Speeches from the Dock Part 6

O'Brien was in bed, when Meagher and Dillon arrived at Balinkeele where he was stopping. The news of the suspension of the _Habeas Corpus_ Act, and of the plans formed by the Confederates were speedily communicated to him. O'Brien manifested no surprise at the intelligence. He quietly remarked that the time for action had arrived; and that every Irishman was now justified in taking up arms against the government; dressed himself, and set out without losing an hour to inaugurate his hazardous enterprise at Enniscorthy. As the train drove along, the three friends occupied themselves with the important question where should they begin the outbreak. Wexford was mentioned, but the number of Confederates enrolled there were few, and the people were totally unprepared for a sudden appeal to arms; New Ross and Waterford were ruled against, because of the effectual a.s.sistance the gunboats stationed in the river could render the garrison of those towns. Against Kilkenny none of those objections applied; and the more they discussed the subject the more convinced did they become that the most fitting cradle for the infant genius of Irish liberty was the ancient "city of the Confederates."

"Perfectly safe from all war steamers, gunboats, and floating batteries; standing on the frontiers of the three best fighting counties in Ireland--Waterford, Wexford, and Tipperary--the peasantry of which could find no difficulty in pouring to its relief; possessing from three to five thousand Confederates, most of whom were understood to be armed; the most of the streets being narrow, and presenting on this account the greatest facilities for the erection of barricades; the barracks lying outside the town, and the line of communication between the powerful portions of the latter and the former being intercepted by the old bridge over the Nore, which might be easily defended, or, at the most, very speedily demolished; no place," says Meagher, "appeared to us to be better adapted for the first scene of the revolution."

Towards Kilkenny they therefore took their way, haranguing the people in soul-stirring addresses as they proceeded. At Enniscorthy and at Graigue-na-mana their appeals were responded to with fervent enthusiasm; they called on the people to form themselves into organized bodies, and prepare to co-operate with the insurgents who were shortly to unfurl their banner beneath the shadow of St. Canice's; and the crowds who hung on their words vowed their determination to do so. But in Kilkenny, as in every town they visited, the patriot leaders found the greatest disinclination to take the initiative in the holy war. There as elsewhere the people felt no unwillingness to fight; but they knew they were ill prepared for such an emergency, and fancied the first blow might be struck more effectively elsewhere. "Who will draw the first blood?" asked Finton Lalor in the last number of the _Felon_; and the question was a pertinent one; there was a decided reluctance to draw it.

It is far from our intention to cast the slightest reflection on the spirit or courage of the nationalists of 1848. We know that it was no selfish regard for their own safety made the leaders in Wexford, Kilkenny, and elsewhere, shrink from counselling an immediate outbreak in their localities; the people, as well as the men who led them, looked forward to the rising of the harvest moon, and the cutting of their crops, as the precursors of the herald that was to summon them to aims.

Their state of organization was lamentably deficient; antic.i.p.ating a month of quiet preparation, they had neglected to procure arms up to the date of O'Brien's arrival, and a few weeks would at least be required to complete their arrangements. In Kilkenny, for instance, not one in every eight of the clubmen possessed a musket, and even their supply of pikes was miserably small. But they were ready to do all that in them lay; and when O'Brien, Dillon, and Meagher quitted Kilkenny on Monday, July 24th, they went in pursuance of an arrangement which was to bring them back to the city of the Nore before the lapse of a week. They were to drive into Tipperary, visit Carrick, Clonmel, and Cashel, and summon the people of those towns to arms. Then, after the lapse of a few days, they were to return at the head of their followers to Kilkenny, call out the clubs, barricade the streets, and from the Council Chambers of the Corporation issue the first Revolutionary Edict to the country. They hoped that a week later the signal fires of insurrection would be blazing from every hill-top in Ireland; and that the sunlight of freedom, for which so many generations of patriots had yearned, would soon flood glebe and town, the heather-clad mountains, and pleasant vales of Innisfail. _Diis aliter visum_; the vision that glittered before their longing eyes melted away with the smoke of the first insurgent shot; and instead of the laurel of the conqueror they were decked with the martyr's palm.

On arriving in Callan the travellers were received with every demonstration of sympathy and welcome. The streets were blocked with ma.s.ses of men that congregated to listen to their words. A large procession, headed by the temperance band, escorted them through the town, and a bonfire was lit in the centre of the main street. They told the people to provide themselves at once with arms, as in a few days they would be asked to march with the insurgent forces on Kilkenny--an announcement that was received with deafening applause. After a few hours' delay the three compatriots quitted Callan, and pursued their road to Carrick-on-Suir, where they arrived on the some evening and received a most enthusiastic reception. They addressed the excited mult.i.tude in impa.s.sioned words, promised to lead them to battle before many days, and called on them to practice patience and prudence in the interval. On the following day they quitted Carrick, and took their way to Mullinahone, where the people gathered in thousands to receive them.

