.^'% ^ * o »• o ' ^^ ^^ - • I ^0--^^ :- '^Ao^ o .♦^"-^^ •• . -^ 1/ . ♦ • o © M O " ■^' Lectures and Essays' ON Irish aid Other Subjects. By henry GILES. If NEW YOEK: D. & J. SADLIER & CO., 31 BARCLAY STREET. BOSTON :— P. 11. BRADY, 149" 'J^REMONT STREET. MONTREAL : OOK. NOTRE DAME AND ST. FRANCIS XAVIER STREET. 18G0. ^S''^ 0-^ Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, By D. & J. SADLIER & CO., In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. BEQUEST OF ANNA ?£nK!r:3 SlEWAftT JArJoAHV 22. 1947 THE LIBRARY OF COHGSrsi stereotyped by VINCENT DILL, ■15 & 27 New Chambeni St, N. V " PUBLISHERS' PREFACE. The Lectures and Essays here given to the public are among the finest efforts of the genius of Henry Giles. None of the contents of this volume have ever before been published in book form. The many thou- sands who had the privilege of hearing Mr. Giles discourse on "Spirit of Irish History," "Irish Wit and Humor," "Irish Character, Mental and Moral," "Ireland and the Irish," " Irish-born Citizens, " "Irish Emigra- tion," "Daniel O'Connell," or "John Philpot Curran," will be glad of the opportunity of having those noble Lectures by them for frequent perusal. So, too, with the Essays on ' ' Doctor Doyle " " Oliver Gold- smith," "Gerald Griffin," and "Wit and Humor in Scotland," written for a Boston periodical ; many will be pleased to have them in a more permanent form. The beautiful Lecture on "Catholic Art and Protestant Culture," new to most readers, will be found one of the most admirable essays ever written on a similar subject. It is probably one of the finest specimens in our lan- guage of that particular style of writing. "The Cost of War," written during and in relation to our own disastrous but, happily, successful war, was read in New York and other cities by a friend of Mr. Giles, after the gifted author had become unable to travel or to appear in public. This Lecture was, we believe, the last production of his brilliant and prolific mind. This volume is invested with a mournful interest, from the fact of its bemg revised by the author in his sick room, if not in his sick bed. Some of its contents have already delighted thousands, as they are destined, we trust, to delight thousands and tens of thousands in the after time, when the bright spirit from which they emanated shall have winged its way to other spheres. They are among the latest flashes of a genius that may shine no more as once it shone — of a mind prostrated by much suffering, and darkened by much tribulation. Nevertheless, they will be foimd not unworthy of the brightest days of their author's earlier life. New York, May 21, 1869. CONTENTS. PAGE ^ SPIRIT OF IRISH HISTORY 9 " IREI^ND AND THE IRISH in 1848 40 DANIEL O'CONNELL 7G JOHN THILPOT CURILVN 104 IRISH EMIGRATION I.JO IRISH BORN CITIZENS 157 IRISH CHARACTER, MENTAL AND MORAL 184 IRISH SOCIAL CHARACTER 207 GERALD GRIFFIN 233 DR DOYLE 259 ^ OLIVER GOLDSMITH 288 TilE CHRISTIAN IDEA IN CATHOLIC ART AND IN PROTEST- ANT CULTURE 31(5 THE COST OF WAR 342 POPULAR WIT AND HUMOR, ESPECIALLY IN SCOTLAND.... 3G5 GILES' LECTURES. SPIRIT OF IRISH HISTORY. It is now some years since I began to speak in Boston. Among the first of my efforts, Ireland was my theme. I endeavored, as best as I could, to tell her story. I was heard with generous interest, but it was the stoi*y, and not the tellei', that inspired it. It was called for throughout the length and breadth of New England ; it was repeated in city halls and in village lyceums. Old and young, grave and gay, listened to it with open ears and with eager hearts ; and to many of them it seemed a new, and wild, and strange recital. It is no longer novel. It is now, not a story, but a drama ; a black and fearful drama, which civilized nations gaze upon with a terrified astonishment, that has no power to weep. It was then gloomy and sad enough, and to those who know Hfe only in its general comforts, it appeared a condition which it would be hard to render worse. But the presump- tuousness of man is constantly rebuked by the vicissitude of events. It is but too surely so in this case. There was yet the vial of a deeper woe in store, and that vial is now open. Tragic as the story of Ireland was, when first I tried to tell it, it might yet be given with those flashes of 10 Giles' Lectures. mirth and wit, tliose outburstings of fun, and drolleiy, and oddity, and humor, which can be crushed in the Irish heart only by the heaviest load of sorrow. Of such weight is now the burden that lies upon it. Ireland, now, is not simply a place of struggle, of want, of hard work, and of scanty fare, it has become a wilder- ness of starvation. The dreariest visitation which human- ity can receive, rests upon it — not of fire, not of the sword, not of the plague ; but that, compared with which, fire, and sword, and plague, are but afilictions ; that is. Hunger — hunger, that fell and dreadful thing, which, in its extremity, preys more horribly on the mind, even than the body; which causes friend to look on friend with an evil eye, and the heart of a maiden to be stern to her lover ; and the husband to glare upon the wife that nestled in his bosom, and the mother to forget her sucking child. Such, though we trust never to come to this awful extremity, is the nature of that calamity which lately has been preying upon Ire- land. It is not, indeed, at this awful extremity, but far enough towards it, to spread over that beautiful island a pall of mourning ; far enough towards it, to quench the joy of childhood, to bow down the strength of men, to wither the loveliness of women, to take away the comeliness of the young, and to cover the heads of the aged with a sorrow darker than the grave. We cannot think of it with other thoughts than those of grief. We cannot refer to it with other speech than that of sadness. For my own part, I cannot hear of this terrible affliction ; I cannot read of it ; my imagination, of its own accord, transports me into the midst of it, and, for the time, I dwell in the company and throngs of the wretched. The necessity that compels me to think and speak of it, bows down my soul to the earth, and I am almost prompted to exclaim, in the words of the prophet, " O, that my head were waters, and my eyes were Spirit of Irish History. 11 fountains of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughters of my people." Multitudes are perishing ; that fact admits neither of doubt nor of dispute. Multitudes are perishing ; that fact is as certain as it is terrible. It does not signify what they are <)r where, the fact is still most horrible and most appaUing. Were they savages in the depths of an African wilderness, our common humanity would urge us to send them succor. Were they the most utter strangers, foreign to us in evei'y mode of thought and habit, that can render nations alien to each other, they would still be within the embrace of that common humanity, and its voice would plead for them. Were they most base and worthless, both in character and condition, their misfortunes would give them dignity, and win from us compassion. Were they enemies, and had done us the worst of injuries, not only the precepts of the Gospel, but the sentiments of magnanimit}^ would impel us to help them in the hour of their agony. But they are none of these. They have given to civilization some of its most quickening elements ; some of its most brilliant genius ; some of its fairest ornaments ; some of its most heroic minds. Numbers of us, here, are bone of their bone, and flesh of their flesh ; the fathers who supported our youth, live above, or lie below, the green sward of Erin ; the mothers who sang our infancy to sleep with its plaintive melodies, are still breathing its air, or gone to mingle with its saints in heaven. To all of us, of whatever nation, they are kindred in the ties of that solemn existence, which we feel the more intensely, the more it is afflicted. They are a people, too, whose own ears have been always open to the cry of the distressed. They have ever been willing to give, not merely of their abundance, but even of their want ; a people whose hospitality is free as the wind upon their mountains, and generous as the rain upon their valleys ; the 12 Giles^ Lectures. fame of it as wide as the earth, and as old as their history. This people are noAV in grievous troubles. They are in the midst of famine, and we are in the midst of plenty. Out of this great plenty we are sending them ^support, and with support our pity and our prayers. Let us most gratefully and humbly bless God, who has put this most blessed privi- lege in our power ; the privilege of saving those who are I'eady to perish, and of causing thovisands of breaking hearts to sing for joy ; to change mourning to gladness, and the spirit of heaviness for the spirit of praise. I am not here to excite an interest ; for that is already ex- cited, and has been working bravely through the land with a passionate emotion. It has been shaking the hearts of this great people to the utmost verge of their dominion ; agita- ting, not their cities alone, but piercing the sympathies of those who dwell in shanties on the open prairie, and by the half cleared forest; melting into tenderness, not the women of the land alone, but subduing the hardy men of the woods, of the camp, of the ship, and of the battle-field. I would not insult your sympathies by appealing to them ; I would not insult your generosity by praising it ; I am not here to plead a cause. Humanity in millions of hearts have effectually pleaded that cause already ; and hands are hfted up, while now I speak, to thank Heaven, and the good humanity in which Heaven lives on earth, for the sympathy with which it has responded to the cries of affiicted brother- hood. I will not therefore enlarge on the present distress ; I will not, and I cannot, go into its technical detail ; neither will I vaguely ascribe this great suffering to Providence. I will not seek the sources of it in the clouds above, or in the earth beneath ; I will try, so far as my light leads me, to seek those sources in directions whore they may be intel- ligibly accounted for. I would lay no blame on the present Spirit of Irish History. 13 generation ; I do not speak of them. I am not insensible to the great exertions of the Government of the British na- tion to meet the tremendous crisis now existing ; nor would I speak otherwise than in heartfelt, enthusiastic sympathy of those huge manifestations of kindness in the British nation, which show forth those sublime charities, that vin- dicate the divine and God-imaged character of our nature. I will endeavor to review the whole system, of which the present distress is a part, and of which it is a result ; I will endeavor to seek out whence it has originated, and how it may be changed ; I will endeavor to tx'ace some of its causes, and to indicate some of its remedies. I must, of course, confine myself to a few striking points, not alone by the limits of our time, but by the requirements of the occasion. The occasion is one, that will not tolerate much that admits greatly of dispute ; it is one that requires all the concili- ation which truth can sanction. It will therefore be my desire, in analyzing causes, and in specifying remedies, to take as broad and common ground as, with my opinions, it is possible for me to take. It will be also my desire to give no candid or just man offence ; and though such a man may dispute my positions, I trust that ho wiU have no complaint to make against my spirit, or against my temper. The causes of Irish distress many find wholly in the char- acter of the people. On this topic, we cannot afford to en- large ; and that it may not stand in our way as we proceed, we wiU grant, for the sake of argument, that the character of the people is as idle and as reckless as these philoso- phers describe it, and still it will be seen that, to ascribe the state of Ireland to this cause alone, or to this cause mainly, is not only partial, but false ; at variance alike with any comprehensive grasp of sound logic or personal observa- tion. The cause of any particular suffering in Ireland is seldom local or temporary, seldom to be found within itself 14 Giles' Lectures. or near it. The causes even of the present destitution are not all immediate ; they are not all in the failure of the potato crop, not all in the character of those who plant the potato and Hve on it. The potato, it is true, is a precarious vegetable, and the people of Ireland, who have fed upon it for generations, are not in all things the wisest and most provident of nations ; but in any sound state of things, it would not, surely, be within the limits of any contingency, that miLlions should Avither into the dust, which had failed to afford nourishment to a fragile root. Such afflictions as Ireland is now enduring, terrible as they are, are not singular in her experience. They have been but too often her mis- fortune ; and though, to oiu- view, they are strange, they are, in her story, sufficientl}- famihar. But these afflictions come not fi'om the skies above or the earth beneath ; and, therefore, we shall not ascend to the heavens, nor go down to the deep, to seek their causes. Most of them are within the range of very ordinary inquiry, and they are both in- telligible and explainable. I shall speak on causes of two kinds ; one historical, and one social. And, first, of the historical. Ireland has long been a country of agitation. The elements of discord were sown early in her history ; and throughout^ her course, they have been nourished, and not eradicated. At first, divided into small principalities, hke all countries so circumstanced, strife was constantly taking place among them, either for dominion or defence. It did not happen to Ireland as to England, that these separate states had been subdued into unity by a native prince, before the intrusion of a foreign ruler. It did not happen to Ii-eland as to England, that the foreign ruler took up his residence in it, identified his dignity with it, and that his children became natives of the soil. England, pre- vious to the invasion of "William the Conquex'or, was a united empire, and therefore, though at the battle of Hastings, the Spirit of Irish History'. 15 occupant of the throne was changed, the integrity of the nation remained. Ireland was made up of divided and con- flicting states, when the myrmidons of Henry the Second arrived upon its shores ; and even after these had gained settlements in the country, there was no adhesive principles among the natives. Had Ireland been consoHdated, she could not have been conquered ; or, being conquered, she would, like England, have absorbed the conquerors. The spirit of English nationality was never stronger than it was in the princes of the Norman line ; and they asserted it with a haughtiness, oftentimes with an injustice, that rendered them formidable to every neighboring state. They Avere the most inordinately jealous of any internal interference with the concern of their kingdom, either of a secular or a spiritual character ; for generations they guarded England with even a ferocious pride, but, also, with a commendable zeal, they reared up her native institutions, and brought out her latent energies. But the stranger came to Ireland, and a stranger he still remained. English dominion commenced in Ireland in a spirit of conquest, and it continued in a spirit of exclusion. National animosity thus perpetuated, sustained the spirit of war, and war raged on with a fierceness which time did nothing to mitigate. The native chieftains, when not in conflict among themselves, united against the common foe ; and the end of every new struggle was increased oppression to the people. Covetousness was added to the other baser passions ; and rapacity inflamed the anarchy in which it hoped for gain. Defeated rebellion brought confiscation ; insurrection was, therefore, the harvest of adventurers ; sol- diers of fortune, or rather soldiers for fortune, gathered like wolves to the battle. They were ready to glory in the strife and to profit by it; they enjoyed the soil of the wretches whom they slaughtered, and the work seemed as great a 16 Giles' Lectures. pleasure as the recompense. Exhausted, however, in rob- bing the aborigines, they sought new excitement in despoil- ing one another ; and, tired of fighting for plunder, they began at last to fight for precedence. So it continued to the period of Elizabeth, and though that brought a change, it did not bring improvement ; for to the conflict of race was now added the conflict of rehgion. This age of Elizabeth, which was to Europe the dawn of many hopes — this age of Ehzabeth, which was so adorned and so enriched with all that makes an age transcendent — this age of Elizabeth was only for Ireland a heavy and a starless night. The government of Elizabeth, which had so much glory for England, gave no promise to Ii-eland. Under the sway of Ehzabeth, Ireland lay in tempest and in waste. Oppression, that makes wise men mad, will provoke even despair to resistance, and resistance was obstinate and frequent in Ireland to the rulers whom Elizabeth set above them. Resistance was put down by methods the most inhu- man ; the crops were destroyed, dwelling-houses burned, the population indiscriminately massacred, famine the most terrible ensued, and hunger withered those whom the sword had spared. The people were slaughtered, but not subdued ; the soil was not enriched, but ravaged ; no arts arose ; no principles of wealth or hberty were developed ; life was unsafe; and property in the true sense was scarcely known. Even the stony heart of Elizabeth at length was touched ; human- ity, for once, shot a pang to her breast. " Alas, alas ! " she cried ; " I fear lest it be objected to us, as it was to Tiberius, concerning the Diolmatian commotions — you, you it is who are to blame, who have committed your flock, not to shepherds, but to wolves." And to wolves, they were still committed. Such was the rigor of the ordinary government, that a deputy of the most ordinary kindness, gained the worship of the unhappy Irish, and became hateful to the jealous queen ; Spirit of Irish History, 17 so that the gratitude of the people ruined, at the same time, their benefactors and themselves. And yet, this age of EUzabeth was a glorious age. Every where, but Ire- land, it was filled with power and with promise. From the death of Mary to that of James the First, was a period such as comes but seldom, and when it comes, such as makes an era. A mighty life was palpitating among the nations ; the head of civilized humanity was filled with many speculations, and the heart was beating with mjarvel- lous fancies and magnanimous passion. Genius and gloiy had burst as a flood of light upon the world. The feudal system was passing away. The arm of its oppression had been broken, but its high-bred courtesy yet remained ; its violence was repressed, but its heroic spirit had not been quenched. The courage of the savage warrior had given way before the chivalry of the humaner soldier. The dominion of superstition, too, had been broken, but a rigid utilitarianism had not yet taken place. The spectres of night had vanished, but dreams of the wonderful and the lovely still hovered around imagination. The earth was not bare, nor the heavens empty. The merchant and the money-changer began to rule the city ; but Queen Mab was not yet dethroned. She had yet her fairy empire in the green-wood shade ; she had yet her dancing in the moonht glen. The practical had not yet banished the romantic, and the soul had her phi- losophy, as well as the senses. Columbus had opened new worlds, and the old world hailed him as the Moses of the seas. Dreams of sunny regions ; of Edens in the deserts; of El Doradoes in the treadless hills, wafted longing fancies from olden homes, and thoughts flew fast and far on the crest of the wave and the wing of the wind. Learning started from leaden sleep to earnest life. Philosophy poured forth her eloquent wisdom ; and the thoughtful hstened with en- raptured ear. Poetry was filhug the earth with her music ; 18 Giles^ Lectures. unci Fiction was delighting mankind with rare enchantment; and Eeligion was busying all brains Avith her solemn and profound discoursing. Bacon was sounding the depths of human intellect, and calling from their silence the energies of endless progression. Shakespeare was shaping, to endiu'ing beauty, those wondrous creations which embody the univer- sal life of man. Cervantes, the glorious Spaniard, in soul a brother to the glorious Briton, had sent forth among men's fancies, Don Quixotte and Sancha Panza ; the high-dream- ing knight, and the low-thinking squire ; the grave in com- pany with the grotesque, a goodly image of humanity for everlasting laughter and everlasting love. Luther had arisen, awful and gigantic, half the earth his platform, and millions of excited men his audience. Liberty had began to know her rights, and was gathering courage to maintain them. Traditional claims had already lost in the contest against natural justice. Priests and princes had ceased to be gods, and the people were fast rising to be men. Com- merce had enlarged her boundaries ; wealth had increased its enterprise ; independence had gi'own with industry. The course of freedom went nobly onward. Britain had humbled Spain ; and Holland, after one of the most heroic struggles in the history of patriotism, had cast off the Spanish yoke. While Europe was thus rejoicing in spreading grandeur, the fairest island on its western border, with every means of prosperity and glory, lay hke a ruin at moonUght, -vVhere pirates had assembled to divide their plunder in blasphemy and in blood. James of Scotland, the successor of his mother's slayer, treated unfortunate Ireland with no gentler policy. "Without accusation of sedition or rebellion, he alienated six counties from their owners, and colonized them with his country- men. The outcasts wandered on theii* own soil, as strangers and as vatrabouds. Fearful deeds were done in revenfro spirit of Irish History. 19 and retribution during the terrible insurrection of 1641, which occurred in the reign of this man's son. Deadly passions mingled together in the strife, as elements in the hurricane ; and the blood of Eeformer and the blood of Romanist, swelled the common torrent. England, too, became convulsed with trouble. Charles endeavored to ingratiate the Irish, and to a considerable extent he succeeded. But, their assistance availed the unhappy monarch nothing ; and ere his blood was well nigh clotted on the block, they had Cromwell of the iron hand, dealing death upon themselves. It is not my province, here, even if my power answered to the task, to draw a complete moral portrait of Cromwell. I am simply to speak of him in relation to Ireland ; and, in that relation, he was a steel-hearted exterminator. I have no inclination to deny him grandeur, and if I had, the gen- eral verdict would stand independently of my inchnation. Whether the moralist approve, or whether he condemn, the world always enthrones will, and power, and success ; and that which it enthrones, it worships. How much in Cromwell was the honesty of a patriot, how much was the policy of a designer ; how much was purity, how much was ambition, which so predominated, the evil or the good, as to constitute his character ; this will probably be decided in opposite directions by opposite i)arties to the end of history. Whatever be the decision on the man, measured as a whole, the facts of his career in Ireland show him to have been most cruel and most sanguinary. Nor are these facts inconsistent with our general idea of the dictator's character. A dark compound of the daring soldier and the religious zealot, uniting in one spirit the austerest attributes of each, stern in purpose, and rapid in execution, he was the man for a mission of destruction. The Irish, on many accounts, were peculiarly hateful to him They were the adherents of defeated royalty. They were not 20 Giles^ Lectures. simply prelatists, which were in itself offensive ; but they were papists, and that was hideous iniquity. They were not only aliens, they were worse than aliens ; they were outcasts, the doomed of prophecy, the sealed of Antichrist. They were the modern Canaanites, and he was the modern Joshua, the anointed of the Lord, to deal judgment on the reprobate ; and judgment he dealt with vengeance, with vengeance that knew no touch of mercy. His track in Ireland may be fol- lowed over ruins which yet seem fresh. "We can trace him as we do a ravenous animal, by the blotches where he lay to rest, or by the bloody fragments where he tore his prey. The Irish peasantry still speak of this man with those vivid impressions, which, of all passions, terror alone can leave. They allude to him in the living phraseology, which only that can prompt which moves us nearly, and, therefore, moves us strongly ; they allude to him, not as if he were a shadow in the dimness of two centuries, but as if he were an agent of recent days. Stop, as you pass a laborer on the road- side in Ireland ; ask him to tell you of the ruin before you on the hill. You will hear him describe it in language far more poetical and far more picturesque than I can copy, but somewhat in manner such as this : " Och, sure, that's the castle o' the Cogans, that Cromwell, the blackguard, took away from them. But maybe they did'nt fight, while fightin' was in them, the poor fellows ; barrin' there's no strivin' agin the devil, the Lord presarve us, and everybody knows that Cromwell, bad win to him, was hand and glove wid the ould boy ; musha, faix he was, as sure as there's fish in the say, or pigs in Connaught. There's the hill where the wag- abond planted his cannon. There's the farm which the Blaneys got for sellin' the Pass, the white-livered thraitors ; there's the brache which he made in the walls, where brave Square Cogan — a bed in heaven to his soul — was killed, wid his six fine darlant sons, as strappin' boys as you'd meet in Spirit of Irish History. 