- doned him. As it was plain, however, that the intolerable wrongs and sufferings of the [rish under British tyranny had created lor them- selves and their cause a considerable sympathy anion-- all the nations of the Continent that had clung to the old faith, Fitxniaurice persevered. At last arriving in Smerwi k Bay with three small ships, a small hand of eighty Spaniards, and bearing a consecrated banner from the pope, this enterprising leader made a daring descent on the const and fortified a tongue of land which was named Fort-del-ore. After this, however, he met with naught save bitter disappointment and swift ruin. The head of all the Geraldines, Bar] Gerald, vacillated, and finally declined putting himself at the head of a revolt, though he had grievances enough to spur him on and warrant such a step. It was not so very Ion-- since he had escaped from the prison into which Lord-Deputy Sydney had cast him, but he was jealous of, or, at least, disliked, his cousin Fitz- uiaurice. In short, we find him even shamefully taking side with the queen, and hunting Fitzmaurice and his own two brothers, James and PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 521 John. The gallant and enduring Fitzmaurice, after pushing on to Tip- perary, is finally surrounded in a thick and lonely wood by the brothers Theobald and TJlick Bourke of Castleconnell and some of the O'Briens of Arra. Irishmen (alas ! ) again pursuing Irishmen to the death, and that, too, for the accursed stranger! But the brave Munster Geraldine, like the heroic Leinster Geraldine of '98, sells his life right dearly. In the last fierce fight of despairing valor. Fitzmaurice is wounded by a ball in the chest, but ere he falls he smites the two false Bourkes of Castleconnell. The expiring warrior cleaves with one noble stroke the head of Theobald, and next mortally wounds Ulick. Calmly giving final directions to the faithful few who still stand by him, Fitzmaurice dies. A grieving kinsman cuts off his head and hides the trunk under an old tree ; this a hunter subsequently finds and brings to Kilmallock ; there, swinging from a gallows, it is riddled by the shots of ungenerous ene- mies. This was the end of the adventurous Sir James Fitzgerald, or Fitzmaurice (as he was called from his father, Maurice of Desmond), an able leader and good patriot, generous, brave, prudent, earnest and indomitable. And now, when too late, we find Earl Gerald raising the standard of ojDen revolt and joining his outlawed brothers and kinsfolk — reluc- tantly, however, and not till the thanklessness of the English governors for his adhesion to the queen's side was made too manifest. He had given his only son and heir, James, as a hostage for his loyalty to the lord-justice, and in return had been promised a protection. The Eng- lish fulfilled this promise by destroying the cattle of his tenants, plun- dering his crops, laying waste his lands and burning his castles. 1 have not space to give any very lengthened detail of the incidents of this calamitous war, which turned the whole south-west of Ireland into a melancholy scene of utter desolation. The English destroyed all the houses and corn within their reach. The Geraldines themselves, anx- ious to lessen the resources of the foe, helped to increase the devastation of their country. "We find the earl of Ormond, chief of the Butlers and hereditary enemy of the Desmonds, assisting the lord-justice to crush his hapless countrymen, and sparing neither age nor sex. It is still more strange and mortifying to find the great Hugh O'Neill assisting the English in this horrid war. Throughout its whole course this was PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. a dreary and almost hopeless struggle for the Irish, checkered with few passing gleams of success or glory. Sometimes, indeed, the maddened Irish, turning fiercely on their ruthless foes and standing at bay, would slaughter a number of the marauders. A seasonable diversion, too, was made by Eustace, Lord Baltinglass, with the O'Byrnes, O'Tooles, O'Kav- enaghs and others, on the borders of the pale, and at least one glorious victory was won, that of Glendalough in 1580, when stout Fiach Mac Hugh, the mountain-chief of the O'Byrnes, totally defeated the lord- deputy, Arthur, Lord Grey. The Irish drew the English uiain body, consisting of infantry, into the defile; then suddenly pouring a volley into them from the surrounding coverts, they darted fiercely with wild battle- cry on their startled and bewildered foes, slaying several of their best captains — Carew, Moore, Audley and Cosby — and 800 of their common soldiers. Grey and his cavalry witnessed the slaughter of their coun- trymen without being able, owing to the broken and difficult nature of the ground, to give them any help. Finally, he had to retreat to Dub- lin, covered with the shame of his rash at tempt to force the defile, which bcems to have been made contrary to the advice of his most prudent captains. But, in spite of such transient gleams of success, the fortune of war was almost wholly against Ireland. The deputy ere long found an opportunity of taking a cruel and ignoble revenge for his discomfiture. Ormond besieged in Fort-del-ore 700 Spaniards and Italians who had landed in Smerwick Harbor in September, 15S0, and compelled them to surrender at discretion, according to English authorities, but according to the Irish on sworn articles. Be this as it may, Lord Grey caused them all to be slaughtered in cold blood. Speaking himself of their sur- render and the atrocious deed of wholesale murder that followed, he coolly says, "Then put 1 in certeyne bandes who streighte fell to execu- tion;" and also, ■There were 600 slayn." Xo wonder that 'Grey's faith'' became a proverbial phrase of reproach throughout all Europe. Even an insurrection in Connaught, in which we find Click and John Bourke, sons of the earl of Clanriekard, engaged, together with O'Kourkes, O'Connors and O'Briens, failed to strengthen the cause ol Ireland. Some of the leaders give in quickly. Indeed, the history of the greater portion of this war is little else than a chronicle of English PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 523 atrocities. In 1581 forty-five persons are hanged in Dublin. In the southern war, Zouch and (sad to say) the celebrated Sir Walter Ealeigh signalize themselves by peculiar cruelty and rapacity. The hunted Geraldines still, however, occasionally strike successful blows at their enemies. John of Desmond even overruns the lands of the Butlers and MacCarthy More, sweeping away creaghts of cattle and other spoil. Des- mond, though defeated by Zouch near Aghadoe, rallies, advances to Cashel, captures and plunders it. But, in spite of these partial suc- cesses, the G-eraldine cause is lost ; reverses follow thick and fast ; John of Desmond is defeated by Zouch, and slain. His body hangs in chains for three years at one of the city gates of Cork; at last, one stormy night, it is blown into the sea. The head is spiked in front of the castle of Dublin. James of Desmond and his two sons are hanged shortly after John's death. Zouch hangs some children he holds as hostages. Still, Desmond himself struggles on with occasional success, but at last he becomes a hunted fugitive. Himself and his countess, in 1582, at Christmas-time, have to stand for concealment up to their necks in water under a river-bank. Through the year 1583 the wretched earl deserted by all save a small band of gallowglasses, is hunted from place to place, having no longer any secure spot whereon to lay his head. His hereditary enemy Oimond vindictively pursues the fallen earl ; at last, on the 11th of November, 1583, the aged earl is surrounded in a hut, wounded and made captive. His head is sent to England, enclosed in an iron cage, and impaled on London Bridge. His body is interred by the peasantry in the little chapel of Kilnamanagh, near Castleisland, Kerry. Spanish vessels, with men, arms and money for the earl, arrive too late. They immediately return to Spain, for the Geraldine war is evidently at an end. Such was the fate of the once powerful earl of Desmond. Indeed, the might of the noble race of the southern Geraldines was extinguished for ever. Some years before, a haughty earl of Desmond, when borne by the victorious Butlers, wounded and a prisoner, from the field of Affane, was tauntingly asked, "Where is now the proud earl of Desmond?" His answer was a fierce and scornful sarcasm: " Where he ought to be — upon the necks of the Butlers !" But the day of Desmond's pride and power was now past for ever. The Butlers (subservient tools of English 524: PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. dominion) became all-powerful in their stead. The dead earl of Des- mond and l-lO of his adherents were attainted ; their estates, to the extent of 600,000 acres, were confiscated ; English undertakers were to colonize them. Though this plantation-scheme did not succeed event- ually as well as its originators had hoped it would, yet nothing could equal the misery of the Irish race in Minister and the ruin of their country at the close of this frightful struggle. The words which, we are told by Tacitus, the Caledonian chief Galgacus applied to the Roman conquerors of old, might well be turned against the English oppressors of the Geraldines: "They make a solitude and call it peace!" The icy- hearted but brilliant poet of fancy, Spenser, though, like the old mon- ster oddly surnamed the great earl of