The number of men who a.s.sembled to meet them was between three and four thousand, of whom about three hundred were armed with guns, pistols, old swords, and pitchforks. The gathering was reviewed and drilled by the Confederates; and O'Brien, who wore a plaid scarf across his shoulders, and carried a pistol in his breast pocket, told them that Ireland would have a government of her own before many weeks.

On the evening of Tuesday, July 25th, the Confederate leaders arrived in Mullinahone, where they slept. On the following morning they addressed the people, who flocked into the town on hearing of their arrival. And here it was that O'Brien himself dealt the death blow of the movement.

The peasantry, who came from their distant homes to meet him, were left the whole day long without food or shelter. O'Brien himself gave what money he had to buy them bread; but he told them in future they should provide for themselves, as he could allow no one's property to be interfered with. Hungry and exhausted, the men who listened to him returned at night to their homes; they were sensible enough to perceive that insurrection within the lines laid down by their leaders was impossible; the news that they were expected to fight on empty stomachs was spread amongst the people, and from that day forward the number of O'Brien's followers dwindled away.

On July 26th, O'Brien and his party first visited the village of Ballingarry, where he was joined by M'Ma.n.u.s, Doheny, Devin Reilly, and other prominent members of the Confederation. They took a survey of the village and its neighbourhood; addressed the crowd from the piers of the chapel gate, and slept in the house of one of the village shopkeepers.

Next day they returned to Mullinahone and thence to Killenaule, where they were received with every demonstration of welcome and rejoicing.

Bouquets fell in showers upon O'Brien; addresses were read, and the fullest and warmest co-operation was freely promised by the excited crowds that congregated in the streets.

The exact position which the Confederates had now a.s.sumed towards the Crown and government, is deserving of a moment's attention. Up to the last they carefully distinguished between resisting the acts of the government and disputing the sovereignty of the queen. They regarded the suspension of the _Habeas Corpus_ Act as unconst.i.tutional in itself; and when O'Brien told her Majesty's Ministers in the House of Commons, that it was they who were the traitors to the country, the Queen, and the Const.i.tution, he did but express the opinions that underlay the whole policy of the Confederation. Even the pa.s.sing of the _Habeas Corpus_ Suspension Act was not quite sufficient to exhaust their patience; in order to fill the measure of the government's transgressions and justify a resort to arms against them, it was necessary in the opinion of O'Brien and his a.s.sociates, that the authorities should attempt to carry into operation the iniquitious law they had pa.s.sed; the arrest of O'Brien was to be the signal for insurrection; meanwhile, they were satisfied with organizing their forces for the fray, and preparing for offering an effective resistance to the execution of the warrant, whenever it should make its appearance. It was therefore that when at Killenaule, a small party of dragoons rode up to the town they were suffered to proceed unmolested; at the first notice of their coming, the people rushed to the streets and hastily threw up a barricade to intercept them. Dillon commanded at the barricade; beside him stood Patrick O'Donoghue, and a young man whose career as a revolutionist, was destined to extend far beyond the scenes in which he was then sharing; and whose name was one day to become first a terror to the government of England, and afterwards a by-word and a reproach amongst his countrymen.

O'Donoghue and Stephens were both armed, and when the officer commanding the dragoons rode up to the barricade and demanded a pa.s.sage, Stephens promptly covered him with his rifle, when his attention was arrested by a command from Dillon to ground his arms. The officer pledged his honour that he did not come with the object of arresting O'Brien; the barricade was taken down; and the dragoons pa.s.sed scatheless through the town.

Another opportunity had been lost, and the hearts of the most resolute of O'Brien's colleagues sunk lower than ever.

On Friday, O'Brien and his followers returned to Ballingarry, where they held a council on the prospects of the movement. It was clear that the case was a desperate one, that the chance of successful resistance was inevitably lost, and that nothing now awaited them--should they persist in their enterprise--but ruin and death. Only a couple of hundred men, wretchedly armed or not armed at all, adhered to their failing fortunes; and throughout the rest of the country the disaffected gave no sign. But O'Brien was unmovable; he would do his duty by his country, let the country answer for its duty towards him.