21 a long summer's day. Och, wirra, wirra, struli ; bud Cogan was a man it would do your heart good to see ; my vardi av, it wouldn't keep the frosht out of your stomach the blackest day in winther ; full and plinty were in his house, and the poor never went impty from his door ; as I heard my grand- mother say, that heard it from her grandmother, that, be the same token, was Cogan's cousin. Och, bud, with fair fighting, Cogan didn't fear the face of man, and, sure enough, when Cromwell commanded him to surrender, he tould infarnal coppernose, he'd ate his boots first ; throth he would, and his stockings after, av there was the laste use -in it ; bud the man's not born'd of woman, that can stand against a whelp of hell ; and, av ould Nick iver had a son, my word for it bud his name was OHver." The cause of the Stuart, that family so faithless to their friends, and so fatal to themselves, next made Ireland the battle-ground of faction. Again her green hills were sown with blood ; again her pleasant valleys were scorched with famine. The infatuated Catholics joined that wretched im- becile, James the Second, while the Protestants, with a wiser policy, gathered to the standard of William the Dutchman, the son-in-law of James, and his opponent. The fortunes of James received their first blow at the siege of Derry in the north ; were staggered at the battle of the Boyne, midway in the kingdom ; and were fatally decided at the taking of Limerick in the south. The fall of Limerick closed the war. James had fled ; and WilHam remained the victor. Limer- ick did not go out of the contest ignominiously. Even the women threw themselves into the breach, and for that time saved the city ; nor did the city, itself, surrender, but on terms which comprehended the whole of Ireland. Limerick capitulated on the part of aU the Irish Catholics. The capitulation was but signed, when a large French fleet ap- peared in the river, with extensive supplies and numerous 22 Giles' Lectures. reinforcements. But with the good faith of honorable men, fifteen thousand laid down their arms, and were true to their engagements. The terms of this treaty were fair and advan- tageous. They secured to the Cathohcs the rights of proj?- erty, of liberty, and of conscience, and all things seemed to augur well for peace, for unity, and for happiness. Had the victors been merciful with power, and generous with success, had they been just, nay, had they been wisely politic, Ireland might have been tranquillized, and her pros- perity might have commenced. But it was an age of faction, and faction was true to its vilest instincts. The legislation that followed this event, was intensely exclusive, and it was exclusively Protestant. The whole power of the country was in the hands of a Protestant aristocracy. The first action, then, of the Parliament in Ireland, after the reduction of Limerick, was to annul its treaty, a treaty as solemn as any that history records ; a treaty made in the face of armies, and which pledged the faith of nations. And, not only that, but it was followed by a code of laws, which would have been a shame upon the reign of Nero ; a code of laws which made, at one time, the Catholic religion a capital offence ; and which, when greatly mitigated, denied to Catholics the means of education, the claims of property, and the rights of citizens. Legislation like this was, of course, disastrous. Strange, indeed, if it were not. If it were not, history were a lie, and all experience a dream ; if it were not, human nature were, itself, a confounding delusion. It was disas- trous to the Protestant religion, which it pretended to sup- port ; it was disastrous to the interests of England, which it promised to maintain ; it was disastrous, also, to the un- hai^py people, whose energies it crushed ; but, that the law of compensation should not utterly fail — that some evidence should be given to earth, that even on earth crime does not go unpunislied — it was disastrous to its enactors. Spirit of Irish History. 23 Man cau never separate himself from his fellows. He can never make their evil his good. The darkness which he draws upon his country, vdH overshadow his own home ; and the misery which he prepares for his neighbor, will be misery for himself. So it was with the authors of these evil laws ; so it ever must be, while moral right binds actions to appropriate consequences, while a God of eternal justice governs the world by principles which are as immutable as they are holy. The possessions which rapine had acquired, and which wrong controlled, did not give such return as the covetous heart desired. By confiscation, by penalties, by all modes of harsh restriction, the kingdom Avas drained of its native intelhgence and native strength. Wealth of senti- ment, wealth of capital, wealth of skill, wealth of industry, wealth of muscle, were driven from the country, or paralyzed within it. The high chivalry w^hicli generous treatment would have retained, directed foreign courts, commanded foreign ai-mies ; while a hardy yeomanry that indulgence could have made loyal forever, carried bravery to the ranks of England's enemies, and labor to their markets. And, observe with what a solemn retribution the conse- quences return upon the class who enacted or favored this kind of legislation. The laws against Catholics pressed upon the whole tenantry of Ireland, for the whole tenantry of Ire- land were, and are Catholic. The laws, therefore, against the Catholics, were so many enactments against the interests of the landlords themselves ; were, in fact, so many tariffs against their wealth. Uncertainty of title disturbed industry; the soil withered under imperfect cultivation ; absenteeism of proprietors left the laborers without protection, and the owners without profit. Only meagre harvests were gathered from exhausted fields. Trade had no scope in impoverished cities ; the peasantry were starving, and the gentry were poor. This gentry, poor, but luxurious, lived upon estates 24 Giles' Lectures. that were miserabl}' deteriorated, as if tliey were in pristine freshness ; and doing nothing to enrich the soil, they would liave fi'om it the utmost rents ; and thence they became indebted, and thence they became embarrassed. To dig they were not able, but to beg they were not ashamed. They begged pensions, places, sinecures ; and no work was so unjust or mean, which they were not willing to do for government, if government was liberal enough in patronage. Gaming, gormandizing, profanity, licentiousness, became aristocratic distinctions. Honor there was to kill, but not honesty to pa}"" ; and the man who shot his friend for an inadvertent word, could bear, if anything was to be gained by it, the reiterated insolence of a viceroy's menial. The wages being ready, here was the hireling ; and the slave, in his turn, became the tyrant. The self-respect which he lost as a time-server, ho sought, after the manner of all low natures, to regain as an op]oressor ; and the hardship of the forlorn serf paid for the mortification of the suppliant ofiicial. These men who, in element and charitable duties, might have been as gods, enjoying and dispensing blessings, taking the evil way of persecution, found their due reward in being despised by those whom they served, and in being detested by those whom they governed. If any one shall think this tone exaggerated, then I ask him to look at the Memoirs of Sir Jonah Barrington, in which he may study, at his leisure, the manners of the Irish gentlemen in the last century ; the picture, too, is painted by one of themselves ; by one who shared all their partial- ities for combat and for claret, for pensions and for place. Events rapidly proceeded to bring relief to Ireland, and partially to bring fi'eedom. CornwaUis was captured at Yorktown, and America sprung into her glory fi'om a prov- ince to a nation. The volunteers arose in Ireland, and forty thousand, with arms in theu' hands, demanded independ- Spirit of Irish History. 25 euce. Henry Grattan gave their passions sublime expres- sion. Corruption was startled from the apathy of indulgence, and the guilty wei'e struck with fear as with the voice of a prophet. Grattan called Ireland up fi*om the dust of most sei-vile degradation. He put brave words into her mouth, and a new hope into her heart ; and although upon his own lips the words afterwards sunk into complaint, and the hope withered to despondency, he was not the less heroic on that account. Speaking at one time of Ireland, he asserts that she is a nation. S^jeaking of her again, he says, " I sat by her cradle, I followed her hearse ; " but always he was her champion, and he was her friend. Lowly as she was Avhen he entered upon life, he determined that she should not so remain. He caused her to arise, aug-ust and majestic, before her tyrants, bound as she was with their sackcloth. He called on her to assume her might, and taught her the strength that yet slumbered in her breast. He was the fearless accuser of her enemies. He dragged the villains into open light, that trampled on her rights, and that bat- tened on her miseries. He loved her with an enthusiasm that only death could quench. She was the passion of his soul, the devotion of his life. Mighty in his eloquence, ho was yet mightier in his patriotism. The cfi'ects of his eloquence are left in the history of his country ; and in me it would be vain, as it would be imper- tinent, to describe, in my feeble words, the power of such speech as his — speech that nxade the proudest quail — speech that shivered and prostrated the most able and the most iniquitous faction, which personal selfishness and political corruption ever banded together in gainful wickedness. Rapid, intense, scornful, indignant, his spirit was formed for contest. Fiery in passion, and brilliant in intellect, his antithetic language shot forth as Hghtning, as beautiful and as fatal. Of stern and stoic grandeur, he was the Ileformer 26 Oiks' Lectures. who was wanted among evil, exalted, and educated men. He was not of the gladsome fancy, which gathers flowers and weaves a garland ; he was of the impetuous temper which rises upon the storm, and plays among the clouds. "With individuals, he may not always have been in the right, and with his country he was never in the wrong. The French Revolution came, then, to rock political Europe with its tremendous earthquake. Hoary dynasties rocked on their foundations. Decrepid legitimacy trembled and looked aghast. The terrible insurrection of 1798 brought fresh desolation to Ireland. Some interludes of jail and gibbet being gone through, an afterpiece was added to this horrible drama in 1830, signalized by the death of Lord Kilwarden, and by the execution of the noble-hearted Emmett. You all know the story of his heroism and his love ; you know how he fell in the prime of a most manly nature ; you know how a true and beautiful spirit laid her broken heart upon his grave. Your own Washington Irving has told you this in words of rainbow light ; your own Irving, whose liberal geniiis loves the good of every land ; and when he gives their annals, none can add beauty to the record. You have the ashes of an exiled Emmett among you ; shrouded on the soil of liberty, he lies in sacred sleep. You gave him in life a freeman's home ; in death you have given him a patriot's grave. Among the mighty spirits which have been lights to Ire- land, I will mention one who, in this sad period, was pre- eminent. I allude to Curran, the glory of the Irish bar. Most exalted in his oratory, and most generous in his use of it, he was ever what the true man would wish to be, if his power enabled him — the defender of liberty, the champion of the wronged. With a moral intellect of the widest grasp, he had an imagination of subtle delicacy and of gorgeous wealth ; and this intellect, iiiipulaivc with a superhiunan spirit of Irish History. 27 fervor, and this imagination, lyrical as the very soul of poetry, became, iu their union, an enthusiasm that dared the loftiest heights and gained them. But, though soaring, it was not solitary. If it mounted upward to the skies, it was borne thither on the aspirations of all generous interests. It carried others to its own proud climbings ; and they, for the moment, transported from the lower earth, burned with its electric fire, and became godlike in its communicated lustre. How various is the eloquence in which that opulent spirit found expression. It is wit, ready and exhaustless ; piercing as the pointed steel, or lambent as a ray of light ; now playful as a gleeful child, and then mischievous as a merry fiend. It is humor, in all queer analogies, in all shapes of oddity, in all hghts and hues of fantasy. It is sarcasm, which lashes its victim to despair. It is pathos, which wrings the heart ; which touches it in every nerve where agony is borne ; which searches it in every fold where the smallest drop of grief can lie concealed. It is denun- ciation. And here he is greatest of all. How does he exhibit the wrong-doer ! How does he show the transgressor his ways! How does he display the tortures of an accusing conscience, the sickness of a guilty soul, the apathy of habit, the damnation of remorse ! And no matter who the wrong-doer is, let him tremble if Curran is to paint his deeds. Proud he may be in titles, boundless in wealth, hardened in the bronze of fashion ; if he is human, the orator's words shall transfix him ; wherever feeling has a sense, a barb shall rankle ; and for the time, at least he shall stand before the world, naked, bleeding, shiver- ing, and despised— to his species a thing of scorn, and to himself a thing of shame. Ofiice shall no more protect him than rank. Is he a judge, who sullies the purity of the bench with the malice of a partisan ? His ermine shall not guard him from the advocate's indiguation ; and the tribunal 28 Gilcs^ Lectures. which he disgraces shall, in its very loftiness, but make his ignominy the more conspicuous. Neither shall a villain find a shield in the baseness of his work or the obscurity of his condition. Is he a spy, Avhom government pays for perjury, the hireling violator of human faith and human nature — a wretch that panders for the gallows, and steeps his feet in widows' and in orphans' tears? Cased and coated as his heart may be in adamant, callous as may be his brutish face, stolid as may be his demon-soul, Curran could cleave the armor of his wickedness, and shake his miscreant spirit with fear, when it had lost even the memory of a virtue. It is not, however, the power of Curran's eloquence, but the purpose of it, which has relation to this lecture. It was for the weak against the strong. Curran lived in times which tried men's souls, and many souls there were Avhich did not stand the trial. Some, with coward fear, sank before the storm of power ; and others, with selfish pliancy, dis- solved in the sunshine of patronage. But Curran was brave as he was incorruptible. In 1798, he labored with a martyi-'s patience, and with a hero's courage. He pleaded under the shadow of the scaii'old. He defended one client over the dead body of another ; and while the victim is expiring on the gallows, for whom yesterday he struggled, with no hope to cheer his labor, he struggles as manfully to-daj'- for one who will be the victim of to-morrow. He was upright, when honor was rebellion ; he was true, when integrity was trea- son ; he stood by the accused and the doomed, when to pity was to participate ; and he was loyal to liberty, when even to name her was almost to die. The year 1829 saw the Cathohc emancipated, and now ho stands with other JBritish subjects, in equality of privilege and equality of grievance. The later history of Ireland has had three grand epochs, and in each has had a man fashioned for the time. In 1781, the Parliament of Ireland contended Spirit of Irish Hi at or y. 29 for independence ; then there arose the majestic spirit of immortal Grattan ; all that was claimed, he asserted, and all that he asserted, he achieved. In 1798, the liberty of the citizens was set at nought ; the impetuous voice of Curran arose above the storm, and if it was not able to qiiell injustice, it bore witness to the right. In 1829, six mill- ions were emancipated, and with that sublime event the name of O'Connell is forever associated. But, not with that year or that event alone, the name of O'Connell is con- nected with the indefatigable struggle of half a century ; it is not only sacred in the liberty of his country, but in the liberty of man ; and the famo of it will become wider and brighter, as freedom covers the earth, and a slave is not known in the world. The historical aspect of our country presents us with nothing but disunion and mismanagement ; and the social to which we must now briefly refer, presents us with noth- ing better. We observe in the structure of Irish society, not merely that the elements of it are fragmentary, but antagonistic. There is, for instance, little of a native aristocracy ; and there is no country on the earth which so respects and reverences its mighty names. The old families, Celtic and Saxon, were successively' stripped of their estates. It was asserted by Chancellor Fitzgibbon that the island had changed owners three times in a cen- tury. The aristocracy in Ireland have, therefore, remained away from the people. Their existence is entirely a separate one ; their education is distinct ; their feehngs are anti- national ; their sympathies are foreign ; they are aliens after two centuries of possession. No people are more easily governed than the Irish through their imagination and affections. Appeal successfully to these faculties, and you may rule them as you please. If you would have power with the Enghsh, appeal to their interest ; show 30 Giles' Lectures. to tliem that you can lessen their taxes, and that yon can increase their loaf. If you would gain power with the Irish, appeal to their sentiments ; show them that yoa would bx'ing back to Ireland, the glory that has departed ; that you would re-string their national Harp, and re-kindle her national oratory ; that you would re-build the Halls of Tara, and flood them with the music of her bards ; that you would re-open the doors of her senate, and lill its courts with the eloquence of her statesmen. But, to understand a people, you must live with them ; nay, you must have within you the hfe of their life ; and without this understanding of a people, you will vainly try to work on theu' sentiments. You can work on their sentiments only by sympathy. You must freely appreciate their virtues ; you must have that also in you, which can penetrate the spirit even of their vices. Herein was the power of O'Conncll. It was not all in the genius of the man ; nor was it all in the wrongs of the government. Much of the secret lay in the profound insight which ho ever had of the character of the people ; the complete identification of his nature with theirs. His words were resistless, for they were the echoes of the hearts around him, and with the beatings of these hearts, his own heart kept time. The Irish aristocrat has no such unity with the people ; naj, he has scarcely an external acquaintance with them. He has not the affection of a native, and he wants the impartiality of a stranger. His life is a sort of penance for his birth. He would not be an Irishman, and he cannot be an Englishman. He looks splenetically across the channel, and mourns that his trooper-ancestor gave him any thing in Ireland but its acres. He then turns a sullen gaze upon the soil on which he has had the misfortune to be born, and which has had the still greater misfortune to bear him. He is to his tenantry Spirit of Irish History. 3] not so much a protector as a superior ; a claimant rather than a patron ; an exactor more than an improver ; always a receiver, and seldom a bestower. This opposition of interior feeling between the higher and lower classes in Ireland, is lamentably exemplified by a correspondiug contrast of external circumstances. Irish society is a living antithesis, of which the peer and the l^easant are no fanciful extremes. The peasant shows what privations hfe can endure ; the peei", with what indulgence it can become a burden. The peasant works, but does not eat ; the peer cats, but does not work. The food of the peasant is, also, the food of the brutes ; that of the peer were a banquet for the gods. The peasant so^YS, and reaps, and gathers into barns, and carries the crop to market, and carries nothing home ; the peer sows not, reaps not, gathers not into barns, carries not the crop to market, and has all the gain without even the trouble of carrying it home. It makes some difference to the peer whether his territory is fertile or barren ; for he has what ever it produces ; it makes none to the peasant, for small crop or abundant, his lot is still the same, to toil and to starve. The manor houses of the Irish gentry are situated in the midst of extensive domains, surrounded by lofty walls, and guarded by surly gate- keepers. The finest of these places are often girded by deserts of the most squalid misery. The owners are in them on rare occasions, and then, it is to revel in the midst of want. Suppose yourself a guest on one of these occasions. Look around you on the scene ! The princely park without, and the ornamented halls within ; slope, woodland, garden, hill, dale, and river, glowing in the outward prospect ; the inward view, that of a kingly residence furnished for every refined desire ; adorned with mirrors, statues, pictures, re]->lonished 82 Giles' Lectures. with whatever can dehght the fancy or feast the senses. Think, then, of a tenant peasantry, physically more deplor- able than the serfs of Turkey' ; and when you have thus thought, look calmly on the assembly before you. Here, gathered at joyous night, is a throng of the noble and the fair ; men of gallant bearing, and women of surpass- ing beauty. Lights stream over decorations which almost transcend what Eastern story feigned of Eastern magic ; music floats upon the perfumed au*, and grace rules the mazes of the dance. When you recollect the haggard country through which yoxi passed, to arrive at such a mansion ; when you recollect the hovels that afflicted you on the way, the sad faces that stared you as you went along, that constantly subdued your reveries to grief ; when you recollect the fever and the hunger, that, as you traveled by then, appalled your very soul ; all that you see in this abode of grandeur appears unnatural ; it seems a brilliant, and yet an agonizing vision ; an illusion by some evil genius, powerful to delight, terrible to destroy. You cannot recon- cile it with your ordinary associations — with your sentiments of moral harmony ; it is incongruous ; a rejoicing in an hospital, a feast in a famine-ship, a dance in a charnel-house, a bridal in a sepulchre ; your heart becomes convulsed, your head giddy, your imagination confused and sick. You look upon a social class that bewilders you, and you turn from the whole with loathing and disgust. The social system in Ii-eland is disjointed and defective. The great proprietors are absentees, and the small ones are unpoverished. Another decisive evil in the social state of Ireland is, the want of due gradation. "Where there is not general equahty, there ought to be successive ranks. But society in Ireland exists only in extremes. The two main divisions of it are the owners of the soil, and its occu- piers ; and between these there seems a gulf, which one Spirit of Irish History. 