Cork, he could contemplate with considerable complacency the idea of utterly rooting out the Irish, can- not help drawing the most vivid and even moving pictures of the scenes of woe and desolation that overspread the fair fields of Minister. He says : " In all that warre there perished not many by the sword, but all by the extremity of famine." The seemingly ideal images of desola- tion presented in the following stanza of "The Faery Queen" are copied from the realities he witnessed in Ireland while living in Kilcolman Castle and enjoying domains robbed from their rightful owner: " He in his furie all shall over-rorme, And holy church with faithless hands deface, That the Bad people, utterly l'oredoue, Shall to the utmost mountains fly apace : Was never so great waste in any place, Nor so fowle outrage doen by living men ; For all thy cittiea tiny shall Back and raee, And the green grass that growcth they shall bren, That even the wilde beast shall dy in starved den." In short, the southern Irish were starved to death. Holinshed says: "The very wolves, the foxes, and other like ravening liensts, many of them lay dead, being famished." Here is another quotation from Spen- ser: "The end will (I assure me) he very short, and much sooner thai. can be /toped for; although there should none of them fall by the sword, nor be slain by the souldiours, yet thus being kept from manuranee, and their cattle from running abroad, by this hard restraint they would quickly consume themselves and devour one another." Again- In a PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTOEY 525 short space there were none almost left, and a most populous and plen- tiful! countrey suddainly left voyde of man and beast." The soldiers supplemented the exterminating action of starvation by setting fire to buildings full of men, women and children. Infants they specially destroyed, lest they should grow to "become popish rebels." "Women were found hanging from trees, with their children strangled in the mothers' hair." Spenser, telling us of the famine-scenes, when the poor Irish were forced to feed on carrion, or, like beasts, on roots or watercresses or shamrocks, says that, viewing the emaciated sufferers, ' any stony heart would rue the same." Considering his own somewhat stony heart, one is not very much afflicted to read that afterward, in 1598, during the rage of rekindled warfare, he was burned out of his castle of Kilcolman, and lost all his ill-got property. The year follow- ing the hapless poet died in London, "for lack of bread." It must be admitted that in this reign the Irish, in spite of their fierce resistance, were gradually succumbing to the yoke of England. The old forms of Celtic society, with their strange features — some of which resembled more or less those of the tribe-systems of Syria and Arabia, others, such as the custom of having hereditary bards and bre- hons, etc., not wholly unlike certain features of the Hindoo castes — were giving way at last to the institutions of the stranger. Even during the reign of Henry VIII. a few attempts to Anglicise some of the Irishry had been made, not altogether without success. The Parliament which met in Dublin in June, 1541, during the administration of the politic Sir Anthony St. Leger, conferred the title of king of Ireland on Henry VIII. and his rightful successors. Before this date the English kings had only been styled lords of Ireland. There were idle pomp and foolish joy in Dublin on this occasion. Soon after quite a number of Irish chiefs were cajoled into surrendering their territories and their Celtic appellations of chieftaincy. In return, their estates were given back, and Anglo-Norman titles conferred on them by letters-patent. Mur- rough O'Brien was made earl of Thomond ; Mac Giolla Patrick became baron of Upper Ossory ; Mac William (De Burgo), earl of Clanrickard ; O'Neill, earl of Tyrone. Some of the smaller dynasts got foreign titles of inferior dignity. Thomond' s brothers, indeed, subsequently opposed him. and when he died Donnel claimed succession by the old Celtic law 526 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY of tanistry, and, amid the great enthusiasm of his tribe, proclaimed himself O'Brien. In St. Leger's time, too, Irish soldiers are raised tc tight lor the king in France and Scotland. In 1549, 0' Carroll becomes Daron of Ely. Some Irish chiefs ask the government to arbitrate between them. Many tributary chiefs, too, are declared independent of their superior dynasts. In Mary's reign, in 1550, the Celtic districts of Leix and Offaly are metamorphosed into the Queen's and King's counties, the new names being in honor of Mary and her husband, Don Philip of Spain. New colonists, to keep down the natives, are introduced, and several contumacious Celtic chiefs are hanged or otherwise executed. In 1560 we find writs to return members of Parliament issued to the counties of Dublin, Louth, Kildare, Meath, West Meath, Carlow, Kil- kenny, "Wexford, Waterford and Tipperary. In 1569 a Parliament declares the laws of tanistry abrogated. Charter-schools are directed to be established in various dioceses, the teachers to be all English. Mr. Mitchel has the following passage toward the close of his sketch of the Geraldine war: "Thus fell the great earl of Desmond; and thus the fairest province of this island, wasted and destroyed by the insane war- fare of the Irish themselves, lay ready for the introduction of the for- eigner's law, civilization and religion; or, as Dr. Leland has it, 'for effectually regulating and modelling this country upon the principles of justice and liberal policy.' And accordingly a Parliament was soon held for the purpose of vesting in the queen of England all the lands which had been inhabited by the kinsmen and adherents of Desmond. Letters were written to every county in England offering estates in fee to all 'younger brothers' who would undertake the plantation of Minister; each undertaker to plant so many families; but 'none of the native Irish to be admitted.'" This progress of the conquest continues steadily through the years immediately following the termination of the Ger- aldine war. Seven new counties in the north — Armagh, Monaghan, Tyrone, Coleraine, Donegal, Fermanagh and Cavan — are marked out and furnished with the usual civilizing staff of sheriffs, coroners and commis- sioners of the peace. In 1585 the new lord-justice, Sir John Perrott, tries the conciliatory policy: at least he makes believe thai he is rathei inclined to treat the natives on somewhat equal terms with the dom- inant race. A Parliament assemble?, attended by chiefs of nearly all PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 527 the Celtic clans. Perrott, in order to pass his laws more easily, even wants to suspend Poyning's Act, which subjects the Irish to the Eng- lish legislature. This, however, is successfully opposed. With all his conciliatory turn, Sir John must do a little in the attainting way. An act is passed attainting Eustace Lord Baltinglass and other so-called rebels. In a second session of Parliament, held the same year, the attainder of Desmond and his partisans, already noticed, is carried through. Also claims of chieftains to impose taxes are annulled. Still, Sir John Perrott becomes unpopular with the English adventurers. He is insulted and thwarted in the council-chamber. Intrigues are got up to set the queen against him. Had he not condemned the conduct of that true and thorough English civilizer, Sir Richard Bingham, who in 1586 executed seventy men and women in Galway ; then butchered all the garrison of the castle of Cloonoan in Clare; then hanged several dis- tinguished Burkes ; and next allowed his soldiery to rob and kill, ad libitum, men and women, young and old, in Connaught, himself indulg- ing in massacre and executions without limit ? In disapproving of tho brutal Sir Richard (who doubtless was ancestor to the tenant-extermin- ating and civilizing Bingham, styled earl of Lucan, of our own day) Sir John Perrott was unreasonably oblivious of the interests of English civ- ilization and civilizers, which should inevitably suffer if anything like justice or equality were accorded to the mere native Irish. But though the English power and system were gradually creeping on through the island, yet Irish resistance was by no means finally crushed. In spite of the insidious influences of her crafty policy, the Irish were not going to " give up the old land " to Queen Elizabeth "without another blow." As I have just taken a hasty survey of the most dismal and melancholy, so I shall now give a rapid sketch of the most formidable and glorious, of all those fierce struggles against Eng- land's power that occurred in the long reign of Elizabeth. I need scarcely add I refer to the war in which the politic and renowned Hugh O'Neill and the gallant Red Hugh O'Donnell were the leaders of the Irish race and cause. In all probability, Hugh O'Neill meditated a supreme effort to throw off the yoke of England for years before he thought proper to throw off the mask. Possessing, as Camden says, " a profound dissembling heart,' 5^8 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. he dissimulated long. Having spent, during his early life, much of his time at the court of England, he learned how to fathom thoroughly the policy of the astute statesmen who were the pillars of Elizabeth's throne. He could even return them wile for wile, and circumvent them with their own arts. He determined