The collision came at last. On Sat.u.r.day morning, July 29th, the constabulary of Thurles, Kilkenny, Cashel, and Callan received orders to march on the village of Ballingarry, for the purpose of arresting Smith O'Brien. On the previous day the government had issued a proclamation, declaring him guilty of treasonable practices, by appearing in arms against the Queen, and offering a reward of 500 for his apprehension; on the same day, 300 was offered for the arrest of Meagher, Dillon, and Doheny. Fired with the ambition of capturing the rebel party with his own forces, and winning for himself a deathless fame, Sub-Inspector Trant marched out in hot haste from Callan, at the head of forty-six policemen, and directed his steps towards Ballingarry, where it was known to him that O'Brien was still stopping. Between twelve and one o'clock they arrived at Farrenrory, within three miles of the village of Ballingary. On arriving at this point the police found that effective measures had been adopted to dispute their further progress. Across the road before them a barricade had been thrown up, and behind it was arrayed a body of men, numbering from three to four hundred. Fearing to face the insurgent forces, the police turned off to the right, and rushed towards a slate house which they saw in the distance. The people saw the object of the movement, and at once gave chase; but the police had the advantage of a long start, and they succeeded in reaching the house and barring the door by which they entered, before their pursuers came up.

The die was cast, and the struggle so long watched for, and sighed for, had come at last. But it came not as it had been depicted by the tribune and poet; the vision that had flashed its radiancy before the eager eyes that hungered for the redemption of Ireland, differed sadly from the miserable reality. The serried ranks of glittering steel, the files of gallant pikemen, the armed columns of stalwart peasants, pouring through gap and river course, the glimmering camp fires quivering through the mist, the waving banners, and the flashing swords--where were they now?

Where were the thousands of matchless mould, the men of strength and spirit, whose footfalls woke the echoes one month before in a hundred towns as they marched to the meetings at which they swore to strike down the oppressor? Only a few months had pa.s.sed since two thousand determined men had pa.s.sed in review before O'Brien at Cork; scarcely six weeks since, similar sights were witnessed from the city of the Shannon to the winding reaches of the Boyne. Everywhere there were strength, and numbers, and resolution; where were they now in the supreme hour of the country's agony? A thousand times it had been sworn by tens of thousands of Irishmen, that the tocsin of battle would find them cl.u.s.tered round the good old flag to conquer or die beneath its shadow.

And now, the hour had come, the flag of insurrection so often invoked was raised; but the patriot that raised it was left defenceless: _he_ at least kept his word, but the promises on which he relied had broken like dissolving ice beneath his feet.

Around O'Brien there cl.u.s.tered on that miserable noontide, about four hundred human beings--a weak, hungry, and emaciated looking throng for the most part; their half naked forms, browned by the sun, and hardened by the winter winds--a motley gathering; amongst whom there were scores of fasting men, and hundreds through whose wretched dwellings the, wind and rain found free ingress. They were poor, they were weak, they were ignorant, they were unarmed! but there was one, thing at least which they possessed--that quality which Heaven bestowed on the Irish race, to gild and redeem their misfortunes. Of courage and resolution they had plenty: they understood little of the causes which led to the outbreak in which they partic.i.p.ated; of Smith O'Brien or his a.s.sociates few of them had heard up to their appearance at Ballingarry; but they knew that it was against the forces of the British government and on behalf of Ireland's independence they were called on to fight, and in this cause they were ready to shed their blood. Such was the party whom O'Brien gazed upon with a troubled mind on that eventful day. Even the attached companions who had so far attended him were no longer by his side; M'Ma.n.u.s, O'Donoghue, and Stephens were still there; but Meagher, Dillon, Doheny and O'Gorman had left at break of day to raise the standard of insurrection in other quarters. Of the men around him not more than twenty possessed firearms, about twice that number were armed with pikes and pitchforks; the remainder had but their naked hands and the stones they could gather by the wayside.

On the other side were forty-seven disciplined men splendidly armed, and ensconced moreover in a building possessing for the purpose of the hour the strength of a fortress. It stood on the brow of a hill overlooking the country in every direction; it consisted of two storeys with four windows in each, in front and rere; each gable being also pierced by a pair of windows. There were six little children in the house when the police entered it. Their mother, the Widow M'Cormick arrived on the spot immediately after the police had taken possession of her domicile, and addressing O'Brien she besought him to save her little ones from danger. On O'Brien's chivalrous nature the appeal was not wasted. Heedless of the danger to which he exposed himself he walked up to the window of the house. Standing at the open window with his breast within an inch of the bayonets of the two policemen who were on the inside, he called on them to give up their arms, and avoid a useless effusion of blood. "We are all Irishmen, boys" he said, "I only want your arms and I'll protect your lives." The reply was a murderous volley poured on the gathering outside. Some half drunken person in the crowd it appears had flung a stone at one of the windows, and the police needed no further provocation. The fire was returned by the insurgents, and O'Brien seeing that his efforts to preserve peace were futile, quitted the window and rejoined his companions. For nearly two hours the firing continued; the police well sheltered from the possibility of injury fired in all about 220 rounds, killing two men and wounding a number of others, amongst them James Stephens who was shot in the thigh.