33 cannot pass to companion with the other. To fill up this wide interval, there is Avanted an active and enter- prising middle class. Except in the learned professions, social eminence in Ireland belongs only to the owner- ship of land. Money in Ireland has not accumulated into capital ; industry has not risen to ambition ; and, thence, wliile in England men climb from labor to aristocracy, in Ireland men descend from aristocracy to labor. But the most grievous need of Ii*eland is the want of variety in occupation. Externally, Ireland is finely situ- ated for commerce ; internally, she is admirably consti- tuted for manufactures. Commerce and manufactures would not only train the people to skill and independence, but relieve the soil from the pressure of an excessive jDopu- lation. The soil is the only source of life, and out of this fact come many evils ; one of the worst is that of extreme competition. Evei-y vacant sj)ot becomes an object of deadly strife. It is generally given to that person who offers the highest price and shouts the loudest promise. He soon finds out in his despair that he has undertaken too much. The landlord has spent no capital on it ; the tenant has none to spend ; and of the produce which is torn from its savage nakedness, the bulk goes to the absent proprietor and to the Estabhshed Church. The soil deteriorates ; the landlord will not lower his demands ; the tenant cannot pay them, and he is ejected. The land- lord gives his place to another, and the ruined tenant knows not where to find a shelter. Though law has driven him out from his familiar hearth, nature compels him to return. He will prowl around the miserable abode that gave his poverty a refuge — the hut that gave his little ones a home — the roof that shielded the mother of his children. He cannot reason ; his blood rushes back to its fountains ; his whole nature is excited ; his brain is convulsed in de- 34 Giks^ Lectures. lirium ; he is mad in his houseless distraction ; and in his madness, he slays, perhaps, his blameless successor. His former landlord is, possibly', a magistrate. This magistrate hands him to the constable ; the constable delivers him to the judge ; after due forms of trial, the judge consigns him to the executioner ; and the executioner closes the tragedy. This is but one of a hundred, that vary little in plot or incident. The scaflfold is the stage, with which, as yet, Iri'lund has been the best acquainted ; and on that she has witnessed many a terrible drama — black, silent, bloody, and monstrous ! Who does not see in these circumstances, rudely as I have described them, the soux'ces of enormous evils ? Pas- sions, the deepest and most lasting, were kindled and kept burning by crushing men upon their own soil — by irritat- ing them in those sentiments that all but the basest hold in reverence. Education was not only withheld, but pun- ished ; trade was not advanced, but restricted ; home in- dustry was suppressed, and foreign commerce was forbid- den ; and yet, men are now wondering that this work of folly and of guilt should still be felt. Why, it is not greatly over half a century since any change for the better even began. But the effects of such a Avork does not pass away in fifty 3'ears. What other eifects than those which we have seen could be expected? Discontent, that outlives the provocation ; anger, that survives the wrong ; disorganization, that fol- lows servitude and misrule ; ignorance, deep and wide- spread, that bad legislation had long compelled, and that the best cannot hastily remove ; idleness, that law made a habit or a necessitj- ; poverty, coming out of idleness ; crime and misery-, issuing from both — a complication of en- tangled dilHculties that shakes the hope of the philanthro- pist, and that balHes the wisdcnn of the statesman. Spirit of Irish Ili.s'lori/. 35 But tlio evils iiidicato their own remedies ; and it is en- couraging to see, in the progress of recent events, that national instincts are taking the direction that will grad- ually ameliorate national calamities. The Irish people must be respected ; and they mxist be practically respected ; they must have their duo share in the legislation of the empire, and they must bo fully represented, according to their numbers, their power, and their interests. There must grow up in Ireland, too, a social unity. Men of the same atmosphere must learn to love, and not to hate each other ; they must join heart and liand, to promote the good of their common country ; they must have hope for what is to come ; they must have pardon for what is jiast. The law of tenure must bo changed ; the tenant must bo protected. The landlord shall not bo denied his rights ; but he must be made to feel his duties. If ho will not bo true to his obligations, like all criminals, he ought to meet with punish- ment ; and the punishment ho could most be made to feel, would be punishment on his purse. This, when written, was prophesy; much of it is now history; and the landlords have so contrived matters as to prepare the punishment for themselves. Relieve the land of the horrible pressure that is on it ; call in the amount of stalwart nuiscle that withers away in idleness to healthy manufactures ; let the young men and maidens that wander over earth for leave to toil have but that liberty given them x\i)on their own green island, and I shall challenge the world to show a happier or a handsomer race — men more generous, or women more lovely. Oh that all classes and all creeds would unite in a broad and generous sentiment of nationality ; not a nationality of vanity and prejudice, but a nationality of brotherhood and peace. This would bo for Ireland the day of her regeneration. To tlio eye, sho is fair, indecnl, among the 86 (jriles^ Lectures. nations ; but to the heart, her beauty has been covered with sadness. Her fields are hixuriant, and her hills are green ; yet the lot of her children has been in tears and blood. History, whose work at best is but melancholy, has writ- ten her story in despair. Hunger has lingered in her valleys ; sickness in her dwellings ; sin and madness in her secret places. Nature has given her a great largeness of bounty. Cattle cover her plains ; the horn of plenty has been emptied on her vales ; but sorrow and a curse have rained a blight on all. The airs of heaven blow upon her freshly ; but they swell no sails, except those Avhich are to bear her children into exile. The glorious sea girds her about ; but it washes the shores of solitary harbors, and dashes an unloaded wave upon a virgin sand. A race of no mean capacities have lived in huts unworthy of the savage, and upon food almost too wretched for the brutes. Ought it to be thus ? Is this the design of nature ? Is this the order of Providence ? Is this a fatal and perpetual necessity ? No, no, it is against the design of nature ; it reverses the order of Providence ; and the only necessity that belongs to it, is that which springs from misrule, mismanagement, and disunion. Lot there bo but a united people, and it cannot bo longer thus ; let divisions bo abolished by a holy love of country, combined interests and combined activity will issue in general prosperity ; let party names be lost in Irishman, and Irishman be a word for patriot ; then, the sun of a new era will bathe with glory " the emerald set in the midst of the sea ;" then will the land of a common birth be the land of a common heart ; and then, " Ilowe'or crowns and coronets bo ront, A virtuous populace will riso tlu^ while, And stand, a wall of (hv around lli(>ir much-loved isle." spirit of Irish History. 37 The course of these observations had led us along pain- ful toi^ics, but we will not leave them in despondency. If days which arc gone have left but painful memories, days that are to come may cheer us with bright and gracious hopes. If a soil the most fertile has borne but a starving peasantry ; if noble rivers have flowed unburdened to the sea; if capacious harbors have been ruflled by no freighted keels ; if mines of wealth have slumbered untouched in the sleeping earth ; still, I do not despair for my country. The soil is there yet in its beauty, and its children vnay yet live upon its fullness ; the rivers are yet majestic, and will not always be a solitude ; the broad and sheltered bay that now mirrors but the mountains and the heavens, may yet reflect the snowy drapery of many a gallant ship ; and the hills on which now the ragged and dejected shepherd wan- ders, may j'et yield up their treasures to the light. Nature is not dead ; nature is not dead in the works of creation or in the soul of man ; nature is not dead, but ever in its generous beauty covers and supports us. No foolish pas- sions can dry up the kindly heart of earth, or consume the fatness of the clouds, or shut out the glory of the skies. Nature yet survives — survives in her limitless bounty — sur- vives in her eternal youth ; and the people, though im- poverished, are not destroyed. No wrongs have been able to crush them ; no wars to render them inhuman. From every savage influence they have come forth — not indeed uninjured, but yet not deeply degraded, nor ruthlessly de- praved. From the worst experience in the history of nations they have saved elements of excellence that may be shaped into the noblest civiHzation. From a long and dreary night of bondage they have escaped with the vivid intellect, the cheerful temper, the affectionate spirit, the earnest, the hopeful enthusiasm that springs clastic IVom every sorrow. 38 Gilrs^ Lectures. The hour now seems dark in Ireland, but the light is not quenched ; it is only for a season obscured. The cloud is thick and broad ; it rests heavily over the shivering millions ; it is most dreary, and it seems tilled with threaten- ings ; but the moveless sun is shining tranquilly above it in the benignant and the everlasting heavens. The cloud may break in tempest ; but stillness and beauty will come when the hurricane has spent its strength and the storm has passed away. But no tempest will, possibly, come at all. The cloud may dissolve in rain ; it may give freshness where it had only given gloom, and cool the ardor of the beams which it had excluded. Dark skies bring lightning ; lightning brings the shower ; then comes the sunshine on the grass, and all the tields are sparkhng with glory and with gems. Let mo so think of the moral atmosphere that now hangs around and over Ireland. It is not to continue. God is in his universe, and guides the nations in their way. "We will hold to our goodly trust ; and in the strength of that earnest trust we will firmly believe that He has rich bless- ings yet in store for Ireland. "Where often wq can see nothing but evil, our gracious Father is preparing good; and we will so believe it now for sad, aflUcted, mourning Ireland. Oh land of my heart, of my fathers, and my birth ! I will ever keep it in my thoughts that God is looking down upon you Avitli pity and with grace, and that He will call yon lip more brightly from your calamity. The times, indeed, seem bad, but suilering will leave its blessing. Plenty will come again ; and humility, and gratitude, and mercy, and penitent and softened hearts will come along with it. Peace will be established ; confidence will come with peace ; capital will follow confidence ; employment will increase with capi- tal ; education will be desired ; knowledge will be dift'used ; and virtiie will grow with knowledge. Yet, even if these Spirit of Irish History. BO lhinj:!fs shoukl not soon bo ; if all that is now anticipated, filiould long be hopo deferred, and many a licarfc should sicken in waiting for relief ; yet I will not despond, I will not despond fiu' Ireland; I will not despond for humanity; I will entertain no doubt in the agency which guides the world, and no mistrust in the destiny whorouuto the world moves. IRELAND AND THE IRISH, IN 18 48. The three journals named below are in opposition to the British government in Ireland, but Avith diliereut degrees of antagonism. The Tabid is a paper in the interest of the Roman Catholic Church, and, though English in its spirit and editorship, it sympathizes with the struggles going forward in Ireland. • It denounces the Union, it pleads for Repeal ; but it does not commit itself to any danger of legal prosecution. The Nalion is a journal pledged violently to more than Repeal — peaceably if possible, forcibly if it must be. It contains much spirited writing, and reports of speeches, that defy the legal authorities, and despises aU compromise. This is the organ of " Young Ireland," and of a portion of the physical-force party. Still, though it hints at republi- canism, it does not openly avow it. It professes loyalty to the imperial crown, but disowns the right of the imperial legislature to make laws for Ireland. The real purport of its views is, not simply repeal of the Union, but the abso- lute nullity of the Union. Meagher is its leading geniiTs. 21ic Nation was either not strong enough for Mitchel, or IMitchel was too strong for The Nation, and so he set up The United Irishman. The United Irishman carries the doctrine of resistance out in its most logical consistency and to its In land iiiid f/ic Tris/i. 4\ utmost consequences. It spits upon Uopoal, it cries for independence ; it calls not only I'or a Uiitionul pavlianient, but for national sovereig-nty. It laughs at the "golden lijdc of the crown," and holds no terms with O'Conncll, to whom this phrase, wo believe, is attributed. It scouts Victoria, and mocks Conciliation Hall with as nuicli scorn as it does Conciliation. It demands a republic at any cost; and with fierce earnestness it preaches the gospel of the pike. It tells the starving masses of Ireland that they cannot bo worse oil", and that, with courageous hearts and a strong right hand, they Lave the power to be better off. It goes even beyond a mere republic. It attacks the present laws and distribution of property, reprobates political economy and its theories, and insists on a reorganization. The editor, John Mitchel, is the son of a Unitarian minister, esteemed by all men who knew him while he lived. He closed a good life, and a long and useful ministry, a few years ago, in the town of Newry, in the North of Ireland. His son, John Mitchel, is undoubtedly a 3'oung man of fine talents, ready to do, and dare, and die ; and, if we can judge, prepared for either fortune— for victory or death, the tribune or the scaffold. His eloquence is brief, bold, llery, and (iondeused. If Meagher be the Cicero of the Confederates, Mitchel is the Demosthenes of the Democrats. The Tablet calls him "the Irish Danton," and so far as strong and burning words, that neither modify nor compromise, are concerned, the designation is not unsuitable ; yet those who know him speak of him as singularly gentle in personal temper. It is not our design to enter into either the politics or the purposes of these journals ; but they suggest some remarks on the present condition of Ireland, physical and social. " Ireland '' and " Irish " seem very simple terms, yet do they stand for very complicated things. Ireland, to an American imagination, consists of space extremely limited ; 42 (riks^ Lectures. yet, from its earliest history, that space has been most minutely divided. It would not, in mere space, form a leading State of this Union, yet it was once an empire, comprising kingdoms, princedoms, chieftainries. These kingdoms, princedoms, chieftainries had their respective customs, laws, prejudices, with the feuds and factions that spring from such a constitution. Even now Ireland has her provinces, counties, baronies, in the civil arrangement, with archdioceses, dioceses, parishes, in the ecclesiastical. The Enghsh invaders found Ireland a country of manifold partitions, with a people as subdivided as its surface. "Irish" is a word of most composite signification also. We wonder at the ignorance of writers on this country in their strictures on American character. But surely the ignorance of our own writers on the character of other nations is scarcely less, and much less excusable. We won- der that authors of any intelligence should confound, imder one general idea, the reckless men of the West with the orderly men of the East ; the ardent men of the South with the cool men of the North ; the men who hold slaves, with pecialiar training as well as peculiar institutions, with other men who have no such training and no such institu- tions. Yet we are ourselves in much grosser error in our popular conception of the Irish. We have, in general, no notion of them but as exiles and drudges. " Irish " means •with us a class of human beings whose women do our house- work, and whose men dig our railroads. Judging merely by the senses, we are not much to blame, for these are the relations in which, from infancy, we are accustomed to know them. We have indeed heard of Burke, and Grattan, and Curran, with many other great names besides ; we have a sort of persuasion that these were Irishmen ; but when we try practically to consider them as the compatriots of a mud-covered laborer in tho Ireland and the Irish. 43 bed of a canal, the contrast is too violent, and by no force of imagination can we bring such extremes together. We, as a people, are intolerant of ragged garments and empty paunches. We would replace the rags by decent raiment, and we would fill the paunches with wholesome food; but we liave only small respect for those who come to us in tatters, and who rush to us from famine. We are a people who have had no experience in physical tribulations ; and we do not understand the virtues or the vices which such tribulation can produce. We do not know the fearful selfishness which exceeding want may generate ; but neither do we know the blessed charities which it may exhibit, the holy self-denial which it may manifest. As a consequence, the ill-clad and destitute Irishman is repulsive to our habits and to our tastes. We confound ill-clothing and destitu- tion with ignorance and vice, for thus they are associated among ourselves ; and that fancy is a rare one which can emancipate itself from the power of habit and the impres- sions of experience. The crowds that cross the Atlantic to seek a refuge here are, in general, a ragged contrast to our own well-covered masses ; and, thus rude in external appearance, many find it hard to reach the kindred and im- mortal humanity which is so coarsely tabernacled. Many of us . only look on the outside ; we do not enter into the soul. We observe the ci-ushed animal, but we hold no converse with the hidden spirit ; we have abundance of pity, but we fail in reverence. It is a foolish thing to judge of a building by a brick ; but the folly is j^et greater not to examine even the brick. Irish society is but very partially represented by the por- tions of it that we have the opportunity of seeing. The structure of Irish society has been very variously and gradually built up, and by materials from a great many quarries. First, there was the old Celtic race ; then the 44 Giks^ Lectures. Milesian ; then the Danes ; then the Anglo-NoiTnans and Anglo-Saxons ; then the Scottish colonists sent by the first James ; then the troopers of Cromwell and the boors of the third William. Now each of these successive invasions deposited a new element of discord, and stratum was laid upon stratum of rebellion and confiscation. Out of rebel- lion and confiscation have proceeded perpetual strife and hatred. But among the worst results, we must regard that condition of things as the most unfortunate which trans- ferred the whole soil of the nation to the hands of strangers, and which placed over the people an alien and iinsympa- thizing aristocracy. We have some observations to make on this condition of things as we proceed. The English in the beginning found the Irish broken up among themselves into conflicting factions. This, too, was unhappy. Had it been otherwise — had the Irish been one — had they been con- centrated into a national integrity, as the Saxons were when William the Conqueror gained the battle of Hastings, then either the invaded would have repelled the invader, or one would have absorbed or exterminated the other. Neither of these results followed; and the strange paradox is accord- ingly exhibited in the universe, of a progressive physical amalgamation of the bone and sinew of Ireland with the bone and sinew of Britain, carrying along with it an un- ceasing, an undj-ing hatred of its government. It is there- fore very absurd to speak of the Irish as if they were a single, simple, primitive, unmixed race. The very con- trary is the fact. Perhaps there is not a country on the whole earth so limited in its dimensions, so complicated in its population ; and this, not onl}' in the elements that stiU continue separate, but also in those that have mingled and coalesced. It has been common to ascribe the agitations and dis- orders which so frequently convulse Ireland to the imp a- Ireland and the Irish, 45 tient and turbulent passion of the Celt, to Lis inherent lovo of battle and disturbance, to his unruly and rebellious dis- position. No position was ever more false than this ; not only is it without proof, but against proof. The Celts are not especial rebels ; and, indeed, they never have been. The districts in Ireland most troublesome to Britain have always been those which the British colonized ; and thus it has been from the days of Strongbow to those of MitcheL The region in Avhich Cromwell found his hardest task, and that in which he left the most atrocious memory, was that which had its population from English blood. If England has done Ireland wrong. Providence has brought a chastis- ing retribution on her, by means of her own children. The sins of English fathers are not merely visited on their children, but through their children the visitation comes. The most sanguinary page of Cromwell's campaign in Ire- land, is that which opens at Drogheda and concludes in Wexford. Likewise in 1798, the counties which earliest entered the conflict, and which longest sustained it, were those wherein the descendants of the British chielly resided. Wexford fought with desperation, and fought to the last ; and Vinegar Hill, with its broken Avindmill, remains to this hour a memento of courage and a monument of despair. Let us now take a rapid survey of the two broad divisions of Irish society. We begin with the aristocracy. And by the aristocracy we mean, principally, the owners of the soil ; we jnean, in general, the landlords and their immediate kindred. Most of those who have fortunes sufficiently large live in England, or on the Continent, deserting at the same time their country and their duties. The greater number have inherited their estates by conquest or confiscation ; and they have never become native to the land that gives them luxury, but that denies life to the wretched men who till it. Accident has made them Irish, and their life is a lon'r 46 Giles' Lectures. regret for being so. They scourge the unhappy nation in -which they have had the misfortune to be born, and which has had the still greater misfortune to bear them. The members of this class, who have to stay at home because they are not rich enough to go abroad, constitute the local magistrates, and fill most of the influential local offices. A large majority of the class is utterly bankrupt — insolvent over and over. Most of these men have but the name of property ; for what are called their estates lie under piles of mortgages and incumbrances. Debt has been heaped upon debt, by each generation in its turn, so that it would be as puzzling to a lawyer to discover the original possession, as it would be to a geologist to describe the primitive condition of this planet. Entails, and other artificial contrivances, have long kept estates in families, and held them from the last action of the law on the part of creditors. But even if they could be sold, they would afford only a miserable percentage on the sums for which they have been, time after time, pawned. There is a story of an Irishman who traveled over England Avith a pig of peculiar sagacity and buoyancy. The pig was lean, lank, and rough ; but she had the vigor of a race-horse, and the elasticity of a greyhound. Walls she despised, and gates could not confine her. Her master, each morning, was a little space on his road, when she was after him, and each morning they began a new day most lovingly together. Availing himself of the animal's excellent qualities, the fellow sold her at every stage of his journey, being certain, at each successive sale, that he would have her to sell again. The pig which was thus so often sold was, probably, not honestly come by at first. This elastic animal is no bad representative of landed prop- erty in Ireland ; we leave it to the imagination of our readers to find out the analogy and to apply it. Nature has its laws in society, as irrefragable as those it Ireland and the Irish. 