to lull to sleep all suspicions of his loyalty till the occasion should seem to him ripe and his prepara- tions complete. To attain this end he consented to wear the hated coronet of the earldom of Tyrone, and even, as we have already noticed, went so far as to serve on the queen's side in the Geraldine war. So much did he enjoy the confidence of the queen's government that he was allowed to raise, equip and discipline six companies of soldiers. Taking advantage of this privilege, as fast as one batch of his followers are trained he disbands them and commences training a fresh squad of recruits, until at length his drilled followers count by thousands. He procures a vast quantity of lead for bullets, on the plea that he wants a leaden roof for his new house of Dungannon. Perrott's aid enabled him to humble the Scots of Antrim, who had begun to rival the power of the O'Neills. To compass these ends the crafty earl seems to consent to English supremacy, and even advises that the statutes against assum- ing the name of O'Neill be enforced. The outwitted queen solemnly invests him with the lands of his race; gradually, too, he deprives Tur- logh Lynnogh, the nominal chief of the O'Neills, of his influence and authority, till at last, at the rath of Tulloghoge, on the stone of royalty, girt by the warriors, bards and ollamhs of Tyr-eoghain, having made oath to maintain the old customs of the tribe, he receives the wand of chieftaincy and is recognized as O'Neill. He next complies with the immemorial ceremony of descending from the stone and turning round "thrice forward and thrice backward." For a considerable time after this O'Neill continued to dissemble Meanwhile, several things occurred to favor his designs. The iniquitous murder, by a mock trial by jury, of Hugh MacMahon, a northern chief, on a trumped-up charge of treason, the whole villainy having been con- cocted by the corrupt and rapacious lord-deputy, Sir William Fitzwil- liam, tilled the entire north with indignation and a fierce thirst for ven- geance. Other villainies of Fitzwilliam fanned the flame. During this period, too, some vessels of the storm-tossed Spanish Armada were PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 529 wrecked on various points of the Irish coasts. Nearly all the chiefs on whose lands the Spaniards were cast treated the war-and-tempest-worn strangers hospitably, and protected them against the English governors ; but no one treated the strangers so kindly or paid them such honors as Hugh O'Neill. He foresaw that such courtesy might pave the w r ay for a Spanish alliance, and no doubt he took good care to explain the state of affairs and interests in Ireland to the Spanish officers. He had all this time been busy endeavoring to become reconciled with old enemies and healing all the feuds he could — trying, in short, to realize his noble project of a northern confederation, which no doubt he considered only a step to the creation and consolidation of an independent Irish nation ; for the mind of this great chief seems to have grasped the large idea of a united Ireland. He and his enemy, O'Cahan, became fast friends ; he also formed an alliance with the Ulster Scotch, the Macdonnells of the glens of Antrim. But the circumstance of all others which most favored his plans was the escape, in 1592, from his dungeon in Dublin Castle, of Red Hugh O'Donnell. This gallant young prince had some years before, by a most per- ridious stratagem, planned by that conciliatory and justice-to-Ireland- loving governor, Sir John Perrott, been trapped on board a ship in Loch Swilly and born off captive to Dublin; there he languished long in prison. In 1591 he first escaped, but the Wicklow chief, Felim O'Toole, with whom he took refuge, basely surrendered him through fear. His second attempt, which was made in 1592, about Christmas-time, was more fortunate ; with two fellow-prisoners, Henry and Art O'Neill, sons of Shane, he once more made for the Wicklow Mountains, which were cov- ered with snow. All night he and his two friends, buffeted by a snow- storm, struggled to reach Glenmalure and the protection of the redoubt- able victor of Glendalough, Fiach Mac Hugh O'Byrne ; three days and nights they were lost in the mountains. Poor Art perished. O'Donnell and Henry O'Neill were at last found by some of O'Byrne's clansmen half dead with cold, O'Donnell's feet all frost-bitten. O'Byrne's gener- ous hospitality soon gave them fresh life and vigor. O'Donnell sent a messenger to Hugh O'Neill, who sent him back a trusty guide. After a journey full of peril, O'Donnell reaches Dungannon, where he and Hugh O'Neill interchange confidences, and strike up a lasting friendship 530 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. and alliance. He next goes home to Tyrconnell, "where his tribe wel- come him joyously ; but he is hardly home when he hurries, with some of his father's warriors, to chastise the ruffian soldiery of Bingham, who had just taken and spoiled the Franciscan monastery of Donegal, the abode of learned chroniclers. On the 3d of the ensuing May, at the rook of Dovne in Kilmacrenan, " the nursing-place of Columkille," his father renounces the chieftaincy of the clan, and Ked Hugh, now nineteen years of age, is solemnly made The O'Donnell, with the accustomed cere- monies of his race. Thus the two great tribes of the Kinnell Connell and the Kinnell Eoghain were at length under the sway of two warlike and vigorous princes, sworn friends of each other and sworn foes of the Saxon. Of the two, O'Donnell was the first in the field. He hastened to lend effective aid to Maguire, the hard-pressed chieftain of Fermanagh. O'Neill thought fit to dissimulate a while longer. To throw dust in the eyes of the English, he appeared in arms against Maguire, and, in a charge which he made on Maguire's flank, received a wound in the thigh. When Sir William Russell came to rule Ireland as the successor of the greedy and corrupt Fitzwilliam, O'Neill, with singular audacity, even ventured to Dublin to confront his enemies and accusers. It waa on this occasion that he defied to mortal combat his brother-in-law, the lord-marshal, Sir Henry Bagnal, whose sister he had induced to fly with him to Dungannon. In spite of the protection he had received, he would in all probability have been treacherously seized, but for the friendly warning of the earl of Ormond, which caused him to fly from Dublin. Not without risk did he manage to pass through the pale and the toils of the enemy that were fast closing round him. But the long-looked -tin day was at hand when he was to strike a giant's blow for freedom of religion and country. His northern confed- eracy was now complete and strong. By family alliances he had even won over Macgennis of Iveagh and O'Hanlon of Orier, two chiefs for- merly under the influence of Bagnal. In Leinster his friends, the 0' Byrnes, O'Cavenaghs, and the daring Sir Walter Fitzgerald (sin- named Kiagh), who was afterwards caught by treachery and executed in Dublin, were attacking and laying waste the frontiers of the pale. The glorious hour came at last, in 1595, when the dread royal standard of PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 531 O'Neill, with "that terrible red right hand upon its snow-white folds." waved defiantly over the hills of Tyr-Owen ! The great chieftain's operations in the field were at once attended with the most brilliant success. He began by defeating the queen's best general, the brave Sir John Norreys, along with his brother, Sir Thomas. At Clontibret, O'Neill's personal courage was conspicuous, for, in despe- rate single encounter — both combatants first shivering their lances on each other's mail, and then rolling in deadly embrace from their horses to the earth — he slew a gigantic Meathian named Segrave. Throughout this war, O'Donnell, when not fighting on the same fields with O'Neill, was making fierce irruptions into Connaught, laying waste and spoiling the lands of all who supported the English interest. In Leinster, too — in spite of the loss of the heroic chief of Glenmalure, the glorious victor of Glendalough, Fiach Mac Hugh O'Byrne, who, for twenty years with his small clan having stood at bay against the whole power of Elizabeth and, within a few miles from the gates of Dublin Castle, maintained his independence, had finally, at the suggestion of Sir William Eussell, been betrayed by the treachery of a kinsman and executed in May, 1597, leaving, however, worthy sons behind him — in spite of this, in the pro- vince of Leinster the general aspect of affairs promised well for the national cause. O'Mores, O'Carrolls, O'Byrnes, O'Tooles, Cavenaghs, and even Butlers, made fierce and sanguinary inroads on the pale. Even Crumlin village was burned, within two miles of Dublin. The chief men of Connaught, too, combined. Later, the confederacy embraced the noblest Celtic and even Norman families of Munster. By O'Neill's authority, James, nephew of Earl Gerald, assumes the title of earl of Desmond. Though we still find traitor Irish fighting on the side of the Saxon — queen's O'Reillys, queen's Maguires, and others — yet the idea of a united Irish nation seems, for the first time, about to animate the minds of the majority of Irishmen. Of all our Irish victories in those days, the most glorious was that gained at Beal-an-atha-buidhe, near the river Callan, and two milee north of Armagh, on the 10th of August, 1598, by the combined forces of the northern and Connaught clans