Long before an equal number of shots were fired from without, the ammunition of the insurgents was exhausted, and they could only reply to the thick falling bullets with the stones which the women present gathered for them in their ap.r.o.ns. It was clear that the house could not be stormed in this way; and M'Ma.n.u.s, with half-a-dozen resolute companions, rolled a cartload of hay up to the kitchen door with the intention of setting fire to it and burning down the house. But O'Brien would not permit it; there were children in the house, and their innocent lives should not be sacrificed. In vain did M'Ma.n.u.s entreat him for permission to fire his pistol into the hay and kindle the ready flames, O'Brien was inexorable; and the first and last battle of the insurrection was lost and won. The Rev. Mr. Fitzgerald, the priest of the parish, and his curate, Father Maher now appeared on the spot, and naturally used their influence to terminate the hopeless struggle, a large force of constabulary from Cashel soon after were seen approaching, and the people, who now saw the absolute uselessness of further resistance broke away to the hills. The game was up; the banner of Irish independence had again sunk to the dust; and O'Brien, who had acted throughout with preternatural coolness, and whose face gave no more indications of emotion than if it had been chiseled in marble, turned from the scene with a broken heart. For a length of time he resisted the entreaties of his friends and refused to leave the spot; at last their solicitations prevailed, and mounting a horse taken from one of the police he rode away.

From that fatal day down to the night of Sat.u.r.day, August 5th, the police sought vainly for O'Brien. He slept in the peasant's hut on the mountain and he shared his scanty fare; a price which might well dazzle the senses of his poverty-stricken entertainers was on his head, and they knew it; over hill-side and valley swarmed the host of spies, detectives, and policemen placed on his track; but no hand was raised to clutch the tempting bribe, no voice whispered the information for which the government preferred its gold. Amongst those too who took part in the affray at Ballingarry, and who subsequently were cast in shoals into prison, there were many from whom the government sought to extract information. Bribes and promises of pardon were held up before their eyes, menaces were freely resorted to, but amongst them the government sought vainly for an informer. Many, of them died in captivity or in exile; their homes were broken up; their wives and children left dest.i.tute and friendless; but the words that would give them liberty and wealth, and terminate the sufferings of themselves and their families were never spoken. Had O'Brien chosen to escape from the country like Doheny, O'Gorman, Dillon and other of his friends, it is probable he might have done so. He resolved however on facing the consequence of his acts and sharing the fate of the Irish rebel to the bitter end.

The rain fell cold and drearily in the deserted streets of Thurles on the night which saw the arrest of William Smith O'Brien. Away over the shadowy mountains in the distance, the swimming vapours cast their shroud, wrapping in their chilling folds the homes of the hunger-stricken prostrate race that sat by their fireless hearths. The autumn gale swept over the desolate land as if moaning at the ruin and misery that cursed it, and wailing the dirge of the high hopes and ardent purposes that a few short weeks before had gladdened the hearts of its people. Calmly and deliberately with folded arms...o...b..ien walked through the streets, and entered the Thurles Railway Station. He wore a black hat, a blue boat cloak, in which he was rather tightly m.u.f.fled, and a light plaid trousers; in his hand he carried a large black stick.

He walked to the ticket office and paid his fare to Limerick; then wrapping himself up in his cloak and folding his arms, again he walked slowly along the platform awaiting the arrival of the train. He had resolved on surrendering himself for trial, but he wished to pay one last visit to his home and family. That gratification however was denied him, he was recognised by an Englishman named Hulme, a railway guard; in an instant he was surrounded by police and detectives, and torn of with brutal violence to gaol. That same night an express train flashed northwards through the fog and mist bearing O'Brien a prisoner to Dublin. In the carriage in which he was placed sat General M'Donald, a Sub-Inspector of Constabulary and four policemen. On entering the train a pistol was placed at O'Brien's head, and he was commanded not to speak on peril of his life. Disregarding the injunction, he turned to M'Donald and asked him why he was so scandalously used. The General "had a duty to perform," and "his orders should be obeyed." "I have played the game and lost," said O'Brien, "and I am ready to pay the penalty of having failed; I hope that those who accompanied me may be dealt with in clemency; I care not what happens to myself."