47 has in matter. Not in one case more than in the other can there be any pei'manent violation of them. Soon or late, they vindicate themselves. A state of things like that which "\ve have just described cannot last. It must die of its own corruptions, or it must explode by the force of a pressure that has reached the limit of enduring capacity. The ances- tors of Irish landlords bequeathed them broad domains, but with them they bequeathed titles to them that were written and sealed with blood, guarded by a system of legislation that was shocking to humanity. They be- queathed memories of rankling irritation, which the descend- ants of the injurers were as unable to forget as the descend- ants of the injured ; Avhich the descendants of the injurers were more unwilhng to forgive. Wealth that is acquired by violence is seldom spent with wisdom. Economy is as much the offspring of virtue as of labor. We manage that, and that alone, well, which we gain, not simply by toil, but by honest toil. Let no body of men imagine that they can grow rich by conquest. It is not merely a crime to assume such a position, it is a folly, a delusion — it is a blunder. The most dearly purchased treasure is that which is acquired by the sword. The highest price for land or gold is blood. Every nation which has gained either on such conditions, has perished by thern; and it deserved to perish. The ancestors of the Irish aristocracy, from the Catholic Normans to the Puritan Cromwellians, thus obtained their property ; they left it to their children, adding to it the penal legacy of prodigal extravagance and profligate habits. Our description is general. We know that among the gentry of Ii-eland there are many and noble exceptions : and being exceptions, they have our greater admiration. The most common virtues become subhme, when the oppo- site vices are all but universal. When neglect and oppres- sion of the poor spread over a land, the spots on which they 48 Giles^ Lectures. receive some degree of care and kindness appear as little Edens ; but they are Edens in a desert. We speak of the Irish gentry as a class ; and as a class neither their origin nor training — neither their temper nor circumstances, fit them to conciliate, to foster, or to improve the masses that surround them. They never had power over the hearts of the people ; and that power of coercion which they once possessed, they have not ceased to love, though they have for ever lost it. "We mean, especially, their monopoly of political influence. Their power as proprietors they yet hold and love ; they do not fail to use it either, and to use it as badly as ever. Becoming, as we have seen, deeper in debt with each generation — one anticipating the income of the other — their tastes and desires have, in the same order, been growing more costly. They may have become more refined, but they also have become more expensive. The deadly competition for land in Ireland enables them to raise rents to the highest sum that human labor can produce, and to press down living to the lowest condition that human nature can endure. The tenant is cast upon the ragged soil, to tear from its bosom payment for his master, and starvation for himself. In the latter he always succeeds ; and when he fails in the former, the master, by means of arrears, holds in his hands the power to expel him. The owner spends no capital on the soil ; he builds no houses or offices ; he furnishes no implements ; he pursues no ex- periments in agriculture ; he does not instruct the tenant, either by theory or example ; and when some year worse than others leaves the tenant at his mercy, the mercy that many a landlord shows is to turn him off, with neither allow- ance nor compensation for such improvements as he has struggled in his poverty to make. We fancy some of our readers complaining about the everlasting historical references, to account for the state of Ireland and the Irish. 49 Ireland. "Why, we conceive tliem saj-ing, why this reiter- ation of matters that are gone to the grave of centuries, to explain what our eyes see and our ears hear ? But they are not gone to the grave of centuries ; they were but sown in the living soil of centuries, and now they are ripened into a heavy harvest of a most black and bitter crop. We cannot understand joresent events without understanding their his- torical connection, and least of all can we understand those of Ireland ; and to us, especially, young among the nations, the example of our elders is important. As it is, the lesson that history teaches does not seem entirely needless to us. Recent as is our independent existence, we have gone far in the pathway of the Old World, and, instead of looking to it as a beacon, we seem rather to follow it as a star. It is more our model than our warning ; we study the lesson the wrong way ; and it is well if we do not in that wrong way outrun the instruction. We, too, have our oppressions and our injustice. Under the very shadow of our Capitol, while the welkin rings with gratulations which are to stir with joy the heart of France, a mob gathers to crush free thought — thought dedicated to the widest liberty and to the highest humanity; nay, at the very time th:it shouts of execration were sent across the broad Atlantic to blast a fallen monarch in his exile, tyrants with hearts harder than the hearts of tigers were tearing off their human brothers and sisters from the region of their native affections, con- signing them to a slaverj^ compared with which their former slavery seemed freedom — dead to their agony of spirit, chaining them with iron that did not gall half so terribly as the iron that had entered into their soul ; and all because, prompted by instincts which God and nature had implanted, they sought that freedom for which God and nature had designed them. What a mockery is this ! What right have such men to hoot at Louis Philippe, con- 50 Giles' Led urea. trasted with wliom Louis Philippe is an angel of light? What title have such men to vociferate acclamations for liberty ? Liberty is but insulted by their praise. We, too, seem in a fair way to enthrone the soldier, and to idolize the sword ; to give strength the place of virtue, and victory the place of right. But let us not be deceived. God is no more mocked by nations with impunity than by individuals ; and nations, as well as individuals, wiU reap according to what they sow. We may despise the lesson of history, but we cannot reverse it laws ; and this law is made evident in the records of aU ages. Wrong and right make no ac- count of time; they are certain and eternal : their conse- quences may not be instantly seen, but they are not lost ; nay, they do not even linger. There is but one step from the aristocracy to the peasan- try in Ireland, and that step is over a fearful precipice into an abyss of indescribable, of unimaginable desolation. There are but few intermediate grades to break the view, or to soften the contrast ; it is a yawning gulf, exposed in all its horrors, from which the gazer shrinks back afiVighted, with a reeling head and with quivering nerves. Yet must we, however loath, ask our readers to lean with us for a moment over it. The physical state of the Irish peasantry did not, in past times, seem capable of being lower than it was. Even then it was the lowest which any region of the civiHzed world could present. Their dwellings Avere hovels ; their clothing, rags ; and their food, an almost unseasoned root. But all this was paradise to what their state has been since — to what it is now. The very root which was so despised, we have come to regard almost with reverence ; and when we see how, by the withering of this single root, hundreds of thousands of human beings withered along with it, we can understand how the heatheii Egyptians bowed down to Ireland and the Irish. 51 leeks in worship. The grave of the potato-seed was the grave of men, women, and children ; bnt the potato died knowing not its own existence, while the men, women, and children that perished with it expired in ghastly and con- suming torture, with blank despair of this inhospitable world, yet, thank God! not untrustful of a better. Far off though it was, we heard the low moaning of that despair, for at the extremities of earth the heart of man can feel the pantings of another heart that suffers, and, even where it cannot give relief, it fails not to give pity. Who can faintlj'' picture what even one family must have endured in such circumstances ? Think of them turning their weary eyes around on the arid fields, and vip to the sky, that seemed to grow sickly to them from hour to hour ; awaking in the morning,^ without a morsel to greet them ; watching through the day, counting minute after minute, awaiting the possible rehef that never came, or that came too late ; clasping each other on the filthy straw, or bare cold floor, through the miserable night ; sleeping to dream of feasting, awaking to die of famine. And yet we have not reached the worst part of the case. The most fatal pain lies here, not in the appetites, but in the affections. Look at the emaciated father, who comes in after vain search all day for food, and has nothing to offer his wife and little ones but a meal of unwholesome herbs, picked out of the ditches ; look at him when he can find even these no longer, when competition has consumed them. Has it entered into the heart to conceive of his affliction? Yet is that of the wife and mother even greater, who beholds the manly form bent and wasted of him that had been once her strength and her guide ; who beholds her chickens clustering about her, opening their craving mouths for food, and drooping as they get none. This picture is pale to what the reality must have been : and of such realities there was no small 52 Gi/c'i' Lectures. number. It is to be feared that they have uot 3'et passed ; nay, it is to be feared that some are now passing. The Irish peasant in former days had a hut, such as it was ; but in these days his master hunts him out of it, as if he were a rat, and the land refuses him a hole for shelter. The workhouse is full ; the jail would be relief, and he breaks the law for refuge in a prison ; but by and by crime itself will be as fruitless as charit}', and the prisons will not bear the throngs that seek them. In former days the Irish peasant sat down to his potatoes, and while they laughed in his face, his partner and his offspring laughed around him. His cabin was of mud, covered with sods or straw ; but it gave him a home, and, in general, love and peace abode in it. Nor was hospitalit}'^ absent. No poor-laws existed, yet were beggars fed; no workhouses were in being, yet were beggars lodged ; the pauper had his seat at the peasant's meal, ho had his covering under the peasant's roof. If his condition even then was physically stiU below that of the Russian serf or the negro slave, what shall we say of his present condition ? The Eussian is a filthy creature in all his habits ; but his filth coexists with comfort and abund- ance. His filth is of his own creation, and he remains filthy because he chooses to do so. His dwelling is rude, biit it is warm ; his food is coarse, but it is plentiful. He is in no fear that any landlord will turn him out, for he has the right to continue where he toils, and to die where ho was born. If he must serve the emperor when the em- peror commands, he knows what his lot is, and he does not complain of it. In general, he glories in it ; for to be changed from being a serf into a soldier, is to rise in his own esteem. Without overlooking the degradation of humanity, and the sorrow which slavery inflicts itpon the negro, in the mere matter of bodily well-being, there is no comparison between his state and that of the Irish peasant. Ireland and f/ic Irish. 53 It is the interest of Lis muster that lie sliall liave at least so much care as shall render him a saleable article or a jn-olitable laborer. His master is induced to give him a healthy youth, and he is bound to provide for him in age ; it is his interest even that he shall enjoy mental quiet and contentment, for the more cheerful he is, the more useful. No doubt he is often subjected to cruelty ; but even to the slave Christianity is a protection, for it infuses a sentiment into the moral heart, and creates a power of social opinion, which is stronger than" law — stronger than tyranny; and these, if they do not break the yoke, alleviate bondage. "Unlike the Russian serf, the Irish peasant's home is un- certain, and it is his master's desire not to keep him, but to cast him off ; and while all the power is on one side, there is no acknowledged claim on the other. Unlike the negro slave, the Irish peasant has no hold on the interests of his lord, as he certainly has no hold on his affections. He has no public opinion, in the class to which his lord belongs, to shield him fi'om oppression, and the sympathy which he lias among his own is such as tempts him often to revenge himself by methods always to be lamented. He may stand in manhood or sink in age, there is none but God on whom he can cast the burden of his care ; for among men, those who feel for him and with him are as helpless as himself. We have already stated a sad case, but we know from every week's report, that, at present, other terrible elements are at work. The potato withered last year ; this year the pike is forged and Avhetted. Fierce and dark passions are boiling in the breasts of men, and threaten to burst out in the tempest of civil, bloody strife, with all its hatreds and terrors. Despair has ceased to be quiescent ; it has started up in wildness from its laii', and shakes its Gorgon locks in deadly anger ; it has ceased to wail, it thunders ; and if it does not strike, it grasps its weapon. 54 Giles^ Lectures. It were vain to enter si^ccially into causes wliicli Lave produced effects, such as these we have been describing. Whatever causes we might assign, remote or proximate, there is still an actuality before us of a most appalling character — a whole people starving amidst fertility, and arising in madness to look for hope in the face of death. Before this spectacle, abstract questions lose all their inter- est; our gaze is fascinated by the misery which is before us, which stares on us with horrid eye, and from which we cannot turn away, though Ave look on it with trembling. The plain, open wretchedness is there ; but it so appalls us, that we are unable to inquire or to discuss how it came to be there ; and the babble of discussion on hypotheses to account for hunger and revolt, by men who feed amply and feed at ease, is as offensive to our taste as the affliction itself is painful to our feelings. Whatever series of causes has issued in the effects which we contemplate, we see evidently and with alarm that it cannot stop, that it is not exhausted in these effects. We hope and trust that all these irritating elements may be lost in peaceful amelioration. The British power has many and grave crimes to answer for ; but we should lament with no common lamentation the wound that civilization must receive, not merely in the disruption of the British empire, but in any severe shock to it. The shower of lava that buries a single city, the earthquake that shakes one to pieces, history notes down in words of pathos and sadness that move the heart for ever. But the disorder which should tear to atoms laws, letters, culture, customs — which should crumble to dust beautiful structures of public and private taste — which should reduce to chaos arts of fancy and utility — all of which it has taken centuries to rear — would be a calamity to be compared, not with a shower of lava, a torrent, a hurricane, an earthquake, biit with a deluge which should come down from the black Ireland and the Irish. 55 wratli of heaven, and bury in its flood, not millions only, but the works of millions also for a thousand years. Yet we feel that in the British islands affairs cannot continue as they are. In no part of them arc the people contented ; in Ireland they are mad. They are in the extremit}'^ of ■wretchedness ; it is no wonder they should bo in the ex- tremity of desperation. The Irish people are starving, and yet the Irish soil is not barren. With all the ill treatment which it has to bear, it yet continues rich ; the clouds pour down fatness, and the earth gives forth abundance, yet multitudes do not so much live as wither. The soil is vital, while the people die. It seems a mystery to the inhabitants of this country how thousands should expire of hunger at a time when pro- visions Avere sent away from every port ; and why, while the war-ship went in with charity, the merchant-ship should go out for gain, both freighted with the staff of life. The mystery is easily explained. The manufacture and the com- merce of Ireland consist generally in the production of food and its exportation. The manufacturers are the tillers of the soil, who give in their labor all the capital, and pay high rents besides for that on which they toil. The land- lords are the owners of the soil, who expend no capital, and who take even more than the profit. The land cannot support these two classes as they are at present related. The landlord must have state and luxury, not expending time, or labor, or money, though the tenant, spending time, and labor, and money, has not subsistence. The best of the produce, animal and vegetable, is exported to meet the landlord's demands ; the worst is retained to supply the cultivator's wants. The cultivator must pay or quit. He sells his wheat, his oats, his stock, to pay; he reserves the potato, on which to exist. The potato fails ; the cultivator becomes a pauj^er or a corpse. But all are not thus at once; 50 Giles' Lectures. and so, while whcjit is goiuj;- out from Cork from some to pay the laudlortl, maize is coming in for ahns to others, who haA-e ah-cady paid him. A man Avill feed his pig with potatoes, but he may never feed himself with pig. The man feeds the pig bnt to sell it, and he sells it to pay one Avho had never had trouble in rearing it. Eent not only takes the surplus produeticni of the tiller's labor, but constantly anticipates even more than the whole. It may, then, easily bo seen how the mass of a plentiful general prodtictiveness may be going out from a country, while the mass of its producers are running to the workhouse or famishing iu their cabins. We write practically and prosaically. We should more delight ourselves, iu writing on Ireland, to write poetically; for Ireland has much, indeed, to stir the spirit of poetry. Ireland is a land of poetry. The power of the Past there, over every imagination, renders it a land of romtince. The past is yet an actuality in Ireland ; in all the other parts of the British islands it is a song. The tragedy of Flodden Field moves a Scotchman's feelings, but it does not disturb his business ; the battle of Bannockburn calls iip his en- thiisiasm, but, though it keeps him late at the bottle, it never keeps him late from the counting-house. The im- prisonment of the poet-king Jamie softens his affections, but it leaves his judgment perfectly clear on bills of exchange and the price of stocks. Even the battle of Culloden is gone long ago to the calm impartiality of things that were. The Welshmen take English money without remorse, and say not a word about the assassin. King Edward, and the murder of their bards. Even the English themselves have but faint remembrance of the heptarchy, the revolt of the barons, the wars of the roses, the death of the tirst Charles, and the abdication of the second James. But events do not pass Ro rapidly in Ireland. Ireland is a country of tradition, Ireland and the Irish. 67 of meditation, and of great idealism. It lias niucih of tho Eastern feeling of passion added to fancy, w'llh continuity i)f habit, as in the East, connected Avilh both passion and fancy. Monuments of war, princedom, and rciligion cover the surface of the land. The meanest inan lin<^'erH under the shadow of piles which tell him that his fathers were not slaves. Ho toils in the field or he walks on tho highways with structures before him that have stood the storms of time, through which tho wind echoes with the voice of centuries, and that voice is to his heart the voicte of soldiers, of scholars, and of saints. We Avould pen no ehilhng word respecting the impulse of nationality that now seems astir in Ireland. We honor every where the spirit of nationality. We honor the glorious heroism which, for an idea and a conviction, if it cannot do, can always dare and die. Much there is in Ireland that wo most dearly love. We love its music, sweet and sad, and low and lonely ; it comes with a pathos, a melancholy, a melody, on tlie pulses of the heart, that no other music breathes, and while it grieves, it soothes. It seems to Jlow with long complaint over the course of ages, or to grasp with broken sobs through the ruins and fragments of historic thought. We are glad with the humor of Ireland, so buoyant and yet so tender ; quaint with smiles, quivering with sentiment, pursing up the lips while it bedews the eyelids. Wo admire tho bravery of Ireland, which may have been broken, but never has been bent — which has often been unfortunate, but which never has been craven. We have much affection for tho Irish character. We give unfeigned praise to that purity of feeling which surrounds Irish women in tho humblest class, and amidst the coarsest occupations, Avith an atmosphere of sanctity. We acknowledge with heartfelt satisfaction that kindred love in the Irish poor, that no distance can weaken, and that no time (jan chill. We feel 58 Giles' Lectures. satisfied with our Imnianitj^ when we see the lowty servant- girl calling for her wages, or drawing on the savings' bank for funds, to take tears from the eyes of a widowed mother in Connaught, or fears from the soul of an aged father in Munster. We behold a radiance of grandeur around the head of the Irish laborer, as he bounds, three thousand miles away, at the sound of Eepeal, at the name of O'Connell ; and yet more as his hand shakes, as he takes a letter from the post-oiSce, which, rude as it may be in superscription, is a messenger from the cot in which his childhood lay — is an angel from the fields, the hills, the streams, the mountains, and the moors wherein his boyhood sported. "We remem- ber Avith man}' memories of delight, too, the beauties of Ireland's scenery. "We recollect the fields that are ever green ; the hills that bloom to the summit ; the streamlets that in sweetness seem to sing her legends ; the valleys where the fairies play; the voices among her glens, that sound from her winds as with the spu-its of her bards ; the shadows of her ruins at moonlight, that in pale and melan- choly splendor appear like the ghosts of her ancient heroes. "We would, could we choose our theme, rather hnger on the beautiful songs of Moore than on the prosecutions of Meagher or of Mitchel ; and if in this paper we have dwelt more upon the physical and social wants of Ireland than on her higher and more ideal qualities, it is because the immediate pressure of present events has left us neither soul nor strength to do otherwise. But what is to come out of this pressure ? "We ask the question with fear and doubt. Is Ireland to come in con- flict with England? "We cannot always trust rumor, but rumor is at present dark and ominous. The event may not come ; but the very sound of it is fearful. War, in any way, is a monstrous calamity; but civil war is a calamity that transcends imagination. War between England and Ireland and the Irish. 