under O'Neill and O'Donnell. On the morning of that memorable day a splendid army of veteran English troops, led by O'Neill's personal foe, Sir Henry Bagnal, proudly marched 532 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. forth from the city of Armagh to force the intrenched position of the Irish Stoutly the lord-marshal fought his way through all obstacles — through ambuscades of light-armed troops, guarding the intervening denies and sending their volleys into his ranks out of thick fir-tree groves — till he was able to form his army on the more open ground in front of the Irish line of battle. This accomplished, he attacks without delay. Nor did the sight of the cavalry tumbling headlong, both men and horses, into the treacherous pitfalls which O'Neill had cunningly caused to be dug in front of his defences and covered over nicely witli wattles and grass, seriously check the ardor of the British ousel. Loudly shouting "St. George for merry England!" the English press on with dauntless obstinacy, battering the intrenchments with cannon. But if the attack is terrible and hard to be resisted, so the defence is tierce and stubborn. Hatred of race inflames both armies; personal animosity also incites O'Neill and BagnaL At length the bull-dog valor of the English succeeds in forcing, not without great sacrifice, the Irish intrenchments at one point, and the defenders are driven back. But now O'Neill's main body, hitherto skilfully held in reserve, comes to the rescue. The bagpipes sound the charge. Wildly and terribly the Iribh battle-cries, " Lamh-dearg !" and " O'Donnell aboo!" ring in the ears of the Saxon foemen. O'Neill in person "pricks forward" with rage and rancor in his heart, seeking on all sides his deadly toe that he might slay him. But Bagnal falls by a hand less noble. The mar- shal raises the visor of his helmet, the better to mark the aspect of the field. Straight a ball crashes through his brain. And now, for the English, mishap quickly follows mishap. A cart of gunpowder explodes amid their ranks, blowing numbers into fragments and spreading wide confusion and dismay. The cavalry of Tyr-Connell and Tyr-Owen are on them too in full career. The war-cry of the Tyr-Connell gailow- glasses, " Battaillah aboo!" rises fiercely above the battle din. 'Tie vain to think of standing against that irresistible charge. Before it the whole English army reels and flies in wild disorder and hideous rout leaving behind them cannon, standards and treasure. John Mitchel gives the following graphic description of the flight and pursuit: "The last who resisted was the traitor O'Reilly; twice ho tried to rally the flying squadrons, but was slain in 'he attempt; and PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 533 at last the whole of that fine army was utterly routed, and fled pell-mell towards Armagh, with the Irish hanging fiercely on their rear. Amidst f he woods and marshes all connection and order were speedily lost ; and, us O'Donnell's chronicler has it, they were pursued in couples, in threes, in scores, in thirties and in hundreds, and so cut down in detail by their avenging pursuers. In one spot especially the carnage was terri- ble, and the country people yet point out the lane where that hideous rout passed by, and call it to this day the ' Bloody Loaning.' Two thou- sand five hundred English were slain in the battle and flight, including twenty-three superior officers, besides lieutenants and ensigns. Twelve thousand gold-pieces, thirty-four standards, all the musical instruments and cannon, with a long train of provision-wagons, were a rich spoil for the Irish army. The confederates had only two hundred slain and six hundred wounded." After three days' investment in Armagh, 1500 fugitive English sur- rendered to the Irish. Some of the chieftains would fain have slaught- ered them by way of retaliation for the atrocities of the English, but O'NeiU's humanity prevailed over these sterner counsels. " The pris- oners were disarmed and sent in safety to the pale. Portmore was instantly yielded, and its garrison dismissed with the rest." Such was the most brilliant passage in the life of Hugh O'Neill. To quote again from Mr. Mitchel : " All Saxon soldiery vanished speedily from the fields of Ulster, and the Bloody Hand once more waved over the towers of JSTewry and Armagh." Of course it is quite impossible in a brief summary like the present to follow O'JSTeill and O'Donnell through all the varying incidents of their days of glory and disaster. For long they were victorious over all antagonists. Viceroy after viceroy went down before them. Fitzwil- liam, Eussell, De Burgh (who was defeated and killed at the battle of Drumfluich), Ormond, but, above all, the queen's brilliant favorite, Es- sex, — all these viceroys, together with several generals of distinguished bravery and skill, such as JSTorreys, Bagnal and Clifford, failed igno- miniously in every effort to subdue the banded tribes of Ireland. Eng- land's star of conquest seemed about to pale before the morning star of a united Ireland. In Mr. Mitchel's life of Hugh O'JSTeill the reader will find ample details, full of interest and animation, of the many glorious 534 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. achievements of O'Neill, O'Donnell and others of the national leaders. There we may lean to estimate O'Neill's skill in warlike stratagems and wiles, from the account given of the singular mock-combat between two bodies of his own troops (one, in the clothes of slaughtered English- men, simulating an English party on their march to relieve leaguered Armagh), which drew forth the garrison to help their imagined friends, whereupon an ambuscade that O'Neill had planted in a monastery on the east of Armagh cut them off from the city. In Mr. Mitchel's book all O'Neill's victories on the Blackwater and elsewhere, from Clontibret to Beal-an-atha-Buidhe, rise vividly before us. We have vivid pic- tures, too, of the victories and fierce raids of O'Donnell, especially of the battle of the Curlew Mountains, where fell his brave antagonist, Sii Conyers Clifford ; and of the terrible foray on the lands of Thomond, on which occasion, during Ins march homewards, he generously restored to the suppliant bard, Maoilin Oge, his plundered flocks and herds. The brilliant exploit of the brave and faithful Richard Tyrrell — of Norman extraction, indeed, yet an Irishman true as steel — in the defile that evei since lias borne liis name, where he all but annihilated the Meathiau detachment of young Barnewall of Trimleston; the equally brilliant exploit of the O'Mores in the Pass of Plumes, where five hundred of Lord Essex's rear-guard were cut to pieces; O'Neill's interview with thai showy but shallow viceroy; the sketches of all these and numerous other scenes and events, with occasional glimpses of the anus and cos- tume of the Celtic tribes, both [rish and auxiliar Highland Scotch, th" former "enveloped in Long woollen cloaks, which in action they often wound round the left hand," and their footmen fighting with "sharp battle-axes and short swords ;" while the latter, wearing the clan-tartans, wield the redoubtable huge two-handed broadsword, — all these scenes and pictures of the life of our forefathers give variety and movement to Mr. Mitchel's narrative. Meagre as this outline of (Mir past history must necessarily be, I shall yet devote a few pages to the scenes disastrous to the Irish cause that till the closing years of this war, which has left behind il for Ireland so many proud as well as saddening memories. A perception of the true uauses of O'Neill's and O'Donnell's final defeat will also give us a perfect insight, both with regard to the policy which England has PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTOtU. 535 nnvaryingly pursued in her dealings with Ireland, and with regard to the chief perennial source of weakness among the Irish themselves. After such a long series of years, in the course of which so many chief governors and military leaders had reaped nothing in their con- flicts with O'Neill and O'Donnell save utter defeat and consequent death or disgrace, at last there came on the scene to assume control over Eng- lish affairs in Ireland a man of altogether different stamp of intellect. This was the celebrated Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy, at once a man of learning and an experienced soldier ; in short, a man of superior craft and superior energy, though many, even O'Neill himself, with all his penetration, had, before Mountjoy was tested, been deceived into thinking him too indolent for successful action. In February of the year 1600 Mountjoy was appointed lord-deputy. From the moment he landed in Ireland the fortune of war and of the old race began to change. In the south, where the motives of resistance to England were probably more religious than national, he sapped the confederation and seduced men from its ranks by his apparently tolerant views. He showed, in Mr Mitchel's words, " all the liberality, all the tenderness for Irish Cath- olics, that a British minister has never failed to assume when a storm of Irish wrath was to be weathered or the hope of Irish nationhood to be crushed." He adopted, in short, the policy contained in two pithy pre- cepts of Bacon : to weaken the Irish by disunion, and to cheat them by a temporary indulgence of their worship. The fear of persecution began to die out in the south, and with it the great bond of union between