On Thursday, September 28th, he was arraigned before a Special Commission on a charge of high treason at Clonmel. The trial lasted ten days, and ended in a verdict of guilty. It excited unprecedented interest throughout the country, and there are many of its incidents deserving of permanent record. Amongst the witnesses brought forward by the crown was John O'Donnell, a comfortable farmer, who resided near Ballingarry. "I won't be sworn," he said on coming on the table, "or give evidence under any circ.u.mstances. You may bring me out and put a file of soldiers before me, and plant twenty bullets in my breast, but while I have a heart there I will never swear for you." He expiated his patriotism by a long imprisonment. Nor was this a solitary instance of heroism; Richard Shea, a fine looking young peasant, on being handed the book declared that "he would not swear against such a gentleman," and he too was carried off to pa.s.s years within a British dungeon. But their sacrifices were unavailing; of evidence there was plenty against O'Brien; the police were overflowing with it, and the eloquence and ability of Whiteside were powerless to save him from a verdict of guilty.

The papers of the time are full of remarks on the firmness and self-possession displayed by O'Brien throughout the trial. Even the announcement of the verdict failed to disturb his composure, and when the usual question was asked he replied with calmness and deliberation:

"My lords, it is not my intention to enter into any vindication of my conduct, however much I might have desired to avail myself of this opportunity of so doing. I am perfectly satisfied with the consciousness that I have performed my duty to my country--that I have done only that which, in my opinion, it was the duty of every Irishman to have done; and I am now prepared to abide the consequences of having performed my duty to my native land. Proceed with your sentence."

A deep murmur, followed by a burst of applause filled the court as the n.o.ble patriot ceased speaking. Stepping back a pace, and folding his arms on his breast, O'Brien looked fixedly at the judge, and awaited the sentence of the court. Amidst the deepest sensation, Chief Justice Blackburne proceeded to discharge his task. O'Brien was sentenced to be hanged, beheaded, and quartered. "During the delivery of the sentence,"

says a writer of the period, "the most profound agitation pervaded in the court; as it drew towards the close, the excitement became more marked and intense; but when the last barbarous provisions of the sentence were p.r.o.nounced, the public feeling could only manifest itself by stifled sobs and broken murmurs of sympathy for the heroic man, who, alone, was unmoved during this awful scene, whose lips alone did not quiver, whose hand alone did not tremble, but whose heart beat with the calm pulsation of conscious guiltlessness and unsullied honour."

Nine months later (July 29th, 1849), the brig "Swift" sailed from Kingstown harbour, bearing O'Brien, Meagher, M'Ma.n.u.s, and O'Donoghue into exile. In the month of November the vessel reached Hobart Town, where "tickets of leave" were offered to those gentlemen on condition of their residing each one within a certain district marked out for him, and giving their parole to make no attempt at escape while in possession of the ticket. Messrs. Meagher, M'Ma.n.u.s, and O'Donoghue accepted these terms; Mr. O'Brien refused them, and was consequently sent to an island off the coast called Maria Island, where he was placed in strict custody and treated with great severity. The news of the indignities and the sufferings to which he was subjected, outraged the feelings of the Irish people in the neighbouring country, and ere long his sympathisers in Tasmania laid a plan for his escape. They hired a vessel to lie off the coast on a particular day, and send a boat on sh.o.r.e to take off the prisoner, who had been informed of the plot, and had arranged to be in waiting for his deliverers. This design would unquestionably have succeeded but for the treachery of the captain of the ship, who, before sailing to the appointed spot, had given the government information of the intended escape and the manner of it. What occurred on the arrival of the vessel we shall relate in the words of Mr. Mitchel, who tells the story in his "Jail Journal" as he heard it from Mr. O'Brien himself:

"At last as he wandered on the sh.o.r.e and had almost given up all hope of the schooner, the schooner hove in sight. To give time for her approach he walked into the woods for a s.p.a.ce, that he might not alarm his guardian constable by his attention to her movements. Again he sauntered down towards the point with apparent carelessness, but with a beating heart. San Francisco was to be his first destination; and beyond that golden gate lay the great world, and home, and children, and an honourable life. The boat was coming, manned by three men; and he stepped proudly and resolutely to meet them on the sh.o.r.e. To be sure there was, somewhere behind him, one miserable constable with his miserable musket, but he had no doubt of being able to dispose of that difficulty with the aid of his allies, the boatmen. The boat could not get quite close to the beach, because they had to run her into a kind of cove where the water was calm and unenc.u.mbered with large tangled weeds.