50 Ireland would be a civil war — there is no disguising it — and a civil "war of the worst description. We ask not which party would be right, but still we reiterate that this would be among the greatest of calamities. We do not inquire what title England has to govern Ireland, but we do ask what means Ireland has to combat England. We think that in revolutions, as in all human movements, there are certain ethical conditions, as well as prudential ones, which true men and wise will always respect. War has its morals as well as peace. Moreover, as war is of all controversies the most alllicting, and it is that whi(;h most involves innocent persons who have had no part in bringing it about, who yet may sul'ler the worst of its consequences, it should be the last, as it should be the most solemn, of human resolves. And if war is not to be sustained by civil- ized measures — if there is no guaranty that humanity even in its last strife shall be respected, to originate it is to assume a terrible resj)onsibility. If citizen is to butcher citizen — if the revolters are to exterminate the loyal, and the loyal to show no mercy to the revolters — if one has no power to compel the other even to military moderation, alas, alas for him who sets on the strife ! Ivcvolution may be an accident ; but if it be a calculation, it should bo a very s(jber calculation ; at best, it should be a very sad one. The simple fact, that a man thinks little of his own lite, gives him no title to our respect ; for the lowest of the human family have been found in this predicament. We have seen culprits at the bar stand up to receive the sen- tence of death, and even among the basest we have noticed those who listened to the sentence perfectly calm, and the most unmoved. When the lives of others are concerned, the man who cares nothing for his own often the longest hesitates. With the most determined conviction of the rierht, it is the thing most soi-rowful boneath the stars to 00 ailts' iirturts. liftYo brothers of tho same soil uuvkini* u rod sea witli tJio life-stroiuus of OiU'h other's hearts, m uhioh, \vith oursos and detestation, botli sink in despair together. Then, in oases tliat involvo vast consoquouees both to masses and to individuals, the pnideutial does, in tho liighost sense, beoiuno othieal ; so that ^Yhat is e\tren\ely danger- ous is oxtroinolv wrong. ^Vhat wo tho moans and resonrees of war, at present, in tho war-party of Ireland against Kngland? This is not an unwise question, for He who was best auvl wisi\>t has said. "AVhat king, going to make war against auother king, sitteth not down tirst and eonsulteth whether ho bo able with ten thousaaid to moot him that oometh ag'jiinst him Avith twenty thousjuid?" They wlio wmild by foivo deliberately rovohitiouizo, must, if truo, thoroughly ponder this question, aud in tho groat court of conseioncQ tliov must not only ponder, but decide. A physical struggle with Kngland, as n more physicsU struggle, would to rt thoughtful nuvn just now present a serious case within tliis court, and outside of it tho consoquences would bo most solemn. Knghuid is at peace. England is, on the whole, prudent as to her colonies and her foreign relations, I'^nglaud has tleets and armies compactly organii:ed aud tlioroughly disciplined. Englsuid impels all tlio organic machinery of tho law and of power. "Within Ireland sho has a nnnierous party, and tho nvost consununate statesman- sliip, which would oppose Irisli nationality ; the most \etorai\ soldiership, which would light ag-jvinst Irish inde- pendence, would bo of Irisli productton. Tho composite nature v>f the Britisli empire, which might appear to be a weakness, is in resUity a principle of strong"th. And this, by a nn-olutionsuy thinker, should bo considered in relation to the »j«/t»nW of the Britisli army. Then> is no tuxny in tho world in which tho soUlier is so sopsvrated from tho citizen as in tho Britisli. There is no Iir/it)i(l ivu{ the Irish. bl anny in llio world, whii'li, iVom i(s (•oiiipoiiiulcd (•iKvnici.i-, tho }4'i)Yt'i-niU(Mil, i'!in bctliM- wield. A man IVdiu lll(^ Nurtli of Scotland may stand in the I'links luvsido a. man IVom IIk* South of l'ai;;Iand ; bot.ii may Ix^ opixiscd to an Irish in snr>4(>nt be (H)rdially \vilhM<^' to hIiooI iiim, and, if can^u* donuuid, to shoot (^icli otluu'. Tin* army iM co mixed, from localities, r(^li'^ion.s, ])rejudiM, that, it haa no unity of spiritual wiMdimcnt or of Htx-ial purpoHO ; it [oiwh not to ruHli a-Miinst tho d(Mullic.st rcHista,m'(\ but it would not ihiro to disobey the nmst faintly whispered cinnmand. I'lnc;laiid can uso tliin j^ij^faidJc inKtnunent. It is for those who woidd lead In^liuul into a Avar, to tliiidi \vhat. Ireland can brin;;' against it. I'lnv.land has a tremendous artillery, both on the laud and on the N(^a. Nor is her sti(Mi;;th in [oVi.-o ahnn^. SliO luiH on her side the fears of the timid, and tJa^ hopes of tlio aspiriuf^" ; tJm distinction that allures the ambitaous, aiul the riches that bribe tlu^ sordid. Jf, howdvcr, tlu^'o b(^ cthica,l and prndciitial conaidcvationn to 1)0 tak(iM into view on tlni .side of r(\siHtan('(», thei'o a.ro ilioso of inlinilely inor(> solemn obli;;a.t ion on the side of authority. Oii tho nn)ra.l siile of tho ([uostiou, it is I'oi- rulei'H to iiupiiro Avlnither the nnului!S,s a,in[ misery of tho peo[)l(( are not traceable to the iui;^lect a,ml misiisa;';(^ of the pooplo. It in for rulcra to auk thcmselvcH whether the millions havo had justice dono (U'y force? If, iu tho end, tho blooil of thousamls (low, iijion wiioso head must th;d, blooij bo charged? Tho (-ondiK't of members in tho IJritish Ibiuso of Commons, on tiio (ncnin,"; of the day of tin' (!li;iiti;it G2 Giles' Lectures. meeting, strikes us with a painful surprise. Bodies of gaunt men gathered \vithin view of the metropohs — a cloud of silent but of potent passions, that hovered on its margin with dread foreboding. The metropolis itself was one vast garrison. Men were silent, women feared ; and neither breathed freely till the assurance came, with night, that danger had disappeared. On the other side of the Chan- nel, resistance was openly and fearlessly preached, and it was not alone preached, but prepared for. On that solemn night — a night one might suppose in which the most reck- less would be serious, when, if men stood in England on solid ground, the rest of Europe was heaving with a moral earthquake — on that night, the assembled Commons of the British empire met the complaints of infuriated masses with peals of contemptuous laughter. This was assuredly as far from the grave decency which they owed to the occa- sion, as it was from the dignity of senators and the wisdom of statesmen. When heathen Nineveh was threatened, her rulers decreed penance in sackcloth and ashes ; when Christian London was threatened, her legislators laughed. Such laughter sounds more like the rebound of cowardice fi-eed from danger, than the levity of tranquil coui-age ; the laughter, not of self-possession, but of trepidation. If thoughtless, it was folly, and if intentional, it was worse. Are property, privilege, and power to have all attention and respect, while want and labor are for mockery and scorn ? Such conduct imphes neither magnanimity nor good sense. It is for rulers to ask themselves whether the millions have had justice done to their minds. Ireland has had for centuries a Chui'ch of monstrous inutility and enormous wealth forced on her, agamst her creed and her consent, with revenues that would have instructed all her people, and done much to feed her poor. England lavishes funds with imperial prodigality over the whole earth, as well as within Ireland and the Irish. 63 her own borders, but is penurious with miser meanness in the support of popular instruction. The cost of Prince Albert's stables would educate a province. The cost of the Queen's nursery would educate a kingdom. How are in- congruities like this — and this is but one of a legion — to be endured in the nineteenth century, when the human mind has awakened to its rights and to its power — Avhen human energies assume a might with which they never acted before ? The most ragged Chartist is a man, as well as the best clad lord ; and take the clothes away, God and nature have not placed any immeasurable distance between them, after all. Of the two, the Chartist may be the better man, and the Chartist is beginning to feel this. If the Chartist owes submission to the laws of his country, his country owes obligations to him ; and all moralists concede that there is a boundary beyond which submission ceases to be a virtue. It is the dut}' of wise and good rulers never to let that boundary be reached. If authority demands obedi- ence, authority should be so used that the obedience may be willing as well as rational. This is not only true humanity; it is good pohcy. Thus expediency teaches the same lesson to rulers as morality. The victory over the Chartists, notwithstanding the boastings of the middle classes and the nobles, was a doleful vietor3^ If it showed the strength of government, it equally displayed its danger. Masses made the com- mencement of a demonstration, which may be only the beginning of an end. The Chartists were dispersed ; but was Chartism annihilated? Were the grievances extin- guished out of the depths of which Chartism cries with its loud and strong appeal of agony? It may, for the time, retreat to its cellar-and-garret concealment ; moody and wordless, it may sit brooding on its wrongs, but, passive though it seems, it is but preparing for other efforts of 64 Qiles^ Lectures. greater vigor and of calmer decision. In the tactics of society, as well as in the tactics of war, it may be a fatal error to mistake retirement for defeat, or the possession of the field for victor}-. For the present. Chartism may be discouraged in England, insurrection may be put down in Ireland ; but English Chartism and Irish insurrection, come out from sources which no outward force can reach. The agency that can reach the fountains from which they spring, that can purify or change the direction of the streams, must be inward, radical, and moral. The pikemen of Ireland, it is true, might be hewn to pieces ; but when bodies lay stiff upon the ground, and gibbets tainted the air — when native blood darkened the stream and sullied the field, nothing would result from triumph but fresh calamities and increase of enmity. Even as to physical securit}^, the strongest gov- ernment is liable to err. Rulers may think themselves safe within their battlements of bayonets, but their thoughts may be delusive. Desperation may achieve what no dis- ciphne could attempt ; enthusiasm may be more than a match for skill ; passion may shatter calculation ; and against the uproused fury of excited millions, garrisons, artillery, the most solid columns of soldiery, might prove as feeble as an Indian's teut upon the prairie in the midst of a hurricane. The risk of collision is great on both sides ; but rulers have their share in it as well as the people. How great that is, recent events, the money-lenders of Europe, vagrant ministers, and kings out of place, can plainly tell. It is better to conciliate than to provoke ; and surely that old saw, " Prevention is easier than cure," is a precept as worthy of observance by doctors of the body politic, as by doctors of the body corporal. What would seem grace at one time, becomes unworthy of acceptance at another ; and to know that point at which concession should anticipate compulsion, implies a degree of administrative sagacity, and Ireland (ind the Irish. 05 of legislative foresight, Avhicb it is rarely given to politicians or to ministers to possess. The politician is among the most common and the most vulgar of characters ; the statesman, among the highest and the most infrequent. England, and other countries Vk'hich we shall not name, may start a politician from every hedge ; but it requires a generation to supply a statesman. There is a time when concession may be grace ; let that time pass, and the very offer becomes insult. It is then too late. " Too late " is a phrase, in its ordinary use, of harrow- ing significance. "When love becomes despised, vows are then too late. When friendship, known often to be vio- lated, implores reconciliation from betrayed friendship, dis- trust has entered, and the prayer is too late. When disease has fixed its seat in central vitality, and the neglected physician is called to remove it, he looks only on the eye, he touches only the pulse, and he says, it is too late. That " too late " is despair to those who hear it : but the fact is certain then, and they cannot remove it with many tears — no, if their tears should make a deluge. " Too late " is the burden of all the tragedies of individual and of private life, and just now it is the burden of desolated thrones. The individual heart that breaks in its remorse, groans out, " It is too late ; " and so does many a royal one exclaim, that withers in its exile. " Come, let us sit upon the ground," says one of Shakespeare's characters to another, "and tell strange stories of the deaths of kings." The phrase, to suit our present age, should be, " Come, let us sit upon the ground, and tell strange stories of the flight of kings." England's sovereign may feel secure amidst the crash of dynasties ; but those who would keep her safe, must not de- spise the warning that booms around them. If her throne would be secure, it must be founded in righteousness ; and if her sceptre would be honored, it must be a sceptre of G6 Giks^ Lectures. peace. Her throne must not Lave beneath it the fear of any, but the love of all ; and her sceptre must be a wand that waves not amidst complaints, but amidst blessings. England may seem strong, Ireland may seem weak, but there is no strength except in justice ; and if Ireland, in this, has the advantage of England, she is stronger, though Ireland were small as the Duchy of Baden, and England were largo as the empire of China. After all, we are moralists, not politicians, and we cannot forget our vocation. We may be accused of repetition, but we shall not risk the charge of unfaithfulness. England has been deeply guilty towards Ireland, and Ireland has now be- come her punishment. England, within late years, may have had kinder intentions towards Ireland than the England of former ages ; but, notwithstanding her kind intentions, the Ireland which she so long ill-treated has become her per- plexity and her penalty. The Ireland which, by neglect, by partial or adverse legislation, she has impoverished or kept in poverty, deluges her cities, swamps her labor- market, paralyzes her industrial energies, reduces the wages of her people, and continues to pull them down rapidly to Irish hunger, Irish nakedness, and Irish despair. Wrong is indissolubly bound to retribution. This Ave have before ex- pressed, but it can hardly be too often reasserted. Nations, as well as individuals, may want that large foresight which sees afar into the future, and which perceives, in all circum- stances, that it is not merely the dictate of virtue, but the wisdom of calculation, to deal justly, to do right. They may bo blinded by the present passion or the present gain, but the law works on, though they do not, or cannot, or will not see it, until the crash of its power awakens them to doom. Late repentance is better than perpetual sin, but sin plants seeds of evil which produce their envenomed crop, despite the most penitent remorse. That justice alone Ireland and the Irish. (',7 is safety, antl that iinriglitcousiicss is suvo dostnietion, is Avritteu on every page of life, on every page of liistory. It is a lesson whicli all that run may read, and yet it is a lesson which is as universally neglected as it is uiiiv(!rsally admitted. riiysieally, socially, morally, the present state of Ireland is most gloomy and most disastrous. Hunger and hatred go hand in hand ; hunger yearning for the potato, while hatred prepares the pike. The cloud of agitation gathers, and seems every hour to grow darker. The bursting of the cloud threatens to bo near ; but as }ot, tliero appears among the people no man who could "ride upon the Avhirl- wind, and direct the storm." The people are not only divided into manifold and inveterate parties, but parties are again divid(;d among themselves. Young men harangue the people against the troops, and these troops preserve their lives from the passions of the people. What mind has yet shown itself so calm in thought, so comprehensive in rellection, so decisive in action, that it could reconcile all the contradictions of popular Ireland, and bring them united and compacted against the disciplined and regulated force of England ? Fervor there is in abundance; enthusi- asm, passion, ready utterance, and daring speech, the most impulsive eloquence. We doubt, indeed, whether in Ireland, in the grandest day of her oratorical renown, there ever shot forth a crop of finer words than comes out now from the soil of her young and impassioned genius. But though a great man said that "words are things," the agents who have created greatest things, were men of fewest words. Washington could not have made an oration to save his life, and Jel'lerson, who wrote the ])(!claration of Indepen- dence, had but small power of thiiddng on his feet. Wo do not underrate the influence of grand and impassioned speech ; we hold that utterance is a sublime faculty — that it 68 Giles' Le.cUires. can set the brain on fire, and the heart in flame ; but to guide a nation, when that nation has reached its chmax of excitement, the finest iitterance will be feeble. It was Moses who led the hosts of Israel out from Eg-ypt, and to the borders of the promised land, yet Moses was poor of speech ; Aaron, who was eloquent, was but the mouth of Moses, and Aaron was always only secondary. At the present hour we behold on the popular side of Ireland, no commanding mind — no mind of large capacity for counsel — no mind of varied resources for command. There is no great mind on the other side either ; but the other side con- trols all the machinery of government, and has all the prestige of power. We sympathize with the sufferings of Ireland, and we lament her evils ; we look with a painful interest upon her present crisis ; but at this distance, were it even within the province of our journal, it would be idle in us to speculate on remedies. Whether a repeal of the Union would remove the grievances of which Ireland complains, it is not for us to say; it is cleai*, however, that the enactment of the Union did not prevent them. When the Union was first mooted in the British Parliament, Pitt presented the measure in a speech of remarkable compass and power. Imposing as a rhetorician, quick as a debater, and possessing a fluency wonderfully correct, Pitt was seldom grandly eloquent, but in this speech he became so. In picturing the future which was to open upon Ireland under the sunshine of an im- perial parliament, he rose to a kind of millennial grandeur. Sectarian strifes were to be allayed ; political divisions would be assuaged ; capital would flow into the country ; industry would be encouraged ; commerce would advance ; tranquillity and comfort would abound. Large promises were given, and bright prophecies uttered ; but where are the fruits of the promises, and where are the things foretold Ireland and the Irish. 69 in the prophecies? After half a century, there is not one spot in Ii'eland which answers to the anticipations of Pitt. The Union was no measure of the people ; it was a con- trivance of intriguing ministers, efiected by acting on the base motives of men, who grasped at the bribe and gave up their country. Had the Union been honest — had it it been the fair choice of the whole people, and on terms approved by their wisest counsellors — had it been cordial and recijDrocal, it is not for us to conclude, from what we now see, what might have been. Had imperial legislation given emancipation at once to the Catholics, and given it generously and graciously — ■ had it relieved the country from the Church establishment, and left the care of each form of religion to those who pro- fessed it — had it introduced a bounteous system of national education — had it treated the sacred feelings of the larger division of Irishmen with kindness and respect — had it done justice to popular sentiment in the distribution of political offices — had it separated the administration of law from the spirit of faction, by showing the misguided that the balance of justice never swerved except on the side of mercy — had the Union been a bond of friendship and an interchange of benefits — it would have been a reality. But none of these things took place, and, as it was, it was not a union, but a cheat. The delay to grant Catholic emancipation doomed the people of Ireland to thirty years of struggle, and the manner in which it came at last tended rather to irritate than to pacify. The long struggle educated them in the consciousness of their strength, taught them how to use it, and emboldened them for continued resistance. The gall- ing vexation of tithes and church-rates was long sustained, and that huge anomaly, that monstrous blunder of folly and injustice, still remains — a Protestant Church supported 70 Giles' Lectures. by fi Catholic people ; the Church the richest in the worlcl, aiacl the people the poorest. The Uiiiou has assuredl}- uot produced social order. If it has, where are we to look for it? Shall we seek it in Coucihation Hall, or in that of the Confederates? Shall we hear its voice in the modulated complaint of John O'Connell, or in the fierce defiance of Smith O'Brien ; in the florid imagination of Meagher, or the concentrated pas- sion of Mitchel ? Shall we turn for its pleasant souuds to the anvil on Avhich the pike is shaped ? There is the " Song of the Bell," and the " Forging of the Anchor ; " shall we dedicate a lyric to the social order of Ireland in the " Song of the Pike ? " Shall we take, as evidence of its existence, the congTCgations of moody peasants that a word can bring together, and that -a motion can excite ? Or shall Ave prefer to see it in fortifications, where death lies in wait for thousands, should these thousands show signs of fight? The truth is, the whole condition of Ireland is disjointed, and ^^hothcr Ivepetil coi;ld remedy it or not, Ave do not aver, but, as Avo have observed, the Union has, at least, not averted this monstrous, this appalling Avretchedness. The Avealthy and the poor arc in no true relations to each other. Their relations are those of coercion on the one side, and sullen discontent on the other ; a discontent that seems groAviug to the boldness of an open resistance. Complain- ings are in the streets ; disease is in the hovel and the cellar ; the dying go Avhere the Aveary arc at rest, and the siTrviving stuj behind, not knoAving hoAv to live. Cities have become garrisons ; palaces are turned into barracks ; the land is bare of bread ; it is filled Avith soldiers. Come the tourist into Ireland, whence he may — from France, England, Germany, Russia, Asia, or America, from any region of civilized man betAvecn Cape Horn and Gibraltar, from the Ganges to the Tiber — the Avondcr is alike in each. Ireland and Ike Irish. 