the native and Norman Catholics. The same policy, however, would prove inadequate for the work of creating divisions in the confederate ranks in the northern part of the island, where the war was national rather than religious. There the seeds of dissension must be sown by endeavoring to seduce prominent men in the great families, with promises of English support and recognition, to revolt against their chiefs and set up rival ?laims of chieftainship. Thus Nial Garbh, "the rugged," enters into traitorous correspondence with Sir Henry Docwra, governor of Deny, revolts against Red Hugh and lets an English garrison into Lifford. Art, son of Tuiiogh Lynnogh, becomes the queen's Sir Arthur O'Neill, revolts against the prince of Tyrone, and claims the chieftaincy of the O'Neills for himself. Connor Roe Maguire, also being tampered with, 536 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. stands in the ranks of the enemy as " Queen's Maguire." Nor is this plan considered by any means superfluous in Munster either. There the lord-president, Sir George Carew, ably combines it with the toleration " dodge." He devises means in the most ingenious maimer to set the heads of the Irish by the ears, so that " they would prove the most tit instruments to ruin one another." Dermot O'Connor was one of the leading chiefs of the Munster army. His wife, Lady Margaret, was lis- ter to the hapless heir of Desmond, unfortunate Earl Gerald's son, who had for years languished in captivity in England. Carew works on this lady's jealousy of James — Hugh O'Neill's earl of Desmond, known in history as the "Sugan etui" — and wins her to his interests. She in turn gains her husband over, aifd he agrees "for a consideration" to seize the earl and deliver him to tin.' president. At the same time, to help this nefarious plot, Carew addresses a letter to the earl, in which he makes the most infamous proposals and promises; he coolly ineites him to murder or snare into captivity Dermot O'Connor. The letter is extant ; here is a passage from it : "You may rest assured that promises shall bee kept; and you shall no sooner bring Dermond (J Connor to me, alive or dead, and banish his bownoghs out of the countrie, but von shall have your demand satisfied, which 1 thanke God I am both able and willing to performe." This letter was put into the hands of O'Con- nor, that he might say he had intercepted it, and might represent his seizure or assassination of James of Desmond as an act of self-defence against a secret foe. This detestable plot had only partial success. The earl was taken, but escaped for a time. Eventually, however, he was betrayed for a thousand pounds by the White Knight, also a Ger- aldine and his kinsman, lie died in the Tower of London. Mr. Mitchel tells us that this rascal " president's secretary and historian details with much candor — rather, indeed, as a matter of triumph — many other dark machinations of his crafty master.'' I regret that want of space will not allow me to take farther advantage of this delightful English candor and give a few more specimens of Carew's subornings and other villainous intrigues. I have said enough, however, to enable the reader to compre- hend fully some of the Machiavellian arts by means of which the Eng- glish governors gradually undermined the Irish league in Munster and elsewhere, so that O'Neill could no longer hide from himself the gloom) PBELIMINARY SKETCH OF IEISH HISTORY. 537 fact that the national party was breaking up, at least in the south. Indeed it was now becoming too plain to all, for Oarew "was soon enabled to overrun all Desmond, and to reduce, by force or treachery, the castles of Askeaton, Glynn, Carrig-a-foyle, Ardart, Liscaghan, Lough- gwire, and many others, everywhere driving off the cattle and burning the houses and corn-stacks ; so that by the month of December (1600) there was not one castle in all Munster held against the queen, nor, in the language of Morryson, ' any company of ten rebels together.' " During this year (1600), Mountjoy had been lucky in Leinster too. In a skir- mish in Leix the gallant O'More, the hero of " the Pass of Plumes," was slain. Mountjoy this same year cut down green corn which would have grown to be worth ten thousand pounds. Some Leinster chiefs were seduced to become traitors to the cause of their country. Treachery was in the patriot councils — confidence had vanished. Indeed, the military measures of Mountjoy were on a par with his civi] policy. They were characterized by consummate skill and con- summate cruelty. Large bodies of troops built forts and established garrisons at Deny and Ballyshannon. These and other forts, together with the treacherous revolt of Mai Garbh O'Donnell, curbed and occu- pied Red Hugh, and prevented him from effecting a junction with O'Neill, and co-operating with him as of old. Deny also helps to keep O'Neill in check. Mountjoy forces his way through the Moyry Pass. He cuts down the woods and clears the country all round that difficult and dangerous defile ; he also builds a fort at its entrance. Contenting himself with this for the present, he retires. On his way to Dublin, O'Neill, for whose head he has just offered a reward of two thousand pounds, falls on him at the " Pass of Carlingford," and inflicts heavy loss on his army ; Mountjoy himself being one of the wounded. Throughout the winter the gallant Tyrrell still holds Meath for O'Neill, and defies the viceroy, who marches to Trim and Athlone, his track being marked everywhere by fire and devastation. Next year (1601) Mountjoy again presses hard on O'Neill, and strives gradually to hem him in; he constructs new or repairs old works. Ulster is filled with his garrisons, strong and abundantly supplied with all necessaries ; these from time to time sally forth to burn and ravage, above all cutting down and trampling the corn. Mountjoy takes 538 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. especial care to clear the woods that obstruct the defiles between Newiy and the Blackwater, the scenes of so many disasters to the English in the earlier period of this war. In spite of O'Neill's untiring activity and occasional success in destroying marauding bands of the enemy, even in Ulster the gradual encroachments of the tide of conquest are becoming more visible every day. The advance of Mountjoy is steady — slow, indeed, but sure. Ten thousand English troops are on the soil of Ulster. O'Neill has still some expectation of receiving succor from Spain. For years the Irish had been looking to the kindred Spaniards with hope and trust. In 1599 two envoys had come from Don Philip III., who had just mounted the throne of Spain ; they brought twenty-two thousand pieces of gold from the king, and from the pope indulgences for those combating against English heresy and a "Phoenix plume'' blessed by the Holy Father; but now nothing short of a large expedition could serve or save Ireland. At last about three thousand four hundred Spanish soldiers, many of them raw troops quite untrained in the use of arms, landed at Kinsale ; a feu years before such a force, making a descent on any part of our coast, might have secured Ireland's independence, but it was now too late for so small an auxiliary force to be of any real ser- vice, especially landing as it did in Minister, where the patriotic struggle had died out completely. Had it landed in the north, it might even yet have given some chance of final victory to O'Neill. It is true that O'Neill and O'Donnell had concurred in the selection of a southern port, doubtless considering such a one most accessible to a Spanish licet; but it can hardly be doubted that they had expected a much more formid- able expedition. They had also relied on the fidelity of the clan Carrha and their chief, the MacCarthy More ; never dreaming that without one manly blow the entire southern confederacy would in so brief a time have yielded to the corrupt and fraudulent arts of Mountjoy and Caiew. The worst feature of tin; Spanish expeditionary force was that Don Juan d'Aguila, the general commanding it, unlike most of the Spanish military chiefs of the sixteenth and early part of the seventeenth centu- ries — the proud and palmy period of the Spanish monarchy, when Spain boasted that "the sun never set on her empire'' — was, if not faint-hearted, at least conceited and incompetent. He was at once discouraged when PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 539 he saw that none of the people of Munster, save 0' Sullivan Beare, O'Con- noi Kerry and O'Driscol, had the patriotism or courage to rise and join him. Indeed, some of the high-toned Spaniards conceived an unreason- able contempt for the southern Irish, thinking even that "Christ had never died " for such a people. Don Juan in a short time let himself be shujt up in Kinsale by Mountjoy and Carew, who sat down before that town with an army of fifteen thousand men, two-thirds of whom, melan- choly to relate, are asserted to have been Irishmen. The towns of Munster sent their contingents to swell the queen's array. We find the Irish earls of Thomond and Clanrickarde holding high command in the English army. The latter, in some of the succeeding operations, distin- guished himself more, both for bravery and ferocity, than any one else on the English side ; he is even said to have killed with his own hand, at the battle of Kinsale, twenty of the Irish, and to have cried out to spare "no rebels." Carew compliments him by saying that "no man did bloody