O'Brien, when he reached the beach, plunged into the water to prevent delay, and struggled through the thick matted seaweed to the boat. The water was deeper than he expected, and when he came to the boat he needed the aid of the boatmen to climb over the gunwale. Instead of giving him this aid the rascals allowed him to flounder there, and kept looking to the sh.o.r.e, where the constable had by this time appeared with his musket. The moment he showed himself, the three boatmen cried out together, 'We surrender!' and invited him on board; where he instantly took up a hatchet--no doubt provided by the ship for that purpose, and stove the boat. O'Brien saw he was betrayed, and on being ordered to move along with the constable and boatmen towards the station, he refused to stir--hoping, in fact, by his resistance, to provoke the constable to shoot him. However, the three boatmen seized on him, and lifted him up from the ground, and carried him wherever the constable ordered. His custody was thereafter made more rigorous, and he was shortly after removed from Maria Island to Port Arthur station."

To this brief narrative the following "note" is appended in the work from which we have just quoted:--

"Ellis, the captain of the schooner, was some months after seized at San Francis...o...b.. Mr. M'Ma.n.u.s and others, brought by night out of his ship, and carried into the country to undergo his trial under a tree, whereupon, if found guilty, he was destined to swing. M'Ma.n.u.s set out his indictment; and it proves how much Judge Lynch's method of administering justice in those early days of California excelled anything we know of law or justice in Ireland--that Ellis, for want of sufficient and satisfactory evidence then producible, was acquitted by that midnight court, under that convenient and tempting tree."

Port Arthur station, to which Mr. O'Brien was removed from Maria Island, was a place of punishment for convicts who, while serving out their terms of transportation, had committed fresh offences against the law.

After a detention there for some time, Mr. O'Brien, whose health was rapidly sinking under the rigours of his confinement, was induced, by letters, from his political friends to accept the ticket-of-leave and avail of the comparative liberty which they enjoyed. The government, on his acceptance of their terms, placed him first in the district of New Norfolk, and subsequently in that of Avoca, where he remained until the conditional pardon, already mentioned in these columns, was granted in 1854. He then left Australia, went on to Madras, where he made a stay of about a month; from thence he went to Paris and on to Brussels, where he was joined by his wife and children. He next made a tour in Greece, and was in that country when the unconditional pardon, which permitted him to return to his native land, was granted in the month of May, 1856, immediately after the close of the Crimean war. On Tuesday, July 8th, 1856, Mr. O'Brien stood once more upon his native soil after an exile of eight years. The news of his arrival was joyfully received by his fellow-countrymen, who welcomed him with every mark of respect and affection whenever he appeared among them. Thence-forward Mr. O'Brien took no active part in Irish politics, but he frequently offered advice and suggestions to his countrymen through the medium of letters and addresses in the _Nation_. In February, 1859, Mr. O'Brien made a voyage to America, and during the ensuing months travelled through a great portion of that country. After his return to Ireland he delivered, in November, 1859, an interesting series of lectures on his tour, in the.

Mechanics' Inst.i.tute, Dublin. On July 1st, 1863, he lectured in the Rotundo, Dublin, for the benefit of a fund which was being raised for the relief of the wounded and dest.i.tute patriots of the Polish insurrection. In the early part of the year, 1864, the health of the ill.u.s.trious patriot began rapidly to fail, and he was taken by his friends to England for a change of air. But the weight of many years of care and suffering was on him, and its effects could not be undone. On the 16th of June, 1864. at Bangor, the n.o.ble-hearted patriot breathed his last. His family had the honoured remains brought to Ireland for interment in the old burial-ground of his fathers. On Thursday morning at an early hour they reached Dublin on board the "Cambria" steamer. It was known that his family wished that no public demonstration should be made at his funeral, but the feelings of the citizens who desired to pay a tribute of respect to his memory could not be repressed. In the grey hours of the morning the people in thousands a.s.sembled on the quays to await the arrival of the remains, and two steamers, which had been chartered for the purpose, proceeded, with large numbers on board, some distance into the harbour to meet the approaching vessel. All along the way, from the North Wall to the Kings-bridge railway station, the hea.r.s.e bearing the patriot's body was accompanied by the procession of mourners, numbering about 15,000 men. At various stages of the journey similar scenes were witnessed. But the end was soon reached. In the churchyard of Rathronan, Co. Limerick, they laid him to rest. The green gra.s.s grows freshly around the vault in which he sleeps, and has long filled up the foot-prints of the mult.i.tude who broke the silence of that lonely spot by their sobs on the day he was buried; the winter gales will come and go, and touched by the breath of spring, the wild flowers will blossom there through succeeding years; but never again will a purer spirit, a n.o.bler mind, a patriot more brave, more chivalrous, or more true, give his heart to the cause of Ireland, than the silvered-haired, care-burthened gentleman whom they bore from Cahirmoyle to his grave on the 24th day of June, 1864.

THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER.

Early in 1846, when the Repeal a.s.sociation was still powerful and great, and ere yet the country had ceased to throb to the magic of O'Connell's voice, there rose one day from amongst those who crowded the platform of Conciliation Hall, a well-featured, gracefully-built, dark-eyed young gentleman, towards whom the faces of the a.s.sembly turned in curiosity, and whose accents when he spoke, were those of a stranger to the audience. Few of them had heard of his name; not one of them--if the chairman, William Smith O'Brien be excepted--had the faintest idea of the talents and capacities he possessed, and which were one day to enrapture and electrify his countrymen. He addressed the meeting on one of the pa.s.sing topics of the day; something in his manner savouring of affectation, something in the semi-Saxon lisp that struggled through his low-toned utterances, something in the total lack of suitable gesture, gave his listeners at the outset an unfavourable impression of the young speaker. He was boyish, and some did not scruple to hint conceited; he had too much of the fine gentleman about his appearance, and too little of the native brogue and stirring declamation to which his listeners had been accustomed. The new man is a failure, was the first idea that suggested itself to the audience: but he was not; and when he resumed his seat he had conquered all prejudices, and wrung the cheers of admiration from the meeting. Warming with his subject, and casting off the restraints that hampered his utterances at first, he poured forth a strain of genuine eloquence, vivified by the happiest allusions, and enriched by imagery and quotations as beautiful as they were appropriate, which startled the meeting from its indifference, and won for the young speaker the enthusiastic applause of his audience. O'Brien complimented him warmly on his success, and thus it was that the orator of Young Ireland made his debut on the political platform.

Meagher was not quite twenty-three years of age when his voice was first heard in Conciliation Hall. He was born in Waterford of an old Catholic family, which through good and ill had adhered to the national faith and the national cause; his school-boy days were pa.s.sed partly at Clongowes-wood College, and partly under the superintendence of the Jesuit Fathers at Stoneyhurst in Lancashire. His early years gave few indications of the splendid wealth of genius that slumbered within his breast. He took little interest in his cla.s.sical or mathematical studies; but he was an ardent student of English literature, and his compositions in poetry and prose invariably carried away the prize. He found his father filling the Civic Chair in Waterford, when he returned from Stoneyhurst to his native city. O'Connell was in the plenitude of his power; and from end to end of the land, the people were shaken by mighty thoughts and grand aspirations; with buoyant and unfaltering tread the nation seemed advancing towards the goal of Freedom, and the manhood of Ireland seemed kindling at the flame which glowed before the altar of Liberty. Into the national movement young Meagher threw himself with the warmth and enthusiasm of his nature. At the early age of twenty we find him presiding over a meeting of Repealers in his native city, called to express sympathy with the State Prisoners of '43, and he thence-forward became a diligent student of contemporary politics. He became known as an occasional speaker at local gatherings; but it was not until the event we have described that Meagher was fairly launched in the troubled tide of politics, and that his lot was cast for good or evil, with the leaders of the national party.

Up to the date of secession Meagher was a frequent speaker at the meetings of the Repeal a.s.sociation. Day by day his reputation as a speaker extended, until at length he grew to be recognised as the orator of the party, and the knowledge that he was expected to speak was sufficient to crowd Conciliation Hall to overflowing. When the influence of the _Nation_ party began to be felt, and signs of disunion appeared on the horizon, O'Connell made a vigorous effort to detach Meagher from the side of Mitchel, Duffy, and O'Brien. "These young Irelanders," he said, "will lead you into danger." "They may lead me into danger,"

replied Meagher, "but certainly not into dishonour."

Against the trafficking with the Whigs, which subsequently laid the Repeal a.s.sociation in the dust, and shipwrecked a movement which might have ended in the disinthralment of Ireland, Meagher protested in words of prophetic warning. "The suspicion is abroad," he said, "that the national cause will be sacrificed to Whig supremacy, and that the people, who are now striding on to freedom, will be purchased back into factious va.s.salage. The Whigs calculate upon your apostacy, the Conservatives predict it." The place beggars, who looked to the Whigs for position and wealth, murmured as they heard their treachery laid bare and their designs dissected in the impa.s.sioned appeals by which Meagher sought to recall them to the path of patriotism and duty. It was necessary for their ends that the bold denouncer of corruption, and the men who acted with him, should be driven from the a.s.sociation; and to effect that object O'Connell was hounded on to the step which ended in the secession. The "peace resolutions" were introduced, and Meagher found himself called on to subscribe to a doctrine which his soul abhorred--that the use of arms was at all times unjustifiable and immoral. The Lord Mayor was in the chair, and O'Brien, John O'Connell.