71 the testimony as uniform, the expression of it as unvarying in pLrase, as the sources from ■which it is derivetl are diverse and independent — each finds in Ireland a singu- hirity of wretchedness, an originahty of misery, which out- runs not only his experience, but his fancy. " Well," said Colonel Napier, while describing the state of Europe at the commencement of the Peninsular War — "of Ireland it is unnecessary to speak ; her wrongs and her misery, peculiar and ^^nparallelcd, are too well known and too little regarded to call for any remark." The author who wrote these words is at present commanding, wo believe, in Ireland. What Avould he say of Ireland, if he should undertiijce to write another book ? These agitations in Ireland arise from no superficial causes. It is short-sighted and vain to ascribe them to temporary inlluences, or to the agency of individuals. As well might the fever which burns through tlie body of a patient be ascribed to the quickness of the pulse, which is the concomitant, but not the cause, of the disease. No man, no class of men, no combination of talents, no force of genius, no subtlety of scheming, can widely agitate or long control millions of people who are governed well and feel that they are. No such power can disturb a nation per- manently, when the masses of it are content ; and they will be content, when they know by exi^erience that in its pros- perity they have their due share, and in its adversity no more. The potency, therefore, which leaders have over multitudes, they gain not all from character, not all from mental superiority; they gain it from the uneasy elements which the multitudes themselves contain. Though the Irish leaders, therefore, were as bad as their o^jponents paint them, the question as to the real condition of the country would remain the same ; that is a setilcd fact, untouched entirely either l)y the eulogium or the abuse of this njan or 72 Cij.'ci" Ltdiiiis. tlie otlior. Those ngitatious cannot bo sulnluod bv force, for thongh they may disappear for a period, it is only to come lip agixin witli maturer streugtli. They arise fi'om radicjvl cAUses, and thoy vrill cease only ^^■ith radical changes. "Whether by jui imporiid or domestic legislature, Irohuid must bo governed by her consent, not by coercion — by the power of opinion, and not by the edge of the sword. She must no longer be a military province. She cannot con- tinue to be as she has been and as she is. Tho time has come for her to insist on a higher place in the empire — in the world — and not insist in vain. That slio ought to have it is the decision of that sentiment of justice, which acts strongly, and more strongly with every ■successive change, in tho conscience of all Christendom. In the opening part of this tu'tiele we suggested a lesson of warning to be leiu'nod from the present state of Europe. In this closing part of it, we would suggest a lesson of en- coursigoment. The youngest and the oldest of us havo heard little from the politic:il writers of Europe but prophe- cies on tho instability of our govexument, or on the certainty of its failure. "We were either so wise or so rasli !is to talio no svlarm from these prophecies. That we wei*e right to feel at peace, most of them will now admit. These forebodings were written under the shadows of thrones that havo tumbled to pieces about the writers" e:u*s, and tho thrones, which were to st^ind securely on their simple and sound foundation, while our clumsy and unwieldy con- federacy wjxs to go to pieces, went in fragments to the earth before tho ink was dry upon the printer's paper ; yet probably oxir institutions may bo firm, when dyix:\sties that mocked us sliall be forgotten. Our government, it was said, was but an experiment ; it proves now not jui experiment, but experience — au experi- ence from which men of ancient States are able to learn. lirlnnd and I he Irish. *l',\ AVd hiivo our inob.M, iiiul luob.s ol'l-dii of llui woi'hI, Kind ; l)iil, tlicy (|iii(-kly cliasolvo, and loiive no nioro iiuproHHioii on (ho soliilily of our Hooiiil Hiructuro limn a Huow-Hhowcr docH upon ihn jjfrjinil,(i of Monad noi^k. Wo havo oviLs iiinoii;^ uh, \V(i conlcss, tJial, ci-y l,o lioavusn ; wo liavo abimcH of \vlii('li \V(( may wtiLl bo aHliiuncd ; wo liavo Hin.s iliat (;all For Acvp icpcnianco ; yofc, nol, indulj^Mu;^' in any idio truMl., but a(;l,ivo willi indivi])ular i-emonstranco ; but the bayonet has ceaKcd to bo invincible. Sentiments have become stronger than weapons. Society begins more and more to feel its luunanity. A revelation has come to multitudes that they are men, and it is this faith which wtu-ks in them with most wondrous etticacy. It is in the strength of this that they burst their chains asunder, and dash their fetters at their keepers. Beneath the outward events of the world — the battles of parties, the schemings of factions, the plottings of intriguers, the eleva- tion (if jieopU^s, and the fall of kings, the doings of the Ire/and diid the Irish. 75 active, and ilu) theories of tho Hp(H;ii];il,ive— tlio rrovidoiico of Ood is o[)(u-iitui{j^ ill the depths of luuimuity, iuvigor- utiiif,' its Ci4)!U',itios, guidiii«,' its destiny, and prepiiriiif,' it to vindicate everywliore tlio Divine Hkeness in which it was orij^inally ereated. DANIEL O'CONNELL. [In the (.'ourse of this lecture on Daniel O'Counoll, I pvoposG to trace tlie loading incidents of his life — to con- sider him as a man of public action, as a man also of public speech, and, hxstly, to attempt an estimate of his nrind and character.] Daniel 0'Connei.l was born on the iJth of Augiist, 1775, in Cahir-civeen, in the County of Kerry. He was of an old family which claimed to bo of royal descent. "When thirteen years of age, he was sent to a classical school in Ivedingtou, near tJio Covo of Cork, kept by the l\ov. Mr. Harrington. This is said to have been the llrst school publicly opened after the repeal of those laws which nuido it penal for Roman Catholics to educate tlieir children. AVith youth, fresh from the mountains — with a mind trained in healthful simplicity — with an imagination which had received its lirst impressions from the cloud-capped head- lands of Kerry, and from the billowy and bouniUess Atlantic — with a memory stored from the treasury of Celtic legend, from the wild and passionate complaints of song and story — he entered the College of St. Omers, a seminary for Catholic instruction. After a short interval at Douai, he came back to St. Omers, and was thence excluded by the French Revolution, and escaped to England. The pro- fession of the law was optMicd to the Ivoman Catholics in Ihiniil (J'Coiiik//. 77 170.'}: 0'(JoiiJH;ll Hl,ii(li(;(l (or jl,, iuid ill I'JUH Iirj w,'i» <:ii,llr;(l to Uic, Ii-IhIi bar. lie wuh uirion^' the iirHi of IjIh (J}injf;Ji f,o avail liimHcli' of UiIh relaxation of the jjeiial code, lie eiit(;r(:d the political arena at the same time, and immediately Ijecamc, a,H lie afterwarrlH continued tf^ be, the champion of Irinh nationality. He made hin firHt pul^hc speech in 1800 — a speech which at once gave notice that a great orator and a great man had been Ijorn into the world. Shortly after, in 1802, he married his cousin, Mary O'Connell, with whom, as he declared, he had thirty years of as pure hapjiinesH as it is given to man to enjoy on earth. 'Jims blesned at tlie entrance of household life, he began at once a course of prosperous activity. He had not long to wait and bitterly to fear, as many a young man of worth and genius has, in the first struggles of his profession; to have the hope of love deferred until the heart is sif;k or withered ; or to rihk the martyrdom of domeBtic penury — in which sympaiJiy itself becomes a knife in tlie hand of Indigence, whetted on affec- tion, to cut the fle.sh that is nearest to the heart — in which the puzzled brain is often called on to do its best, when malicious Fortune has done her worst. O'Connell had no such trials. Practice came to him early, and tf/'the last it continued to increase. " The first year I was at the bar," said he to Mr. Daunt, "I made ,£;58; the second, about .£;1.50; the third, <£;200 ; the fourth, about 300 guineas. I then advanced rapidly, and the last year of my practice I got JDO.OOO, although I lost one term," But the great work of O'Connell's hfe was to labor for the political emancipation of the Catholics. " For more than twenty years," he says to the Earl of Shrewsbury, "before the passing of the Catholic Emancipation Bill, the l^urden of the cause was thrown on me. I had to arrange the meetings, to prepare the resolu- tions, to furnish replies to correspondence, to examine the case of each person complaining of practical grievance.% to 78 Giles' Lectures, rouse tlie torpitl, to animate the lukewarm, to control tho violent and inflammatory, to avoid the shoals and breakers of the law, to guard against multiplied treachery, and at all times to oppose, at every peril, the powerful and multitu- dinous enemies of the cause." Such was the work which O'Connell had for a quarter of a century to do, and to do it gratuitously: for it was not until he entered Parliament (hat popular provision was made to supply him with an income. That the position had even personal danger, was proved by the duel which D'Esterre, a member of the Dublin Corporation, forced on O'Connell in 1815, evidently from political rancor. D'Esterre w^as noted as a marksman ; but at the first shot, O'Connell killed him; an event which, though driven to it by the tyranny of society, he never ceased to repent of and to regret. The organization which O'Connell worked successively changed its name, but never changed its nature. In 180-4, it was the Catholic Board; in 1808, the Cathohc Committee; in 1823, the Catholic Association. When the organization was forbidden under one name, it merely assumed another; did not die, but only lived a stronger life. Such it was by tho power* of O'Connell; and the power of O'Connell con- sisted in the might and force which enabled him to grasp the genius of the People within the embrace of his sympa- thies, his passions, and his intellect. So it was that the asso- ciation, thus inspired, grew into its greatness, and gathered to its strength, until, from a few individuals in an obscure room, it consisted of millions — became not only commen- surate with the island, but spread its influence throughout the world. Another spirit was, however, in this organiza- tion, who, though subordinate in it to the genius of O'Con- nell, should not be left unnoticed. I allude to Richard Lalor Sheil. Yery diU'crent from O'Connell Shell was in many particulars — not the least in social and political ten- Dun id (yConncll. 79 dcncies. O'Conncll Kympatliizod g(M\oriilly with ilio I'lulical democracy; Slioil with tho moderate and literary wbiti's. AVliile the laws excluded both from Parliament, both battled on the same arena. When that exclusion ceased, their different tastes prompted divergent courses. ]5ut howH^vor Slieil differed from O'Connell in opinions and disposition, he stood beside him in eloquence and genius. Shoil Inul a mind of tho liucst nature and of the richest cultivaiioii ; a vigorous intellect, and an exuberant fancy. His speaking was a condensation of thought and passion — in brilliant, elabo- rate, and often antithetical expression. He hap})ily vuiited precision and embellishment, and his ideas in being adorned became not only attractive, but distinct. Images were as easy to him as words, and his figures were as correct as they were abundant. With a faculty peculiarly dramatic, he gave vivid illusioji to scenes and characters with which he filled the imaginations of his hearers. He compressed into a passage the materials of a tragedy, and moved, as ho pleased, to terror and to pity. Ho was not the less the master of invective and of sarcasm. He was, in prose, almost as effective a satarist as Pope was in verse — as scathing and as lacerating. He clothed burlesque in as mocking a gravity; was as bitter in his irony, as polished in his wit, as elegant in his banter, and soniotinios as unmerciful in his ridicule. In tho battle for Catholic eman- cipation, this splendid and impassioned orator was heard everywhere in Ireland shrieking IVn-th the wrongs of liis people. That shrill voice of his cried aloud and S2:)ared not. It stirred his brethren to indignation and to action; it pierced into their souls, and awakened to torture tho sense of their degradation. It was heard in ni(;tropolis and vil- lage; on the mountain and in the market-plMce. It r;ing- out from sea to sea, and was chorused by the slu.nis of sympa- thetic multitudes, O'Connell was tho le-^islaior and the 80 Giks^ Lectures. doer, but iu the agency of speech Shell ^Yas ludefatigable, and had no superior. In 1828 O'Connell was elected for Clare. But he could not take the oaths -which lay between him and his seat. In 1820 these oaths were removed, and O'ConneU was again triumphantly returned for Clare. From that time till his death, he continued to be, for one place or another, a mem- ber iu every Parhoment. He used, indeed, to caU himself the member for all Ireland; and, in some sense, such he was. Iu 1842 he opened his agitation for repeal of the union. Upon the prosecution of Government, at the instigation of Sir Eobert Peel, he was convicted of sedition, sentenced to be imprisoned for a year, and to pay a fine of £2,000. On appeal to the House of Lords, the judgTuent was reversed; O'Connell and his fellow-prisoners, after three months con- finement, wei-e released. In the course of the discussion iu the I'pper House, Lord Denman spoke the memorable words, '' that prosecutions so conducted would render trial by jury a mockery, a delusion, and a snare."' O'Con- nell was released; but impi-isonment had left its ineradi- cable mark upon his spirit. It did not injure his body, but it entered into his soul. It proved him vulnerable ; and when a man is thought invulnerable, a wound in the heel is as fatal as the splitting of the head. His person till then was as the person of a tribune, which no man must rudely touch and hve. The spell was broken; he felt it was, and he began to droop. The majesty that doth hedge a king had been attacked; though not despoiled, it had vet been profanely treated. He could no longer reign : his battles had not henceforth the prestige of victory or of hope. The hard but exhilarating contest in which his life had passed must succumb to prosy forms; the wild eloquence that shouted in its free power over the surging seas of mul- titudes must sink to cautious tameness in the presence of Daniel O'Coymell. 81 a government reporter ; must give account of itself at the bidding of Tory judges. The charm was dissolved, and Avitii it the glory of unquestioned dominion. Division, dis- union, and feud began to rage around his throne. The im- patience of younger enthusiasm spurned his veteran policy ; resistance to his long-honored authority completed the dis- memberment of his kingdom, and broke to pieces the unity of his might. He sickened. He went to the Continent in 1847 — not so much with the hope of restoration, as cjn a religious pilgrimage ; and he died at Genoa on May the 15th of that year. His heart, according to his desire, was embalmed and borne to Rome; his body was carried back and buried in his native Ireland. The name of Peel also was soon added to the death-list. In tlie blaze of his fame and wealth, the horse which he rode threw him and crushed him into fragments. While nations waited on his word — while artists hung upon his smile — while there were yet bright around him glory and genius, and literature and luxury, the kindred that loved, and the millions that ap- plauded — in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, he was a bruised and a lifeless thing. O'Connell and Peel fought each other throughout their lives ; both went almost together out of earth. Mighty men were both in their day; but in the presence of death, the mightiest are nothing, and we feel that, as the French preacher said over the corpse of Louis XIV., " God alone is great." II. In px'oceeding to consider O'Connell as a man of public action, I observe a relation between the leading events of his life, to changes in the laws which concerned Pioman Catholics, that has, I think, more than the interest of a merely curious coincidence. O'Connell was born in a period when some among the harshest of the penal laws had been modified and softened. The cruel portion of the code had been generally abolished, but the liumiliating j^or- 82 Giles' Lectures. tiou of it was still in force. The birth of O'Connell had preceded by a few months the declaration of American independence. There was need of soldiers ; there was cor- responding need to conciliate the Irish, and the laAvs were accordingly ameliorated — so far, at least, that, b}'' the time O'Connell was thirteen, a Roman Catholic might go publicly to school. But university education Avas still denied him, and for this he was obliged to go abroad. In the mean time the French Revolution broke out ; and then again a need for advanced conciliation of the Irish. Roman Catho- lics obtained the elective franchise, and were admitted to the legal profession. O'Connell became a lawyer. Still his religion would have excluded him from the bench — from every governmental office at the bar — from all honorary dis- tinctions; ho could never hope to change his stuff gown for a silk one; he must bend himself to hard work; he must be content with fame — and fees. At last, a Roman Catholic could enter Parliament. We notice, in tracing this course, that fi"om entrance on life till entrance on its decline, the successive changes of the law just enabled O'Connell to take one step at a time to the completeness of emancipated citizenship. He was among the earliest in the first public school open to Catholics; he was among the earliest of Catholics called to the bar ; and ere the bolts had been yet drawn, ho was already waiting at the door of Parliament. This succession of experiences could not have been in vain for O'Connell. Such exiDcriences must have had passionate meanings for him ; they must have entered into the very spirit of his life, and, from one stage to another, the}' must have trained him for his work, and trained him in it. He was born in the right hour ; and he was the right man. A generation earlier, his life would have been too soon ; with all his native vigor — with all his indignant ambition — with all his ijinate force of genius, the laws would have been Daniel O'ConncIL 83 too strong for him, and liis would have been an unheard-ol grave in the cemetery of a foreign convent, or in a church yard among the Kerry mountains. Born under those hiws, O'Connell hved to see the hxst of them ; but even then, it was at the cost of a struggle — long, constant, and obstinate. In this struggle O'Connell spent the vigor of his life. But what were these laws of which we hear so uiuch, and without reference to which the social characteristics of modern Ireland can neither be explained nor under- stood ? I offer a very condensed abstract of their leading provisions. A Roman Catholic could not inherit real estate ; he could not purchase it ; it could not be pur- chased or held in trust for him ; and the estate that he would have by entail went to the next Protestant heir, as if the Romtin Catholic were dead. A Roman Catholic could not have a lease for more than thirty-one years, and if the profits of such lease exceeded more than one-third of the rent, any Protestant who could prove the fact took possession of the property. A Catholic wife, on turning Protestant, was allowed an increased jointure. A Roman Catholic father could not be guardian to his own child under a penalty £500; and a Roman Catholic minor, who avowed himself a Protestant, was immediately delivered to a Protestant guardian. If one child abjured the Roman Catholic religion, though he were the youngest, he inherited the whole estate, and even his father had no legal claim on it for support. No Roman Catholic could marry a Pro- testant, and it was a capital crime for a priest to celebrate Buch marriage. Indeed, the fact of merely being a priest subjected a man to transportation for life, and, in case of return, to death. For a Roman CathoHc to teach a school was felony; to aid in sending another abroad to be educated in the Roman Catholic rehgion, subjected the parties to a fine, disabled them from being executors or administrators, 84 Giles' Lectures. from taking any legacy or gift, from holding any office, from suing in law or equit}-, to a forfeiture of all their chattels, and of all their real estate for hfe. No Ivoman Catholic Avas eligible to any civil oi' military office, to sit in Parliament, or to vote at elections. If Protestants lost property in war by the privateers of a Catholic power, Catholics alone were to make it good. That these laws should not be evaded by mere passiveness, not to attend the Established Church — not, in fact, to be actively Protestant — exposed the indi- vidual to odious privations and to exorbitant fines. Those laws were all enacted in Ireland, and by legislators who claimed to be Irishmen. They were the code of an Irish, and not of an English Parliament ; and they have evidently in them a spirit of vindictive and of local hatred. They go beyond all the severities and restraints which a governing minority, in fear and self-defence, impose on a subjected population. "If,"sa3'S Arthur Young, "such a system as would crush the minds of a conquered people into slavish submission was ever necessary, it must have been under that new and in many respects weak establish- ment, when the late conliict might have been an apparent justification ; but why such a system should be embraced six or seven years after the death of King "William, is not so easy to be accounted for." The reasons for these laws lie more deeply than Arthur Young examined, and for their object they were not so senseless as he considered them. There was more in them than even the zeal of religious persecution, and more than the immediate passion of military success ; there was a profound energy of angry vengeance — an evident desire to show contempt, as well as to inflict pain. From the time of Queen Elizabeth, the laws were harsh ; but still, the Catholics of Ireland had wealth, and no small share of power. Even after Cromwell, the Catholics had something to lose, both in property and Dan id. O'ConncU. Sf) social emineuce. It was not until after the siege of Limer iclc, and even the death of AVilliam, that the laws against i\\(i Catholics of Ireland assumed their utmost iicrceness. There was not merely the ordinary bitterness of domestic strife, civil and religious, to make them so, but there came among the soldiers of William — many of whom shared in the spoils of confiscation — the French Huguenot, furious at the revocation of the Edict of Nantz ; the Dutch Calvinist, always in power, cruel, and from his memories of Spain, steeped in hereditary aversion to Catholics ; other ad- venturers, who were merely unprincipled hirelings of the sword ; all these iinited, put their evil dispositions into statxites, and gave to their worst passions the authority of laws. But there was more than passion in these laws ; there was purpose — compact, settled, systematic jiurpose — that purpose was, either to abolish the lloman Catholic religion in Ireland, or to reduce the lloman Catholics themselves to absolute serfdom. The laws failed, from the outset, in the case of religion; but with regard to the other alternative, they came near to being successful. They were admirably contrived to Avork out a people's degradation ; for, in the first place, they tended efl'ectually to make them poor, and as effectually, in the second, to make them ignorant. Rendered landless not only as to proprietorship, but even as to secure tenancy; shut out directly from many mechanical trades ; shut out from the guilds and corpora- tions, with which were connected all the gainful and in- fluential modes of industry; ineligible to every ollicie and profession that could excite or keep alive ambition, law to the utmost of its power made poverty the inevitable condition of Roman Catholics — universal, perpetual, igno- minious povert3\ There was no possibility allowed by law for the poor Catholic to rise ; and the rich Catholic, excluded from all honorable activity, deprived of the means 8G Giles' Lectures. of increasing, of securing, of transmitting, almost of using his wealth, must cither quit the country, or sink down, as many of the aristocratic Catholics did, into common serfdom. Still a man may be poor in worldly substance, and yet be rich in the spirit of his mind. Leave a man art and letters, he still has imperishable treasures. He has the sense of his human dignity left, and this can support him against many a painful humiliation. Thus the Jews sustained themselves through long ages of oppression ; they had their- language and their literature ; much as they were wronged, I do not remember that, by the code of any nation, they could be hanged for teaching or learning Hebrew, for expounding the Prophecies, or for chanting the Psalms. They had stiU the refuge, not only of their faith, but of their intellect. Take from a man the culture of the intellect, then you make him poor indeed. Impoverish a man, you certainly do him evil ; but close to him the avenues of thought and knowl- edge, you blind him to the hght of light — you attack him in his life of life. , Whom do Christian writers rate as the deadliest persecutor of all the Roman emperors? The mild and cultivated Julian. Yet Julian put no Christian to the cross — gave no Christian to the beasts; ho merely forbade Cln-istians to learn, and shut them out from the schools. Even Gibbon, his eulogist, shows that no more fatal injury could have been imagined or contrived. But Julian soon died, and his purpose died with him. The laws in Ireland, which improved on Julian's malice, remained, and for more than two generations were not inoperative. The letter of these laws, it may be said, was not in force ; it was not because it could not ; but their spirit was not inactive or without result. It kept the people from wealth ; it kept the people from education ; it kept the people from the moans of education ; it broke their spirit ; bowed Ihom down into submission, and wont far to oxtinguisli Daniel (yCoiimlJ. S7 in Ihem fcir over tlio lilo of iiulcpoiulcMii, juanhood. This is the truth, and