his sword more than his lordship that day." At the call of Don Juan d'AguD.a, O'Neill, at the head of between three and four thousand troops, and O'Donnell, at the head of two thou- sand five hundred men, at once march southward, in order, if possible, to raise the siege of Kinsale and form a junction with the Spaniards. O'Djnnell, though he leaves his principality in a state of confusion and peril, hurries on without losing an hour, and arrives first at Holycross, the place appointed for a rendezvous with O'Neill. Mountjoy, like a skillful general, detaches Carew with a strong force to try and crush O'Donnell before O'Neill can join him. O'Donnell is too weak to give battle, and is reluctant to give up the object of his march southward by retreating on Ulster ; yet how is he to elude Carew by a forced march over Slieve Felim into Limerick, when recent heavy rains have made the mountains and morasses impassable for horses and carriages ? Most luckily, one night's hard frost renders even the boggy places for a brief time pass- able; O'Donnell waits for darkness, and then marches all night; by morn O'Donnell is far away. The escape and prodigious celerity of '• this light-footed general" amaze the baffled Carew. However, he fails not to exert himself strenuously, but all his energy is thrown away. The loss is not to be redeemed ; 'tis vain any longer to think of inter- cepting O'Donnell. Cs* v^vf admits that the one day's march of O'Don* 540 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. nell from O'Meagher's country to dome, thirty-two Irish miles, is "the greatest march that hath been heard of." High praise this, coming ; rom so bitter an enemy. O'Donnell reaches Castlehaven in time to join seven hundred newly- arrived Spaniards, intended to reinforce D.'Aguila. And now some signs of life appear among a few of the southern elans. Donough O'Driscol, Sir Finnan O'Driscol and Donal O'Sullivan receive Spanish garrisons into their castles and declare manfully for their country's cause. Mean- while, the English press the siege of Kinsale vigorously. The Spaniards hold out stoutly; they make several bold sorties; numbers are killed on both sides. The English strain every nerve to capture the town, if possible, before O'Neill can come to relieve it ; the Spaniards strain every nerve to keep the enemy at bay, and keep possession of the town until his arrival. Meanwhile, by extraordinary efforts, the great Ulster chief gets together aboul four thousand men, and lights his way through Westmeath; joined by the untiring Tyrrell he makes a rapid march to the south-west and effects a junction with O'Donnell and a portion of the small body of Spaniards recently landed at Castlehaven. O'Neill and the Irish army now cut Mount joy off from his supplies; the besiege] is himself besieged. Still, the odds against the Irish are too great; against Mountjoy's fifteen thousand the Irish cannot muster seven thou- sand men; yet the English are in a critical position — between two fires, so to speak. The Spaniards are still formidable, the Irish still resolute and animated by the memories of several years of victory. Sickness and the frequent desertions of their soldiers of Irish race thin the ranks of the Englisharmy; the severity of the season, privations, constanl skir- mishing are sure to waste them. O'Neill's plan was to persevere in besieging the besiegers till their strength should be exhausted (his own troops, meanwhile, gradually regaining the energy lost in their [ate fatigues), and that then both Spaniards and Irish, combining their ope- rations, should suddenly fall on the worn-out English and complete their destruction. This was obviously the prudent course for the confederates to adopt, but O'Donnell w;is too impetuous to bide his lime patiently, and Don John, lacking the indomitable will and endurance of a heroic commander, was unwilling to bear the brunt of the siege any longer. The English deluded him with false representations. O'Neill, impor- PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY 541 tuned on all sides, was compelled to give a reluctant consent to attempt a night-attack on the British entrenchments. There is reason to believe that an officer high in his confidence betrayed his plans to the enemy. On the fatal night of the 3d of January, 1602 (new style), the Iiish inarched in three divisions ; the extreme darkness seemed to favor their design, but the guides lost their way ; hence the attack was delayed, till at length morning was approaching. The English were on the alert before daybreak. In short, the Irish, thinking to surprise the Eng- lish, were themselves surprised. Don Juan d'Aguila and his Spanish garrison either failed to sally forth, or did so feebly and without effect. Some of O'Neill's cavalry and the troops under the brave Tyrrell made a gallant stand ; the Spaniards, also, who had joined O'Donnell at Cas- tlehaven, disdaining to fiy, were almost entirely cut to pieces on the field of battle ; but these instances of valor were all unavailing : the Irish army was totally defeated, and the capitulation of Don Juan d'Aguila and his troops followed shortly after. Three days after this disastrous battle of Kinsale, O'Donnell took ship for Spain ; there he was received with the highest honors by king, nobles and people ; he did all he could to persuade the king to send a fresh expedition to the aid of Ireland. At first, Philip seemed disposed to accede to his entreaties, but subsequently the preparations for a fresh descent in force were countermanded. Again, with heart and brain on fire, O'Donnell was hurrying to the court of Spain to renew his almost hopeless suit, when, at Simancas, two leagues from Valladolid, "his proud heart broken," he found rest from all further struggles and disap' pointments in death. The king ordered him to be buried with royal honors, and the hero's bones lie in the chapter of the cathedral of St. Francis in the city of Valladolid. Meanwhile, Hugh O'Neill after his defeat had retreated to the north, where he determined to make his final stand. During the spring Mountjoy wa^ occupied in trying to effect the reduction of Munstei, which, with the aid of the perfidious and cruel Carew, he succeeded in accomplishing, in spite of the gallant front shown to the foe by 0' Sulli- van Beare and O'Neill's active lieutenant, the valiant and faithful Tyrrell, and the noble defence of 0' Sullivan Beare' s castle of Dunbuidhe by the indomitable Mac Geoghegan. Once more Munster saw its lands and corn 542 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. wasted and destroyed, its wide extent covered with blood and ashes and desolation ; but Ulster too was about to have her turn of " fire, famine and slaughter." Early in June, Mountjoy advanced northward to Armagh, and thence to Dungannon. O'Neill prepared for his last desperate struggle by setting fire to his town and castle of Dungannon ; then he betook himself to the forest and mountain-fastnesses in the centre of his territory ; " And backward to the den of his despair The forest-monarch shrinks, and finds no lair." But it is unnecessary in this brief sketch to dwell on the melancholy closing scenes of this noble struggle for Irish independence, which, if it had succeeded, would have made Ireland compact and strong; for, as I have already said, this great O'Neill had in his capacious soul the large idea of a united Irish nation. There is little reason to doubt that he would, if victorious, have introduced into Ireland the Spanish military discipline, then the first in the world, and would have welded into one great and well-consolidated monarchy the jarring elements of the Irish population. But alas! this was not to be; it was otherwise written in the book of fate. Vainly O'Neill gallantly stands at bay for months of sore struggle and sacrifice ; vainly his faithful clansmen resist the gold and treacherous lures of the Saxon, spit upon all offers of reward for his betrayal, and suffer and die heroically for their beloved chief and their dear old Celtic customs and rights. Like fiends incarnate, Mountjoy and his Saxon soldiers — and, worse still, his queen's O'Reillys and queen's Maguires — cut dow r n the green corn, trampling it under foot and leaving it to rot, and devastate the entire country. In the woods of Glan-con-keane, with only six hundred infantry and aboul sixty horse, O'Neill makes his last stand, and thrusts back the foe through the whole winter; but he hears that Connaught too is subdued. Where is he now to look for succor? What hope is there remaining of help, either at home or from foreign lands? Besides, his people are everywhere dying of famine. Moryson, who w r as with Mountjoy's army, tells us "thai no spectacle was more frequent in the ditches of towns, and especialh of wasted countries, than to see multitudes of the poor people dead, with their mouths all colored green by eating nettles, dock and all things they could rend up above ground." Chichester and Sir Kobert Moiyson PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 543 on one occasion this winter " saw a horrible spectacle — three children, the eldest not above ten years old, all eating and gnawing with their teeth the entrails of their dead mother, on whose flesh they had fed for twenty days past." Again : Moryson tells us, on the authority of Cap- tain Trevor, one of the English officers, how some old women are making a fire in a field near Newry, " and divers little children driving out the cattle in