Denis Reilly, Tom Steele, and John Mitchel had spoken, when Meagher rose to address the a.s.sembly. The speech he delivered on that occasion, for brilliancy and lyrical grandeur has never been surpa.s.sed. It won for him a reception far transcending that of Shiel or O'Connell as an orator; and it gave to him the t.i.tle by which he was afterwards so often referred to--"Meagher of the Sword." He commenced by expressing his sense of grat.i.tude, and his attachment to O'Connell, "My lord," he said:--

"I am not ungrateful to the man who struck the fetters off my limbs while I was yet a child, and by whose influence my father, the first Catholic that did so for two hundred years, sat for the last two years in the civic chair of my native city. But, my lord," he continued, "the same G.o.d who gave to that great man the power to strike down one odious ascendency in this country, and who enabled him to inst.i.tute in this land the laws of religious equality--the same G.o.d gave to me a mind that is my own, a mind that has not been mortgaged to the opinion of any man or set of men, a mind that I was to use and not surrender."

Having thus vindicated freedom of opinion, the speaker went on to disclaim for himself the opinion that the a.s.sociation ought to deviate from the strict path of legality. But he refused to accept the resolutions; because he said "there are times when arms alone will suffice, and when political ameliorations call for 'a drop of blood,'

and for many thousand drops of blood." Then breaking forth into a strain of impa.s.sioned and dazzling oratory he proceeded:--

"The soldier is proof against an argument--but he is not proof against a bullet. The man that will listen to reason--let him be reasoned with. But it is the weaponed arm of the patriot that can alone prevail against battalioned despotism.

"Then, my lord, I do not condemn the use of arms as immoral, nor do I conceive it profane to say that the King of Heaven--the Lord of Hosts! the G.o.d of Battles!--bestows his benediction upon those who unsheath the sword in the hour of a nation's peril. From that evening on which, in the valley of Bethulia, he nerved the arm of the Jewish girl to smite the drunken tyrant in his tent, down to this our day, in which he has blessed the insurgent chivalry of the Belgian priest, His Almighty hand hath ever been stretched forth from His throne of Light to consecrate the flag of freedom--to bless the patriot's sword! Be it in the defence, or be it in the a.s.sertion of a people's liberty, I hail the sword as a sacred weapon; and if, my lord, it had sometimes taken the shape of the serpent, and reddened the shroud of the oppressor with too deep a dye, like the anointed rod of the High Priest, it has at other times, and as often, blossomed into celestial flowers to deck the freeman's brow.

"Abhor the sword--stigmatize the sword? No, my lord, for in the pa.s.ses of the Tyrol it cut to pieces the banner of the Bavarian, and, through those cragged pa.s.ses, struck a path to fame for the peasant insurrectionists of Inspruck! Abhor the sword--stigmatize the sword?

No, my lord, for at its blow a giant nation started from the waters of the Atlantic, and by its redeeming magic, and in the quivering of its crimsoned light the crippled colony sprang into the att.i.tude of a proud Republic--prosperous, limitless, and invincible! Abhor the sword--stigmatize the sword? No, my lord, for it swept the Dutch marauders out of the fine old towns of Belgium--scourged them back to their own phlegmatic swamps--and knocked their flag and sceptre, their laws and bayonets, into the sluggish waters of the Scheldt.

"My lord, I learned that it was the right of a nation to govern itself, not in this hall, but on the ramparts of Antwerp; I learned the first article of a nation's creed upon those ramparts, where freedom was justly estimated, and where the possession of the precious gift was purchased by the effusion of generous blood. My lord, I honor the Belgians for their courage and their daring, and I will not stigmatize the means by which they obtained a citizen-king, a chamber of Deputies."

It was all he was permitted to say. With flushed face and excited gesture John O'Connell rose, and declared he could not sit and listen to the expression of such sentiments. Either Mr. Meagher or he should leave the a.s.sociation; O'Brien interceded to obtain a hearing for his young friend, and protested against Mr. O'Connell's attempts to silence him.

But the appeal was wasted, O'Brien left the hall in disgust, and with him Meagher, Duffy, Reilly, and Mitchel quitted it for ever.