thcro is iiothiug to bo giiiiiod in denying or concealing it. Head the pamphlets and spoochos of those times, and you cannot but fool to what social degradation the Catholics of Ireland wero reduced. Swift, in his iiolitical and polemical writings, always refers to the condition of the Catholic Irish as that of the lowest and the most hopeless submission. And this was su(^h as Swift approved ; such as from prin(!iplo and iuc.liiiation, ho would counsel, conilrni, and perpetuate. For the physical desti- tution which ho l)(!lu!ld around liini, ho had a sort of savr.go pity; ho would willingly have relieved tlie distressed, and ho was zealous for the general prosperity of the country; but if a proposal wero possible, in his day, to extend civic freedom to the Catholics of Ireland, or oven religious toler- ation. Swift would have been the llrst to denounco it with all tlu! lierceness of his temper, and wil.li all tlio vigor of his genius. What IMacaulay says is, therefore, to tho letter true: "Tho domination of the (iolonists was al)soluto. Tlio native population was trancpiil willi (.ho ghastly trancpiiUity of exhaustion aiul despair." " Scattered," as ho again ob- serves, "all over Europe wero to be found brave Irish generals, dexterous Irish diplomatists, Irish counts, Irish l)arons, Irish knights of St. Lewis, of St. Leopold, of the White Eagle, and of the Golden Eleece, who, if they had remained in tho house of bondage, could not have boon ensigns in a marching regiment, or freemen of petty corpor- ations. These men, the natural chiefs of their race, having boon withdrawn, what remained was utterly and helplessly passive. A rising of tho Irishry against tlio Englisliry was no more to bo dreaded than a rising of wonuni and children against tho men." Lord Macaulay is oftcm figurative and llorid ; l)ut in these statein(!nts he is exactly lilcraJ and (■■■iniple. ('ailiolics wer(^ sli.",lilly regarded in ilic discussions 88 Giles' Lectures. of tlie Irish Parliament ; and wlieuever a Catholic ven- tured to put his grievances into printed appeal or explana- tion, his manner, was cautiously moderate — almost, indeed, shrinkingly timid. So late as 1781, when the heroic Henry Grattan arose and shook the nation with his eloquence, his power was not by means of Catholics, but by means of liberal Protestants ; his agitation in favor of Catholics was not as their representative, but as their advocate ; and the brief parliamentary independence which Grattan conquered was through the short-lived passion of a merely Protestant nationality. Even Lord Charlemont, so much loved and lauded, refused his consent to let Catholics have the elective franchise ; and to the last hour of his hfe he was ojiposed to Catholic emancipation. The Catholic commonalty was inert ; and Wolfe Tone alleges, in his Memoirs, that " the Catholic aristocracy was not only quiescent, but subser- vient." " Such an effect," he remarks, " had the operation of the penal laws on the Catholics of Ireland — as proud a race as any in all Europe." Arthur Young's testimon}- is to the same effect. The edition of his Travels in Ireland to which I refer, is a Dublin one, printed in 1780. Physi- cally, indeed, the people were not so badly off, as frequently they have been since ; they had then a humble plenty, which in later years they had often sorrowful occasion to regret ; but socially, their state in some respects was worse than serfdom. Such had been the Ireland which was just receding behind O'Connell's youth. The Ireland was not quite so dark on which his working manhood entered, but still it called for a giant's toil. O'Connell had not merely to arouse a people — he had, first of all, to create a people. Having created a people, he had to shape its instincts — to direct and rule them. Hannibal is esteemed the greatest of generals, not because he gained victories, but because he Daniel (yCon/ic//. 85) iniulo ill! arinj'. O'Coiniel], for ilio same I'ea.soii, luii.sl 1)0 considered auioiig the lirst of legislators — not bccansG lie Avon triumphs, but because ho made a people. The people, whom ho called up almost from death, he had not only to Avork u)i, but to work hij ; first, ho Avorkcd hi/ them to over- come the apathy of Catholic aristocracy; and, secondly, ho worked l»j them to overcome the combined forces of anti- C^atholic resistance. In teaching the people to know their own power, and to show it, he presented motives of action to the interest, the ambition, and the genius of those who were on their side ; in the degree that he thus united minds and masses — in the degree that ho added all moral and social energies to the inlluenco of luimbers, he nuulo opposition formidable to the prudence, the policy, and the fears of those who were against them. O'Connell seemed singularly fitted to his mission and his time. The Rebellion of 1708 was scarcely quelled, when he appeared. The heaving swell Avas yet rocking societ}', and the blood-red clouds had not passed from the moral atmos- phere. Tears Avere yet falling from unsleeping eyes, and the desolate yet mourned Avith a gi-ief that Avould not bo comforted. The convulsion of the French Revolution Avas still agitating Europe, and not with the less force because all its elements had converged their power Avithin the person- ality of Napoleon's stupendous mind. The cannons of Napoleon boomed through the sky from the Danube to the Nile ; and mingled Avith the din of conquest Avere the shouts of peoples and the crash of thrones. War on the sea Avas not less fierce than war on the land. Jiritain was sweeping the ocean Avith her lleets ; Nelson Avas tiring fame Avith the rapid succession of his victories, until, at last, his career Avas closed in the ecstasy of battle. While these terrible men shone amidst the gloomy majesty of war, O'Connell, too, had visions of renown, but they arose from 90 Oiks' Lcrfiors. tlie anticipated acliievements of humanity and poacc. A crisis liad conio iu the history of his country, and ho was tlic man to meet it. Ho ^Yas the only man. Curran, as an advocate, had bravely done his melancholy duty, and there was no more that ho could do. Grattan, as a senator, was not silent, but ho was disheartened. But had both been in their prime of genius and of hope, neither of them had fitness for the mission of O'Connell. The millions for whom the battle was fought were Roman Catholics ; it was there- fore meet that the leader who commanded should be one of themselves ; and O'Connell was the greatest lloman Catholic genius who had yet arisen in Ireland since the Siege of Limerick. But O'Connell was not only a great Catholic, ho was a great man — great in all the qualities which his situation demanded. A man of reflection, yet of decision ; of boldness, but of prudence ; ever fertile in resources, ever master of his faculties, the hour and the difficulty found him at no time unprepared. His words were daggers, yet not libels ; and while passion burned in his heai't, caution kept watch upon his lips. He instructed the Irish masses to exhibit strength without using it ; to nullify bad laws without transgressing them ; and to gather the fruits of conquest witliout the risks of wai'. O'Connell, like Carnot, organized victory; Carnot's was the organiza- tion of force, and O'Connell's was the organization of opinion. . The labor which O'Connell went through was gigantic. That which O'Connell did has been underrated, because of that which he did not. But if we contrast tlie political condition of Ireland as O'Connell found it, with the political condition of Ireland as he left it, we shall see how grand and successful he was in his politic;il agitation. He found an oligarchy that seemed unapproachable in the height of its ascendancy, impregnable in the strength of its position ; he fronted its arrogance, delied its power, pulled Dan id O'Conndl. \)\ down its pride, swopt away it« privilc^^cs, and f,a-()Uiid its monopoly into atoms. Ho found tho Catholic peasantry serfs, he made them free ; ho found tho middle-class timid and dependant, ho stirred them into couraj^o — he raised tliom into citizens ; he found the Catholic aristcK-i'acy tiiiic- Bervers or idlers, and ho shamed them into dignity. YA'v.vy Catholic, hig-h or humble, had been mado an alien C)ii his own native Ireland ; O'Coiniell re.stoi'ed him io liin ])lu(;o in the commonwealth ; and if he did not arouse, or caro to arouse, tho spirit of national independence, he did very effectually that of personal and political independence. After a long sleep of submission, he called up millions to tho desire for freedom. Surely this, for one man, was a great work. And yet O'Connell did not die in time. Men there are in history who, dying at a certain time, would leave on us tho impression of immeasurable genius, but who, Ijy surviving tho turn of their fortunes, lose l)y comparison with themselves — for with themselves wo still compare them ; and while we diminish our estimate, we seem to foi-get how great they must be, since we think never of comparing them with others. For this reason, Charles XII., of Sweden, should never have survived Pul- towa ; Napoleon should have died soon after Austerlitz ; O'Connell should have died after he had gained Catholic Emancipation, and made his first and best speeches in the House of Commons. If he had thus and then died, hia genius as a popular leader must have Ijcen a tlieme oi wonder even to opponents, and tho manner of dealing with his memory would have been tliat of admiration, and not that of criticism. As it is, the world sliows hardly another man who has singly done so much as O'Connell, and l^y merely moral and intellectual means. III. To estimate O'Connell as a speaker, would in itself alone require a lecture; and here it must Ite attempted 92 Giles' Lectures. in a fragment. Sucli a lecture would Lave three natural divisions : O'Connell as a lawyer, as a legislator, and as a popular tribune; or O'Connell as speech revealed him at the bar, in Parliament, and in the open assembly of the people. On the first two positions, I miist be brief ; but this is of less account since it is in the third O'Connell had superlative and characteristic distinction. That O'Connell was able at the bar we might safely infer. "NVe know that he was industrious, studious, and ambitious ; that he had much knowledge of men, as they live in the world; that he had instinctive talent in the acquirement of this knowledge — talent improved by practice and oppor- tunity; that he had an athletic understanding, much sen- sibility, imagination, and gi-eat force of passion ; that he had caution, coolness, and extraordinary powers of labor and endurance; that he entered the profession of a barrister with the education of a scholar; and that, along with all, he had the genius which spontaneously brings thought, feeling, and word into the unity and music of expression, which we call eloquence. Such qualifications meeting in one jDcrson, would have made him a good general lawyer, would have made him also a siiccessful advocate; and such qualifications did meet in O'Connell. We are not, however, left to infer- ence; we have the evidence of fact. The best opinion we can give of a lawyer is to employ him. Orangemen constantly employed O'Connell; and they were his political, if not his personal enemies. O'Connell, as an advocate, was often called on to defend journals which the most opposed him. " Oh ! a broguish Irish fellow, who would listen to him ?" said an English snob once, in conversation with Sir Robert Peek " If I wanted," replied Sir Robert, " an eloquent advocate, I would readily give up all the other orators of whom we have been speaking, provided I had with me this same broguish Irish fellow." O'Connell was universally Daniel O'Connell. 93 recognized as the leading advocate, and the best general lawyer of his time. He was especially great in all jury cases. He had a singular power of making juries averse to himself personally, and politically favorable to his case and to his client. He seemed even to have some art by which he turned that aversion to account, and made it subservient to the purpose of his argument. He did often, no doubt, insinuate scruples in the minds of conscientious jurors politically opposed to him, which made them fear, particu- larly when conviction was capital, to give a verdict of " guilty," lest it might be the foregone conclusion of pr(!Ju- dice, and not the solemn decision of justice. But most singular of all, O'Connell could not only conceal his opinion of the jurors, but make them suppose it the contrary of what it was. I once heard him before a Cork jury defend- ing men tried for seditious consjiiracy. The jury were strong Tory Protestants — the prisoners strong anti-Tory Catholics. As I knew the jury, I had small hope for the prisoners. But as O'Connell advanced in a most ingenious, concihating, and pathetic speech, I fancied myself in error both as to the character of the jurors and the fate of the arraigned. The jurors, as I thought, were not the men I took them for — men who would find a fragment of treason in the paring of a Papist's nail, and the essence of disloyalty in every hair of O'Connell's wig ; they were evidently moved; " tears were in their eyes ; all their visage wanned ;" I set them down as just, generous, impartial men ; and I entirely believed that so did O'Connell. After a short charge and brief absence, they came back with a verdict of "guilty." O'Connell tui*ned towards them with a look of such mock reverence, and such real derision, as it is impossible to de- scribe, and said, " Gentlemen, it is just what I expected from you." In dealing with witnesses, O'Connell was equally a master. In general he was cautious, civil, even polite ; 94 di/cx' Lirhars. but in i'ross-o\;iiuiii;i(ion of nn iurornuM*, Avliom lio \v;is siiro of bivakiii';- l^o^Yn, Ihoro \V!is an exhibit ion of tho coinio iiud Iho loniblo. It. was a sort of ligt'v-i^lay, in which a niiinlcvous ]HM-juror !sokod anj^'vy. O't'onm^ll puUod at his wis;" and sniilod ; tho infornior troniblod. 0'C\n\noll booanio droll; tho inl'ornior in tho nii^an time tuvnod art>und, as if ho wore sookiuj^- for osoapo. A\'ilh O'Oounoll tlioro was meaning in every gesture — tluM-(> was purpose in every motion— there was fatal valeulation in t^vtM-y tpiestion. The people laughed, but the lauglrtei" was titful and spasmodic. Thoro was interest too awful for mirth dependent on tho is^no; and when, at last, O'Connell gave the blow, which he delayed only in iMilor to strike with eertainty — the blow which snioto to death the prosecuting testimony — a burst of relief eame from the audience, and tho choor (hat disturbed tho forms of tlio court was the instinct of joy at tho saving of innocent lives. I was witness of such a. strngi;lo botwoon O'Oonnell and an infonuer, and tho shout which hailed tho lawyer's triumph was sui-h as bursts from the pent-up feelings of a crowd that watches a strong Kwinnner, bulVoting with stornn- waves to rescue a fellow- creature fnnn their depths, when lie has bounded on ilry land with his human brother living in his gras]\ No one, however, denied that (VOonnell was a groat advocate; neither did any deny that ho spoke with wondiM- ful t^lVeet to a multitude; but nuiuy insisted that he would miserably fail in Tarlianu^nt. Very great lawyers, very great denuigogues, even very groat men, have failed in Vnv- lianiint. O'Connell did »(>/ fail there; nay, Ihere wcvo some o( his most distinguished triumphs. He was not, as his ttl^ponents prophesied he would be, alarmed or overmatched; on the I'ontrary, he at once took a commanding position iu the House, ojioned there for himself a new sphere of fame, Daniel, ()'('(mmlL 1)5 .'1)1(1 wjiH li.sl.(!)ic(l to iiK mucli {(If l,Ii(! (Icli^'lil, wliicli lio gavo l)y liJH ij;(:\i\uH iiH i\)V tlio jndiicrico vvliicli ucc.oinpaiiicd liiw void. SIJll, ()'(J()iiii(:ll JiiiH h(;(;u C(jij!ilcd or cxcc.WcaI id ilio bill- ;i,ii(| in l',irli;uiH!iil,; in llu! po])nliir a«HCmb]y, Ik; Iuih iioi, ill iiiodcni iiiiicH, Ijcon upproucliod. Now, wliou I way tluH, .1 do jioi iiKJiin that O'Coriiicll had riH;f(,']y ilio rudo and i(;ady ialcjnt which many Bocni to think in all tliat in nccoK- Hary to f,'aiii ov(;r inidtitudoH — the victorioH of Hpcodi. ()'(jonnoll wan jiot rndx;; and rudonoKH in itHcIf iH novcir ])o\vject; and always for an ojjject (J'Cojinell Kpf;ke — never for the wake of oratory or iov its piaiKc. For such lie cared but little. Like every man of practical and maHsivo gcniuH, his mind was intent upon an end; and to that his speech was merely incidental. He was no mere rhetoi'ician; he was a leader, he was a ruler, and language was only an iiiHt)umentality trepariiig for th(; battles of the day, but for the battle!; of the age. TIk; fruit of such 96 Giles' Lectures. application was not only various and solid acquirements, professional and general, but also confidence in himself, a secure versatility, and a fearless aptitude. O'Connell was not superficial. He spoke much frequently, and on a great variety of subjects; but he never spoke at random; he never depended on his reputation ; he never taxed indulgent partiality ; he never went beyond his distinct ideas. He always left the impression that he had mastered the mat- ter which he handled, and had more and better things to say. The mental elasticity which has not been trained into culture, is mere flippancy ; the boldness which has not security in knowledge, is but reckless impudence, an uncertain guesswork, or a desperate leaping into dark- ness. So it never was with O'Connell. From childhood, he was assiduous in the disciphne of his faculties. Separately and in combination, he nurtured the strength of each and all. He learned to master and direct this strength at will ; to be prepared for every emergency; to leave nothing to chance, and to venture nothing upon risk. He was intellec- tually constant in observance and acquirement. The demands of his position were ever present to his attention, and, from sustained exercise, his mind had formed the habit of being at the same time active and meditative. There need but the contact and the impulse to elicit from such a mind the flash that dazzles and the bolt that kills. This is no sudden accident, no surjDrise of happy chance, but the natural effect of cultivated power. And this power, too, was, in O'Connell, a cultivated personality. O'Connell, the man, was in all that he spoke. His knowledge mingled with his nature, and made part of it. All that he got from reading — all that he learned from men — all that he was by nationahty, passion, prejudice, or circumstance, entered into the living identity out of which he spoke. O'ConncU was in every way made for a great tribune. Daniel O^Connell. 97 Of commanding height and sohd breadth of body — with elevated head, open face, cleai", piercing eye, a full, sweet voice, imperturbable cheerfulness, ready Avit, vernacular expression, and earnest address — in thought, forcible and direct — in passion, kindly or angry, as the case might be — in impulse ever-varying, from the whisper of emotion to the tempest of excitement, from the hush of prayer to the rage of indignation — O'Connell, as he willed, ruled a popular assembly. He put positions into broad, brief, and homely statements ; he clinched them with pertinent instances, and then he let them take their chance. He dealt much in aphorism, proverb, anecdote. He ever and ever changed his topic and his manner ; and joke, story, insinuation, sarcasm, pathos, merriment, a lofty burst of passion, a bold personality, indignant patriotism, or subdued, conciliating persuasion, came in quick succession — so that all within hearing of his rich, strong, musical voice, became uncon- cious of fatigue, and wished only the enchantment to continue. He was never boisterous, was not often even vehement ; and though he could, and frequently did, rise to transcendentally figurative and impassioned speech, his general matter consisted in simple and earnest argument, in vigorous and homely sense. It is true that the popular assemblies which O'Connell was accustomed to address were Irish, and that Irish multitudes are susceptible and impassioned is also true. O'Connell had naturally his first school among such multi- tudes, and a most excellent school it was. No other multi- tudes can be so electrified by flashes of emotion, or can be so aroused by the expression of a sentiment. They are quick to every allusion of tenderness ; and to wit, humor, and melancholy, they are alive in every fibre. Irish assemblies are not critical, but sympathetic. Eloquence is the child of confidence ; and therefore it is that eloquence springs up in 5 08 Giles' Lectures. Irish assemblies as a native instinct. O'Connell in all such assemblies was an incarnation of the Irish soul. His genius was the genius of the nation, and faithfully it gave ex- pression to the native mind of Ireland. One moment in jest and banter, sparkhng like the streauilets in Irish glens ; in another, like a tempest amidst Irish mountains ; now soft as a song to the Irish harp ; deep as the wind upon an Irish heath ; again mournful as waves around the Ii'ish shores. .The people felt their being in the personality of O'Connell ; the sorrow of the past and its anger ; the love of their country and its afflictions. They felt this in words plain to their intellect, in a poetry bold as their hopes, and in a prophecy as wild as their enthusiasm. Yet O'Connell's sway as an orator was not limited to an Irish multitude. I heard him in Scotland, when his triumph was as complete as it could have been in Ireland, and more splendid in its circumstances. He stood on Calton Hill, which overlooks the City of Edinburgh. The sky was clear and blue, and a mellowed sunlight spread afar and along upon flood and mountain. Some tens of thousands ranged themselves on the side of the hill, and gazed upon the stal- wart man from Ireland. The city lay below them — the city of palaces — the city of romance and story — the city of Mar}', of Knox, of Scott — the city of heroic memories and of resplendent genius. The j)anoramic vision stretched into the infinite, through glory and lovehness ; and the eye strayed over frith, and lake, and brae, and highland, until the heart was dazzled and drunk with beauty. To this sublime scenery O'Connell pointed, and opened with an earnest eulogium upon Scotland. The Palace of Holy- rood was beneath. He called up the shade of Bruce, and quoted Burns. He glorified the beauty of Scottish women, and the bravery of Scottish men. He said to the women that he would tell their sisters beyond the Channel that Daniel OX'omiell. 