the cold mornings, coming thither to warm them, are by them surprised and killed and eaten." Is it then wonderful that O'Neill, seeing his land and people a prey to such desolation and horrors, at last despairs ? Surely all immediate prospect of winning his country's lib- erty is at an end. The sole chance left for Ireland is to save the rem- nant of the old race for better times. On the 30th of March, 1603, O'Neill, now sixty years old, worn in frame and stricken in heart, on bended knees submitted to the lord-deputy at Mellifont. Ireland seems, at last, about to be Anglicised and her conquest made complete. Yet O'Neill surrendered on good terms, all things considered. The queen was anxious to win his submission at any price, for, even reduced to such terrible straits, he was still a formidable foe. Just about this time the illustrious virgin-vixen died. James VI. of Scotland, who suc- ceeded her as James I. of England, confirmed the favorable conditions granted to O'Neill. He, indeed, and the chiefs his allies, were to give up their Celtic chieftainships and surrender their lands to the crown ; but they were to receive full pardon, and with certain reservations to have the whole of the lands held by their several clans regranted to them by royal "letters-patent." O'Neill, restored in blood in spite of attainder and outlawry, was reinstated in his earldom of Tyrone. Roderick O'Donnell, Red Hugh's brother and successor, was created earl of Tyr- Connell. The enjoyment of full and free exercise of their religion was granted alike to chiefs and people. Such was the termination of Hugh O'Neill's memorable struggle for Irish freedom. But I need hardly add that all these conditions were before long vio- lated by the English; robbery and persecution were soon "let slip" again upon the Irish. In 1607 a charge of conspiracy, real or pre- tended, was trumped up against O'Neill and Earl Roderick; they felt that their lives were in danger. O'Neill had before this complained of the base espionage to which he was subjected — "that he had so many 544 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. eves watching over him that he could not drink a full carouse of sack but the state was advertised thereof a few hours after." It was hard for the proud spirit of O'Neill to have to endure a state of things like this ; still, he yielded to necessity, and bore on in peace till, in 1607, he and Earl Roderick, finding their lives in jeopardy, decided on flying from their country. They, their relatives and numerous other friends, em- barked at Rathinullen, on the shores of Lough Swilly, on the 11th of September, 1607, and gazed from the ship, for the last time, on the hind for which they had fought so many battles. Landing in Normandy, they afterward visited Flanders; finally, the weary-hearted exiles found refuge in Rome. Here they lived on a pension from the pope and the king of Spain. In his old age the illustrious chief of Tyr-Owen became blind ; he died in the year 1616. After the flight of the earls all their vast possessions were seized by the crown; six counties in lister were confiscated. Grants of lands were made to a host of Scotch and English " undertakers." A'ast estates wen- parceled out among London companies and guilds. This "plan- tation of Ulster," as it was called, was the origin of the great admixture of Scottish blood which we find in all the counties of Ulster. To this day we hear in that province a modification of the Scotch accent, and we ran trace in the inhabitants some of t lie peculiar traits of the Scot- tish character and habits; yet the old Celtic element still preponderates. If any projects for exterminating the Datives had been entertained, they failed miserably; the natives in their depressed state increased and mul- tiplied more than the favored colonists, dames I. also granted lands to the Established Church and to Trinity College — two institutions thor- oughly anti-Irish in their tendency; the latter had been founded in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, during the viceroyalty of the corrupt Fitzwil- Iiam, on the site of tin? suppressed monastery of All-Hallows. The great and peculiar hardship of these Irish confiscations consisted in the fact that not merely the chiefs, who became obnoxious to the English rulers, were thereby despoiled of their estates, but all the people composing their tribes were robbed at the same time, and reduced to penury; for, by the old Irish law, all the lands ruled by each chief, so far from being his exclusive or absolute property, were the property of the entire tribe, and liable on certain occasions to redistribution. A system like this PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. 545 wanting fixed appropriation of land, seems not very favorable to agri- culture. Indeed, some writers, considering these old Celtic land tenures and certain other Celtic customs to be incompatible with a high state of refinement and civilization, seem, in reviewing these wars of Ireland, always to regard the English as the champions of civilization, and. the cause of Ireland as identical with that of barbarism, if not savagery, and consequently to look upon its loss or ruin as something not to be regretted by the wise. Sir Archibald Alison, as might be expected, talks of the Irish as always resisting civilization ; but it is somewhat strange to find even Moore, while he cannot withhold a certain amount of sympathy from the patriotic struggles of his countrymen, at the same time seeming to be troubled with some misgivings as to whether he ought not to contemplate with satisfaction the successes of England as the triumphs of civilization; he seems, in short, for ever in doubt whether he should call the Irish, fighting for their own, patriots or rebels. Apparently it seldom or never occurs to these "philosophic historians" that a country like Ireland pays a trifle too dearly even for civilization if the price be the extermination of her brave children > cr that if she should succeed in throwing off the yoke and driving out her civilizing oppressors, her own sons might compensate her for the loss of a foreign by the development of a high and refined native civilization. If O'Neill, for instance, had succeeded in his efforts for Irish independ- ence, why might not he and his successors have gradually abolished such Celtic institutions as stood in the way of what is nicknamed "progress," and developed a new Irish civilization, better adapted to modern ideas and requirements than the old forms could be ? In the portion of his " Norman Conquest " that refers to our grand struggle for more than seven hundred years against the English sway, the great French historian Thierry shows a far profounder insight and knowledge of the real spirit and teaching of Irish history, and manifests broader and more generous sympathies with our people, than any other historian, whether foreign or Irish. He glorifies that noble struggle of our race, only paralleled by the Spanish struggle of nine hundred years against the Moors ; calls the fidelity of generation after generation of Irishmen to a cause ever lost, the son with little hope of success taking up and bearing aloft in battle the standard trampled on by the foe in the days 546 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. of his sire, and then, when defeated in turn, still handing down the old quarrel to his son, — Thierry, I say, calls this unconquerable tenacity of the Irish, this immortal clinging to the hopes of one day winning their independence, one of the noblest and most touching things in all history. He quotes with applause the heroic words of Donald O'Neill in his letter addressed to Pope John XXII. in the fourteenth century : " Hatred pro- duced by lengthened recollections of injustice, by the murder of our fathers, brothers and kindred, and which will not be extinguished in our time nor in that of our sons." From the days of this " plantation of Ul- ster " the war of races in Ireland, which Thierry places in so clear a light, became more and more envenomed. Eeligious rage and hate, too, waxed bitterer. The only actual rebellion, however, during James I.'s reign, was the revolt of the gallant young chief of Innishowen, Sir Cahir O'Dogherty, who met with considerable success at first, but was killed a few months after he took the field. I have dwelt on the rebellions of Queen Elizabeth's reign, and the consequences that flowed from them, longer than to some may appear warrantable in a brief summary like the present. If I have done so, it is because I am inclined to think that in these wars all the glorious and all the hideous features of Irish history are more conspicuous than in any of the struggles of earlier or more recent date. In the Eliz- abethan wars you have the most shining examples of Irish patriotic resistance, the most striking illustrations of that great curse of the Irish race, dissension, and the most vivid pictures of English fraud and fero- city. Moreover, in the events of Elizabeth's and James's reigns the seeds of the most important occurrences of later generations were sown. In the reigns of the Tudor sovereigns and in that of .lames I. a total revolution gradually took place in the tonus of Irish society. The old Celtic usages and manners and costume disappeared, and the found- ations of our modern society, with its very different customs, were laid. English laws superseded the Brehon code. The English language began its struggle with the Gaelic. The distinction between the pale and the Irish territories virtually disappeared, though we still sometimes hear the lords of the pale spoken of. Theoretically, at least, the mere Irish are at length presumed to be entitled to the rights and privileges of the king's subjects of English blood. In short, in James's reign, for th« PEELIMINAEY SKETCH OF IEISH HISTOEY. 