09 the daughters of Scotland could feel for the woes of Ireland. He dwelt with enthusiasm on the independence which Scotland liad always maintained — giving sovereigns, but receiving none, and allowing no foreign king to keep his foot upon her heathered hills. He spoke of the Covenant- ers, whoso dust made the soil which held it consecrated ground. He did homage to the sanctity of conscience for which these heroic men had fought, prayed, and died. He then turned with an eloquent despondency to Ireland. He pictured the long, the hard, the desolate sway of the op- pressor — the humiliation which for centuries had crushed his countrymen, who, never Avilling to be slaves, had always vainly struggled to be free. He enl^ged on the charms of his native land and her miseries — on the loss of her Parlia- ment — the waste of her energies — the decline of her nation- ality, and the sinking of her heart and hope. Then he gradually arose to more cheerful strains, and closed in the rapture of jubilant and exultant prophecy. After three hours he was silent ; then the collected enthusiasm of that sublime mass burst into one loud shout ; it rent the skies with its boomings, and rolled in long-sounding echoes through the rocks and hills. IV. I had hoped that, when I came to speak of O'Connoll in relation to character, I should be able to do so with fulhiess of illustration ; but some disjointed hints are all that time will now permit. O'Connell, like every man of powerful activity, was strikingly individual. He was en- tirely himself, and it was evident that he had the strongest sense of self. A certain O'Connellism was noticeable in th« very curls of his wig, in the cut of his cap, in the disj)osal of his cloak, in the whole air of his person — in every move- ment, in every gesture. The emanation of a strong interior personality gave character to his face, his body, and his motions. Wc may be told in general terms, that he was tah, 100 Gilcn' Lectures. large, bulky ; that he had stout hmbs and broad shoulders ; that his face was fresh and comely; that his brow was ample ; that his eye was gray, quick, and jiiei-cing ; that in his look and walk there was a combination of plebeian force and kingly freedom ; but until we have infused the whole with what I have called O'GonneUism, v>q have no image even of the outward man. We must see in the big body the struggling soul of a great agitator. The face that seems placid at a distance, reveals, as we look more closeljj, thoughts of discontent, which only lean men are said to have. Sternness, even melancholy, is seen in those features wherein we had fancied onl}' smiles ; and in that gray eye, which, to the passing ^ook, seems to sparkle with merriment and mischief, are observable, to a more careful gaze, depths that reach down to passions into which had come the anger and the grief of centuries. O'Connell was no less national than individual. Perhaps we might more correctly say that nationahty was incorpor- ated, identified with his individual consciousness. To think, speak, act, was to him to live in the life of Ireland. Therein he "must either live or have no life." There can be no doubt that O'Connell loved Ireland, and that in all his measures he contemjilated her interest and her glory. If he accepted in his later years a munificent income, he gave up a lai'ge one in giving up his practice. The revenue which he received was gratefully contributed. O'Connell spent it generously ; hoarded nothing ; died poor, and to his family left little but his fame. Some have had doubts of his faith in Eepeal : those who were nearest to him had no such doubts. His most intimate companions assert that he not only regarded the return of the Irish Parliament as practicable, but as certain — not only as certain, but as near. All individualism and nationality, to be otherwise than cynical or bigoted, must belong to a chai'acter of cordial Da/ltd O'Co/me/f. 10 1 humanity — must be alive to its affections, its charities, and its rights. As to the affeclions of humanit}^, no one can accuse O'ConncU as having been wanting in tliem. Some of O'ConneU's allusions to his family in his public speeches might have exposed him to jocular criticism, if it v/erc not iov the luve m them that immediately won men's better feelings, and those gleams of domestic sunshine which often threw a gracious illumination over the arid spaces of politi- cal discussion. The friends who were the most with O'Con- nell, and who knew the most of him, were the most attached to him. O'Connell had that tendency to sing which belongs to kindly natures and to genial tempers. He was constantly breaking out into snatches of ancient song — sometimes from an English ballad, sometimes from a Latin hymn. He dehghted in hearing and telling old stories. He had that love for children which is ever an instinct of tender and of noble hearts. He had, too, that generous reverence for woman which brave and honorable men always feel ; and passages are in his speeches so inspired with this sen- timent as to rise to the poetry of eloquence. He was hospitable ; and in the harmony of his household festivities, he was glad to forget the contests of the world. I will not dare to say so much for the spirit of O'ConneU's public speeches as I have said for that of his private intercourse. Yet even here we must not judge too sternly. O'ConneU's position was between extremes. He was a man the most applauded, and a marf the most decried — a man in all Chris- tendom the most loved and the most hated; and if he was, as he himself said, "the best abused man in Europe," it must also be admitted that he was the best abuser. But, with few exceptions, there was nothing sardonic or satanic in the political combats of O'Connell. Even his abuse had a sort of buoyant exaggeration that made it almost kindly. Besides, in these combats, O'Connell was too sure of victory 102 Giles' Lectures. to be malicious. He had an intellectual enjoyment, a liappy self-satisfaction, ^Yllicll always kept his spirit in them free from rancor. One night, as Lord Lyndhurst was in the fall career of an eloquent tirade against O'Connell, O'Connell himself entered the House of Lords. The noble orator was climbing to the pinnacle of a climax, and reached it by ap- plying to the Liberator the famous apostrophe of Cicero to Catiline. ""What do j'ou think of that?" said a friend to O'Connell. "Oh, simply as it should be," replied O'Con- nell ; " I have just come from the Freemason's Tavern, where I have been abusing him. It is only tit for tat, and turn about is fair play." Most of O'Connell's attacks were in this spirit of reciprocity ; and though he did sometimes apply an epithet or phrase which burned inelfaceably into his opponent's memory, and which, when dead, might be found stamped upon his heart, as Mary of England said that '•■ Calais'' would be on hers, it was seldom that such invectives much more than repaid their provocation. O'Con- nell was never implacable, and it was easy at any time to soften or conciliate him. No one was ever more fierccl}', or more ably, or more successfully O'Connell's antagonist than Lord Stanley, aftcwards Lord Derby. On one occa- sion, when O'Connell had spoken in his usual strain on the wrongs to Ireland, Lord Stanley asserted that ho was as much a friend to Ireland as was O'Connell. "If that bo so," replied O'Connell, "you can be no enemy of mine. Let our hearts shake hands." As to O'Connell's sense of human charities and rights, we have every proof which testimony can offer that he was merciful, tolerant, liberal; that, morally, socially, and politically, ho held in deepest reverence the claims of man. He was in the van of every movement that favored liberty, or that aimed at the elevation of unfavored multitudes. He was opposed to capital punishment; he disliked w'ar. Ho Daniel O'Conncll. 10*3 showed a want of political foresight when ho supposed, as he did late iu life, that moral force Avould take the place of war. But this says nothing against his moral feeling. Ho detested war — not fi'om want of courage or want of manli- ness, but from the force of a sympathetic imagination, which conceived vividly of war, of its atrocities and miseries. Ho never could overleap these to the something beyond on which most minds find rest. He had by the necessity of his tem- perament to pass through the vision of carnage and death, and long before he got near to the other side, ho sickened, staggered, and retreated. I need not say that he was an enemy to slavery, and that for the zeal with which he de- nounced it, he was in turn, throughout America, denounced. But all that O'Connell said and did in this cause, he said and did in pure and most disinterested principle. He iu no narrow struggle for his own creed, forgot his kind ; and his greatest exultation was, that every success in contest for the right, in favor of any class or people, was still a victory gained in the grand battle of universal emancipation. He insisted always that man has rights inseparable from his nature — rights which lie at the foundation of morals and society — rights which cannot be bought, which cannot be sold, and which imply as the essential of rational and im- mortal manhood — that the individuality of the human person can by no law be human property. This logic of spirit, of mind, of life, of equity, and of nature, which justified his own claims, ho argued, would justify every man in asserting the rights of his humanity. The logic which he maintained for himself, he applied to all ; for he believed that all had in the God-given soul the same divine and eternal title to the liberties and dignities of intelligent existence that he had. In this conviction he lived and labored ; it was his earliest — it was his latest ; he fought its good fight to the last, and even unto death he kept its faith. JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN. I PEOPOSE to speak to you on the life, character, and genius of a great man — I mean John Philpot Curkan. I begin Avith some hurried alkisions to the leading events of Curran's biography. John Philpot Curran was born in 1750, on the 24:th day of Jul}', in New Market, a small town iu the County of Cork, Ireland. He was the son of James Curran, senes- chal of the manor, a minor sort of local magistrate. His mother's maiden name was Sarah Philpot. This name en- ters into Curran's baptismal designation, and has become immortal in his fame. Curran ascribed to his mother his inheritance of intellect, and to his father that of a small person and of homely features. But his father was a man of respectable education, and but for that, Curran's inherit- ance of natural gifts, whencesoever it came, might have been to little purpose. Of inborn genius, and the son of a man well cultivated, it was in the order and the destiny of character that he should aspire. Aided by the Rev. Nathaniel Boyse, the Protestant clergy- man of the place, he was prepared for college. He entered the Dublin University as a sizar. He had a good classical education, and he was fond of classics to the end of his life. In due time he went through his law studies in London. Though subjected to severe scarcity of funds, he bore his privations with cheerfulness and gayety. Frugal and labo- John Philpot Cur ran. 105 rious, the pleasures and pomp of a great metropolis excited in him neither envy nor despondency; and he closed his sojourn in it without having contracted either debts or vices. Curran married in 1774, and was called to the bar in 1775. His practice became rapidly eminent and lucra- tive. But his practice in Chancery was impeded early by the judge, his political opponent, the Lord ChanceUor Fitz- gibbon, Earl of Clare. Curran estimated his aggregate loss at £30,000. On grounds political, professional, or personal, Curran fought four duels. First, with the Hon. Mr. St. Leger, brother to Lord Doneraile ; second, with John Fitz- gibbou, the Attorney-General for Ireland ; third, with Major Hobart, the Irish Secretary of State ; fourth, with a lawyer named Egan. Egan and Curran had been friends. The duel arose out of a casual dispute, and is only memorable as giving occasion to Curran for one of his witty sallies. Egan, a man of huge bulk, complained of the dispropor- tionate risk between himself and his antagonist. " Have my size," said Curran, " chalked upon yours, and let every shot outside it go for nothing." This was in Ireland the era of the pistol. ■ Curran in 1797 closed his pai'hamentary career, and was approaching the culmination of his forensic grandeur. Curran's eloquence in Parliament has not been ranked with liis eloquence in the courts of law. I have no time to ex- amine the grounds of the comparison, or the truth of the decision. It is enough to say that Curran's character and genius are seen as distinct!}' in Parliament as in the courts. We see in it, on all occasions, the spirit of manliness, wis- dom, and justice broadly and vigorously exhibited. Great as has since been the advance of enlargement and of en- lightenment in the application of political principles to the government of society, it has not yet gone beyond the truths which, amidst the clash of factions and in the worst 106 Giles' Lectures. of times, Curran urged, defended, and reiterated. "Wliat- ever the most fervent oratory could do, he did, in warn- ing, entreaty, threatening, and argument. All in vain. The prophet's -words were true, but none would believe their report. Ere long the prophecies became facts, in blood, in crime; and of all tragedies in history, the record of these facts in the struggle of 1798 is one of the most terrible. The scorned forebodings of the patriotic and the wise, as well as the prudence of their hberal exhortations, were soon terribly proved sound by the calamities which followed in the deadly battle-field, in the crowded dungeons, in the loaded gibbets, in the despairing wretchedness, and in the pitiless atrocities with which the neglect of advice and ar- gument covered the afflicted kingdom. Curran had severe personal and domestic sorrows. The abortive attempt at insurrection in 1803, and the murder of his friend, Lord Kilwarden, were heavy blows against his peace. A heavier blow still was the concealed attachment of his daughter for Eobert Emmett, and the tragic close of Emmett's lif e ; but the heaviest blow of all was the deser- tion of his wife with a profligate clergyman named Sandys, after she and her husband had lived for a quarter of a century together. She afterwards repented, and was sup- ported by Ciirran's bounty. In the short-hved Whig ministry of 180G, Curran was made a Chancery judge, as Master of the Rolls — an ap- pointment which was to him more a grief than a glory, and one for which neither his natural genius nor his professional experience gave him fitness. The last public speech which he ever made was in 1812, as a candidate for the represen- tation of Newry in the imperial ParKament. He was de- feated — and after that, listening multitudes heard his electric voice no more. Three or four years before his death, Curran resigned his judicial office; and on the 1 Ith John P/dlpot Cwron. 107 of October, 1817, ho died at Biompton, near London, being above sixty-seven years of age. In 1837 his remains were removed to Glasuevin, in the suburbs of DubKn, and there they rest in his loved and native soil. Choicer ashes than Curran's, Irish earth does not contain ; and the fire of more impassioned eloquence than his, never inspired human cla}-. Like Robert Burns, Curran loved popular sports, and was nurtured amidst popular traditions. Curran identified himself in feeling, interests, and ob- jects with the Irish people ; but ho was peculiarly attached to the humbler classes. Ho understood the Irish people in their virtues and their vices, in their suilerings, uiid in their wrongs. He was their true friend, and if, at times, ho justly l)lamed, on all right occasions he as generously praised. They in return loved him ; they loved him with an ai'fection of admiration and enthusiasm which was no base idolatry, but a noble worship. Curran was conscious of this popular love to him ; but being conscious also that he deserved it, he had nothing in him of the demagogue. His intercourse with the people was marked by cordiality and dignity, and his demeanor was as simple as his spirit was sincere. His personal manners were unpresuming and unpretending. He was courteous, with that genuine courtesy which is easy, unobtrusive, informal, and that loses the sense of self in sympathy with others. Much as he talked, he was never his own subject, as most talkers are. In this he was the contrast of Erskine, his most celebrated forensic contempo- rary. On a certain occasion he administered to this vain and great orator a severe rebuke. " Come, come," said Erskine once to Curran, "was not Grattan intimidated at the idea of a first appearance before the British Parlia- ment?" "Indeed, my Lord," answered Curran, "I do not think he was, nor do I think he had any reason to be. When he succeeded so splendidly with so eloquent and so 108 Giles' Lectures. discriminating a body as the Irish House of Commons, he iieed not have apprehended much from any foreign criti- cism." "Well, but, Curran, did he not confess he was afraid?" insisted Erskine — "did you not hear him say so?" "Indeed, my good Lord, I never did. Mr. Grattan is a A'ery modest man — he never speaks of himself." Curran was the delight of a wide social circle, with which he always maintained kindly relations. He was ardent in his profession and in politics, but in neither was he vindictive. At his own table he was generous ; at the tables of other 2nen he was genial ; always, he was humorous — rarely, in- temperate ; and to the very last, while his mind could govern his words, his sayings had the stamp of power. Even when mental gloom had shut out for ever the light of happiness, and mortal disease took away all hope of health, the special originality of his wit and humor did not forsake him. Even in the breaking up of nature, there was stiU his genius, in its extraordinary^ combination of the serious and the gay, of the brilliant and thoughtful soul ; it was still there, in its wonderful union of idealism and oddity, of irony and sympathj-^ — of the mirth which is bred in the heart of melancholy, and of the fancy which relieves de- spondency by laughter. Throughout life, Curran's conver- sation seems to have given to all that heard it the pleasure of constant enchantment and surprise. A sense of wonder and delight appears to excite aU who allude to it. In obedience to what lecture-hearers expect, I present two or three sayings of Curran's out of numbers which tradition insists on calling examples of his Avit and humor. But I do this almost under protest, for the wit and humor of Curran so interveined his mental Ufe, that they cannot be illustrated by posthumous dissection, or exhibited in bit-and-bit specimens. I may properly — as an Irishman, privileged to blunder— begin by showing Curran's humor John Philpot Curran. 109 iu a saying which was not Curran's. It was that of his colored servant, who refused to Hve with him any longer. Curran wondered why he desired to go, and entreated him to stay. " No, massa," said he, " I cannot Hve longer mth you; I am losing my health; you make me laugh too much." Curran was told that a lawyer, who was dirty in his person and sparing of his money, had set out from Dublin to Cork, with one shirt and one guinea. "Yes," said Curran, "and he will change neither of them till he returns." This saying is the carcasm of good humor. Sometimes his sayings are whimsical and droll. To this effect was his contest with a Cork fish-woman. She was gaining such advantage on him, that he was for retreat. But retreat, as Curran observes, was to be achieved with dignity. "So, drawing myself disdainfully up," he goes on, "I said — Madam, I scorn aU further discourse with such an individual." "Individual ! you wagabone ! " she exclaimed, " I'm no more an individual than your mother was." At times his drollei'y is touched with pathos, and merges into poetry. One morning, near to Curran's death, the doctor observed to him that he coughed with more difficulty than he had on the preceding evening. " That is very surprising," said Curran, "for I have been practising all night." In a less dangerous position, when Curran feared he had a premonition of palsy, the physician assured him there was no danger of the kind. "Then," said Curran, "I am to consider what has lately happened was a runaway knock, and not a notice to quit." To come back once more to the gi'otesque. The wig of a stupid barrister was awry. Curran smiled. " Do you see anything ridiculous in my wig?" said the barrister. "No," replied Curran, -"nothing but the head." A pretentious witness feigned ignorance of Irish, and spoke in English badly. "I see, Sii', how it is," said Curran, "you are more 110 Giles^ Lectures. ashamed of knowing- your own language than of not know- ing any other." Many in spirit resemble this poltroon ; they are ashamed of being Irish, and yet are often them- selves the disgrace of Ireland. I quote these sayings in obedience to popular desire, and in reverence to traditional affection. But in the intellectual estimate of them, I entirely agree with Thomas Davis. "What avails it to us," he says, "to know the capital puns which Curran made in college, or the smart cj.ngrams he said to Macklin ? These things are the empty shells of his deep-sea mind — idle things for idlers to classify. But for men who, though in the ranks of life, are anxious to order their minds by the standard of some commanding spirit — or for governing minds, who want to commune with his spirit in brotherly sympathy and instruction — to such men the puns are rubbish, and the jokes are chaff." Curran had an unconquerable aversion to the labor of writing. In the composition of his speeches, Curran trusted only to meditation and memory. He tried at first to write his speeches, but immediately gave up the attempt. Writing was not to him an aid, but an embarrassment. He much loved walking, and as he walked, he loved to think. In these thoughtful walkings much he mused, and out of these musings came many of the electric brilliancies of his speeches. Ho loved music too ; and having some skill on the violencello, while he poiired along the strings some love song, or war song, or death song, he composed and elaborated his orations. But though Curran did not write his speeches, he was no merely extemporaneous speaker, as indeed no great speaker can ever be. His preparation was one of careful and most thorough labor. What ho was to speak, he made ready to his thought, that it might also be ready to his tongue ; and this he did by toil, Avhich it required the utmost ambition and onthusiasiu to undertake or to boar. Curran was a John Philpot Curran. Ill man of genius, and because ho was such, he was a man of labor. He neglected nothing which could perfect his gifts, but was honestly vigilant that, in all which work could do, his gifts should not be vulgarly or profanely spoken of. He trained an obstinate voice into musical obedience ; by the habit of nobly thinking, ho gave glory to homely features; and nature blessed him with an eye that, largo, grand, and deei?, was as variable as the phases of the sky — living as the spirit mind— soft and tender to pity or console — gay and sportive to amuse or delight — earnest and solemn "to threaten or command. I do not propose to give a critical review of Curran's speeches, but simj^ly to estimate the spirit of his oratory. The measure of time proper to a lecture will not permit more, and if it would, more were hardly possible. We have no complete or correct report of Curran's speeches, but only hurried notes, which give us merely hints of what the speeches actually spoken must have been. The reports have preserved, indeed, the idiom of his manner, of his mind, but evidently they convey no adequate idea of his rich and rounded power. I shall only glance at a few of the speeches which are most marked by Curran's manner, and characterized by his genius. His speech in defence of Peter Finnerty, as the printer of what was deemed a libel on the Irish Government, is very able. It is powerful in logic, law, and passion — especially I^assion — the passion of angry despair, of patriotic sorrow ; caUing into use all the sardonic or sportive fancy, all the faculties of ridicule, scorn, irony, and sarcasm which his wonderful talent had so sovereignly at command. This speech is one of the noblest defences that was ever made for the rights of the citizen and the liberty of the press. The defence of Finney, prosecuted for high treason in 112 Giles' Lectures. 1708, has passages terrifically ironical in their dissection of the character of Jemmy O'Brien, the hirehug spy and in- fonuor of the government. The speech for Oliver Bond is distinguished by gravit}'-, reflectiveness, and melancholy — burning up, at times, into the llame of consuming energy. The speech against Major Sirr carries irony, ridicule, con- tempt, hatred, and scorn to the utmost limits of language. In the plea for Owen Kirwan, the advocate feels that he can- not save his client, and becomes despondently eloquent on the condition of his country. Curran's argument for Judge Johnson is tender, learned, classical, and is famous for a passage in which he alludes to a former friendship with Jjord Avoumorc, who presided on the trial — a passage which more than renewed their friendship ; for the barrister and the magistrate had for some time been alienated. The speech for Hamilton llowan is grand and large. The speech for Henry Shears, and that for Lady Fitzgerald, are remarkable for pathos and moral beauty. The speech for Shears Avas made under the most dismal and discouraging circumstances. The trial began at nine o'clock in the morn- ing, and fifteen hours of vigilance and hard Avork had been gone through when Curran was called on, after midnight, to begin his speech for the defence. He requested a short interval — no so much, he said, for repose as for recollection. The request was refused; and, in a condition of the last exhaustion, he commenced his terrific task. The speech against Headfort contains Curran's best excellencies, and all the elements of the highest forensic oratory. This was his last great effort at the bar. I have in this enumeration observed no strict chronological order. I will occupy the remainder of the lecture in giving my general idea of Curran's eloquence. I am impressed deeply with its moral sinq)licity, and its moral elevation. Curran found the data of his forensic or legislative roa- Jail II Phil pal i'lirntii. \\',\ polling^ in ilic coinnion uuitire ol" in;ui ; :i\u\ ilu- l