547 first time, Ireland, superficially at least, wears the aspect of a subdued and Anglicised country. I may here observe that the union of the Scot- tish and English crowns was undoubtedly a great misfortune for the cause of Irish independence. An independent Scotland would occasionally prove an ally to Ireland or create for Irish insurgents a seasonable diversion. It is by no means necessary, then, that I should do much more than refer to the subsequent wars of 1641 and those that arose out of the Revolution of 1688. The tyrannical but able administration of Went- worth, better known as the earl of Strafford, by intensifying the sense of intolerable wrong in the hearts and souls of the Irish, prepared the way for the outbreak of 1641. Strafford's extortions, frauds and tyran- nies in Ireland also enabled the English House of Commons to swell the charges which served them as a pretext for bringing him to the scaffold when they commenced their memorable quarrel with his equally ill-starred master, Charles I. The wars in Ireland which followed the insurrection of 1641 are, in a great degree, a repetition of the old story. We have atrocities on both sides. We have fractions of the Irish race giving tne English, assisted by other sections of the Irish race, the utmost trouble to subdue them. We have, indeed, in these campaigns, a most extraor- dinary amount of "confusion worse confounded." We have two English parties in Ireland in arms against the native Irish party, and at the same time hostile to each other — that of the king and that of the Eng- lish Puritan Parliament. We have a section of the so-called Irish reb- els professing loyalty to the king and hostility to the English Parliament. We have another section open enemies to every person and thing Eng- lish. The pope's legate, Einuccinni, is chiefly sustained by this subdi- vision. I omit to notice all minute shades and distinctions of party. The myth of the famous "Kilkenny cats" is almost realized. At one time, in the course of this struggle, we find in Ireland about fourteen armies in the field. This war was the natural result of "the plantation of Ulster." Bishop Mant, however, in his Church history, can only see in the outbreak of 1641 an instance of the retributive justice of Prov- idence on account of the guilty connivance at popery on the part of English rulers in Ireland during a portion of the administration of Blount (Lord Mountjoy). Among the principal military leaders who 548 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. appeared in this war three are conspicuous. Two of these are Irish; the third English. Of the Irish, the marquis of Ormond, like most of the race of the Butlers, fights for the king of England against the cause of Ireland. The other eminent Irishman, Owen Roe O'iSTeill (a truly great man, even according to the admission of writers in no degree friendly or just to the Irish or their cause), rivals the most glorious of Ireland's patriots and chiefs of eveiy age. He wins a victory over Munro and his Scots greater and more memorable than any victory over British troops won in Ireland before or since. I allude to the victory of Benburb, achieved on the 5th of June, 16-16, which gave Owen Koe pos- session of all Ulster. At one period of this war Ireland seemed indeed on the point of assuming the aspect of a nation. The Confederation of Kilkenny at first appears to promise glorious results. The General Assembly wears the short-lived semblance of a veritable National Assembly. A great seal is struck; a mint is established; there arc printing-presses for publication of ordinances; some admirable enact- ments for encouragement of foreign commerce are passed ; arrangements for the management of internal affairs, both military ami civil, arc made; some of these are judicious; others, such as the division of the Catholic army of Ireland into several independent commands, fatal. With all the shortcomings of the Confederation of Kilkenny, during the sitting of the General Assembly towards the close of L642 Ireland was more like a nation than she had ever been before. But, as usual, accursed dissension ruined everything; and. mosl unfortunately for the Irish cause, Owen Roe dies at Cloughouter Castle, in Cavan, on the 6th of November, 1649, not without suspicion of poison. After his death there remained no one in Ireland lit to cope with Cromwell, the terrible and renowned general of the English Parliamentarians. He mercilessly crushes, for the time, the Irish and their cause in blood and tire. Fain would he send the whole Irish race "to hell or Connaught." Famine and the sword once more mow down the Irish. Fresh confiscations, on an enormous scale, follow Cromwell's triumph. Fresh seeds of hatred and vengeance are sown in the souls of the Irish. Additional memories of wrong are borne along on the stream of time, even down to our own days. The hostility of rival races and religions is keener than ever. In the reign of Charles II. little was done to repair the violence and PRELIMINARY SKETCH OP IRISH HISTORY. 549 wrong inflicted on the Irish by the Commonwealth. The acts of settle- ment and explanation gave scant justice to Catholics ; indeed, it is said that about this period five thousand Catholic Irish, never outlawed, were shut out by law from possession of their lands. In this reign the judicial murder of the venerable and exemplary Oliver Plunkett, the Catholic primate of Ireland, took place in London. After the Cromwellian wars we begin to hear of the Irish tories and rapparees, of whom Redmond O'Hanlon and Galloping O'Hogan w T ere among the most famous or notorious. These tories and rapparees are not to be classed with ordinary robbers or brigands ; they are, in truth, the last remains of the patriotic resistance of those times, Celtic valor reduced to a half-combative, half-fugitive condition ; soldiers gradually acquiring the predatory habits of the ordinary outlaw. There are many parallel cases in the history of other lands and times ; thus, as Thierry in his "Norman Conquest" shows, Here ward, and later, Robin Hood and others, with their bands of outlaws, were the last remains of the more regular Saxon resistance to the Norman conquest. Perhaps some of the bands of Neapolitan brigands in Murat's reign were of the same stamp ; Rob Roy Macgregor too and his clan are to be looked on rather as waging an irregular warfare of vengeance against rulers and laws and a society, in short, that had ruthlessly proscribed and tyrannized over them, than in the odious light of an ordinary captain and band of rob- bers; probably, if Napoleon the Great had succeeded in conquering Spain, many of the guerilla corps in that country would have gradually degenerated till they became in time little better than mere predatory bands. The rapparees seem to have taken part in the Williamite wars on the side of James II. as partisan troops. On the English side a far more repulsive class of individuals arose in Ireland in those sad times — a class which then, or at a later period, re- ceived the hideous appellation of the head-cutters ; we find some of them so late as the early part of the eighteenth century ; these wretches used, for various amounts of blood-money, to hunt to the death tories, rappa- rees and other persons of Irish race obnoxious to the British government, and bring in their heads. Captain Adam Loftus and Lieutenant Fran- cis Rowleston earned money in this diabolical way ; Johnstone, of the Fews, in Armagh, and one Pepper, the murderer of Patrick Fleming, 550 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF IRISH HISTORY. the last baron of Slane, are two of the most notorious among the head cutters. The Williamite wars present to our view most of the principal fea- tures of former Irish wars against the English. In the first place, we see a portion of the Irish nation contending once more for freedom against the might of England, assisted by a different section of Irishmen ; on this occasion England has also a powerful auxiliary force of foreigners; yet against all these odds Ireland for three years bore up so gallantly that it was with the utmost difficulty England finally prevailed over her. When in all these Irish wars we see a fraction, greater or less, of the Irish race contending with the whole power of England, assisted by other Irish, and yet winning many victories and keeping the English forces at hay for long years, and in the end hardly conquered, the ques- tion irresistibly forces itself on us, What would have been the result of anyone of those struggles if Ireland had been united? If the Irish were to-day, or at any period, united as one man againsl the English, England's hold on Ireland would not be worth one month's purchase, seeing thai a mere fraction of the race can always pul British suprem- acy in the greatest peril. We have even seen the small tribe of the O'Byrnes in the glens of Wicklow, under Fiach Mae Hugh, maintaining their independence in the teeth, so to speak, of Dublin Castle, centuries alter Henry [I. 'a invasion, and even during the vigorous reign of Eliz- abeth. Schamyl'a defiance for years in our own century of 2